The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is a beast of a phone.
For 2020, we can call this slab “Peak Samsung”. A prime example of a company pushing its current manufacturing to the limits, and delivering the absolute best “standard” form factor smartphone it can. The Note has a rich history of being the crown jewel enthusiast and productivity device.
We can’t overlook however, the Note 20 Ultra also starts at $1299.99 for 128GB of storage. For that price we should expect the bleeding edge of technology, and a spec sheet packed full of premium-tier exotic options.
Samsung doesn’t disappoint for spec sheet junkies in the United States. Including a Snapdragon 865+ chipset, UFS3.0 storage, and 12GB of RAM, the Note should be leading most of our performance testing.
And it does. But it doesn’t always win…
Performance testing is more involved than running a synthetic bench and comparing who’s number is bigger. Let’s dig a little deeper than that. Here’s the Note 20 Ultra: By The Benchmarks!
How are each of these tests performed? Here’s my process for benchmarking phones!
Synthetic Bench – GeekBench 5
Starting off with a baseline synthetic bench, the Note’s GeekBench scores look great. Single-core tops my list for 2020, and the multi-core scores are near the top of the pile.
The GPU tests are currently the best Android devices have to offer. Both OCL and Vulkan take wins for Samsung. Based on these results, the Note should be almost untouchable.
Video Render – PowerDirector
Our first real world test shows very good performance that can’t catch the LG V60 in PowerDirector, and falls right in line with Sony and OnePlus.
Video Render – KineMaster
KineMaster has a faster rendering engine than PowerDIrector. Here the Note mixes it up at the top of the list for a tie with the OnePlus 8. My 256GB OP8 originally sold for $500 less at launch earlier this year.
Video Transcode – PowerDirector
Samsung is again near the top of the list for a longer transcode test, even squeaking by the V60. Though oddly this is a test well optimized on the Surface Duo, which manages to take its only win in this one specific instance.
Video Transcode – KineMaster
For all the claimed power on tap, the Note 20 Ultra is essentially tied with the top offerings from LG and OnePlus.
Podcast MixDown – Audio Evolution
Likewise, mixing down an hour long podcast interview, the Note squeaks by the V60, but falls behind the Oneplus 8 Pro and Xperia 1ii.
Stabilization – Google Photos
This is still my voodoo test, where I haven’t been able to pin down what contributes more to the speed of completion. Whatever it might be, Samsung has it. Delivering the fastest result in this test I’ve yet recorded.
If we ever see an advertisement for the Note 20 claiming it’s the fastest phone on the market, I’d be OK with an asterisk on that claim stating “While using Google Photos to stabilize a 4k video.”
Compression Test – RAR Lab
And another win for the Note 20 Ultra! If phones might help consumers replace laptops, Samsung Dex is the gold standard for desktop mode computing. Handling documents and compressed files, the Note proves to be a solid option.
RAR Labs built in benchmark shows the highest data rate I’ve seen on any of the phones tested this year.
In a sustained compression test however, while the Note 20 takes a win, it doesn’t win by as dramatic a margin as the synthetic test.
The Note 20 shows around an 11% improvement in the synthetic test, but only wins the real-world compression by about 8 seconds. In a test that takes the fastest phones just under twelve minutes to complete, that’s only roughly a 1-2% improvement.
Gaming – Brightridge
One of the major claims from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 865+ boasts about a 10% improvement to GPU performance over the earlier Snapdragon 865. Brightridge shows this off almost on the nose. At high graphics settings for 1080p gameplay, a phone like the V60 will hover in the low 40’s for frames per second.
The Note 20 Ultra floats in the mid 40’s in the same areas where we have a longer draw distance, which is exactly what we’d want to see. A 10% improvement in a game like Brightridge amounts to around a 3-5 FPS improvement on average.
The Note 20 Ultra is a High Performance Phone.
The end result is a phone that performs near the top of the pack for most of the tests I can throw at it. We should be pleased to see a phone post numbers and scores like this. We should also balance this performance against phones with similar components and at different price tiers.
It’s difficult to overlook devices like the V60, which wins a few fights, hangs close in others, supports an active pen stylus, and sold for a full MSRP of $799 at launch.
We can point to differences on spec sheets, like UFS storage improvements and the Snapdragon 865+ processor, as reasons for price hikes, but the real world implementation rarely seems to produce significantly better results at those higher prices.
Either, Samsung’s software is so demanding that those performance improvements are eaten up by OneUI and the extra processes constantly running in the background, or app developers aren’t targeting these components to optimize performance. Regardless, it’s not difficult matching the Note in completing tasks for significantly less.
The Note 20 Ultra is an absolutely brilliant option for the consumer who will make use of signature features like the S-Pen, super zooming camera, and Dex, but I wouldn’t stress it as THE option for performance junkies.
I think Note and V60 and the Duo fall into the category of productivity phones, not that they are limited to that.
I would say that I fall into that category where I can carry only my phone and still manage to get the basic stuff done with my phone in a tent far away from home.