There’s little that hasn’t already been said about this device. As with all Note devices, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G is designed to be the best device at the bleeding edge of mobile technology and it certainly is in many ways.

Naturally, Samsung has packed this thing with uncompromising tech. An Exynos 990 (or Snapdragon 865+ in the US) chipset taking advantage of octa-core CPUs, 12GB of RAM, 6.9 inches of AMOLED 1440p display and a triple camera set up that we will definitely talk about later! It’s stacked and can definitely justify the £1,000+ price tag.

But the Note series, especially to Samsung, has always been about more than just a spec-filled device. It’s about productivity and being the only device you need for any task.

This time around it’s about gaming, specifically over 5G. During the announcement, Samsung’s partnerships with Microsoft for Windows and the likes of Word and PowerPoint were dwarfed by the excitement of Xbox Game Pass. 

With Xbox Game Pass, for a certain amount a month, you can take advantage of unlimited games on the Xbox platform, streamed over 5G. A master stroke for Samsung, simultaneously reinforcing the claim that Note devices are great for gaming, made in 2018 at the launch of the Note 9, and also giving consumers a tangible reason to buy a 5G phone.

In practice, the device works well. Fortnite plays very nicely, and looks great on the AMOLED screen and does not cause the device to get too hot. I’m yet to try a game pass console controller or an Xbox Game Pass but Call of Duty also worked well and smaller games such as Candy Crush and Clash Royale will not bother this device.

Let’s get onto the camera. It’s great. 

Away is the silly 100x zoom engravings into the camera module and instead we have a clean if bulky, camera set up that plays host to a 108MP main sensor, 12MP periscopic zoom lens and a 12MP wide-angle lens capable of some quite brilliant shots.

The sensor’s automatic exposure is very competent, the wide-angle makes shots look stunning and the 5x physical zoom makes this one of the best devices to take a long-range photograph on. 

High-quality videos are also effortless and the 4K shooting capability is a nice feature if a little unnecessary. Stabilisation works well on videos taken without any help and the footage is clean. Items such as golf balls hit from the tee can be traced from as long as 100 yards away and, where in previous years the exposure of the sun would have prevented a lot of detail being seen, detail in both the ground and sky are present in recordings

Overall this device is great for a power user and falls down in just one aspect. The power!

Be it the enhanced frame rate or increased quality of the screen, the addition of 5G connectivity or processing needed to take high-quality photography and videography or high-quality games, this battery can not keep up.

On more than one occasion I have been out with no charging pack and seen the battery of my device deteriorate from over 75% to empty without real usage. Some small gaming, a bit of browsing and a few hours of music streaming to Bluetooth headphones and four or five hours later the power saving mode is on but the device still runs flat.

Frankly, it’s disappointing to see. Especially with Samsung positioning this device for 5G gaming, there is no way that someone can play for an extended period of time without compromising general usage later in the day.

It’s a shame in a lot of ways as this device is capable of pretty much everything. I have rarely needed a tablet or a laptop aside from streaming and long-form writing. Android runs well despite not having the latest features available to it and multitasking is a long-perfected feature of Samsung devices.

You just have to use it near a charger.