Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Review:
Does It Live Up To Its $1,000 Price Tag
Its 2018 and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 9 is more of a beast than ever – on paper anyways. They took the kitchen sink analogy and moved the needle up even further. You got up to 8GB of RAM, a water-cooling system, up to 1TB of storage, a more powerful S Pen, and everything you would expect a new Galaxy Note to have.
This time around, things are a little bit different from Samsung’s starting price point for this is $1,000 or a stack or 100,000 pennies. The same amount Apple is asking for their high-end iPhones. But w/ Samsung packing a bit more than normal in this Note, we’re gonna see if it lives up to the value of its price tag.
Hardware is still top notch.
The Note 9 retains the glass front + back w/ a metal frame situation. This also makes it a fingerprint magnet. Being a bigger phone, its gonna be hard to keep this clean w/o a case. Speaking of fingers, now that the fingerprint scanner is in a better place that means we can stop accidentally smudging the camera housing, right? Kind of. You’ll still miss on occasion but not enough to be pissed like last year.
Handling the visuals is a massive 6.4inch Super AMOLED QHD display that is almost the same size as last year’s 6.3inch model. Samsung easily retains its crown as making the best display on a smartphone. From YouTube to Netflix and more looks amazing here. Coming from the Galaxy S9 are dual stereo speakers w/ Dolby Atmos. Man, this feature should have been on a Note as this is now the ultimate smartphone for entertainment. The only thing missing is a built-in Quad DAC for headphone audio.
- 6.4inch QHD Super AMOLED Infinity Display w/ 2960 x 1440 resolution + 516ppi
- Snapdragon 845 CPU
6GB of RAM + 128GB of storage expandable via microSD - Rear-facing SuperSpeed Dual Pixel 12MP sensor w/ OIS + Dual Aperture lens of f/1.5 or f/2.4
- f/1.7 8MP front-facing selfie camera w/ autofocus
- Stereo speakers tuned by AKG w/ Dolby Atmos surround effect
- IP68 dust/water resistant body
- 4000 mAh battery w/ fast wired + wireless charging support
- Android 8.1 Oreo w/ Samsung Experience
The massive storage is great but is it needed anymore?
Having 128GB, 512GB, or 1TB on a smartphone is a great feat to achieve. The larger storage sizes are mostly to accommodate media (movies, photos, & music). More or less all of that is either streamed or cloud-based. Whether its Netflix, Hulu, Google Photos, or YouTube, you can get your media content off-device. But having the extra storage is great to have as I don’t know what I could store on-device anymore.
The 4000 mAh battery is what should have been inside of a Note.
Finally, this Note is getting us closer to what we wanted: all-day battery life. The massive 4000 mAh battery inside works beautifully w/ the processor to not drain the juice unnecessarily. On heavier days, I got up to 18 hours on a single charge and on moderate usage, I got almost 3 days. This is a feat but it keeps in mind that it will take a few hours to charge completely from being dead.
The cameras are in the upper echelon of shooters.
Despite the slightly different camera housing, its the same internals from the Galaxy S9 Plus. So you have a dual 12MP rear-facing camera system w/ OIS + dual aperture. Despite the similarities, the camera is still faster on the Note 9 in regards to camera shutter + image processing. You still get great photos that are sharp, great colors, and ideal low-light performance w/ fast auto-focus. New to the mix are a few new features to help differentiate from the Galaxy S line.
You got the Scene Optimizer which uses AI to detect the best scene out of 20 different ones including food, portraits, pets, landscapes, sunrises, sunsets, and more to take photos in. Then you have Flaw Detection which notices when someone blinks to retake the photo. The built-in Scene Optimizer is OK but not enough to notice much of a difference to keep the feature on. The new Flaw Detection is good but I didn’t find myself using it a lot. So overall, the Note 9 isn’t beating the Pixel 2 for me and my tastes but not too far away from it either.
Samsung's UX is still good...
The Samsung Experience hasn’t changed at all since the Galaxy S9/S9 Plus. It is now on version 9.5 still on top of Android Oreo. This offers the same thing you would get from the S9 & S9 Plus. So this grants you an Edge display, DeX support, 3D Emojis (now w/ a few more options), and Samsung apps.
The S Pen gets more useful.
Of course, the differentiator here is the S Pen & its suite of apps. The S Pen is still in a class by itself after many years. It is great to write or draw on or navigate on your Note 9. This year, Samsung added Bluetooth LE to it where that button that was always there gains a purpose.
Now you can use it to take a photo, skip songs, or accelerate your presentation. It has a short battery life though but it does charger fast by placing back into its S Pen slot. This will be great for those of you who love the S Pen but I didn’t run to use the feature. I’m still not an S Pen user as I just appreciate the Note series for the screen size & battery. If you feel the same way, this is why the S9 Plus exists.
...but I'm still not using Bixby.
Even though Bixby got a new redesign visually, it has changed much in usability. The dreaded dedicated Bixby button is still present as I make sure to avoid pressing anything other than the volume rocker like the plague. Once Samsung gets Bixby to where they want it to be, it will be a contender as Samsung can put it everything from fridges to phones to TVs. But we’re not there yet, unfortunately. While I’m still rooting for it but it’s not there for me yet to use over Google Assistant.
The Note 9 is one of the best Android phones out but you'll have to pay for superiority.
The Note 9 is a dope phone and everything you would want from a bigger phone. Big & beautiful screen – the best on a smartphone, big all-day battery, big storage, and big-time performance. More so than any other Note in its history. So this along w/ Apple’s pricing is why they’re charging $1,000 for it. While I don’t agree w/ the pricing, it definitely offers enough value.
If you’re a Samsung fan and you can afford to, I would say yes to get it. If you can’t afford it, I would say to opt for the Galaxy S9 Plus. The options for non-Samsung devices will, however, grow in the coming weeks w/ the Pixel 3/3XL, LG V40, & OnePlus 6T. I doubt any of them will cost $1,000 so you will really have your hands full for choices in Android. Huge thanks to Verizon for hooking us up w/ one.
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