Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra - FULL Review (after 2 months of use)

I’ve been using the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra for almost two months now and during this time, I’ve tested it to its fullest and now I am finally ready to give you guys the full, in-depth ZONEofTECH Review.

As you probably know, I test my devices for about a month, sometimes even more, before publishing our Review. So, even-though we’re never the first, we do try to make our Reviews as comprehensive as possible.

Therefore, this Review contains nine different sections:

• Lineup 

• Design

• Display

• Camera

• Performance

• Special Features

• Software

• Battery Life

• Value

Spoiler alert, the Note 20 Ultra is literally the highest-end, non-foldable Smartphone that you can buy right now, but it does have some issues. Get all those snacks ready, drinks as well, sit back and relax as this is going to be quite the Review. 

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Line-up

Starting off with the line-up and just like last year, where Samsung had two models of the Galaxy Note (the Note 10 & the Note 10+), Samsung now has the Note 20 and the Note 20 Ultra, with the ‘Ultra’ being the new ‘Plus’. This year, there are far more differences between the two models than in 2019.

Not quite iPhone 12 levels of barebones, but the box contents have been slimmed down.

The regular Note 20 comes with a 1080p Display with a 60Hz Refresh Rate, an inferior Camera, a higher latency for the S-Pen and, more importantly, it comes with a Plastic back. All this for $1,000. It is pretty safe to say, do not buy the Note 20. I feel like the only reason why that Phone exists, is to push consumers to buy the Note 20 Ultra, which offers so much more, for $300 more. 

Unfortunately, this year, Samsung has cut down on the stuff you get inside the box by quite a lot. Even with the Note 20 Ultra, there are no S-Pen tips in the box anymore, which I find quite odd. There are also no Headphones if you live in the US. You do still get headphones everywhere else though.  You don’t get the case in Europe and the US, but you do actually get it in some other regions. Definitely keep this in mind, that Samsung is offering different things for different versions of this Phone, as it will be a recurring theme throughout the Review.

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Design

Design wise, I was a massive fan of the Note 10+ from last year. That squared-off look and those sharp corners made it, in my eyes, the most beautiful Phone ever made. The Note 20 Ultra is even better now.

Gone is that super shiny and finger-printy Glass on the back and instead we get a Frosted Glass back, just like the iPhone 11 Pro’s, the Pixel 4, the OnePlus Phones and some others as well. The Samsung text on the back is engraved and it has a different texture than the rest of the Phone. For some reason, there is actually an engraved PO Number on the back of the Phone, which is quite interesting and funny at the same time.  Unfortunately, we only get this Frosted Glass back on the Mystic Bronze colour. If you get the Black or the White one, they still come with regular Glass, which is a bummer for me as those would have been my personal colour choices. 

Samsung has changed the position of the S-Pen, it is now on the left rather than on the right-hand side, which is quite inconvenient if you’re right handed so I’m actually not a fan of this at all. What I am a massive fan of though, is having both the Power and the Volume Buttons on the right-hand side. This way you avoid taking accidental screenshots, like you do on the iPhone, I can’t believe they still haven’t fixed that. 

Not that it was small to begin with, but the Display size has increased.

Aside from the texture on the back of the Mystic Bronze unit, Samsung has also updated the Camera Module’s Design. We get a similar style to what the S20 Ultra came with, more about the Camera once we get to that section, but now we also get these beautiful metal rings that surround the Modules which also match the colour of the Phone. Something else that I like about this Camera Module, which is just humongous in terms of both the size and the thickness, is that I can actually rest my finger underneath it and kinda use it as a pop-socket. This makes the entire Phone much more comfortable and easier to use. I’m not sure if this was intended by Samsung or not, but it is definitely a welcome ‘feature’.

Now, I have to say, if you’re not into big Phones, then this is not the Phone for you by any means. With a massive 6.9” Display, up from the already big 6.8” Panel of the Note 10+ from last year, a 0.2mm increase in thickness as well as a 12g increase in weight, the Note 20 Ultra is noticeably bulkier than the Note 10+. This is without me even taking that super thick Camera Module into consideration. Speaking of that Module, the Note 20 Ultra now wobbles on the table like crazy, because of it. So, if you’re the kind of person that uses their Phone flat on the table a lot, you still can on the Note 20 Ultra, it’s just that it is going to be super frustrating because of that wobble. 

Also, when you compare the Note 20 Ultra against some of the other big Smartphones on the market, such as the iPhone 11 Pro Max, the S20 Ultra and the Huawei P40 Pro, the Note 20 Ultra is still the big boy here. Also, whilst I am indeed a big fan of the squared-off form factor, it did end up hurting my palms after using it.

Overall, I do think that this is the most beautiful Phone on the market right now. Both from the front, with that full screen Bezel-less Display, as well as from the back, with that new Frosted Glass look. 

My only complaints Design wise are, firstly, the fact that the Frosted Glass look can only be found on the Mystic Bronze colour and also, with it so big and having those squared-off edges, it is honestly the most uncomfortable Phone I’ve ever held in my hands.

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Display

So, what about the actual Display? Well, just like with the Design, I do consider this to be the most impressive Display on any Smartphone at the moment. Not only is it larger now, but it is also taller, meaning that it can display more vertical content as well as being brighter. Samsung claims that it can go up to 1,500 Nits of peak Brightness, as opposed to about 1,250 Nits on the Note 10+.

We’ve used our professional XRite Display calibration & measure tool, measuring a peak Brightness on a 100% White Window of 977 compared to 530 on the Note 10+, or 780 on the iPhone 11 Pro Max. This is similar to what you would get outdoors, when browsing a website, as those do usually have a white background. DisplayMatte measured this Display up to 1,609 Nits of Brightness on a 10% White Window. Outdoors, I haven’t really been able to notice that much of an improvement over my iPhone 11 Pro Max. The Note 20 Ultra was perfectly visible outdoors though, even in direct sunlight, but it wasn’t noticeably brighter over any of the previous Phones that I’ve used before, at least not to my eyes.

The Note 20 Ultra, same as the Galaxy S20 series, now has a 120Hz Refresh Rate. As with the S20 series, you have to turn down the Resolution to 1080p if you want to use 120Hz. It still cannot do full Resolution at 120Hz, like the OnePlus 8 Pro (and many other Smartphones) can, which is a bit of a bummer. The good news however, is that I wasn’t able to see that much of a downgrade in Sharpness when using this in 1080p mode. Text is indeed a bit blurrier but not by as much as I was expecting.

The Z Fold 2 is the only other Smartphone to have this quality of Display.

Something new with the Note 20 Ultra, is the LTPO Panel, making this and the Galaxy Z Fold 2 the only two Smartphones out right now that come with a 120Hz OLED LTPO Display. What this means is that the Note 20 Ultra can dynamically adjust its Refresh Rate from 1Hz, all the way up to 120Hz, based on the content that you’re watching, which does help preserve the Battery.

I also love how the Display is still curved here too. I know that some people prefer having a flat Display, like we got on the regular Note 20 or the S20 Ultra, but personally I really do like the way this Display looks. Also, I haven’t really had any accidental touch rejection issues with the Note 20 Ultra, maybe just a few when watching videos on YouTube, but nothing major. Let me know in the comments if you prefer having a flat or a curved Display.

The colours on this are absolutely outstanding. The fact that we get an even higher brightness really shows the most when you’re playing back HDR content, HDR video on this simply looks breath-taking. Overall, I would very confidently say that this is the best screen on any Smartphone out right now. It’s very bright, colours are incredible and the viewing angles are superb on this. HDR content is noticeably better than the same content being played back on the iPhone 11 Pro Max or even the S20 Ultra from just a few months ago.

Now, something that this Display comes with, is Gorilla Glass 7, aka Gorilla Glass Victus. This provides up to a 2m drop resistance, up from 1.6m, as well as double the scratch resistance of Gorilla Glass 6. It’s not perfect, it’s not scratch-proof, but it is a noticeable improvement over anything that I’ve used in the past. My only complaint regarding the Display is the fact that we still don’t have 120Hz at Native Resolution. Other than that, this is the best Display that I’ve seen on a Phone. 

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Camera

So, what about the Camera? Well, buckle up because I have a lot to say here.

The Camera on the Note 20 Ultra is mostly identical to the one on the S20 Ultra, and that’s a good thing, right? If you’re aware of the S20 Ultra, you’re probably also aware of the very negative Reviews that this Phone received. There were two reasons for why that was. Firstly, the price. At a starting price of $1,400 and with promises such as a 108MP Resolution camera, 100X Space Zoom, 8K Video Recording and more, this Phone seemed like it was going to be the god of all Phones. Especially the Camera. Unfortunately, it had a lot of issues, with the main one being the Camera.

That 108MP Module was very poor in Low Light, it had focusing issues, 100x Space Zoom was basically unusable at 100x Zoom as everything looked like water-paint and 8K Video Recording was nice, but it was choppy. Not even to mention the pretty serious HDR Processing issues that it had to the point here the Galaxy Note 10 and S10 from a year prior, actually had a better Dynamic Range with many other Reviewers complaining about this too. 

With all of this, you would expect Samsung to just completely revamp the Camera in the Note 20 Ultra, but it turns out, this is mostly the exact same Camera that the S20 Ultra had. Luckily though, Samsung has actually fixed most of the issues this time. The Main Module is literally the exact same 108MP Sensor that we got with the S20 Ultra. Night Mode has been significantly improved, even photos of the Moon have a gigantic improvement from where the S20 Ultra was, at launch. Even when it comes to Low Light video, the Note 20 Ultra does indeed look better than the S20 Ultra did, 8K Video Recording is about the same, it’s sharp but still choppy, so I wouldn’t really be using this myself. 

There are a lot of similarities to the S20 Camera, but it’s not all bad news.

HDR Processing has also been significantly improved. The Dynamic Range still isn’t as good as on the iPhone 11 Pro Max or the Pixel 4 XL, but it is a major improvement over the S20 Ultra. My main issue was really that Dynamic Range, so I’m glad to see that this has gotten a big improvement over the S20 Ultra’s Processing. 

Something that I also absolutely love about this 108MP Main Module is that you get a natural Depth of Field, pretty much Portrait Mode but fully done through hardware, rather than through software. Photos taken on this Phone literally look like photos taken on a DSLR or Mirrorless Camera, they’re that good. You can also take photos in 108MP Resolution, which results in some insanely sharp photos. 

Unfortunately, the CPU isn’t fast enough to process the 108MP photos that quick and also do all the machine learning required to make them look better. So, you’ll notice that all the 108MP photos will lack that HDR Processing all together, the shadows will often be crushed and the highlights overexposed. The regular 12MP photos, which are actually using an 8:1 Pixel Binning method to combine eight pixels into one, don’t have this issue.

Another issue that the S20 Ultra had, was Focusing. That massive 108MP Sensor lacks the Dual Pixel Autofocus that made Samsung Phones the fastest on the market, in terms of Focusing, since the Galaxy S7 from 2016. We still don’t have Dual Pixel Autofocus now, but Samsung has indeed added a Laser Module for Focusing that has fixed most of the Focusing issues. The only time when it still struggles to Focus, is when you zoom in as the Laser would not be able to be used if you’re that far away from the subject. But it does work pretty well for anything that’s around 2-5m away from you. Overall, definitely a noticeable improvement in Focusing Speed, over the S20 Ultra. 

When it comes to the Telephoto Module, this one sees the biggest changes from the S20 Ultra Module. Resolution wise, this used to be a 48MP Module, but it is now a 12MP Module, meaning that it is much better in Low Light. But you do lose a lot of that Digital Zoom capability. Optically, the S20 Ultra had a 4x Zoom Module, while the Note 20 Ultra now has a 5x. What this means is that photos taken at 5x Zoom, and even at 10x, should actually look sharper than on the S20 Ultra. 

However, the S20 Ultra seemed to consistently take better zoom photos, which I was not expecting. My only guess is that maybe that 48MP Resolution on the S20 Ultra’s Telephoto Module actually matters more than the 1x increase in the Optical Zoom that the Note 20 Ultra brought to the table. 

Interestingly enough, Samsung has actually removed the 100x Zoom capability from the Note 20 Ultra, so the highest you can do now is 50x. I almost never used the 50x Zoom, at least not for photos as they’re not usable at that zoom level. But, I did use them once to see what some food vans had on their menu from my flat, which I couldn’t see with my naked eye. This is a much better use case for that 50x Zoom, being able to read signs from far away. 

The Front Camera is unchanged from the Note 10+ from last year, but it can do 4K60.

Finally, the third Module on the back is the Ultra Wide Angle Module, which is identical to the one on the S20 Ultra. It’s 12MP in Resolution, with an f/2.2 Aperture Lens. Combined with the new and improved Image Processing, we get the most impressive Ultra-Wide Angle shots that I’ve ever seen on a Phone, even more impressive than on the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Aside from this, I absolutely love the fact that you can take Night Mode shots using any of the Lenses. 

Samsung has now added a Pro Video Mode, which is amazing for Mobile Video Shooters, but you can only use it with the Main Module and not the Telephoto or the Ultra-Wide for whatever reason. The same thing applies to the Pro Photo Mode.

That’s a big issue for me and then another big issue is that you cannot record 4K60 Video from any of the other Modules, you can only do 4K60 from the Main Module on the back. What’s worse is that not only can you not switch between Lenses when shooting Video, but even when you’re not recording, if you want to see all three Lens options, you need to go into the Camera Settings and drop the FPS to 30. Samsung, please just release an update where we can still see all three Modules and if we select the Ultra-Wide or the Telephoto, the Frame Rate gets automatically capped to 30. I hate having to go into the Settings.

As long as I have to disable 4K60 for all but one of the three Lenses on this Phone, I cannot call this a 4K60 device. I ended up just leaving it set to 4K30, which is of course not ideal. 

The Front Camera is good, it has too dropped in Resolution to a 10MP Sensor, the same Module as on the Note 10+ from last year as opposed to the 40MP Module that the S20 Ultra got. The Front Camera Cut-out is now smaller than on the Note 10+, so I do really like that. Selfies are still sharp, very well exposed and HDR Processing on the front is surprisingly well done. Additionally, the Front Camera can actually do 4K60. 

Overall, the Main Camera Module is very good, only suffering from some occasional Dynamic Range issues, but nothing as severe as what the S20 Ultra had. The Zoom Module is the best I’ve seen on any Smartphone so far and the same goes for the Ultra-Wide Angle Module. My only major complaints here are not being able to use the Pro Modes on any of the non-Main Lenses and not being able to do 4K60 Video on all the Lenses on the back. Oh, and 8K Video Recording is still a gimmick, as it’s still capped at 24FPS.

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Performance

Moving on to the Performance, this is where I have some pretty unfortunate news. As you may be aware, there are different configurations of this Phone, which depend on which region you’re in. 

Some units come with the Exynos 990 Processor, mainly the ones made for the International market, while some units come with the much better Snapdragon 865+ Processor. This not only gives you 20% better Performance, which is a very gigantic difference, but it also runs cooler while giving you a better Battery Life. That’s absolutely nuts! 

The drop in Frames between the two models (credit: XEETECHCARE)

Even with the S20 line, there was a lot of backlash from consumers on the fact that the Exynos 990 models were slower, ran hotter and had a worse Battery Life than the Snapdragon 865 models. But now with the Note 20 Ultra, Samsung has bridged that gap even more by including the even more powerful Snapdragon 865+ variant in the US variants, while keeping the international models with the same Exynos 990. Not only that, but JerryRigEverything and iFixIt have both found that Samsung even uses two different cooling systems in the Note 20 Ultra’s, some copper based and others Graphite based. Probably the worst part is that in some regions, like India or Pakistan, you actually get less RAM (8GB compared to 12GB), while in the US you only get 128GB of base Storage, as opposed to 256GB like you get everywhere else. Long story short, it’s a mess!

The Note 20 Ultra is the Frankenstein of all Phones and depending on where you buy itfrom, you’ll end up with some very different components, some of which are inferior. Our model is the Exynos 990 version, with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of Storage. Personally, I haven’t really had any Performance issues on this, it’s been running perfectly smooth, but what I have indeed had issues with, was overheating.

On a number of occasions, I’ve found that my Note 20 Ultra was running so hot that I could barely even hold it in my hand. At one point, it was just sitting in my hiking back, I took it out and because it was constantly searching for a signal, it got so hot that I had to literally put it back in my backpack as I couldn’t even have it in my jeans pocket. This overheating, combined with the already weaker Performance of the Exynos 990, results in games getting up to 20FPS less on the Exynos variants, when compared to the Snapdragon 865+ model.

Luckily, I’m not a big gamer myself, but it is very frustrating knowing that you can get an inferior Note 20 Ultra depending on the region that you’re based in, while not necessarily paying less for it.

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Special Features

Moving on to Special Features, the Note 20 Ultra is literally packed to its teeth with features. You cannot get a Phone that’s more equipped than this.

Water Resistance, Wireless Charging, Reverse Wireless Charging, 5G and a Haptic Engine that now seems even better than the one on the Note 10+ from last year, resulting in one of the best typing experiences on a Smartphone. It also has some great, powerful Speakers. The Note 20 Ultra offers basically anything that you can think of.

The S-Pen is a major selling point for the Note 20 Ultra

But the main reason why you would want to get a Note over a standard Galaxy S Phone, or any other Phone for that matter, is the S-Pen. Samsung offers the best stylus experience on a Phone and the Note 20 Ultra is now even better than the Note 10+. The latency is now lower, at just 9ms down from 45ms, so everything feels incredibly smooth and pretty much just like writing on a piece of paper. There’s also a predictive algorithm now to make things even smoother, but I have noticed that sometimes it does indeed make the line jump, so I do think that it needs a bit more tweaking. There are a few new air gestures that the S-Pen supports now, allowing you to go back, go home and open up the multi-tasking menu just by using the S-Pen in the air, which is pretty cool.

I’m not a big hand-written notes taker myself, but where I have found myself using the S-Pen a lot was when using Photoshop or Lightroom. Being able to just use it as a brush or even as a small pointer to adjust the tools and brush size was absolutely amazing. However, because of that massive Camera Module, you cannot really use the S-Pen while the Note is flat on the table because of how much it will wobble, which I think is a massive downgrade to the S-Pen experience overall.

But something that is actually a big upgrade, is in terms of DeX. DeX being this Desktop UI that Samsung Phones will boot in once you connect them to an External Monitor. It’s an extremely underrated feature. Now, the Note 20 Ultra supports Wireless Dex, meaning that if you have a TV that supports the latest version of MiraCast, you can cast directly to your TV and then use your Samsung Phone as a Trackpad and Keyboard. You could also hook up external peripherals and kinda use this as your Desktop replacement to some extent.

You can run the Desktop version of Chrome as well as Microsoft Office so for some people, DeX can indeed replace their Computer. You can also open up all of your Android Apps in windowed and full-screen. I am a big fan of DeX, even though I don’t personally use it as much. 

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Software

When it comes to the Software Experience, the Note 20 Ultra runs on Android 10, with Samsung’s OneUI 2.5 Skin. I have to say, TouchWiz from back in the Galaxy S4 and S5 era was the most infamous Skin on any Android Phone, it was slow and laggy. OneUI 2.5 is for me at least, the best Skin on any Smartphone right now.

This is one of the best skins we’ve seen on any Android Phone.

It’s very fast, very fluid. The design is great and the reason why it is called OneUI is because you can use it with one hand, to some extent at least. My favourite part about OneUI is that you can have App Folders in the App Drawer too. This way, you can have a very minimalist Home-Screen while also having App Folders easily accessible for when you need them.

Also, Samsung allows you to run three Apps at the same time, with one being a picture-in-picture overlay, which makes this Phone, in combination with the S-Pen, one of the best Smartphones for productivity work. You can lock Apps in memory, you can have YouTube Player in the background in a tiny pop-up window if you have YouTube Premium, it’s just so good.

But…it’s not perfect. It does have some occasional Frame Rate drops when it comes to animations and I’m not a fan of the way Notifications are displayed at all. Some end up being in non-chronological order. In my case, where I get hundreds of Notifications per day, which I cannot really disable, it ends up being a complete mess and really difficult finding what I’m looking for. 

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Battery Life

Battery Life is not a strong point for the Note 2 Ultra

The Note 20 Ultra come with a 4500mAh Battery, this is 500mAh less than the S20 Ultra came with. But, we do have that LTPO Display, which does indeed save some Battery Life. From my usage, it was just about the same as on the S20 Ultra. But that doesn’t mean it was great.

I was getting about 3-4 hours of screen-on time, which was pretty bad, even after multiple weeks of use. On my Fold 2 for example, I’m easily getting around eight hours or so. I do have the Exynos variant and have heard that the Snapdragon variant isn’t quite as bad, but the Exynos variant is just not as good as it should be. Luckily, we still have Fast Charging but this has now dropped to 25W from 45W, like we had on the S20 Ultra. The good news is that it still charges to around 50% in just 30 minutes, so I don’t have any complaints in terms of that. 

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Value

So in the end, is the Note 20 Ultra actually worth it? Well, I can confidently say that if you’re looking for a non-foldable Smartphone, this is the best one that you can buy. You get an outstanding Display, an incredible Design, great Cameras and all the features that you can think of. 

But, you will have to pay for all of that. At a starting price of $1,300 or £1,180, the Note 20 Ultra costs as much as a pretty good Laptop and it isn’t that far off from the Galaxy Z Flip, which costs £1,300. You can even find the original Galaxy Fold for about £600-£800 or so, on eBay.

At that point you’ll have to decide. Do you want the ultimate standard Smartphone experience or do you pay a bit more and get into the Foldable Smartphone market? If you do decide to go for the Note 20 Ultra, try to get the Snapdragon 865+ variant as you’ll get a better Battery Life, more Performance, a better Gaming experience as well as a cooler device.

MSI GS66 Stealth (2020) - A 300Hz Portable Gaming Laptop!

Meet the MSI GS66 Stealth Laptop, a Laptop that comes with a 300Hz Display, but unlike some other 300Hz Laptops, this one is actually very portable. It comes with a 15” Display, it’s thin, light and it also comes with pretty much the highest-end specs that you can find on a Laptop.

MSI sent this over, and sponsored this entire video, for us to take a closer look at probably the most powerful portable Laptop that you can buy. 

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Design

Starting off with the Design, the MSI GS66 Stealth is an absolutely stunning looking Laptop. It’s got this very stealthy Matte Black look, which MSI is calling Core Black. The logo itself is laser etched into the body of the Laptop, so from certain angles it’s not even visible and you just get a slab of black metal. When closed down, the GS66 Stealth is simply just a straight piece of metal. I really love how this Laptop looks, it’s a very anonymous Laptop so to say, it’s definitely deserving of its ‘Stealth’ branding.

At some angles, you can’t see the MSI logo at all.

It’s also surprisingly portable. With a weight of just 2.1kg and a thickness of just 1.9cm, this is really the thinnest and most portable high-end Gaming Laptop that I have personally seen. The whole idea of the GS66 Stealth is that you have a very powerful Laptop when you’re at work, then you just pack it in your bag and take it to your place and use it as a high-end Gaming Laptop there. It’s really the best of both worlds, work and Gaming.

The Port selection is also very generous on this. We have a Thunderbolt 3 Port, which allows you to connect this Laptop to 5K Monitors or even connect an External GPU for even more Performance in case you need it. You get a full sized HDMI 2.0 Port, three USB 3.2 Type A Ports, as well as one USB 3.2 USB C Port and an Ethernet Port as well. The Cooling on this Laptop is very extensive as well. We have Vents on each side, in the Hinge as well as under the Laptop itself. You’ll see why this is important when I get to the Performance section of this video. 

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Display

Now, the Display. The model we have comes with a 15.6”, 1080p, IPS Display with a 300Hz Refresh Rate. Usually, Laptops have a 60Hz Refresh Rate, meaning that they can display up to 60FPS. Some of the higher-end Gaming Monitors that you can buy have something like a 144Hz Refresh Rate, or 240Hz as a maximum. This one has an insane 300Hz Display, more than on any Desktop Monitor that you can buy as of right now. So, if you’re a competitive Gamer, this Display is going to make a massive difference as you’ll be able to see five times more frames per second, compared to a standard Display. 

This model has a 1080p Display, but there is a 4K option.

Now, if you’re not a competitive Gamer, MSI does have a 4K option of this Display. This gives you more sharpness at a more standard 60Hz Refresh Rate. If you’re a Content Creator and not an E-Sports Gamer, I would recommend that version, but if you need an insanely high Refresh Rate, you do have this option on the GS66 Stealth. 

When it comes to the quality of the Display Panel itself, it’s a pretty great Panel. The Viewing Angles are great and the colours pop. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any calibration happening at the factory, at least not for the 1080p Panel. The Bezels are very thin, with the exception of the pretty noticeable chin. I would’ve loved this to be as thin as the other three Bezels, but of course that that would’ve required a 16:10 Aspect Ratio Display, which isn’t really that common on Gaming Laptops. 

Something that I really like about this Display is that you can tilt it all the way down and the Hinge itself, just like the entire Laptop, is fully made out of metal, giving the entire Laptop a very premium look and feel. 

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Keyboard & Trackpad

It just wouldn’t be a Gaming Laptop without RGB.

What about the Keyboard and the Trackpad? I’ll start with the Trackpad because this is far simpler. You get a very wide Trackpad with the GS66 and there are no individual Buttons on it, it’s all just a single Button. Just like on most other Windows Laptops, it does indeed use a Diving Board mechanism, which means that it’s fairly easy to press near the Button and then it gets harder, the higher you go. We do have Windows Precision Drivers, so the tracking is really good, I don’t really have anything to complain about here.

Now, when it comes to the Keyboard, we do have a full RGB Keyboard, with each Key being individually back-lit. The Keyboard Backlight is provided by ‘Steel Series’ and there’s a ton of different effects that you can have and tweak, based to your liking. In terms of how it feels, it’s a very rubbery Keyboard so it’s soft to the touch rather than ‘clicky’. So, if you’re into that, you’ll definitely love this Keyboard. 

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Camera, Microphones & Speakers

Before I talk about the Performance, which is what you’re all probably here for, we did some tests with the Camera, Microphones and Speakers in the video above. If that’s of interest, be sure to give it a watch.

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Performance 

Right, time for the Performance. CPU-wise, we get the highest-end 10th Generation Intel i9 10980HK Chip, which is Intel’s most powerful Processor for a Laptop. It has eight Cores and can Turbo Boost up to 5.3GHz. As for the GPU, this model right here comes with the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super Max-Q, with 8GB of GDDR6 Memory. With the RAM, our unit has 16GB of 2666MHz DDR4 Memory, but you can actually configure this to up to 64GB of RAM. Storage-wise, our unit has 1TB of NVMe Flash Storage, with Read Speeds of just over 3GB/s. So, these specs are pretty much the highest that you can get in a Laptop, normally stuff that you see in a large, thick 17” Gaming Laptop. But as you can probably tell, the GS66 is very thin and very portable, considering the specs that it packs. 

If you’re looking for a Gaming Laptop, you can’t get much better specs than these.

So, now let’s run some real world tests and see how it performs. In Fortnite, I was playing this game on maxed-out settings and I was getting around 120FPS, which is nuts for a Laptop. But, keep in mind that you do have that insane 300Hz Refresh Rate, so if you drop the settings a bit, you can actually get close to, or even exceed that 300FPS mark and take full advantage of what this Display has to offer.

In Call of Duty Warzone, I was getting around 120FPS. This was on ‘Epic’ settings with everything maxed out, except for Ray-Tracing, which was disabled. In Overwatch, I was getting 160FPS on ‘Epic’ settings and after dropping the settings to Medium, I got to 300FPS. I then decided to cap the Frame-Rate to 60 and, holy smokes, I was shocked to see how laggy 60FPS looked, compared to 300FPS. Next up, I tried Starcraft 2, one of my personal favourites and on the highest possible settings, I was getting between 200-220FPS. It’s unbelievable that we can do all of this on a Laptop that can easily fit in your bag.

Now, with this insane Performance, you can also use this Laptop for actual work. So, I loaded ‘Keyshot’, which is what we use for all the concepts and renders that you see on the channel, and the GS66 rendered our ZONEofTECH benchmark in just 29 seconds. This is using the GPU. For example, rendering the same project at the same exact settings, on the 2019 maxed out iMac that has an Eight-Core i9 9900K Processor, took 5 minutes and 50 seconds. This is why having an RTX Card in your computer makes such a massive difference. 

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Battery Life 

That Thunderbolt Port could come in handy if you’re looking for the best performance on the go.

The MSI GS66 Stealth features a 99WHr Battery, which is the largest Battery that you can legally carry with you on an Plane, so MSI have really gone all the way here. Since we do have a Thunderbolt 3 Port, we can actually charge it via any USB C Charger. In fact, you can even charge this Laptop on the go, via a USB C Power Bank. 

According to MSI, you can get up to 9 hours of productivity use out of it. This will of course drop if you’re Gaming or if you’re doing anything intensive. Also, because of how power hungry the NVIDIA GPU and the Eight-Core CPU is, you will need to have this Laptop plugged in if you want to take full advantage of its Performance. Otherwise, on Battery, it will run at about 50% of its full power.

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Value

Ok, how much does the GS66 cost and what do you get for that money?

Well, at the moment you can get it for as low as £1,550 and for that price you get a Six-Core, 10th Gen, i7 Processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, an RTX 2060 GPU with 6GB of Video Memory and a 240Hz Refresh Rate. It’s not 300FPS, but it is very close.

That’s the configuration that I would personally recommend. It’s still extremely powerful and with that Thunderbolt 3 Port, you can indeed connect a Desktop Class GPU in case you do need more Performance.

iPhone 12 (2020) - Hands-On with Mockups!

Here, we have something pretty special. These are the upcoming 2020 iPhones. The iPhone 12, the iPhone 12 Pro and the iPhone 12 Pro Max. So, wait a second Daniel, did Tim Cook send these to you? Do you actually have the new iPhones two months before release? Well…yes and no.

These are essentially non-functional models that are made for Case Manufacturers so that they can start working on their Cases. A massive thanks to Sonny Dickson for arranging these units too. Even though they are non-functional units, they do have the exact dimensions of the upcoming iPhones, which means that we can stack these up against other Smartphones and see how they compare.

So, without any further ado, here is an early look at the iPhone 12 line-up! 

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iPhone 12

The regular iPhone 12 from the front.

The first iPhone that we have right here would be the smallest of the bunch and also the most affordable one, the iPhone 12. This iPhone is actually smaller than the current iPhone 11 Pro or the iPhone XS or X,  which at the moment are the smallest notched iPhones that we have. Not only that, but the iPhone 12 is even smaller than the iPhone SE, 8, 7, 6s and even the 6, being just a tiny bit taller and wider than an iPhone 5. So if you’ve always wanted a flagship iPhone that was small and easy to use with one hand, that option is now finally back.

Now, something interesting about this iPhone is that it comes with a 5.4” Display, meaning that while the size of the Phone is smaller than an iPhone 6, the actual Display is noticeably bigger. Also, this is an OLED Display, just like on the iPhone X and newer. So, no more LCD Panels on any of the 2020 iPhones. Goodbye LCD, you won’t be missed.

Another big change to the iPhone 12 is that it now has a squared-off frame, very similar to the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4, which were my favourite iPhone designs ever. While having a squared-off frame isn’t as comfortable in the hand, as a wedge shape frame is, they do have way more grip and they won’t be as slippery because of that. As a bonus, you can even prop the Phones up which might not sound like a big deal for you guys, but for us, that’s pretty huge. It means that we don’t have to prop the Phones on something when we’re filming.

Taking a look at the Ports and the Buttons, on the bottom we have the Lightning Port as well as the Speaker and Microphone Grill. On the right, we have a massive Power Button. Nothing really on the top and finally on the left, we have the Mute Switch and the Volume Buttons. Finally, when it comes to the back and the Camera Module, we have a Dual Camera Module here, as opposed to the Triple Camera Module that we’ll see on the Pro models. This is pretty much the same arrangement as we got with the regular iPhone 11.

A top-down view of the back of the iPhone 12.

This means that we have the Main Module as well as an Ultra-Wide Angle Module. The Cameras on the iPhone 11’s were already pretty much the best in the industry, with 4K60 Video Support on all of the Lenses. These ones are said to be getting even better with support of possibly even 4K Video at 240 FPS.

We’re also getting an Apple A14 Processor, which would be manufactured on a new 5nm process so overall, the iPhone 12 is a pretty big upgrade in every single way and really the biggest upgrade that we got even since the iPhone X, in 2017.

There is one thing that isn’t fully known about these iPhones yet, that is the Notch. Since these models were made for Case Manufacturers, the Notch would not be 100% accurate. We’ve had many reports that the Notch would indeed be getting smaller, so I do expect this to look about the same as we’ve modelled it in our Concepts. This won’t really be that much of a change on the larger models of the iPhones, but it definitely will be on this 5.4” iPhone 12, where that Notch is already taking a considerable amount of space on this tiny Display.

Price wise, this iPhone is said to start at $650, $50 less than what the current iPhone 11 starts at. That is pretty awesome considering that you’re also getting an OLED Display, 5G and better Performance as well. 

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iPhone 12 Max

The iPhone 12 Max has the exact same Camera cut-out as the regular 12.

The second 2020 iPhone would be the iPhone 12 Max. This one is basically the successor to the iPhone 11 as it has the exact same 6.1” Display size, only this time, it is an OLED Display. I really do like this size a lot, especially now that we have these flat sides. I can grip it perfectly and it is noticeably larger than the 5.4” iPhone 12.

On the back, we have the exact same Dual Camera Module setup as on the iPhone 12. The front would have the same Notch size as on the iPhone 12 which again, I do believe will be around the same size as we’ve modelled it in our concept, based on all the leaks that we’ve seen.

The iPhone 12 Max is rumoured to start at $750, or $50 more than the iPhone 11. But, we are getting an OLED Display, thinner Bezels, a new Design with a flat frame as well as 5G support.

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iPhone 12 Pro

Then, we have the two Pro iPhones, starting with the iPhone 12 Pro. This one also has a 6.1” Display, the same as the iPhone 12 Max. This Display is very likely to be a 120Hz Panel, making everything far more fluid and responsive than on the non-pro iPhones. The frame, while still flat, will be made of out Stainless Steel, as opposed to the Aluminium on the non-pro models. Personally, I think I do prefer the Matte Black frame on the non-Pro iPhones. There’s something about that, that just takes me back to that iPhone 5 Design, which was by far my favourite.

The 12 Pro and the 12 Max will have the exact same dimensions.

Also, something to note here is that on the bottom left, we have this thing that looks like a Smart-Connector. Some of you might be thinking that this is the SIM Card Tray but, if you take a look at the previous unreleased iPhone models that we’ve shown you over the years, none of them had the SIM Card Tray on them. That was just on the final models, mostly because you don’t need access to the SIM Card like you do for the Buttons.

We do know that Apple plans on removing the Lightning Port entirely with the iPhone 13 next year and that the Charging will be done through a Magnetic Smart Connector or directly through Wireless Charging. But, Apple could already be including that Smart Connector on the iPhones this year just to get Users accustomed to charging with that Magnetic Connector already. Aside from this, this iPhone will also come with 6GB of RAM, compared to the 4GB that we have on the non-Pro iPhones.

The Cameras will be getting a pretty big improvement too. Not only will we be getting a Triple Lens Camera Module, we would also be getting that LiDAR Sensor that the 2020 iPad Pro got. This LiDAR module is not present on our models right here. This is, again, mostly because they’re for Case Manufacturers and as long as the size of the Camera Unit is correct, it doesn’t really matter what they have inside. Our concept is more accurate, so that would be closer to what the 2020 iPhones will look like, from the back.

The model we received had a White back, which is really clean (Centre-Top).

Now, aside from that new LiDAR Module, which will allow you to scan objects and even the environment in 3D for a significantly improved AR experience, the three Main Cameras will also be getting some major upgrades. The rumors are saying that they’ll be getting higher quality optics, with a Seven-Element Lens system. We’ve also heard rumors of a 64MP Sensor, but those aren’t confirmed as of yet. All we know for now is that the Pro models will definitely be an upgrade over the current iPhone 11 Pro’s in terms of the Camera quality, we just don’t know how much as of yet.

The iPhone 12 Pro is said to start from the same $999 price-point that the iPhone 11 Pro started at. We do get a larger Display, better Performance, a LiDAR Scanner, improved Cameras, 5G support and possibly even a 120Hz Refresh Rate.

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iPhone 12 Pro Max

Finally, the last iPhone would be the iPhone 12 Pro Max, which is the second iPhone out of the iPhone 12 line-up to get a change in terms of its size. But, unlike the regular iPhone 12, which is now smaller, the 12 Pro Max is bigger than ever before, coming in with a massive 6.7” Display. I have to say, while I absolutely love how this iPhone feels in the hand, it is just gigantic. The 11 Pro Max was always on the big side but this is just humongous. However, when we compare it to the Note 10+, which comes with a 6.8” Display, the iPhone is almost the same size, the Note is still bigger of course, but not by a lot. 

The iPhone 12 Pro Max, compared to the S20 Ultra.

The same thing applies when we compare it to the S20 Ultra. But you see, while the Ultra is much taller, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is noticeably wider, making it feel far chunkier and more Tablet-like in the hand, than the S20 Ultra. The fact that we also don’t have a Notch at all gives us much more screen-real-estate, when compared to the iPhone.

Now, even-though I do like the look of this iPhone a lot, and the fact that it has such a massive Display, I still cannot use an iPhone for business, when I’m traveling. We still do not have side by side multitasking support on the iPhone at all. So, if I want to use two Apps at the same time, which I pretty much do all the time when I’m traveling as I need to look at my Calendar and schedule some events based on some emails or some notes, I cannot do that at all on the iPhone. I can only run one App at the same time. But, on a Samsung Galaxy Note for example, or any Android Phone really, you can in fact run two or more Apps at the same time, significantly improving the multi-tasking experience.

I think I might just go for the iPhone 12 Pro this year and of course, the Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 as my Main or Secondary Phone, once that releases. 

Other than that, the 12 Pro Max would have the same Specs and Features that the 12 Pro has. This means 6GB of RAM, alongside that Triple Lens Camera Module on the back with the LiDAR Scanner included. Interestingly enough, if you take a look at the side of the 12 Pro Max, while on the left we do have that Smart Connector shape, on the right we have another Cutout which does resemble the Apple Pencil Connector on the iPad Pro. Also, this Connector is much larger than the single Connector on the 12 Pro. 

The range in sizes for this line-up is pretty significant.

So..what could this be? My theory is that the Connector that’s on the right of the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the one that’s on the left side of the iPhone 12 Pro, will both be used for that new Magnetic Charger. It is a bit weird that they’re not on the same side and they also have different sizes, so I’m not fully sure what’s up with that, but I do believe that they’re both Magnetic Connectors.

When it comes to the second tiny Connector on the 12 Pro Max, I do think that this is actually the SIM Tray and for some reason it was modelled onto this iPhone, even-though it didn’t need to be. That’s my theory but do let me know what you guys think.

Something else that I want to mention here is that all of these iPhones feel considerably thinner than the 11 Pro’s. The 11 Pro’s measured in a 8.1mm thick and the 12 Pro’s are said to be getting thinner, at 7.4mm. As long as that doesn’t affect the Battery Life, that’s really nice. Finally, the 12 Pro Max is said to start at $1,100. For this, we’re getting a larger Display with possibly a 120Hz Refresh Rate, faster Performance, improved Cameras with that LiDAR Scanner, 5G and of course, that brand new Design.

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Overall, the iPhone 12 line-up is looking to be very promising. Especially considering what Apple will be pricing these iPhones at. It will be like $750 for the 12 Max, which would have the most powerful Processor in any Smartphone and likely one of the best Cameras in a Phone, that’s an amazing deal.

However, in order to achieve these prices, Apple had to remove the Charger and the Headphones from the box, so you will have to buy those separately now. Some people might be ok with that, some might not. I personally am, as long as the price gets decreased which unfortunately, for the iPhone 12 Pro’s, it has not.

iOS 14 Review - Biggest Change Since 2007!

Every year in June, Apple announces a new version of iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and macOS. We also have tvOS but come on, no one really cares about that.

This year, we had a few leaks that iOS 14 would bring a new Fitness App to the table, alongside possibly a new list view for the Home-Screen, but that was pretty much it. However, it turns out that iOS 14 is actually pretty much the biggest change that the iPhone has had since the introduction of the very first iPhone, back in 2007. This version of iOS (4) brought the ability to change the Wallpaper, as well as multitasking support. Then, iOS 7 redesigned the whole look and now iOS 14 allows you to have more than just Icons on the Home-Screen. 

It introduces Widgets and an App Library UI, amongst many massive features, making it a gigantic update. I’ve already covered over 40 big changes in our previous video, but now that I actually got a chance to use iOS 14 on my actual iPhone for a few days, I wanted to talk about my personal experience and how it actually is to use iOS 14, iPadOS and watchOS 7. So, without further ado, here is my iOS 14 experience!

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iOS 14

Starting off with iOS 14 and the biggest feature that we got were the Home-Screen Widgets.

Now, we did kind of have Widget support with iOS 8, which came out in 2014. But these Widgets were only viewable in the Notification Centre. In more recent versions of iOS, you had to swipe right from the Home-Screen in order to see them, which was not that convenient. But now with iOS 14, you can place Widgets pretty much anywhere you want on the Home-Screen, which reminds me of Android.

This is so much cleaner, on the face of it.

In fact, Widgets support has been my number one most requested feature in iOS and it’s been one of the major reasons why I keep gravitating towards Android, whenever a major new device comes out. However, unlike on Android where you can basically place a Widget anywhere you want, on iOS they work in the same way as Apps do. They still magnetically attach to other Apps, which means that you just cannot have Widgets on the top, empty space in the middle and Apps on the bottom. You can only place Widgets where you already have Apps, which is a bit of a bummer.  

Also, you always need to have two rows of Apps between Widgets. For whatever reason, you just cannot have one single row, probably because Apple is using a 4x4 App Square for each small Widget. Something cool that I’ve noticed is that now you can just hold your finger anywhere on the Home-Screen to activate the Jiggle Mode, this is what it’s called internally. You also get this nice Haptic Response when you’ve done that. 

In order to add Widgets, you just press on the ‘Plus’ Button in the top right corner, you then get a bunch of automatic Widget suggestions, based on the Apps that you use the most. Once you scroll down, you get to this list of all the Apps that support Widgets. Since the Widget system has been completely redesigned in iOS 14, Apps will need to implement these Home-Screen Widgets, which is the reason why right now, only a few First-Party Apps support them. But then, it’s pretty straight forward. You select a Widget and then you get to choose between three or even four different sizes, in the case of Notes. Unfortunately, you cannot resize a Widget once you’ve placed it. In order to change the size of it, you’ll have to remove it and add it again. 

Now, if you choose to go for a small Widget, then that Widget would not be intractable. The moment you tap it, you would be taken to that App. Whereas if you have a larger Widget, with more UI elements, then you can click one of those elements to get taken to that specific function in the App. You can also hold on a Widget and then edit it with things such as changing the location that the Weather App shows you, the Note that’s currently displayed in the Notes Widgets and so on. 

You can also drag one Widget on top of another, to have a stack of multiple Widgets that you scroll through. It might be useful for some users, but for me personally, I like having all my information visible at a glance. I do prefer having all of my Widgets un-stacked and visible all the time.

Yes, ‘Jiggle Mode’ is the actual term for it.

Overall, I really do like the Home-Screen Widgets a lot and I just cannot wait for more Developers to start creating their very own Widgets. I predict that I would be changing my Home-Screen almost daily when that happens, by playing around with different Widget layouts. But unfortunately, Widgets are far from perfect. 

You cannot position them anywhere on the Home-Screen, for some reason Apple still kept the previous Widget View from iOS 13. Meaning that you can still swipe right from the Home-Screen and get this very long scrollable list with all of your Widgets. I just think that they should remove this because it just complicates things way too much for the average user. Having two places where you can have the same Widgets is just not ok. But wait, it gets even weirder.

In the Widget Panel, you can still hold to make them jiggle and then you have the same ‘Plus’ symbol, from where you can add more of them. It turns out that if you scroll down you still have the ‘Edit’ Button, from where you can add all the iOS 13 style Widgets here. Now, I really do hope that Apple fixes this in a future Beta Version. I do think that it will be fixed by the time iOS 14 launches, especially since all Widgets will be converted to the new style.

The second big new feature in iOS 14, is the App Library. Just like on Android again, where this is called the App Drawer, if you swipe left from your last Home-Screen, you can access the App Library, which is really just like the Launcher on Mac. A collection of all of your Apps installed on your iPhone. While I do like this idea a lot, unfortunately there are many issues and inconsistencies that I’ve found with the App Library. For example, on stock Android you get this App Drawer which lists and sorts all of your Apps alphabetically. Personally, I’m not really a fan of this as I do prefer having my Apps in Folders, which Samsung actually allows you to do in their own Android skin. which I love. Apple is somewhere in the middle.

The App Library does create App Folders, but those Folders are created automatically for you. There’s no way you can change that which means that finding a specific App can be quite tricky. Apple, please give us the option to rename and organise the Folders, as that would help a ton! 

Another mainstay on Android has come to iOS in the form of the ‘App Library’.

The way it works now is kind of pointless as I can still better organise all of my Apps, by having custom Folders on the Home-Screen. Also, opening those Folders in the App Library is very confusing as well. Unlike the Folders on the Home-Screen, if you tap on an App, it just launches it. So, you need to press on the bottom right Icon that shows multiple Apps, in order to open up the Folder. Ok, so you’re probably wondering, what happens if you delete an App from the Home-Screen? Does it go to the App Library or does it get removed? So, once you get into Jiggle Mode, the ‘Delete’ option has been renamed into ‘Remove App’ and once you press that, you’ll be asked if you want to delete the App or add it to the App Library. Which again, is extremely confusing because all your Apps are already in the App Library anyway. I think this should be renamed into “Hide App” and “Remove App”. 

Back to the App Library. If you swipe up, you get this list view in alphabetical order, with all of your Apps. This is sort of like on Android and then you can scroll through them or even search through them, which I can already do that in Spotlight Search, but at least we get this list view, which I am a fan of. Those are the two big changes in iOS 14, Widgets and the App Library. While I do love both, I do feel like iOS is becoming a bit of a mess now. You can swipe right to access the Widget Panel which you can also add to your Home-Screen anyway. You can then swipe down to access the search functionality which you can also access by swiping left from your last Home Screen, but that search is only for Apps, whereas the swipe down search is for everything. I just feel like it needs a lot of polish as right now, it’s like a notebook full of ideas, instead of an organised Operating System.

There have also been a few extra things that I have noticed, which I do really want to point out. First off, the stability has actually been very good. I haven’t had any system crashes or anything really. It was a bit slow at first but after it indexed all the Apps, things got back to normal. It was so good that I even installed it on my personal iPhone and from all the Betas that I’ve used over the past ten years or so, iOS 14 is definitely the most stable. Battery life has been affected, but it’s nothing too severe.

The double-tap on the back functionality allows you to select a specific function that your iPhone will execute, once you double or triple-tap on the back. The way it works is that it uses your iPhone’s motion sensors to detect the tap on the back. However, because of this, my double tap functionality also got activated a few times when I laid my iPhone flat on my desk. The good news is that you can also have custom Siri short-cuts on this, meaning that you can pretty much assign anything you want to this double or triple tap Gestures. I’ve set mine to launch the Camera App as iOS still doesn’t have a quick Camera Launch functionality on the Volume or the Power Button. These gestures are a bit finicky to activate, but when they do work, it’s a pretty nice feature to have. 

A long-awaiting and welcome new feature, is 4K YouTube Content.

Also, you can finally watch 4K YouTube content now, after so many years.

The reason why we couldn’t do it before was because Apple wasn’t using Google’s VP9 Codec and Google wasn’t using the h.265 that Apple was using. But now that the new AV1 Codec has been agreed to by both Apple and Google, and iOS 14 supports AV1, 4K playback is finally possible on Apple devices. But there is a catch. Google only seems to be using AV1 for 4K HDR videos, meaning that you can only watch 4K videos that are HDR. Otherwise, they’ll still be 1080p. I really hope that this gets fixed.

Speaking of things that need to get fixed. There’s now a way to adjust the exposure in the Camera App separately from the Focus, which is pretty great! We’ve had this in some third-party Apps as well. However, the way it currently works in iOS 14 has to be the most unintuitive way that I’ve seen. You can still adjust it via the up/down Slider when you’re focusing, but now you also have this Exposure Meter. The thing is, once you adjust it, there’s no reset button and you can increase/decrease the Brightness the same old way while the exposure meter is set to a custom value and that value won’t change. However, I’m pretty sure that this is a glitch though. 

In the Weather App, you can now see the AirQuality Index, which is pretty nice. Probably my favourite feature that I’ve found is that now you can hold the Navigation Buttons to go back to a specific previous category.  This really helps for when you’re buried deep into the Settings and you don’t want to keep going back and back until you get to where you want to be.

Siri now has a brand new UI, which I do like. You can now summon her without blocking the entire Display. However, what I don’t like is that you cannot interact with your Phone, whilst using Siri. Other than that, it’s more or less the same Siri as before. This UI now applies to whenever you’re getting a call. Rather than this blocking your entire Display, you get this notification-style window which you can even dismiss and continue doing your own thing.

‘App Clips’ is another thing that we’re looking forward to testing in the future.

Control Centre now allows you to show individual Accessories and Scenes from the Home App. Unfortunately, you cannot customise which Scenes or Accessories it shows you as this has all been automated, based on the ones that you use the most.

If you’re wondering how the AirPods pro sound, with that new 7.1 Surround Sound support, I won’t be able to tell you that because it seems that this is not available in Beta 1 just yet. Picture-in-Picture is though and it works just as you would expect it to, kind of. It doesn't work in the YouTube App so you have to be playing a video in Safari in order for that to work. But, it does work for Face-Time now, meaning that the person that you’re speaking to won’t get a black screen every time you go to check a Notification, but instead they’ll get to see you all the time, ands likewise.

Of course, there are many more features, such as App Clips, which I cannot test just yet. In terms of the big changes that I have noticed, these would be the main ones. 

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watchOS 7

Moving on to watchOS 7, by far the biggest change here is Sleep Tracking and…I’m quite disappointed. The way it works is that you have this Sleep App and you select how many hours of sleep you want to get and when you need to wake up, it will then tell you when you have to go to bed. Right before that, you’ll have a ‘Wind Down’ period, which is usually around 45 minutes. This is when DND will automatically be enabled and that’s pretty much it. 

Your Apple Watch will estimate the Battery Life it would have, when you go to bed, and if that amount would be less than 30%, you’ll get a Notification to charge it. The only problem is that I never got that Notification, which I’m assuming will get fixed in the final version. Not only that, but Automatic Sleep Detection never worked for me. I had to manually put my Watch into Sleep Mode, rather than this being enabled automatically based on the sleep times that I’ve set it to. Again, I’m guessing that this will be fixed when iOS 14 comes out.

But probably my main issue with Sleep Mode is that you cannot really see your sleep stats, unless you go into the Health App and into the ‘Sleep’ section of that. Moreover, it doesn’t even tell you much, just the time you were in bed, which is literally based on when you tapped the ‘bed-time’ Icon and the time you were asleep. There are no mentions of sleep quality, REM data or anything like that. An App such as Sleep Cycle is so much better than the native Sleep Tracking is, as of right now.

Native Sleep Tracking will now be a thing, but there are already alternatives that do it better.

Also, you’re probably wondering how much Battery Life it drains in Sleep Mode. Well, in my case, I had 51% Battery when I went to bed and 37% when I woke up about six-seven hours later. A 14% drop is actually very good, I just really hope that the Sleep Tracking gets smarter by the time this gets released. 

There is a new hand-wash feature which would show you a timer when it detects that you’re washing your hands. That’s not working just yet, or at least I could never get it to work, on my Apple Watch. 

Aside from that, the only new Watch-Face that we get, is the Chronograph Pro, which includes a Tachymeter that you can use to measure the speed that you are traveling at. I just wish this also had a digital version. You can also have complications on the X-Large Face, which is pretty nice to have and you can also add a Colour Filter to the ‘Photos’ Watch-Face. I also really do like how Apple has redesigned the Watch-Face customisation page and they now show you the colour selector on the right of the Face, rather than inside the Watch-Face.

There’s a new Workout for Dancing, but this was actually in watchOS 6. It was hidden in ‘Others’ and I’ve used it all the time for when I was playing ‘BeatSaber’. I’m not fully sure what’s new with this, possibly improved tracking?  But that’s pretty much it in terms of big, noticeable changes.

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iPadOS 14

Finally, there’s also iPadOS 14, which is a very small update. Aside from ‘Scribble’, there’s nothing really that stood out to me. In fact, we don’t even get the Widgets from iOS, there’s still stuck in the Side Panel and we don’t have the App Library at all, which is extremely inconsistent.

While I do believe that these will be added by the time iPadOS releases, Craig Federighi indicated to Marques that this is how they’ve intended to release iPadOS 14, for now. So, we’ll see.

But that’s about it, macOS does have a lot of changes as well, just like iOS 14 did, but that’s an entire video in itself.

macOS Big Sur Review - A New Era for the Mac!

Just like with iOS, watchOS and iPadOS, Apple also releases a new version of macOS every year at WWDC, in June. Last year we had macOS Catalina, which was filled with bugs and stability issues, some of which still haven’t been fixed. I was honestly expecting the next macOS version to just be a stability improvement, over Catalina.

Since we didn’t had any leaks on the next version of macOS at all, pretty much the entire tech community was assuming that this would be a very small update. But instead, macOS Big Sur is actually the biggest macOS update that we’ve had in years snd probably the biggest update that macOS has had since the introduction of macOS X, in 2001.

So, without any further ado, here is my experience with macOS Big Sur!

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Ok, so by far the biggest change that we got with macOS Big Sur is the new design. Unlike iOS, which usually gets a decent set of improvements every single year, macOS is a bit more conservative. For example, all versions of macOS, from macOS 10.0, to macOS 10.9, have looked almost identical. 

Spot the difference

But in 2014, Apple released macOS 10.10 (Yosemite). This was the biggest design change that the Mac ever got, at least up until that point. Gone was the skeuomorphism that Steve Jobs was a big fan of, as now we got the same design language as on the iPhones and the iPads with iOS 7, back in 2013. A design that featured a heavy emphasis on transparency, 2D effects and simplicity. I was actually a big fan of this design, I literally had zero issues with it, but I always felt like it could be improved. And it was!  

With macOS Mojave, in 2018, we got Dark Mode. This was one of my favourite macOS features ever and now with macOS Big Sur in 2020, Apple has redesigned macOS pretty much entirely again. 

Essentially, we get an even more iOS like look with things such as Control Centre, the Notifications and Widgets panel from iOS 14 as well as System Toggles that look exactly like they do on iOS. I’m actually a massive fan of this Design. I think it looks absolutely gorgeous, however I do have some concerns that I want to raise, which hopefully Apple will address by the time macOS Big Sur releases to the public.

My first concern is the Contrast. On the current macOS Catalina, all the top bar Elements are perfectly visible. Everything looks pretty great, I’ve never had any issues identifying UI Elements. However, on macOS Big Sur, UI Elements are all over the place. The Contrast is almost entirely gone on the top bar, making everything barely even readable. Not only that, but Apple has also added more space between the Icons in the top bar. This means that for people like me, who have a ton of Icons there, many of those Icons would not be visible anymore due to the extra spacing required.

My second concern is the Control Centre. So, I do like how it looks and how it works a lot, you can even control the Screen Brightness from there and even things such as the Keyboard Backlight, which I think is absolutely brilliant as it just looks and behaves so much like iOS. I wouldn’t normally have a problem with this, if the device had a Touchscreen but…it doesn’t.

Whether this means that Apple will release TouchScreen Macs in the not too distant future, we do not know. But what we do know is that Big Sur behaves a lot like iOS and while using Big Sur with a mouse, it just doesn’t feel right.

Having a UI designed for Touch Input can have its’ upsides and downsides.

Now, speaking of the Control Centre, there are a lot of things that I like about it. For example, having the Control Centre means that you no longer need individual Icons in the top bar for things such as WiFi or Bluetooth. You can now keep all of those in the Control Centre, which does mean that you can indeed clear up a lot of space out there. But, probably my favourite thing about the Control Centre is that you can even drag elements outside of it and onto the top bar. So, if you ever wanted to have, let’s say, ‘Do Not Disturb’ Mode or even AirDrop in the top bar, that is now possible. On iOS, you can have third party apps in the Control Centre, I am predicting that this will also be possible later on, in macOS.

Next-up, Widgets are absolutely brilliant. They look and work exactly like they do on iOS 14, meaning that you can just add different sizes. These can be Small, Medium or Large and they’re fully interactive. My only complaint here is that I wish you could place them on the Desktop as well, rather than having them constrained in this separate Widget Panel. Essentially, just like you can on iOS 14, I think that being able to just drag them out of the Widgets Panel and onto the Home-Screen would be ideal, especially on a Mac, since you have a much larger Display, compared to an iPhone. 

Notifications have also been tweaked. Rather than getting a massive list of all of your Notifications, they are now grouped into a stack which you can then expand to access all of them. Again, I just wish that they worked like they do on iOS or iPadOS. On iPadOS for example, you just bring the Mouse to the top portion of the screen and the Notifications Panel drops down. Apple is aiming for consistency between macOS, iOS and iPadOS, so I think it would be great to have Notifications work in the same way as they do on Apple’s other platforms.

My third concern is when it comes to UI Design. If you take a look at Finder, you can probably tell that it’s been completely redesigned. The Buttons are all in the window to the right, while the Side Panel alone is on the left and we have no control in that one at all. I really do like the way this looks, but the spacing is completely off.

So what about Calendar? The Spacing is completely different from Finder and System Preferences. Speaking of which, why is it still called ‘System Preferences’ and not ‘Settings’, like it is on iOS? I could keep adding to that list. For example with Siri, while it has indeed been redesigned on iOS and iPadOS, on macOS it still uses the same exact look as it did in macOS Catalina. There are many things left that Apple needs to polish, by the time macOS Big Sur releases.

Concern number four, are the Icons. In Big Sur, Apple decided to completely redesign the System Icons to essentially bring them more in line to iOS and I couldn’t agree more. I don’t know why we didn’t have identical Icons until now. But the problem is that they look atrocious. For example, while some Icons look identical as to how they look on iOS, like Calendar, Notes & Reminders, some Icons have this 3D look to them. Some examples include Messages, Mail, Face-Time and App Store, they also have an inner shadow.

The Icons are inconsistent in design, something I hope is addressed before release.

I’m honestly not a fan of this Design, I think it looks pretty bad, especially if you take a look at the System Preferences Icon or that horrid Battery Icon. These icons look like when you add Drop Shadow and Bevel & Emboss in Photoshop, if you know what I’m talking about. I wouldn’t necessarily be that critical of them, if they were all consistent, but they’re not. It looks as if each of these Icons was designed by a completely different person and none of these people were ever in touch.

Finally, my last concern is the Launchpad. First of all, why is it still called the Launchpad instead of the App Library like we now have on iOS? It’s essentially the exact same thing. Anyway, my problem here is that it’s still as painful and as slow, when it comes to organising your Apps. On iOS, you can indeed drag multiple Apps at the same time and place them in Folders. On macOS, you have to do it one by one, which is just a pain to do with a Mouse and even more so when you have loads of Apps installed, like I do.

Now, there are a few smaller features which I did find to be really cool so, here are a bunch of those features. I really do like how every UI Element has curved corners now, this also means that everything just looks off, when you look at the straight corners of the actual Display on your Mac. Because of this and the fact that the iPhone and the iPad both have curved corners, I do believe that the next Macs, starting with the new 14” ARM MacBook Pro, will indeed come with curved corners as well.

Also, remember that Battery Life indicator which also told you exactly how many hours of Battery Life you had left? Well, Apple removed that a while ago but now this seems to be back in Big Sur, which is great. The scheduling feature, which has been buried deep down into the Settings, is much more visible in the Battery section. You can even see your Battery Usage for the past day or week, just like you could for a number of years on iOS.

Everything about Big Sur just looks cleaner, but it’s not perfect.

Safari now lets you see how much websites track you. I’m pleased to say that we only use Google Analytics for tracking, so ‘ZONEofTECH.com’ is pretty tracker free, unlike many other websites out there. Speaking of websites, Safari now lets you watch Netflix in Full 4K Dolby Vision. Up until now, it was limited to 1080p. 

Also iOS 14 does indeed support 4K Video playing on YouTube, albeit you have to be watching a 4K HDR Video, as you don’t really get the 4K option on non-HDR content. But, I am assuming that this will be fixed and it seems likely that we would also be getting 4K support in YouTube on the Mac as well with Big Sur, when it releases. 

Speaking of Safari, you can now customise the Safari Home-Screen quite significantly. So now, not only can you customise the content that it displays by selecting and deselecting categories of items, but you can also have a custom Wallpaper in Safari, just like you can in Chrome. Apple will now be including the Safari Extensions in the AppStore and we also have a brand new API, which should make it much easier for Developers to develop and port their extensions from Chrome, into Safari. Safari is finally becoming more useful and I’m extremely happy with that.

I should also point out that I’m absolutely in love with the new Mail App. The UI has been cleaned up substantially and all the controls are now on the top right, with the left being reserved for the Side Panel, just like in Finder. This design actually reminds me a lot of Outlook, which actually had one of the very best designs for a Mail App.

The Calendar App has been redesigned as well, but I am still not a big fan of the Pastel Colours. I’ve always preferred the look of Google Calendar, maybe that’s just me. The Messages app also got a new Design, which brings in more in line with the iOS version, not just in terms of looks, but also in terms of its functionality.

Hopefully further support for more Apps comes in time.

So overall, I am a massive fan of how macOS Big Sur looks but like I’ve mentioned before, there are quite a few things that just need to be more polished and I’m really hoping that they will be by the time macOS Big Sur releases.

But in the end, macOS Big Sur isn’t just a massive visual upgrade, it is also a gigantic upgrade under the hood. It is the first version of macOS to fully support ARM Processors, which is the reason why Apple has also called it macOS 11. This lays the foundation of all future Macs that will feature Apple Processors. Speaking of that, Windows will not be supported.

Just as a final note, some of you are probably wondering what is the performance is like? Well, unlike iOS 14, which I actually ended up installing on my own personal iPhone just because of how stable it was, I just could not do the same with macOS Big Sur. This was not necessarily because of stability issues, but mostly because of a number of my Apps that just don’t work on Big Sur, without receiving an update.

Google Drive File Stream, which we use a lot for our work here, does not work at all. Mailbutler, a great tool that I use with the native Apple email App does not work either as well as a few more.

These apps will only get updated closer to macOS Big Sur’s release, so I still have to wait a few months until I actually get to use it. Apple hasn’t really told us an exact date for when macOS Big Sur will be released. I would predict the end of October, as COVID has delayed pretty much everything. But I don’t think it would be any later than that though.

The Last of Us: Part II - Full Review (Spoilers)

This is going to be my Full Review of ‘The Last of Us: Part II’ and this will include FULL SPOILERS for the game, so if you haven’t played it yet, I would highly suggest you do so and check out the Story Trailer above if you haven’t already.

The first thing you might notice is that… I’m not Daniel. I normally deal with Marketing and other assorted behind the scenes stuff at ZONEofTECH but as the resident Video Game nerd, I felt that I couldn’t let this opportunity go to waste. Whether you like this game or not, it’s impact and scale has been massive and if nothing else, has sparked a lot of discussion.

I had planned to put this out a little earlier but as it became clear how divisive and polarised the online Gaming Community had become after the game launched, I felt like I needed to finish the Story first and experience everything for myself before giving a more well-rounded and considered opinion. So, here it is (thanks to Sony for sending us over a code).

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A (not so) Lost Legacy

Naughty Dog had a big reputation to live up with the ‘The Last of Us: Part II’ (Image: Pinterest)

Naughty Dog have a rich history of producing some of the most memorable and technically impressive games out there. From ‘Crash Bandicoot’, ‘Jak & Daxter’ to ‘Uncharted’, there is no doubt that these guys are capable of producing Video Games that are of the absolute top-tier. With this in mind, and that the first game of the ‘Last of Us’ series was arguably the game of its Console Generation, there was an expectation to deliver something of equal, if not higher, magnitude.

Playstation have also built themselves an extensive library of exceptional exclusives, such as the most recent ‘God of War’, ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ and ‘Spider-Man’ to name a few. Sony also produce the new ‘Spider-Man’ movies with Tom Holland who, coincidentally, will be portraying Nathan Drake in the upcoming ‘Uncharted’ movie. All of this adds to expectation for Naughty Dog. This game has been built up to the point where anything less than absolute perfection is deemed a failure by the more hardcore segments of the fan-base, this is where the problem starts.

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The Giraffe in the Room

Let’s just get right into it and address the story, which has set the internet on fire over the past week or so. I will warn you one more time for SPOILERS, avert your eyes if you plan to play it yourself. 

The catalyst that sets this game in motion is Joel’s death at the hands of a new character, Abby. He is quite viciously beaten to death with a golf club, staying alive just long enough for Ellie to burst in and watch him die. This is after having his leg damn near blown off by the character who we are made to play with for around half of the entire game afterwards. I have seen a lot of anger towards this, with people saying that Joel deserved better. But Joel did some dark things and made a lot of enemies in the first game so, while I do agree that the manner in which he was killed off was a little gratuitous, I can understand why this had to happen the way that it did. The game is very deliberately pushing a certain narrative at this point, the overkill and ambiguity surrounding this event is meant to invoke anger from the player. Joel saved Abby from an Infected Horde and she does this, why?

Some of the trailers led us to believe some things about the game, which turned out to not be the case (Image: Den of Geek).

This is seemingly unjustified and puts you in Ellies head, goading you to carry on and get the guys who killed Joel for reasons we don’t yet know. But we do know they deserve what they get, right? What follows is a slow descent into Ellie’s personal own rainy, Pacific North-Western Hell, with her state of mind deteriorating, methods becoming more brutal and the people she cares about paying the price for her personal vendetta. She eventually gets what she wants, coming face-face with Abby around half-way through the game. 

The Story then does a complete u-turn and makes you play through the timeline again as Abby, with the people who killed Joel. This time however, you’re dealing with on ongoing Faction War between the Washington Liberation Front (who have de facto control of the City after overthrowing the Military) and the Seraphites (referred to as ‘Scars’ by the WLF). These ‘Scars’ are painted as savage, religious fanatics who want to pull down the existing power structures and establish their own new world with the teachings of their revered founder, a God-like figure in their eyes. We encounter them as Ellie but don’t really explore their role until we play as Abby.

We also explore the motives for Abby wanting Joel dead and as it turns out, her Father was the Doctor that Joel killed while rescuing Ellie from the Firefly Hospital in the first game. Her group are also ex-Fireflies, fuelling the flames. As we explore Abby’s past and the journey she takes to Jackson, I began to empathise with, and see the depth of a character I vilified for so long. It completely changed the way I viewed the game. I hate what Abby did, but I get it. Her character arc was superbly laid out.

Was all of that worth it in the end? (Image: GamesRadar).

The game mirrors the Ellie & Abby characters and by the time it all comes to a head again, both characters have very similar motives for doing what they are doing and it’s impossible to say who’s ultimately in the right. There are secondary female characters on each side who have differing fates from the same scenario, at this point the Writers are almost literally hitting you over the head with that metaphorical mirror. This is all about perspective. In this world, there is no such thing as heroes or villains in the traditional sense, which is fresh from a story-telling point of view because, whilst I love Marvel movies and the like, there’s enough of that around right now. Everyone is a villain or a hero to someone else, depending on what side you’re on. Even the Seraphites, they serve as a metaphor for overcoming certain Social issues, but that’s a discussion within itself.

In the end, Ellie still can’t let go and the game ends with her worse off than before, insinuating that this cycle of revenge that she found herself in did more damage than her actual loss did in the first place. This was an exceptional Story told expertly well, but with a game like this, you’ll never please every single player. I am glad Naughty Dog took this direction though, seemingly embracing the fact that the game was going to get criticised one way or another and just made a game that they felt was real and authentic. I feel like the game justifies its existence and pushes the narrative forward in a way which is true to the identity of the first iteration. That being said, I do feel some of the ‘Jump-Scare’ moments were predictable & repetitive and that the whole back-story behind Joel’s big secret reveal should not have been cut into a flashback. Additionally, I would be very interested to see how this game would have played if it was laid out chronologically. This is not a comprehensive run-down of the entire Story as that would literally take me pages on pages to say in full, I will say again, try to experience the full thing first-hand.

Onto topics that are little less contentious, I’m going to avoid splitting this off into sections as each technical aspect of this game feeds so well into the other that it’s sometimes difficult to draw the line. I’ll start with the first thing you notice, the Graphics. I would say this is second only to the PS4 remaster of ‘Shadow of the Colossus’, in my opinion. From the snowy Mountains of Jackson to the ruined City of Seattle, every scene in this game looks like it was pulled straight out of a big-budget Hollywood film and shot on a Camera, rather than digitally manufactured.

The game couples huge set-pieces with the most acute details (Image: USgamer).

It’s massive too. Each tiny part of this world has been meticulously crafted and it does not suffer from that sheer scale. There are scenes that make the world feel huge, the buildings in Seattle for instance, but then you look around and notice all of the other tiny little things that are there. Some of my favourite moments, from a Graphics standpoint, were ones that made use of Naughty Dog’s talents with Water & Snow Effects. It’s the small details in their behaviour and how they interact so fluidly with what the player is doing and what is happening in the game that give that added layer of immersion. When I first loaded up the game and saw that Main Menu, it had me sold there and then.

The Weather Effects are put to equally good use too. You might notice that Rain, Wind, Thunder, Fog and Lighting is used at very specific points, this is the game very subtly trying to make you feel or act in a certain way. It is devices like this that help guide you through certain points in the game and are a good way of showing you what to do without being explicit. The Lighting is particularly well-done, it’s not over-produced and comes across as natural to the point where you forget to take special notice of it, just because of how well it fits in to every part of the game.

I will give a special shout-out to the Gun Customisation too, the detail in those close-up scenes on the Workbench is straight-up ridiculous. The transitions between these areas are seem-less and at no point did I feel that a menu or a cutscene really took me out of the game. The Infected themselves are just horrifying, but in the best possible way. It speaks a lot about character design when an enemy can make you feel physically ill. There’s one in particular that’ll stick with me, but I’ll leave that one for you to discover.

The boat chapters helped showcase some very technically impressive environments (Image: Evening Standard).

If you’ve played the first game, then it won’t take you long to get into the flow of this one, many of the systems are similar (Weapons, Crafting, Exploration etc). However, especially when you’re playing as Ellie, the game is just so much faster than the first one. Combat is fluid and refined from what we saw in the last game, it’s fast-paced and the environment is put to good use in terms of the animations, some areas might allow you to be bit more creative with how you take down some enemy types. My only complaint is that the Companion AI can sometimes be a little dumb in their movement and is invisible to enemies, even when clearly in their line of sight. Generally speaking though, the Enemy AI Pathing is well thought out, it’s sometimes unpredictable in a good way so you really have to keep your bearings.

Resource management is key, especially on the higher difficulties where they become increasingly sparse. Enemy types can be varied in certain encounters, including: Runners, Clickers, Bloaters, Stalkers, Armed Human NPC’s and Dogs amongst others. The game really makes you think about how to engage and pushes you to utilise everything around you in order to survive. Plus, using all of your Ammo on lighter enemies can have an effect down the line when you find yourself up against something heavier, with only your knife or a wooden board (this happened to me more than it really should have).

There’s a lot to see, too much for just one play-through (Image: GosuNoob).

The levels have a lot more verticality to them to really help flush out the amount that you can see, do and find, making these threats ever-present. This is a ‘Last of Us’ game, so be sure to open up every drawer and look in every corner, there’s always something else that you haven’t seen. My play-through was roughly 32 hours, 10 hours of which was just me looking around a cleared area for Resources & Collectibles. I did start to go slightly insane at points as there are a grand total of 266 Collectibles to find across the 11 Acts/45 Chapters. There are also several PlayStation Easter Eggs scattered around, including Nathan Drake’s Ring, a Precursor Orb from ‘Jak & Daxter’ and a few of the fat PS3’s (as the world effectively ended in 2013) here and there. Also, pro-tip, always expect the worst when resources seem to getting more common and pay attention to what the game gives you, because it might be an indicator that you will need them very soon. Also, they are scattered throughout the world as you would expect them to be in real-life. For example, you will find Cloth in Bedrooms, Alcohol in Bars, Supplements in Bathrooms, Parts in Garages and so on. These are the little details which you might think are pretty common sense, but make the experience so much more real.

Realism is a huge aspect of this game and a lot of that comes through Audio. The Sound Design is immense and use of Music is well-placed and used to flush out the world that extra step further. The Guitar is one of the key symbols of the game and is Ellie’s strongest link to Joel, its integration in terms of the Controls is also very intuitive and unique. It almost makes me feel like I can play the Guitar (which I can’t), this leads into another massive part of this Games’ production, which Accessibility. If you’re hard of Hearing, Blind or have Physical Disabilities, there are features in this game that can allow you to still enjoy & experience it. I saw a video on Twitter of a young man who was Blind, playing the game. It was one of the more wholesome things that I saw on this subject and goes to show how awesome Video Games are, with the impact that they can have.

32 hours well spent (Image: Dexerto)

I could honestly write a full on Book about this game, if given the time, but now I have to find a way to sum this up and not waffle on and on for hours. In Summary, this is not a game that I can that you will ‘enjoy’ the whole time, so to speak. This game is designed to make you think, question and feel, which is the hallmark trait of any worthwhile experience in my view. The ending was ambiguous, but this is the end of Part 2, not the end of the Story. There is still surely more to come with series and judging by Naughty Dog’s history, I have a theory that there will be four ‘Parts’ to this in total. We will see.

The Game is certainly re-playable, with fluid & brutal Gameplay, that level of production and a compelling Story, you will have no problem going through this game a second time while still getting that same sense of fulfilment. Naughty Dog are a victim of their own absurdly high bar, with how this game is being generally received outside of Critics. But I would definitely recommend playing this game, even if you know what happens and have seen a lot of Reviews saying otherwise. I won’t put a number on this, but I can categorically say that the 30 plus hours I spent in that world were worth my time, albeit exhausting, and deserves to be experienced by as many people as possible.

The BEST TV (2020) - For PS5 & Xbox Series X!

The PS5 and the new Xbox Series X will both be out around November 2020, so now is a very good time to buy a new TV. This is pretty much the best one on the market, especially if you’re into Gaming.

Ok, so a bit of a background story first. My previous TV was an LG B7 OLED. This TV came out in 2017, hence the ‘7’, and it was the lowest-end OLED TV from LG, but that was fine because all of the other models still had the same OLED Panel and the same CPU. The only real difference was that the C7, E7 and W7 had a nicer Design and improved Speakers, that was it.

I bought this TV in mid-2018 for about £1,500, which was quite a good deal, and I’ve been very happy with it. I didn’t really plan to upgrade to the 2018 models as they were mostly the same. The 2019 models were using almost the same OLED Panel again and the 2020 models had some minor improvements, so I didn’t really see myself upgrading for a few more years.

Well, LG HQ actually got in touch and they’ve sent me the brand new LG CX, which just came out now, in 2020. Massive thanks to LG for sending this over. I have to say, it turns out that the CX is a massive upgrade over my B7 and here is why I genuinely believe that this TV is the best TV that money can buy, for the next-gen Consoles. 

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4K OLED 

So, number one, this is a 4K OLED TV.

OLED is really the highest-end TV technology on the market right now. The only other technology that’s superior is microLED, but that’s still a few years away from being available for consumers. Samsung is indeed working on that Wall TV but until microLED becomes a real thing, OLED is the best.

Don’t be fooled by Samsungs ‘QLED’ Branding, OLED is definitely the superior technology.

Some of you might have heard of QLED, which is what Samsung calls their high-end TV’s. Spoiler though, QLED is still LCD, it is not OLED or anything like that. Essentially, on an LCD Display, the Pixels only provide the Colour and not the Brightness. This means that you would need a Backlight in order to be able to see anything on the screen. This Backlight not only makes the TV’s very thick, but it also means that when you want to display Black, the Backlight would still have to be fully on and would therefore look grey-ish, they wouldn’t be pure Black.

On OLED Displays, the Pixels provide both the Colour and the Brightness, so you can turn each of these 8 million Pixels off individually and get perfect Black Levels and an infinite Contrast. It’s the best picture quality that you can get right now. 

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120Hz

Now, the second reason why this TV is so good for Gaming is that it supports 120Hz, meaning that it can display up to 120FPS in a game, which is something that both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X will support.

A little bit of downgrade, but it makes almost zero difference.

There have been some TV’s, mostly OLED TV’s from LG before, which have also supported 120Hz. However those ones, like my B7, did not have HDMI 2.1, which meant that while Netflix content could run at 120Hz, all the inputs going into the TV were limited to 4K 60, rather than 4K 120 like we have now. Not only that, but the CX can do 10-bit at 4:4:4 Chroma, which is pretty nuts. However, this is actually a bit of a downgrade from the LG C9 from last year, which could also accept a 12-bit signal. This is because the HDMI Bandwidth has been downgraded from 48Gb/s to 40Gb/s.

My friend Vincent Theo from ‘HDTV test’ did a very detailed Review of the CX and talked about this more in-depth, so if you want to know what this all means, I highly recommend watching his content if you’re looking for the best TV Reviews on YouTube. Long story short, this won’t affect you at all, as 10-bit already displays over 1 billion colours compared to the usual 64 million colours on 8-bit Displays. The Panel is still a 10-bit Panel anyway, it’s just that having a 12-bit signal would have resulted in slightly better Gradients when it comes to Banding. A very minor thing, which I did want to point out. But no need to worry, the PS5 and the Xbox Series X will be fully utilised by using this TV.

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Response Time 

Now, the next most important thing about a Gaming Monitor, or a TV, is the Response Time. This is the amount of time it takes for the Monitor to switch the Pixels from one state to another, after it receives an input.

This TV could easily be used as a Gaming Monitor, especially the smaller variants.

Gamers prefer extremely quick Response Times, ideally 1ms. Unfortunately, TV’s have typically always had around 30-40ms and around 20ms for the very best TV’s on the market. Well, not anymore. The LG CX 2020 has a 1ms Response Time, on par with all the highest-end Gaming Monitors out there. Anything that I do on my Controller translates pretty much instantly to the TV, Modern Warfare (Warzone) feels like it’s had a massive upgrade. It feels incredibly responsive and it’s pretty much the same experience as playing on a high-end Gaming Monitor.

Not only that, but the CX supports both NVIDIA GSync and AMD Freesync, so if you decide to hook this up to a PC, you can actually use it as a Gaming Monitor. Since this is a massive OLED Panel, the Gaming experience would be even better, even when compared to a standard Gaming Monitor. LG does have a smaller 49” model, which is more suitable for PC Gamers as it’s smaller. If you care about a fast and competitive Gaming experience, the CX is the best TV on the market for this. 

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HDR Performance 

Another important thing about any Gaming TV is the HDR Performance. 

The CX supports Dolby Vision, HDR 10, HLG and pretty much all the main HDR modes. But, thanks to the brand new Alpha 9 Gen 3 Processor, the Brightness of HDR Content, when in Game Mode, has been significantly improved. With my B7, HDR Gaming was pretty dim to the point where if I was playing anything during the day, I could barely see anything on the screen. But on the CX, the difference in HDR Performance is night and day. Even when in HDR Game Mode, the screen stays just as bright as when it is not in HDR Game Mode. In fact, it was so bright that I had to turn down the Brightness as it was bothering my eyes. 

This was probably the biggest improvement over my old B7.

Not only is the CX significantly brighter in HDR Game Mode, but we also have a new HDR option called ‘HGIG’. What this is, is a brand new HDR standard where the Games themselves send the HDR Metadata directly to the TV, through the Games Console. What this means is that you’ll get a perfect HDR image without having to calibrate the image, as it will always be calibrated as the Game Designers intended. There are only a few games that do support it but for the ones that do, such as Spider-Man and Modern Warfare, the results are incredible.

So, this is why this TV is perfect for the next-gen Consoles. You get a 4K OLED Display with a 120Hz Refresh Rate, 1ms Response Time, NVIDIA G-Sync & AMD FreeSync Support and this brand new HGIG HDR Standard, on top of an already bright HDR representation.

But, there are a few more other things that I really love about this TV.

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Smart Home

For example, not only does it have an AI Voice Assistant, but it even allows you to set-up your Smart-Home Accessories and control them from there, with full support for the Google Assistant and Alexa. You have this massive digital hub where you can control your entire home, which is really cool.

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AppleTV & AirPlay

The CX also supports both Apple AirPlay, which means that you can stream content to it directly from an Apple device, and an integrated version of the AppleTV App, meaning that there’s no need for you to buy a separate Apple TV Box. I haven’t even used my Apple TV at all, since I got this TV.

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Magic Remote

Not something that you might normally think about for a TV, but it makes a huge difference.

Probably my favourite part about this TV, is LG’s Magic Remote. LG has had this for a few years now, you essentially get a Mouse Cursor that you can control by just waving the Remote in the air. It honestly works so well that now it’s simply a joy to navigate through the TV Menus. Even typing text with this Remote is incredible, it’s just like using a Mouse on a digital, on-screen Keyboard. The Remote itself also has dedicated Buttons for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, which allow you to instantly access the Apps, there’s really no need for an AppleTV at all anymore. 

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WebOS

Also, the UI on LG TV’s is just brilliant. You get this Navigation Bar on the bottom, which contains all of your Apps and you even get a dedicated App Store from where you can download even more. The catalogue of Apps isn’t that massive, but you can still find all of your most popular TV Streaming Services. 

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Sound

The sound on this is very good and you can even enable AI Sound, which will dramatically improve the sound quality based on the content that you’re watching. Also, the TV Remote itself has a Microphone which can monitor the sound levels of the TV and adjust those based on that as well, pretty smart.

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Design

Finally, you cannot talk about a modern TV without talking about its Design. The CX is basically all screen. There are no Bezels at all aside from the very slim screen border, but that’s it. It looks absolutely stunning. 

Out of the current range of OLED TV’s, the CX is the best value for money.

I also love the stand, which is made out of Machined Metal, it looks very sleek, premium and the TV itself is also crazy thin. It does get quite thick towards the bottom, as that’s where all the components are located, but I do still think that this is one of the best looking TV’s on the market. So there you go, my In-Depth Review of the brand new LG CX 2020. The TV which I consider to be the best for Gaming, in 2020.

Ok, but…why not get the BX which is less expensive? Well, the BX comes with a weaker Processor, which means that the HDR Processing won’t be as good on the BX, as it is on the CX. All of the higher-end models like the EX or the WX still have the same image quality and processing power as the CX, it’s just that those are wall mounted. 

There’s honestly nothing negative that I can see about this TV, aside from the price. It’s quite expensive but OLED TV’s have dropped in price over the years. Again, massive thanks to LG for sending over this amazing TV!

New Razer Blade Pro 17 (2020) - 300Hz GAMING Laptop!

Welcome to something pretty different. I’ve always been a very big fan of Razer Laptops and have always considered them to be the very best Gaming Laptops that money can buy. This is not just because of their outstanding industrial design, but also because of their incredible performance, amazing Displays and of course, the stunning Razer Chroma RGB Keyboards. 

Well, this is our very first video on a Razer Laptop, we have featured the Razer Core X GPU before, but not a Razer Laptop, and what better way to start featuring Razer Laptops than to review the highest-end one that they make. This is our first look at the brand new Razer Blade Pro 17 (2020), which is likely the best Gaming Laptop that money can buy right now.

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Design

Design wise, the new Razer Blade Pro 17 2020 looks pretty much identical to the 2019 model. The 2020 iteration is a spec bump rather than a complete redesign, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s because the Razer Blade Pro 17 has one of the most premium designs that I have ever seen on a Laptop.

It is made entirely out of machined metal, with an anodised finish that gives it this dark grey or even black look. It’s very sturdy and feels like a tank. Just by using this for a few minutes, I could immediately tell how high the quality of the experience was going to be, just judging by the extraordinary build quality. In a way, it reminds me of using a MacBook Pro. They both have that machined unibody look, the only difference being that the Razer Blade Pro 17 is much larger as it has as 17 inch Display and is also thicker & heavier than the MacBook Pro. You’ll see why that is, when we get to the performance section.

The Razer is built for Performance, but it still looks the part.

Razer also sent over a brand new Razer Studio, which is a beast in its own right with a full 4K OLED Display. That thing is just nuts, but definitely stay tuned for a completely separate video just on the Razer Studio 15. 

On the back we have a Razer logo which does light up, just like on the old-school MacBooks, and then on the bottom we have three massive Vents, with another Air Out-Take on the back of the Hinge. On top of that, the new Razer Blade Pro 17 also features a Vapour Chamber. So, the Cooling on this Laptop is extremely well thought-out, which it really has to be because of the insane specs that we’ll talk about in just a second.

When it comes to the Ports, on the left we have the proprietary power connector, which supports up to 230W of Power. We then have a 2.5Gb Ethernet Port which is two and a half times faster than your usual Ethernet Port, meaning that you can get wired speeds of up to 2.5Gb/s, pretty nuts. Then we get two 3.2 Gen 2 USB A Ports, a USB type C Port, (Gen 2) as well as a 3.5mm Headphone Jack. On the left we have an SD Card reader, I love seeing that. We also get a Thunderbolt 3 Port, I love seeing this even more. It can be used to connect even more powerful Desktop-Class GPU’s, 5K Monitors and more. We then have another USB A Port and a HDMI 2.0B Port, which supports 4K 60 Output as well as a Kensington Lock. So there you go, Port select wise, the Razer features everything you could wish for, which is great.

In terms of portability, the Razer Blade Pro 17 is definitely not the most portable Laptop out there. It’s pretty massive and it also weighs 2.75kg, but at the same time, there are other 17” Laptops out there that are not portable at all. You can at least put the Blade Pro 17 in your backpack when you want to take it to places. So, it is portable, just not as portable as a Razer Studio 15 or a MacBook Pro 15”/16”.

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Display

When it comes to the Display, the Blade Pro 17 comes with…a 17” Display of course, which in the case of our unit, is a 1080p Panel. Now, 1080p at 17” is probably not the best idea. The Text looks noticeably blurry and it’s just nowhere near as sharp as a QHD or a 4K Laptop. But, on the upside, it is an IPS Panel with 100% sRGB coverage, so the Colour Gamut on this Display is very good, the viewing angles are great. Overall, it’s just a very good 1080p Panel, one of the best I’ve seen.

With the Blade Pro, you can get up to 10 times the FPS that you might be used to on the current Games Consoles.

But, what makes this Display so special, is the Refresh Rate. On Consoles, you mostly get a 30FPS experience. On PC, 60FPS is pretty much standard and this is what gamers aim for. However, over the past two years, we started seeing more and more high Refresh Rate Monitors. These were mostly 144Hz Panels and in order to achieve 144FPS, you needed a pretty beefy GPU, something like a ‘2080’. Well, this panel isn’t 60Hz, 90Hz or even 144Hz. This Display is 300Hz, Meaning that It can display up to 300FPS in a game! That’s absolutely insane. I have done a few tests where I got around 220FPS on this Laptop and it felt unlike anything that I’ve experienced before. Everything was so smooth and so fluid, it almost felt like real life.

So, there you go. This is why we have a 1080p Panel, because if this Resolution was any higher, we wouldn’t have been able to hit 300FPS. The highest that I have seen is 270FPS, which was in Starcraft 2 with everything maxed out.

Now, if you really want, you can actually upgrade this Display to 4K. It won’t be a 300Hz Display in that case, but it will still be 120Hz, which will also support Touch-Input. It does depend on the game that you usually play but I would personally go for that. 120FPS is more than enough and unless you’re an e-sports player, a sharper 4K Display would make a more noticeable difference than the 1080p 300Hz Panel.

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Keyboard & Trackpad

When it comes to the Keyboard and the Trackpad, the Trackpad is absolutely brilliant. It’s made entirely out of glass and there are no other buttons to it, it is just one piece. It is definitely one of the best Trackpads I have experienced on a Windows Laptop, with full multi-touch gestures. It’s not quite as good as on a MacBook but that’s mostly due to how well the Trackpad is optimised in macOS, compared to Windows. Overall, still a very similar experience to a Mac and one of the best Trackpads on a Windows Laptop.

It just wouldn’t be a Razer Laptop without the RGB Keyboard.

The Keyboard on the other hand is interesting. I found the typing experience to be… I don’t wanna say bad but let’s just say that I was making more mistakes with this Keyboard, than I was on my horrible MacBook Pro Butterfly Keyboard. Most of this is just me not being used to this Keyboard but, the layout of the Keys is a bit strange. The Left Shift Key is quite narrow on the European models, even more so than on other Laptops. The Arrow Keys are similar to the ones on the MacBook Pro’s, with the Butterfly Keyboard, rather than the usual T-Shape style.

But it was mostly the typing experience that felt odd. Something about the Keys didn’t feel right, maybe that’s just me. Anyway, what definitely blew me away was the Razer Chroma RGB functionality. Every Razer Laptop comes with the built-in Razer Synapse App, from which you can adjust the Backlight of the Keys in almost any way you can imagine. You can have a specific Key light up in a specific way when you press it and really have a bunch of different styles and effects that just immerse you into the gaming experience. 

The RGB Lighting makes this one of the most unique Laptops that I have ever seen. For those of you who think that RGB is a gimmick, it might be, but it’s so cool! You can’t argue with that.

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Camera, Microphones & Speakers

The stand-out feature with the Camera is definitely the Windows Hello functionality.

Now, the next most important thing in a Laptop for me are the Speakers, the Microphones and the Front-Facing Camera. The Razer Blade Pro 17 comes with a 720p Camera. The good news here is that we also get Windows Hello, meaning that we can log into Windows by just using our face, which is nice. In terms of the Speakers, they do sound good and you can check out the comparison between the 2020 Blade Pro, my MacBook Pro 15” from 2019 and the Blade Studio, in the video.

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Performance

Now let’s talk about the reason why you’ll want to buy this Laptop, the performance. The new 2020 Razer Blade Pro 17, comes with the new Intel 10th generation i7-10875 Processor, which is an Eight-Core CPU with a Turbo Boost of up to 5.1GHz. This makes the Razer Blade Pro 17 one of the very first Laptops to come with an Intel 10th Generation H series Processor.

With the GPU, our unit comes with the brand new Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, Max-Q, with 8GB of Dedicated Video Memory. We also get 16GB of DDR4 2933MHz Memory, which is upgradable to 64GB, as well as a 512GB PCIe Flash Storage. This is combined with a free m.2 Slot, in which you can install your very own m.2 Flash Module. On paper, that sounds pretty amazing. So, how does all of this translate to some real world usage?

Despite all that the Blade Pro already has, you can add even more.

Well, in Doom Eternal, with everything maxed out to the teeth, we were getting an average of 240FPS. Do keep in mind that this is a flagship 2020 game, imagine what you would get in older titles. In StarCraft 2 for example, a game that I’ve never been able to play fully maxed out, the Razer Blade Pro 17 can do this at an average of 270FPS. Overwatch runs at 200FPS with everything maxed out. Fortnite runs at 120FPS with everything maxed out, I was expecting to see even better performance in Fortnite here. Finally, in Modern Warfare, more specifically in Warzone, I was getting around 130FPS with everything maxed out aside from Ray-Tracing. When I enabled Ray-Tracing, I was getting 120FPS, which is still pretty insane.

Also, as a disclaimer, I did those tests about three weeks ago with an unreleased Razer Blade Pro 17, so the Drivers weren’t even up to date. In fact, I was even getting errors that I have unsupported Drivers, yet I was still getting an insane 120-270FPS in all the games that I tested. Once the Drivers do get updated, expect those numbers to be even higher!

Temperature wise, I haven’t’ seen this Laptop exceed 75 Degrees, which is very good. It’s just that if you want to do any intensive tasks, you need to have it plugged in, otherwise you will get less than half of the performance that you get when plugged in.

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Battery Life

With its size and capabilities, the Blade Pro will drain its Battery very quickly.

When it comes to the Battery Life, I cannot really talk about that as much because my time with the machine was pretty limited and I’ve mostly used it plugged in. We do have a 70.5Whr Battery, which is fairly decent, size wise. But, the MacBook Pro 16”, which has a much smaller body, comes with a much larger 100Whr Battery.

Now, when the Blade Pro 17 was not plugged in, it would discharge basically overnight. So, standby time wasn’t great. Do keep in mind that this was with a pre-release unit though. But, considering that you need to have to plugged in, in order to achieve peak performance, I wouldn’t expect a great Battery Life out of this. Especially when you’re gaming. 

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Value

Finally, when it comes to the value, is the new Razer Blade Pro 17 2020..worth it?

At a starting price of $2500/2900 Euros, which can go up to $4200/3800 Euros, the Razer Blade Pro 17 is one of the most expensive Laptops that you can buy. However, you do get an outstanding level of performance with the ability to play pretty much any game in well over 100FPS, sometimes even getting close to that 300FPS mark. Also, if you’re not a gamer and you’re into content creation and 3D modeling, the Blade Pro is still incredibly powerful for that as well.

There’s really not much to complain about it. My only wish would be that the next version would feature a QHD Display at maybe 144Hz. This is just because 4K is honestly overkill on a small 17” Display. You won’t be able to reach 4K 120, but you’ll definitely be able to reach 144fps in QHD and overall, it would be a much better experience.

Samsung Galaxy Fold (2020) - Long Term In-Depth Review

Ever since the original iPhone came out in 2007, completely changing the Cell-Phone industry, Smartphones haven’t really changed that much. Sure, we did get OLED Displays, Dual, Triple, Quad and even Penta Camera Modules, but the idea of a Smartphone has remained the same. It’s essentially this block of glass that we carry with us all the time, which helps us communicate with each other and accomplish our daily tasks on the go. 

But, that block has remained just a block since 2007. Displays started getting larger and Bezels started becoming thinner to the point where we now have Smartphones that are just a massive Displays, and nothing else. However, we’ve now reached a point where there’s only so much we can do with that Form-Factor. 

You might have noticed that since 2017, when Apple and Samsung added a Full-Screen Display to their Smartphones, the design has remained almost unchanged. So, when I started hearing all the rumors about Foldable Smartphones, I got very excited because we were finally going to get something new. I am very glad to say that I’ve been using a Samsung Galaxy Fold for more than a month now as my Daily Driver and this has completely changed my view on Smartphones. I honestly would not be able to go back to a standard one, after using the Fold. So, here is my Full In-Depth Review of the Samsung Galaxy Fold! 

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First of all, you’re all probably wondering, why are you reviewing the Galaxy Fold now? This Smartphone was originally teased in November 2018, fully unveiled in February 2019 and was released in September 2019. Well, it’s simple.. I finally got my hands on one.

Ironically, we were actually one of the first channels to talk about the Galaxy Fold. We started making videos on this back in 2017, three years ago. Samsung has been working on Foldable Display technology for the past nine (or more) years now. They showed us their first Foldable Display prototypes back at CES 2011. They then showed us a now famous TV ad where someone was folding a Tablet into a smaller Phone and then unfolding it back into a Tablet, back in 2014. 

When I heard about the leaks & rumors that Samsung was finally working on a Foldable Smartphone that they would sell, I was extremely exited for this future. That’s why we made so many ‘Leaks & Rumors’ episodes on this, just because I was so hyped for something new.

The general design of most Smartphones has been pretty much the same for the past few years.

Then, right after the February 2019 unveil, they started sending over a few Review units to some of the biggest tech channels in the world. We didn’t get one, but luckily this was the first generation that had a ton of issues and was literally breaking after just a few hours of use. Samsung postponed the release, redesigned the Hinge, even the Display to some extent, and then fully released it seven months later, in September 2019.

That’s when Samsung started sending loads of Review units to a ton of larger, and smaller, Reviewers. Unfortunately, we weren’t on that list and even though I tried my very best to get ahold of one, Samsung UK just didn’t want to send us one. It was also almost impossible to buy as it wasn’t in stock pretty much every single time I checked, so we just skipped making videos on it because we couldn’t get ahold of one.

I did go to IFA 2019, in September, and I did go to Samsung’s booth, but we got kicked out because the whole place was closing down. I was about 10cm away from the Fold and I just couldn’t touch it.  Then, in October 2019, about a month after the Fold came out, I attended the OnePlus 7T launch event, in London. Emkwan, a great guy who also runs the Em Kwan Reviews tech channel, had a Galaxy Fold. He let me use that for a good 15 minutes and I was impressed. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, but it felt like a prototype device.

Fast forward a few months and when Samsung finally sent over the Galaxy S20 Ultra Review unit, they also sent over a Samsung Galaxy Fold for me to check out. While the S20 Ultra ended up being the most disappointing Smartphone I’ve ever used, the Galaxy Fold ended up being the most outstanding Smartphone I’ve ever used. I used it as my daily driver for two weeks, after which Samsung asked for it back. So, I went and bought my own, just because I loved it so much. The Fold has now replaced my iPhone 11 Pro Max as my daily driver and I have loads to say about it.

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Design

With the Design, the Galaxy Fold is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. On the outside, when the Fold is closed, you have this very weird looking Phone that reminds me of the old Nokia 7280, if you guys remember that? That very odd phone that was extremely tall and had this very small and narrow Display. The Fold, when closed, is sort of like that. It has an extremely small 4.6” Display, with a very tall 21:9 Aspect Ratio some insanely massive Bezels, they’re even putting the Bezels of the very first iPhone to shame. It’s crazy thick as well, at 17.1mm at the thickest point and 15.7mm at the thinnest, the Galaxy Fold is actually very comparable to a Nokia 3310, which had a thickness of 22mm. 

I really wish that Samsung would redesign the Hinge so that it would close perfectly flat. This way, the Smartphone would be 1.4mm thinner. Samsung has improved the Hinge heavily with the Z Flip, which closes almost entirely flat. I’m confident that when the Fold 2 launches, it will also have a design similar to that. 

Is it a Smartphone? Is it a Tablet? Well, it’s both (sort of).

Once you unfold it, that’s where the magic happens as you’re greeted with a massive 7.3” Display with a 4.2:3 Aspect Ratio, which is absolutely gorgeous to look at. The Fold now becomes much thinner at just 6.9mm, making it considerably thinner than even the S20 Ultra, for example. So, while the Fold does indeed look very outdated from the Front, when compared to other Smartphones, once you open it, that’s when it truly shows its value. Having what is essentially the equivalent of an iPad Mini right in your pocket, is just unbelievable. 

Now, because of how small the Outer Display is and how massive the Bezels are, you can indeed use the Fold closed with one hand, which is perfect for when you’re outdoors and in a hurry. However, I found that unless I really had to, I was using the Fold purely in Tablet Mode. I was really only using the outer Display when I was out shopping and I had my shopping bag in my other hand. But other than that, this is a Foldable Tablet and not a Foldable Phone.

On the bottom, we have the Speaker, a Microphone and the USB C Charging Port. On the right, we have the Fingerprint Sensor, which strangely enough is actually not built into the Display or even the Power Button, like on many other Smartphones. It is instead a separate Sensor. We then have the Power Button as well as the Volume Buttons. On the top, we have another Microphone and the second Speaker. Finally, on the left, we have the SIM Slot, which only supports a Single Nano-Sim.

In terms of how the Fold fits in my pocket, it does feel gigantic. It’s almost like carrying a TV Remote all of the time, just one that’s a bit thinner than usual. It’s also very heavy, at 263g, the Fold is one of the heaviest “Smartphones” that you can carry in your pocket in 2020. The Huawei Mate XS is a bit heavier though, at 300g. I personally don’t have a problem with how thick and heavy it is in my pocket, mostly because of how much this Smartphone has to offer. For now, I’m ok with that tradeoff.

But something that I do want to mention here is that accessories are pretty hard to find. While D-Brand do make a few Skins and Spigen do make some Cases, other than that, you’re pretty much out of luck. If you’re looking for a car mount when open, the Fold is just too big for a regular Smartphone mount, so you’ll need to buy a Tablet mount. When it is closed, the Fold is just too narrow. It will definitely take some time until accessory makers will start making accessories for Foldable Smartphones, so until then, choices are pretty limited. 

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Display

Moving on to the Display, we have a 4.6” AMOLED, 21:9 Aspect Ratio, 720x1680 Resolution Display with a PPI of 399 on the outside. On the inside, there is a 7.3” AMOLED, 4.2:3 Aspect Ratio, 2152x1536 Resolution Display with a PPI of 362. Some of you might be wondering, why hasn’t Samsung made the Fold so that it folds on the outside? This way, you would’ve been able to use half of that massive Inner Display, as the outer Display. Huawei has done it on the Mate X, so why hasn’t Samsung done the same?

Well, you see, glass doesn’t fold. In order for the Inner Display to fold, Samsung would have had to use a plastic Display. Even on the new Galaxy Z Flip, where Samsung claims that they’re using glass, JerryRigEverything showed that it’s still just plastic in the end. Plastic is also far more susceptible to scratches and damage, than glass. This is why we had those big warning signs when we unboxed the Phone and is why Samsung chose to have that very sensitive plastic Display on the inside. If they had put it on the outside, any keys, coins or anything sharp in your pocket, could’ve permanently damaged the Display. This way, since it folds on the inside, it is always protected. The Display on the outside is standard Gorilla Glass, similar to what you would find on regular Smartphones.

You can set preferences for the App Switch on an App-by-App basis.

So, how does the App Switch work? By default, if you have an App open on the Outer Display and you open up the Fold, that App will continue on the Inner Display. When you close the Inner Display, just like on those old Clamshell Smartphones, it would shut that Display off. If you go into the Settings, you can indeed enable continuity on an app-by-app basis so that when you close the Inner Display, the app continues on the Outer Display too. YouTube, for example, works flawlessly and many others do as well. You can have a video playing on the Inner Display, close it, and it will continue playing back on the Outer Display right from where it left off.

I’m using a tool called ‘GoodLock’. Harry, our Video Creative & 3D Concept Designer, who also has a Fold himself, recommended that App to me. With GoodLock you can force all Apps to continue to the outer Display, which is what I’ve done and it works really well.

Interestingly enough, Samsung’s Launcher is considering each Display as a separate device, in a way. They both have their own specific Home-Screens so even when you change the Wallpaper, you have to do it for the Home-Screen and the Lock-Screen of each Display. So in that case, you have four Wallpapers that you can assign. However, if you use a third party Launcher, both Displays will match, in terms of App layout.

Also, pro tip, I highly recommend adjusting the text size to ‘Small’. This way, not only will the DPI Scaling be higher, but some Apps (such as Chrome) would recognise the Fold as a Tablet, rather than a Smartphone. You would get a Tablet UI with Browser Tabs and more.

Other than that, both Displays are a standard 60Hz Panel, so no high Refresh Rate here. However, both Displays have excellent Colour Reproduction. The Brightness is good too, but I do wish that the Inner Display could go brighter, to match the Brightness of the S20 line for example. We measured the peak Brightness on a Full-Screen White Window, using the ‘Xrite i1Display Plus’ Professional Display Calibrator.

Now, since this is a folding device, there is a crease in the middle. Personally, that never really bothered me. I do feel that it’s there and I do see it at certain angles but it hasn’t really been an issue for me. It’s been like the Notch on the iPhone or the Camera Cutout, where you get used to it very quickly.

Speaking of Notches, for those of you who thought that the iPhone or the Pixel 3 XL had the biggest Notch out there, think again because the Galaxy Fold has one humongous Notch on the inside. This holds the Dual Front-Facing Camera as well as the Light Sensor, it’s pretty massive. I did forget about this after using it, it just took me way longer to forget that this massive Notch was there, compared to the crease.

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Camera

When it comes to the Camera. The Galaxy Fold doesn’t have a Single Camera, but instead it comes with six Cameras, which sounds crazy. On the front, when the Fold is closed, we have a 10MP Selfie Camera, which has an f/2.2 Aperture and 1.22μm Pixels. This is literally the exact same Front-Facing Camera Sensor as on the regular Galaxy S10, just with a smaller f/2.2 Aperture, rather than f/1.9.

When we open up the Fold, on the inside, we have Two more Selfie Cameras. The one on the left is the same Camera as on the outside. On the right we have an 8MP RGB Depth Camera, with 1.12μm Pixels and an f/1.9 Aperture. Essentially, on the Inside Display, we get the same Front Camera System as on the Galaxy S10+ from last year, with that Depth Sensor. 

Despite being pretty similar to the S10, the Cameras on the Fold hold up very nicely. They’re certainly better than the S20 Ultra’s.

So, that’s three Cameras so far. On the back, we get three more, which are the exact same Camera Systems as on the Galaxy S10 line, from last year. That means that we’re getting a 12MP Main Camera with that Variable f/1.5-f/2.4 Aperture and 1.4μm Pixels. We then get a 12MP Telephoto (Zoom) Module, with an f/2.4 Aperture and 1μm Pixels and finally, we’re also getting a 16MP Ultra Wide Angle Module with an f/2.2 Aperture and 1μm Pixels. While this might seem quite disappointing, when you compare it to the 108MP Sensor of the S20 Ultra, or the 100X Space Zoom of the Ultra, the results actually point to the contrary. I’m not going to cover the Ultra’s Camera as I’ve already done that in the S20 Ultra Review. But ironically, the Fold, with last year’s Cameras, is actually performing better than the Ultra does.

Night shots are better. Night video is better. HDR Processing doesn’t have any of the issues, such as the crushed blacks and blown out Highlights that the Ultra has. So overall, this is a very good Camera. The regular S20 does indeed have better Cameras than this with, not just 8K video recording, but also 4K 60 on the Front, where the Fold is limited to 4K 30. But, most people don’t care about those and for how good this Camera is, it will easily satisfy all of your needs.

Also, another pro–tip, on the Fold you can easily install the Google Camera APK and get those awesome Pixel style photos, just like on a Pixel 4. Unfortunately, since this isn’t an official App that you can install, but rather a tweak, it would only work on the small Outer Display. 

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Performance

When it comes to the performance, unlike the regular Galaxy line, which comes with either a Snapdragon or an Exynos Processor based on the region that you buy it from, the Fold only comes with a Snapdragon Processor. This is pretty awesome. There have been many issues with the Exynos versions of Samsung Smartphones ranging from Battery Life issues, to performance issues and even Camera issues. I talk about those comprehensively in my S20 Ultra Review so once again, definitely give that a watch.

But, I’m glad to say that none of those are an issue with the Fold, having that Snapdragon Processor is the reason why we can indeed run the Google Camera APK. This wouldn’t have worked if we had an Exynos variant. So, thanks to the Snapdragon 855 Processor, as well as 12GB of RAM, performance on the Fold has been excellent. Things are snappy and Navigation is fast & fluid. Since you have those 12GB of RAM, I haven’t had any issues with Apps closing in the background and in fact, you can even lock certain Apps in the background so that they never reload and always stay open. 

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Software

But performance really means nothing if you cannot take full use of that power. I’m happy to say that the Fold fully utilises that performance, which combined with massive 7.3” Display, you can open three Apps at the same time and use them fully. You can even have one more as a floating App, for a total of four. These can all be running at the very same time and all of them are usable in real time.

You might think that I’m always on my Smartphone because…I review Smartphones, but that’s actually not the case at all. I spent almost my entire day in front of my computer, I only use my Smartphone when I’m at home and even then, I still prefer using my Laptop. However, when I’m traveling or on the go, this is when I spend all of my time on a Smartphone. This isn’t just for communicating but also for doing actual work such as replying to emails, setting up my calendar and scheduling content, all of that. Because of this, I need a large-screen Smartphone.

The Fold runs Android 10 and gets more than enough updates to keep it going.

I remember this one specific time, when I was travelling to IFA last September and I had a PDF with all of my activities for the week. I had to put events from that PDF onto my Calendar. But, on my iPhone, I couldn’t do that at all because you cannot run split-screen Apps. You have to constantly go back and forward between them and remember the info that you had in the previous one, which is an absolute nightmare. This is why I was always using my Note 10+, whenever I was traveling, because of that massive Display & S-Pen. The Fold is just an even bigger Note 10+, which is even more perfect for what I do. This is really the best productivity based Smartphone, I just wish it had an S-Pen.

Samsung’s OneUI 2.0 looks incredible. It’s by far my favourite Android Skin. I love the ability to have Folders in the App Drawer as well as on my Home-Screen as it gives me an extra layer of customisation. One-handed usability is also there as you are able to bring down the Notification Panel by swiping down anywhere on the screen.

Samsung have finally started releasing more updates for their Smartphones. The Fold now runs on Android 10 and while it is not getting as many updates as the Note or the Galaxy S line, it is still receiving more updates than all of my other Android Smartphones, with the exception of Pixel and OnePlus devices.

Probably the best part about OneUI is DeX. So, when you connect the Fold to a monitor, it would boot into this Desktop UI Mode where you can connect a Keyboard, a Mouse and really use the Fold like you would use your desktop PC. You can run the Desktop versions of Chrome and Microsoft Office, so if you can’t be bothered buying a PC for your home, the Fold can actually replace three devices now. It’s a Smartphone, a Tablet and a Desktop PC (for very casual users).

My only complaint, software wise, is that the the Wallpaper sometimes glitches out and sometimes I do have some frame-drops. I didn’t really had this before the Android 10 update, so I’m hoping that these would be fixed in a future software update. But, nothing too major.

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Special Features

Moving on to special features, let’s talk about the ones that the Fold lacks because there’s quite a few of those. To start with, the Galaxy Fold has no Water Resistance at all. Because of that Hinge design, Samsung couldn’t water-proof this Smartphone, meaning that if rain drops hit it, it’s as good as dead. To add to that, there is no Dust Resistance either. This reminds me of Smartphones back in 2015, way before Water and Dust Resistance was even a thing.

Also, unlike the Galaxy S or Galaxy Note lines, there is no SD Card slot at all on the Fold and, like you’ve heard before, you only get support for one physical SIM. The second SIM that you add has to be an eSIM. The good news is that you get an insane 512GB of Storage and there is no higher-end version of the Fold, there’s the baseline and that’s it. This also has UFS 3.0 Storage, which is insanely fast with speeds of over 1Gb/s. 

Despite all that it can do, the current Fold is still very easily damaged.

The vibration motor is very good. It seems to be the exact same one as in the Galaxy Note 10+ and the S20’s. You get an actual Haptic response every time to type or when you hit a toggle in the Settings. It gives you the impression that you’re actually pressing physical buttons on the screen. 

We do get 5G, sub-6GHz and mmWave 5G, which is great. You also get something called ‘Samsung Concierge’ and ‘SamsungCare+’ with the Fold, meaning that you have access to exclusive 24/7 Help. Samsung will replace your Display for free during the first year as well as fix or replace the entire Smartphone if you’re having any issues with it or even if you accidentally drop or break it.

However, you do have to register for SamsungCare+ manually, which is quite bad in my opinion. You have 30 days to do so and in my case, I tried registering but the website is all glitched and I couldn’t click the next button to actually register. I’ve been in talks with Samsung support, but hey don’t now what the issue is and they’re currently looking into it. My only complaint here, aside from the SamsungCare+ registration, are that the Fingerprint Reader is slow and very difficult to find. So, I’m pretty much using FaceUnlock exclusively on my Fold. 

The S-Pen would’ve been perfect on a device like this. We don’t have one but we’ve seen tons of leaks & rumors that the Fold 2 will indeed come with one. 

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Battery 

Battery Life has been excellent, even with that fairly small 4380mAh Battery. It can easily last me through an entire day and we get Fast Charging, Wireless Charging and Reverse Wireless Charging, for charging things like those Galaxy Buds that we got in the box. 

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Value 

In the end, is the Galaxy Fold worth it? Right now, no. But that’s because the Fold 2 is coming out very soon. We’ll have a video on that in the upcoming weeks so definitely subscribe and hit the bell icon for that. 

But as a whole package, the Fold offers something that no other Smartphone offers. It offers a Tablet that you can put in your pocket. The Screen-Size is perfect for reading and for emailing. The typing is great, I love the more squared off Form-Factor and in the end, like I said, this is the perfect device for productivity.  So, if you’re a CEO or a business person, there’s nothing better than this.

For the average person, unless you can get this for a very good deal, paying $2000 for it isn’t worth it at all. Also, keep in mind that you have to be extra careful with this Smartphone. But, I’m personally extremely happy with my Fold and I’m genuinely looking forward to the future. Because you see, this is the future of Smartphones. Just like the first iPhone, the Fold isn’t perfect but it lays the foundation for what’s yet to come.

MacBook Air (2020) - Full In-Depth Review! (After 3+ Weeks of Use)

Every few years, every few decades, there is this one product that completely changes everything. A product that’s so new, so innovative that it breaks the boundaries of what we believed was even possible, one of those products was…the MacBook Air.

Originally introduced back in 2008, the MacBook Air was the thinnest Laptop in the world. It was so thin, that Steve Jobs even took it out of an envelope and the audience was amazed! Not only that, but the MacBook Air ended up giving birth to the UltraBook category of Laptops that we have now. Those very thin, light and portable Laptops that tens of millions of people own. 

Aside from being extremely thin, the original MacBook Air was extremely innovative in many other ways. It had a multi-touch Trackpad that supported the same gestures as the iPhone that was introduced a year prior. Gestures such as pinch to zoom, rotating a photo with two fingers, swiping with three fingers from one Home-Screen to another and much more. It removed the Disc Drive and featured the smallest HDD ever, in a Laptop, alongside the ability to upgrade that to a Solid-State-Drive, making the MacBook Air the world’s first Laptop to come with Flash Storage. 

An iconic reveal for an iconic device.

However, the First Generation MacBook Air was flawed. The low power Intel Core 2 Duo Processor and that painfully slow 4200rpm, 80GB HDD alongside the lack of any Ports aside from a single USB 2.0 Port, a micro-DVI Port and a 3.5mm Headphone Jack made it quite unpopular at first. All that and the insanely high $1800 starting price point, which back in 2008, that was a lot. Then, just two years later in 2010, Apple released the Second Generation MacBook Air. 

This one featured a new tampered design without a pop-out slot for the Ports. It added a second USB Port on the other side, it dramatically improved the performance, thanks to Intel’s new Core 2 Duo Processors. Also, Apple now included Solid State Storage as standard on all models of this MacBook Air and dropped the price by $500, bringing it down to $1300. Not only that, but Apple also released a smaller 11-inch model, which I actually happened to have, a few years ago. This generation, the Second Generation design, was what Apple sold for the next eight years, up until 2018. I mean sure, we did get improvements in terms of performance and higher capacity Storage options, but the design has remained unchanged.

But then in 2018, we got the big new Third Generation, which finally updated the design to bring it in line with the MacBook Pro’s, which got a big update in 2016. The 12” MacBook, which was re-introduced in 2015, with that space grey thin design, sparked this new generation of MacBooks. This was the biggest update that the MacBook Air line has ever received as we finally got a Retina Display, that Butterfly Keyboard from the MacBook Pro’s, which ended up being very controversial, and we also got multiple colour options such as Space Grey & Gold, aside from just Silver. In 2019, we got a very small update to the 2018 model, with a slightly improved Butterfly Keyboard mechanism and a True Tone Display, but that was mostly it.

Now, we have the 2020 model, which I’ve been using for quite a few weeks now and I’m very comfortable giving you my full In-Depth Review on it. This was a pretty long intro, so without any further ado, here is my In-Depth MacBook Air 2020 Review, covering the Design, Display, Keyboard & Trackpad, Camera, Microphone & Speakers, Performance, Battery Life and finally, Value!

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Design

Starting off with the design, I have to say, Apple Laptops are definitely my favourite and the MacBook Air is no exception. Just like the 2018 model, it is made out of a single piece of Aluminium and it comes in three colours, which are Space Grey (the one that we have) as well as Silver and Gold. If you’re planning on keeping your MacBook Air for many years, you should be aware that the Space Grey and the Gold colours have coatings on top of the Silver Aluminium. This means that if they scuff, they will reveal the Silver underneath it. Therefore, the Silver model is the most durable over-time. I’ve always taken really good care of my MacBooks and I only have a few minor scuffs on my 2015 12” MacBook and my 2017 MacBook Pro but, if you do want to get the Space Grey model, and you take very good care of it, you should be fine.

The MacBook Air still features the same teardrop shape design, where the Body gets thinner towards the front and thicker towards the back, with pretty much no body flex at all. This is really one of the sturdiest Laptops that I have ever seen. It’s pretty much a tank in terms of Build Quality,  nothing to complain about here.

For a Device with ‘Air’ in the name, this is pretty bulky.

But, something that definitely shocked me when I took it out of the box, was just how heavy it was. I’m coming from a 15” 2019 MacBook Pro, and I’ve used a 12” MacBook for years before that as a secondary MacBook, and the MacBook Air is very heavy compared to the 12”. It’s 1.29kg, compared to the 0.92kg of the 12” MacBook. So, if you’re coming from a 12” MacBook, the MacBook Air will feel extremely heavy. If you’re coming from a MacBook Pro 13”, you probably won’t even be able to tell the weight difference as the MacBook Pro 13” weighs 1.37kg, so they’re both extremely similar. So, while the MacBook Air is currently the lightest Laptop that Apple sells, as the 12” MacBook got discontinued, it is not as light as you would expect it to be, considering its’ ‘Air’ branding. Also, fun fact, the 2020 MacBook Air is now 40 grams heavier than the 2018 and 2019 models. 

Fun fact number two, the 2020 MacBook Air is also thicker this year, coming in at 1.61cm at its thickest point, compared to 1.55cm like the 2018 and 2019 models were.  I’ll explain why the 2020 MacBook Air is thicker and heavier, later on.

But overall, design wise, I am extremely impressed. My only two complaints here is that I wish the MacBook Air was lighter and the Bezels were thinner. When comparing the MacBook Air against something like a Dell XPS 13,  there’s a gigantic difference in terms of the Bezel sizes. The MacBook Air looks more like a 2016 Laptop, than a 2020 one. I really do hope that Apple updates the Bezels with the next model, because it’s already starting to look quite outdated. 

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Display

Speaking of the Bezels, let’s talk about the Display. We have a 13.3” Display, which is very comparable to a lot of Windows Laptops. But, we do have a 16:10 Aspect Ratio, meaning that the MacBook Air, just like all the other MacBooks, has a taller Display compared to most Windows Laptops. I absolutely love this. Having more vertical screen-real estate is great for reading articles or for when you’re writing text. Some Windows Laptops, like Microsoft’s Surface Laptops or the new Dell XPS 13”, have started adding a 16:10 Aspect Ratio, but most manufacturers unfortunately didn’t.

The MacBook Air hits that sweet spot, in terms of the Display.

In terms of Resolution, we have a 2560x1600 Resolution Display, which at 227 PPI, I cannot see any Pixels on this from the regular viewing distance. It’s an incredibly sharp Display, text looks like printed paper, it’s just a joy to look at. On the Windows side, we don’t really have Laptops with a 2K Display, it’s usually either 1080p or 4K. I find that 4K is overkill for Laptops. They’re very sharp, but 4K consumes a lot of power and the Sharpness from the regular viewing distance is almost the same as 2K. With 1080p, it does offer the most Battery Life, but I can easily tell that the Display isn’t as sharp and text is a bit too blurry for me, on a 1080p 13” Display. So, 2K is definitely the sweet-spot here and I really do hope that more manufacturers start adding such Displays, even on the Windows side as well.

Colour wise, we have 93.3% sRGB coverage, and 70.8% DCIP3 % coverage. While this is actually very good for a Laptop and one of the very best Displays on any Laptop out right now, if you’re into video editing or photo editing and you need the most colour accurate Display, just get a MacBook Pro instead. MacBook Pro’s have 100% sRGB coverage and 98.9% DCI P3 coverage, meaning that they can display about 30% more colours than the MacBook Air.

Now, I’m not saying that you cannot edit video or photos on the MacBook Air at all, you can definitely do that without any issues. But, if photo or video editing is what you do on a daily basis, then I would look at something like a MacBook Pro, just because of that even wider Colour Gamut.

The MacBook Air has just over 400 Nits of Brightness, compared to 500 Nits on the MacBook Pro or 600 Nits on the 2018 and 2020 iPad Pro’s. Now, while that is still a very high number and one of the highest on any Laptop out there (most Laptops have around 350 Nits of Brightness), again, if you’re into photo editing and you need a brighter Display or you just like working outdoors a lot, then a MacBook Pro is a better choice. But, when indoors and in most cases, 400 Nits is more than enough for me. I almost never even max out the Brightness.

Finally, the MacBook Air also features a True Tone Display. Essentially, if you enable this in the Settings, the White Point of the Display will automatically match the light around you. Just like a piece of paper, if the lights in your room are yellow, the Display will turn yellow to match that light, making it very easy on the eyes for when you’re reading or writing. I do have to manually disable this setting every single time I want to edit a photo or a video, as I do want to preserve the colour accuracy. It does get a bit annoying having to constantly remember to do that every time you want to do any colour work. I wish Apple had True Tone automatic so that it turns off when you open up Final Cut or Photoshop. 

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Keyboard & Trackpad

Now, the third very important part of any Laptop, for me, is the Keyboard & Trackpad. I am very glad to say that the Keyboard has finally been improved, or should I say, completely replaced.

The troubled Butterfly Keyboard is gone, which Apple introduced with the 12” MacBook in 2015, then the MacBook Pro’s in 2016 and the MacBook Air in 2018. That Keyboard was flawed from the very start. It had almost no key travel, so it was very difficult typing on it and it broke extremely easily. Apple ended up being sued multiple times, you probably know that whole story already.

The really good news here is that we get the same Keyboard as on the new 16” MacBook Pro. This is a more standard Scissor Switch Keyboard, very similar to what we had on the Second Generation MacBook Air from 2010. The only difference being that the keys are now even more stable and they feel even better to type on, compared to the Second Generation MacBook Air.  In fact, the entire 12 page Review video was fully scripted on my MacBook Air. I even scripted a few other videos on it, including the OnePlus 8 Pro Experience and about three or four more recent videos. I have to say, the typing experience on this MacBook Air is the best I have ever had on any Laptop, even better than on the 16” MacBook Pro.

A very notable improvement, with a slightly less notable Fingerprint Reader

The fact that the entire MacBook is much smaller than the 16” Pro, you don’t have this massive board of Aluminium which you’re resting your palms on. Instead, you’re typing on the entire Laptop, if you know what I mean, rather than typing on a Keyboard that’s inside a gigantic Laptop. It just feels much more comfortable. Also, the fact that you have this teardrop/tapered design makes it so much more comfortable to type on as not only is the Keyboard angled when you type on it, but it doesn’t feel as sharp and raised on your wrists as a MacBook Pro does.

Also, the arrow keys are now back to being that inverted ’T’ shape. Funnily enough, the only thing that I miss about the Keyboard from my 15” 2019 MacBook Pro, is the Touchbar. Yes, I do miss having it. I mostly used it in Word for changing some text presets or for quickly adjusting the Volume or the Brightness. I wasn’t using it a lot, but now that I don’t have it anymore, I do kind of miss it. Luckily, we do have a Fingerprint Reader built into the Power Button, which is a bit recessed compared to the rest of the keys, but other than that, I really have no complaints.

The Trackpad is outstanding as well. Trackpads on Macs have always been the best ones in the industry and this is no exception. It is a bit smaller than on the 13” MacBook Pro and way smaller than on the 15” or 16” models, but it’s still larger than on most Windows Laptops. It uses a Haptic Motor underneath it, so the Trackpad doesn’t click but that Haptic Engine gives you the impression that you pressed it, even though the glass itself doesn’t move.

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Camera, Microphones & Speakers 

The 2020 Air has the same Camera as the 2018 model. It’s a 720p Camera, which is far inferior to the iPad or the iPhone Camera.  I know the screen is pretty thin but Apple could’ve still added a 1080p Camera there. The quality just isn’t great.

The Microphones have been improved as we now get a Three-Mic Array with Beam-Forming. The Speakers have a deeper bass as well as support for Dolby Atmos Playback.

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Performance 

Now, we get to move to the Performance section. This is where I have the most to say as, aside from the Keyboard upgrade, this is where the other big changes are.

First off, the 2020 MacBook Air is Apple’s first Mac to move onto Intel’s new 10th Generation Processors. They actually got released in September of last year, so not that new. Anyway,  we get a 10th Generation i3, i5 and i7 mode but, don’t be fooled, this is not comparable in any way to a Desktop Class i3, i5 or i7, or even a MacBook Pro’s i3, i5 and i7.  These are all Intel’s Low Powered Y Series Processors and in fact, these Chips are basically the successor to Intel’s Core M Processors, found in the 12” MacBook from back in 2015. These are all some very low power 10w Processors that don’t even require a Fan.

The big change this year is that we do get Four Cores in a MacBook Air, something that only the 15” models used to have back in the day and something that the 13” Pro added in 2018. But, if you do want the Quad-Core CPU models, those are the i5 and the i7 but not the i3. The i3 is still Dual-Core, this is the one that I have.

So which one is right for you, and should you pay extra for the i5 and the i7 models? Well, I’ll tell you straight away, don’t buy the i7 model. The performance difference between the i5 and the i7 is almost nothing, you basically get the exact same experience, for $150 less. The real question is, should you get the Dual Core i3 model or upgrade to the Quad-Core i5 model instead? 

The 2020 model looks to perform very well (on paper).

Well, performance has indeed been improved from the 2019 and 2018 models, even on the base i3 model, and the Single Core performance between the two is almost identical. In fact, the MacBook Air actually scores the highest, in Single Core performance, compared to all the other Macs out there, including the 16” MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro. If you do a lot of Single Core tasks, such as word processing, browsing the web or even watching YouTube videos, you’re better off with the Dual Core i3 model as the Battery Life would actually last you longer on that one.

But if you do want to future proof it and maybe use it for a few more years, or you’re just someone that’s a bit more demanding in terms of what you do on your Laptop, I highly recommend getting the i5 model. You not only get two extra Cores for much higher Multi-Core performance, but you also get a much more powerful GPU. This is the G7 variant of the Iris Plus Graphics, which is noticeably more powerful than the G4 that you get with the i3 model. The i7 also has the G7 GPU, in case you’re wondering. 

Now, something that does directly affect GPU performance, is the amount of RAM. As Intel’s Integrated GPU uses part of your RAM as Shared Video Memory. The more RAM you have, the more memory the GPU will also have, and the better overall performance you’ll get. I highly recommend upgrading to 16GB of RAM. Mine only had 8GB of RAM and my usage was pretty much maxing that out all of the time. This meant that the system felt a bit sluggish most of the time, even when I was just scripting and had a few pages open in Safari. So, 16GB of RAM is a must. Upgrading to the i5 over the i3 isn’t a must but I would suggest that as well, if you plan on using this for more than three years. 

The RAM has had a massive boost.

The MacBook Air now has the fastest RAM that Apple has ever put in a MacBook, this is now 3733MHz RAM, compared to the 2133MHz RAM that the 2019 MacBook Air had, or the 2666MHz that the MacBook Pro has.

By now you’re all probably wondering, how does the new MacBook Air compare to the 13” MacBook Pro? We do get what looks to be faster Processors than the Pro, we also get a much better GPU and we also get much faster RAM.

Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but the MacBook Pro 13” is still far more powerful than the MacBook Air. Ironically, this is not because of the components, which are indeed more powerful on the MacBook Air, but because of Cooling. The MacBook Air only has one single Fan for Cooling, whereas the MacBook Pro 13” can have two Fans, if you go for the higher end model with four Thunderbolt 3 Ports. That one Fan on the MacBook Air isn’t even connected to the CPU’s Heatsink. Instead, it just randomly sits there inside the Case, as if it got disconnected and fell, because of this, thermals on this Laptop are bad. 

Whenever you’re doing something more intensive, such as video editing, the CPU gets as hot as 100 degrees on the MacBook Air, that Fan doesn’t seem to help at all and the performance takes a big hit. 

It doesn’t actually throttle, as the Clocks still remain above the base 1.1 GHz Clock on both the i3 and the i5, but it gets very close to that number when you’re doing some very intensive tasks, rather than staying at the Turbo Boost of 3.2 or 3.5GHz. This is the only reason why the MacBook Pro 13” can outperform it. 

So, why has Apple done such a thing? Why is Apple intentionally limiting the thermal performance of the MacBook Air? Is it so that you upgrade to the 13” Pro? Not necessarily.

A view from the inside.

You see, the Y series Processor that is inside the MacBook Air is actually a Fan-less design, whereas the U series Processor that is inside the 13” MacBook Pro, is not. As per Intel’s own recommendations, the MacBook Air doesn’t actually need a Fan at all, whereas the Pro does. When Apple updated the MacBook Air in 2018 with the Third Generation design, they didn’t even have to include a Fan at all, because this is the same CPU design as the Intel Core M inside the 12” MacBook, which didn’t even have a Fan at all. But Apple decided to include a Fan in the MacBook Air, just for the sake of longevity. When Intel added two more Cores and therefore more heat, Apple decided to just stick with the same Cooling as they had the year prior.

So if you plan on doing any video or photo editing, the MacBook Air can easily handle that, even 4K video editing for that matter. It’s just that the export times would be much longer compared to a 13” MacBook Pro or not even to mention a 15” or a 16” model. If this is something you do on a daily basis, just don’t buy the MacBook Air, get a MacBook Pro instead. If it’s just occasional photo and video editing that you do, the MacBook Air can still handle that quite well.

So, what about gaming? First off, don’t buy a Mac for gaming and secondly, if you do buy a Mac for gaming, don’t buy the MacBook Air. It’s literally the worst option, for gaming, out of all the Macs that Apple sell. Again, even if the GPU is far more powerful than on the 13” Pro, because of that Fan not being connected to the Heatsink, gaming performance is pretty bad on the Air. You can play some very lightweight games such as Hearthstone, but when it comes to even Fortnite or most of the SteamGames, which are actually 32-bit games and are no longer supported, you’re out of luck.

Something that I do like a lot about the MacBook Air is that it comes with two Thunderbolt 3 Ports. Thunderbolt 3 is the fastest Port on any consumer device out there right now, with speeds of up to 40Gb/s or 5GB/s.

Gaming on a Mac? We don’t recommend it.

You can not only use this to connect to Thunderbolt 3 Docks, which gives you a ton of extra Ports by just using a single Thunderbolt 3 Cable, but you can also use it to connect to a 5K Monitor, two 4K Monitors or even one 6K Monitor.  The MacBook Air does support Apple’s Pro Display XDR at full Resolution, something that ironically, not even the iMac Pro supports. This is because the iMac Pro is using an older Thunderbolt 3 Controller. 

You can also use Thunderbolt to connect an External GPU for some incredible GPU performance, which won’t be throttled. In this case you might be wondering, what’s the gaming and video editing performance?

Well, in Fortnite for example, on Native Resolution & Medium Settings, the MacBook Air was averaging around 10fps. With an eGPU attached, a Vega 64 in this case, we were getting around 60fps on average. So a pretty big difference. In FCP X for example, exporting our Blind Camera Comparison, took 1h:15min without an eGPU and just 22 minutes, with the Vega 64 eGPU attached. This was with the eGPU connected directly to the MacBook Air. If you connect it to a Monitor first and then to the Air, you would get even higher performance. 

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Battery Life

What about the Battery Life? Well, Apple actually dropped the Battery Life from 12 hours, which is what we had in 2019 and 2018, to 11 hours.

The Battery is actually the exact same size as last year, 49.9 Watt-Hour. The increase in the thickness is only due to the Keyboard, which needed more space to travel and then, because the body got thicker, it also increased the weight. In terms of how much of those 11 hours I got, I personally only got about five to seven hours, seven hours at most.

My use case scenario on the MacBook Air was pretty light. I used it mostly for scripting & researching, so I had about 20 Tabs open all the time. I did a tiny bit of Photoshop work and I also had Slack open, which consumes a lot of Battery. With this use case scenario, I got about 6 hours on average. 

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Value 

In the end, is the MacBook Air 2020 worth it? Well, let’s see. 

Compared to the 2019 model, we get a Quad-Core Processor option, we get a better GPU and a much better Keyboard. We also get 256GB of Storage on the baseline model, compared to 128GB like we got before. You get all of this for $100 less. The new MacBook Air starts from $1000, or £1000 in the UK. This is indeed for the Dual-Core model, the Quad-Core is $100 more, but there you go, the MacBook Air was never a better deal that it is now. 

So, for any casual user, I would highly recommend it. For people that want something more powerful and much better for regular photo and video editing, definitely consider the 13” Pro but don’t get one right now, because there will be a newer model, with that updated keyboard, coming out very very soon. So hold off for that model instead.

That 14” MacBook Pro that we’ve seen rumoured is likely to get released by June. If that is indeed the case, I might be upgrading, or downgrading, depending on how you put it, from my Eight-Core 2019 15”. 

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra - The Complete Review! (1 Month Later)

Finally, we have a smartphone that ticks every single box! That Smartphone, is the S20 Ultra. It comes with:

• A 108MP Camera, which has nine times the Resolution of the iPhone 11 Pro Max and most flagships Smartphones out there.

• 100X Space Zoom, when most Smartphones feature just 2X Optical or 10X Digital.

• A massive 6.9”, 3200x1440, Ultra-Wide 20:9 Aspect Ratio Display with a 120Hz Refresh Rate, compared to the 60Hz of most other Smartphones.

• It features the second largest Sensor on any Smartphone, right after the Huawei P40 Pro.

• 8K Video Recording.

• A 40MP Front-Facing Camera.

• A gigantic 5000mAh Battery.

• 45W Fast Charging.

• 15W Wireless Charging.

• 9W Reverse Wireless Charging.

• An Always-On Display.

• 12GB of RAM.

• Up to 1.5TB of Storage and you can even turn it into a Desktop PC, thanks to Samsung Dex.

The S20 Ultra is the god of all Smartphones and it is by far the most amazing Smartphone that I have ever used! Or at least…this is how I was hoping I would start this Review.

You see, the Galaxy S10 from last year was one of my favourite Smartphones ever. The S10 was so perfect for me, that I ended up using it as my daily driver for almost three full months, even replacing my iPhone for that period of time. Then, the Galaxy Note 10+ came out, which was an even more perfected S10, with an even bigger Display and an S-Pen. In my Review of the Note 10+, I even called it the best Smartphone ever made. I was honestly so happy with the Note 10+, just because it could do every single thing that I wanted from a Smartphone and more.

So, when I heard that the S20 Ultra would come out, with that insane 108MP Camera and 120Hz Display, I was just counting the days until this would release. We made so many videos on the S20 Ultra way before it was even announced, we made ‘Leaks & Rumors’ episodes, Concepts and I even attended the S20 launch event, which was my first ever Samsung event, and I was honestly so hyped about this Smartphone. I was eagerly awaiting the S20 Ultra launch. I don’t remember the last time I was so excited about a Smartphone, it was probably in 2017 when the big iPhone X launched. 

However, rather than this being the ultimate Smartphone, as it looks to be, judging from the specs, it ended up being the most disappointing that I have ever ever used. On paper, they make this Smartphone look like it came from five years into the future. However, every single one of these specs has a major flaw and this Smartphone cannot deliver on any of its big promises. I’ve been using the S20 Ultra as my daily driver for the past month or so, so here is my full, honest Review of the S20 Ultra covering the Design, Display, Camera, Performance, Special Features, Battery and Value!

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I mentioned that I finally attended my first Samsung event, I managed to see the unveil of the S20 line and the Galaxy Z Flip in person, which further sparked by insane hype about this Smartphone. After the event ended, just like everyone else, I was waiting for my Review Unit from Samsung.

The recent ‘Unpacked’ event was the first time we had attended an actual Samsung reveal.

However, while others started receiving very early units, we didn’t get anything. I kept being promised by Samsung that they would send one over as soon as possible, however, other channels, even smaller creators, got it, while we were left without a unit. About two weeks pass and most Reviews of the S20 Ultra started coming out already and pretty much all of them were very negative, which further crushed my hype for this Smartphone.

Now, Samsung did end up sending us a unit, so thank you Samsung, but that one actually arrived a full month after everyone else got it. It even got delivered at the exact same time as our Retail Unit of the S20 Ultra, which we bought and even that got delayed by an entire week, due to stock issues. 

So, we got the S20 Ultra about a month after everyone else already posted their Full Review, seeing all of those negative Reviews and getting this so late pretty much killed all of my excitement. This is why we haven’t done a single video with the S20’s yet, just because we got it so late, compared to everyone else. But still, I wanted to make this Full Review, so I’ve put the S20 Ultra through its paces and here’s what I found. 

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Design

Design wise, from the front, the S20 Ultra does look outstanding. The Bezels are extremely thin, even thinner than on the S10 and Note 10. The Camera Cutout is now even smaller than before and it is now in the centre, just like on the Note 10. You honestly forget about it after just a few minutes and you just get impressed in that massive 6.9” Display.

Comparing it to the iPhone 11 Pro Max, the Ultra looks light-years ahead. It just looks so futuristic without that massive Notch and those extremely thin Bezels. The back, however, isn’t as pretty. That’s not necessarily because of that massive Camera Module, but mostly because of the colours, we only get Grey and Black colour options. The Grey is just a regular Grey so nothing really too special here, but the Black is actually pretty bad. There’s no shimmer to it or anything, it’s just a fingerprint magnet. It actually reminds me a lot of our fake Galaxy mock-ups. It looks so much like cheap plastic.  Samsung used to have some amazing colours with the Note and S10 last year but for some reason, those didn’t translate to the Ultra. Not only that, but most Smartphones in 2020 started adding a Frosted Glass back.

The Ultra is very bulky, even without that mammoth Camera Module.

The iPhones have it, the Pixels have it, OnePlus has it, Huawei has it with the P40 Pro and many others do as well. A Frosted Glass back not only makes it look so much better, but it removes the issue of fingerprints and smudges almost entirely. I’m quite surprised that Samsung still hasn’t done that. 

Now, leaving the back aside, there are three design issues that I really do have to mention, the first one being the table wobble. So, because of how massive and deep this Camera Module is, you’ll notice that when the Ultra is sitting flat on the table, it will wobble like crazy. If you’re the kind of person that likes using your Smartphone when it’s sitting flat, you can forget about that with the Ultra. 

Secondly, the Ultra is very thick at 8.8mm for just the body alone, not even to mention the Camera Module. The Ultra is pretty much the thickest non-folding, flagship Smartphone on the market right now. If you add a case, to remove that table wobble issue and flatten out the Camera Module, it will make this Smartphone even thicker. 

Lastly, this Smartphone is also pretty heavy. At 222g, it is one of the heaviest Smartphones on the market and while it’s actually 4 grams lighter than the iPhone 11 Pro Max, it does feel top heavy to me. I always feel like I’m about to drop this Smartphone and that Camera Module is so big that you’ll always end up touching it. So, great design on the front, but a very bulky and big Smartphone overall.

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Display

Moving on to the Display, we now get a massive 6.9” Display, up from the 6.7” Panel that the S10 5G had, or the 6.8” Display that the Note 10+ had. But, this size increase is mostly due to its extra height.  We now have a taller 20:9 Aspect Ratio, compared to 19:9 like we had before, it actually doesn’t feel as big as you would expect. In fact, the entire Smartphone is not as wide as the Note 10+ was, meaning that, compared to the Note, it is actually more comfortable to use. I really do like this.

This is a very high quality Display, but it has some notable limitations.

Also, the Glass is almost flat now, Samsung pretty much killed their ‘Edge’ Display with the S20 line. Design wise, I do prefer the Note 10+ over the S20 Ultra. Also, thanks to the flatter Display, there are no more accidental touches at all with this Smartphone, so Samsung definitely gets a plus for that. Resolution wise, we get a 3200x1440 Resolution Display, which translates to 511PPI. The Colour Reproduction is excellent and the Brightness is very good, maxing out at 1300 Nits. So overall, the S20 Ultra has one of the highest quality Displays in a Smartphone.

Now, aside from the Resolution and Aspect Ratio, something else that’s new this year is the Refresh Rate. We now get a 120Hz Display, compared to the 60Hz Panel that we got before. This means that the S20 Ultra can now Display up to 120FPS, compared to 60FPS like on most other Smartphones. Not only will games run twice more fluid on the Ultra, compared to let’s say, the iPhone 11 Pro Max, but animations, scrolling and just using the Smartphone in general will feel so much snappier than ever before.

But, this is where the first main disappointment with this Smartphone kicks in. Unlike the OnePlus 8 Pro for example, which runs at 120HZ at full Resolution, the S20 Ultra can only run at 120Hz when the Display is in 1080p. This wouldn’t really be an issue if this Display was any smaller but, on a massive 6.9” Display, 1080p will make the text look a bit blurry. So, you’ll have to choose, you’ll either want a fluid but blurry experience, or you’ll want a not so fluid but sharp experience. There’s always a trade-off.

Also, OnePlus for example, added a 10-bit Display Panel on the 8 Pro, which can display over 1 billion colours, compared to the 16 million colours that the S20 Ultra can display. OnePlus also added an MEMC Chip, which adds extra frames in videos, bringing them to 120FPS from 30FPS for example. So, even though OnePlus actually uses a Samsung Display, it seems like it is a higher quality Panel than what Samsung themselves have put in their highest-end Smartphone.

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Camera

So, speaking of disappointments, let’s talk about the biggest one there is and that is…the Camera.

Where do we even start?

About a month before the S20 Ultra was even announced, we made a video called “S20 Ultra – Why I’m concerned”, in which I talked about why that 108MP Sensor that the S20 Ultra will come with, might not be a great idea. My point here was that a Camera Sensor is just like a chessboard, it’s a fixed area, inside of which you have multiple squares. These squares are actually the Pixels on the Sensor. The larger the Pixels are, the more light they can capture. Now, if you want to add multiple squares, nine times the amount of squares in the case of the Ultra, they will have to become nine times smaller in order for all of them to fit. This means that they will capture nine times less light and long story short, the Camera would be very bad in Low-Light.

To combat this issue, Samsung increased the chessboard size, or the Sensor size in this case, from 1/2.55” like we had on the Note 10+, to 1/1.33”. This was a massive increase, pretty much double the size. This was a pretty big deal for Samsung as we hadn’t had a larger Sensor since the Galaxy S7 in 2016, Samsung had been using the exact same Camera specs. The only problem, and this is where my scepticism was regarding this Camera, was that the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 also used the same 108MP Sensor from Samsung. It is the same size, has same specs and this is a mid-range Smartphone that costs three to four times less than the Ultra. That 108MP Camera inside of it wasn’t great either.

Photos were indeed sharp, but only when the Camera had a ton of light. If you didn’t have tons of sunlight, the Camera was pretty bad. Now, Samsung did claim that they were doing something a bit different on the Ultra, where they would actually combine nine Pixels on the Sensor, into one, for much better Low-Light performance via something they called ‘NonaBinning’. But, I just wasn’t buying it. The Pixels on the Sensor are still 0.8 Microns in size, compared to 1.4 Microns on the Note 10+ for example. So, the Pixels were almost twice as small. That video of me being skeptical about the Samsung Camera before release got quite a lot of dislikes and I’m sorry to tell you but…I was right.

The Variable Aperture Module is a notable loss on the Ultra.

Even with Samsung’s ‘NonaBinning’, this Camera just isn’t great at all. Low-Light performance is noticeably worse than the iPhone 11 Pro Max, or even the S10 from last year. Low-Light shots on the Ultra, as I expected, are very bad, they are extremely noisy and unfortunately video performance in Low-Light is even worse. As a video is essentially a sequence of 30 or 60 photos every second, the Processor isn’t fast enough to reduce the noise in real time, so video ends up being even noisier than the Low-Light photos. Low-Light video just falls apart entirely on the Ultra because of those extremely tiny Pixels on the Sensor.

Remember that really cool Variable Aperture Module, the f/1.5-f/2.4 Module that the S9 introduced? Well, that’s now gone and all we’re left with is a fixed f/1.8 Aperture Module, which is another reason why this Smartphone does not excel in Low-Light. 

So pretty bad Low-Light performance but, the day-time performance should at least be good, right? Unfortunately, that’s pretty bad as well. The HDR Processing on this Smartphone is close to non-existent, Shadows get completely crushed and Highlights get blown out almost every single time. I don’t remember the last time we had a Smartphone that was this bad in terms of HDR Processing. These photos remind me of pre-HDR Smartphones from around 2012-2013 or so. 

The Ultra makes the Moon look like it really is made of cheese.

Also, the Ultra doesn’t really take 108MP photos. All of the photos that you take are using that Pixel Binning/NonaBinning merge that I talked about before, so they’re all 12MP photos unless you have the 108MP Mode specifically enabled. While the 108MP photos do look very good, the HDR Processing is actually even worse on the 108MP photos, things are definitely not looking great for the S20 Ultra’s Camera. Something has to be good about this Camera, what about that 100X Zoom or at least the 8K video? 

Samsung is using a Periscope Camera inside the Ultra, which is a genius solution of putting a Telephoto Lens inside the thin body of a Smartphone, they actually positioned the Telephoto Camera to the side and they’re using a mirror to direct the light onto the Sensor. But you don’t get 100X Optical zoom, that would really be ridiculous. Instead, you get about 4X Optical Zoom, which is really only twice the Zoom level of the iPhone 11 Pro Max for example, and then the rest of the Zoom is all Digital, thanks to the 48MP Resolution of the Telephoto Sensor and that 108MP Resolution Main Sensor.

Long story short, 10X Hybrid Zoom on this Smartphone is actually pretty impressive, the 30X is OK but I wouldn’t really use it on an Instagram Post. Anything more than 30X, especially 50X or 100X, is borderline unusable. Images end up looking like Oil Paintings and Samsung should’ve really marketed this as 10X Zoom, rather than literally printing 100X Space Zoom on the back of the Smartphone, this would’ve been so much better received. But instead, Samsung hyped this Smartphone up so much to the point where the 100X Space Zoom is pretty much a meme.

I was a bit sceptical when, at the event, Samsung didn’t show us a single photo of the night sky or at least the Moon, even-though the branding on this camera was 100X Space Zoom. 

Printing that on the Ultra may not have been the best idea.

Now, there are two more things that I want to mention regarding the Zoom Camera. The first one being that if you just want to use the Telephoto Module, the Standard Zoom is now 5X, so if you want to Zoom in just a bit, that would be Digital Zoom and not Optical. Portrait Mode is now done with the Main Lens because of that. Secondly, the Telephoto Module is actually a very slow Lens now. It is an f/3.5 Aperture Module, which combined with the fact that it is a 48MP Sensor, explains why this Module is pretty much unusable in Low-Light, or any light that’s not direct Sunlight.

So, what about that 8K video? It’s pretty sharp but it is only at 24FPS and I have a feeling that sometimes it even drops below that, just because it does look pretty choppy every now and then. The HDR Processing is again very poor in this Mode and the Bit-Rate is quite low as well. After the recent updates, it is now around 50-70Mb/s, but for 8K video, you would expect that to be much much higher, at least 150Mb/s, considering that the Storage inside the S20 Ultra is indeed capable of this. But, just to make matters worse, the focusing on this Smartphone is one of the worst I’ve seen in years. First of all, the S20 Ultra, because of that massive Sensor, now lacks the incredible Dual Pixel Autofocus that we’ve had on Samsung Smartphones for years. We just have Phase Detection Autofocus, which is quite slow.

The problem here is that when recording video, it focus hunts a lot. Getting a focused subject with this Smartphone is quite tricky. On top of this, based on how big the Sensor is, and while you do get some incredibly natural Depth of Field straight from the Camera’s hardware, this only makes the Focusing issue even worse. Now, close-ups would look incredibly blurry when compared to other ones.

You still get a whole lot with the regular S20 (Shibe not included).

Also, aside from Focusing, Low-Light and HDR issues, something else that got a downgrade is Slow-Motion. We no longer get Samsung’s iconic 960FPS Slow-Motion, this is now just 480FPS on the Ultra and then digitally enhanced up to 960FPS. Fun fact, the regular S20 and the S20+ don’t have any of these issues. They still have a 12MP Main Sensor, which is also larger than last year, but Low-Light performance on those is just incredible because the Pixels themselves are not as small as on the Ultra. Autofocusing works just fine because we still have Dual Pixel Autofocus and we still get a massive 64MP Sensor as the Secondary Camera, which you can also use to take full 64MP photos.

So, the S20 and S20+ do have a much better Camera than the Ultra, ironically. It’s just that you’re missing out on that 4X Optical Zoom and instead you now just have Digital Zoom all around. The only actual Camera improvement that the S20 Ultra gets over the other S20’s, is when it comes to the Front-Facing Camera. This is now a 40MP Sensor, up from the 10MP Sensor that we have on the other S20’s, and the selfies on this are razor sharp but aside from that, this is pretty much it. 

Now, I do have to give props to Samsung for releasing a ton of software updates on the Ultra, which did improve the Camera. But, at the same time, issues such as the Autofocusing or Low-Light performance are hardware limitations of that massive 108MP Sensor, which won’t be fixable through software updates. 

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Performance

Ok, the Camera is a disappointment. Ironically, this was supposed to be the biggest feature of this Smartphone. But now, what about the performance?

Well, just like the years before, there are two different models of the S20 Ultra. If you buy one from the US, Canada or South Korea, you get the Snapdragon 865 Processor, which is the most powerful Processor in an Android Smartphone right now. But, if you buy it from anywhere else, you’ll get Samsung’s own Exynos 990 Processor inside. While on paper they look almost identical, they’re actually not.

Long story short, there is now a massive difference between these two Chips, not just in terms of overall performance but also in terms of the Battery Life.  Unfortunately, for most people, the Exynos model is actually the bad one.

If you’re in the US, Canada or South Korea, you will be getting the higher-end Processor.

Arun, or ‘MrWhoseTheBoss’, compared the two side-by-side. There, he found that the Snapdragon model was up to 20% faster. Not only that, but the Camera performance is also better on the Snapdragon variant, thanks to an improved Image Signal Processor. This is weird because if anything, the Exynos model should’ve had the best Camera performance as that’s a Samsung made CPU and that 108MP Sensor is also a Samsung made Sensor. Arun also found that the Battery Life was up to two hours longer on the Snapdragon model. So, to make matters worse, the Exynos variant is pretty much the nail in the coffin here.

My experience, performance wise, with the Ultra has been great, I do have to mention that. Those 12GB of RAM and that UFS 3.0 Storage, combined with that 120Hz Refresh Rate, make it one of the fastest Smartphones I’ve ever used. Still, the OnePlus 8 Pro felt much smoother and more responsive. 

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Special Features

Moving on to the special features, the biggest one here is probably the new Haptic Engine. This is now the same one that Samsung used in the Galaxy Note 10+ last year and it is brilliant.  I do find Samsung’s implementation of Haptic Touch in the OS to be the very best on any Smartphone out there. You get these small tap backs when you go into the Settings, take a photo or even when you type on the Keyboard. It’s just incredible. But other than that, there’s really nothing extra that we get from the Note. 

The Always-On Display is still there, as is Reverse Wireless Charging and pretty much all of the features that you would expect from a Smartphone. We now we get 5G as well, this is mmWave 5G. Aside from the S-Pen, this Smartphone has the most features of any Smartphone on the market. It’s just too bad it’s lacking on the essentials. 

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Battery

On my Exynos model, with my use-case, I was getting around five hours of screen-on time, which isn’t great. This was with 120Hz enabled, but do keep in mind that this was on 1080p Resolution. That was similar to the Battery Life that I got with my S10+ after about two months, or so, of use. It’s fine, but it could be so much better.

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Value

Having said all this. Is the S20 Ultra worth it? If this thing was $800/£800, maybe. But, it’s actually $1400, or £1200.

At that price point, the Ultra is now the most expensive non-foldable Smartphone on the market that you can buy. Also, this is just for the baseline 128GB of Storage model and you don’t even get a Case inside the box. Well, you get one in the US but not in the UK, which for this price, this really sucks. You don’t even get the USB C to USB A Adapter anymore, so you’re actually getting less than what you got with the S10 last year. 

When an iPhone SE, which costs $400, more than three times less, takes better photos that a Smartphone that’s supposed to be the Camera King, I’m sorry but no one should be buying the Ultra.  However, the regular S20 is actually a very good deal. At $900, you get a better Camera than the Ultra and you also get most of the features that the Ultra has. 

The Smart Watch with a 2-Week Battery Life!

You might have seen our videos on the brand new Huawei P40 Pro. The Smartphone that currently has the best and most impressive Camera out there. Huawei has reached out once again, sponsoring the above video, and have sent over their brand new Huawei GT 2e Smart Watch. As always, all opinions remain my own, it’s just that it’s highly likely that the video wouldn’t have happened if Huawei didn’t partner with us. 

I’m going to tell you some of the features right now, and you have to guess in the comments how much this Smart Watch costs:

• A 46mm Case

• A 1.39 inch OLED Display

• GPS

• Sleep Tracking

• Automatic Workout Detection 

• Real-Time HR Monitoring

• A 50m Water Resistance 

• Oxygen Level Meter

• Works with any Smartphone out there, no matter what OS you’re running.

• Two-Week Battery Life. Not two days, but two full weeks whilst utilising all of the Smart Watches’ features.

Impressed? Well, wait until you hear the rest! Without any further ado, here’s everything you need to know, in terms of the Huawei Watch GT 2e.

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Unboxing

First things first, the unboxing experience is pretty straight forward. The GT 2e comes in a very stylish looking black box, inside of which we get the Watch itself, followed by a USB type A to USB type C Charging Cable, the main Smart Watch Charger and a Magnetic Charger. This will automatically attach to the Smart Watch, so there is no need to fiddle around with aligning it or anything like that. We also get the Quick Start Guide and that’s pretty much it.

To get started, you need to download Huawei Health, which you can find on all mobile app stores. You might also need to download Huawei Mobile Services if you have a non-Huawei Smartphone. But once you have those two, it’s pretty straight forward.

When it comes to a Smart Watch, there are six things that I personally care about the most, these are: Design, Customisability, Fitness Features, Battery Life, Special Features & Value. So, how does the Watch GT 2e perform in each of these categories?

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Design

Starting off with the design, the GT 2e resembles Huawei’s recently released Watch GT 2. The only difference being that this is more sporty and it is aimed at people who are always on the move, or just younger people in general, as we do get multiple colour options.

You can chop & change the Bands, but I am a big fan of Huawei’s own.

We get Graphite Black, which is the one we have, with a black 316L Stainless Steel Body and a Black Sport Band. Then we have the Lava Red model, followed by the Mint Green and Icy White, both of which come with a Silver 316L Stainless Steel Frame. The Band is now integrated into the Body. So, while you can indeed remove the Band and replace it if you choose to do so, the Band continues the flow of the GT 2e’s design and it does look really nice, especially on my model. It looks as if they were made from the same material.

Also, the GT 2e has an Integrated Glass Display, meaning that the border is actually underneath the glass, so if you run your finger over the face of the Smart Watch, it all feels like one single piece. The Display itself is also laminated, so there’s no visible gap between the Display and the glass. I really do like the way this Smart Watch looks from the front, definitely one of my favourites design wise!

Speaking of the Display, we get a 1.39” AMOLED Display, with a Resolution of 454x454 and a PPI of 326. This Display is razor sharp so you don’t have to worry about seeing any Pixels on it at all. We don’t really have anything on the sides, aside from the two buttons. The top one being used for bringing up the App Menu, while the bottom one can be customised into opening a custom app. By default it is set to opening up the Workouts app, which is what I would recommend most people leave it set to.

Finally, on the back we an array of four Sensors, which are used for measuring your heart-rate and the amount of Oxygen in your blood, which I will get back to when I’m talking about health and fitness. 

Overall, it’s a very sleek looking Smart Watch that weighs just 43g, without the strap, so it’s very lightweight and perfect for anyone who’s into sports and wants a lightweight Smart Watch that also looks great on the wrist.

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Customisation 

How much can you actually customise the GT 2e? Well, you get four models to choose from, which are all 46mm in size. You can indeed change the Bands, as they have a traditional Smart Watch Band mechanism, but I would say the genuine Huawei bands look the best. This is how the Smart Watch was designed, so that the Band continues the design of the Smart Watch. So the customisation with the Bands is pretty limited.

In terms of Watch Faces you get 12 different Watch Faces pre-installed but if you want to get some more, you can just open up the Huawei Health app and from there, you can find literally hundreds of them. These were created either by Huawei or by other members in the community. They’re all absolutely free, so you don’t need to pay for any of these, and there are so many of them that I kept on scrolling and it took me quite some time until I reached the end of the Watch Face list.

I just wish that they were organised in some way because it was quite difficult finding what I was looking for, they were all just… there. But if you care about having a large selection of Watch Faces, you get plenty of them to choose from, with even more to come. With some of these you can indeed change the Widgets and what they show, to something else. However, most of the Watch Faces are fixed and you cannot really change them in any other way.

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Fitness Features

Now, moving on to fitness features, this is by far the GT 2e’s strongest point. Aside from the lightweight Body and the sporty look, the GT 2e also has a 50M Water Resistance. If you’re a swimmer, or even a diver, it can easily handle that. You can take a shower or a bath with it, that’s all fine.

On top of this, the GT 2e supports tracking for 100 different types of work-out, including automatic workout detection for outdoor running, outdoor walking, indoor walking, indoor running, elliptical and rowing.  You also have a built-in GPS, meaning that if you go out for a run, without your phone, the watch will still be able to accurately track your run and put that on the map for you. 

It also comes with a HR Monitor, which supports real-time Heart-Rate Monitoring. The GT 2e can essentially constantly measure your heart-rate, as opposed to measuring it every 10 minutes or so, like most Smart Watches do. It also supports Heart-Rate Monitoring while you’re swimming, which for me is new. I haven’t seen this in any Smart Watch before as the water usually affects the Heart-Rate Monitor, but this doesn’t seem to be an issue for the GT 2e. If your heart-rate is too high or too low for more than ten minutes, you will get a notification to alert you of that.

Moving on, something very unique about this Smart Watch that very few on the market can do, is that the GT 2e can also measure the amount of Oxygen in your blood, as opposed to just your heart-rate. This actually got introduced in an April software update. It allows you to see the percentage of Oxygen in your blood. If this is above 90%, you’re good. If it’s below that, then you either need to take a break from exercising or you might even have a medical condition. 

It’s such a great feature to have, as a lack of Oxygen can cause fatigue. So if you’re feeling tired, it might be because the room that you’re in isn’t Oxygenated well enough, and this Smart Watch can make you aware of that. These are excellent fitness tracking capabilities, with the GT 2e. 

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Battery Life

Like I mentioned before, the fourth important thing for me in a Smart Watch is the Battery Life. Most Smart Watches last for a day, very few last for two days and there are even fewer that can last you for weeks. Even these have to enter this Ultra Power Saving Mode, which disables pretty much everything and only shows you the time on a Display that no longer has a backlight. 

Somehow, Huawei managed to get two weeks of Battery Life out of this. This is two full weeks without even enabling the Power Saving Mode, which this Smart Watch doesn’t even have because it just doesn’t need one. How on earth has Huawei achieved two weeks of Battery Life when others can only do a single day? Well, there are a few reasons.

First of all, the GT 2e runs on Huawei’s own Operating System. Second, there are no third party apps supported. Everything that this Smart Watch can do is already built into it. You cannot download any more apps or any more functionality. This means that Huawei does have full control over the software experience. Finally, number three, the GT 2e is powered by Huawei’s own Kirin A1 Processor, which is Huawei’s first wearable Chip featuring Dual Bluetooth 5.1 as well as an Ultra Low Power Management Unit. So, this is why we get a two-week Battery Life. No third party apps and both the software and the hardware is fully made by Huawei.

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Special Features

So far, we get a Smart Watch with an insane Battery Life and some of the best fitness capabilities that I have seen on a Smart Watch. It’s just that you have no third party app support and customisation, in terms of the Bands, is pretty limited. So, what special features does it come with?

Firstly, it works with any Mobile OS. You just need to download Huawei’s health app and you’re good to go. Just to make it clear, even if you don’t have any third party apps, you will still get notifications from your apps. It’s just that you can only see them and you cannot respond to them, but you’ll still get them.

The extra-long Battery Life really adds to the Sleep Tracking feature.

Secondly, this is definitely the biggest special feature, we finally get Sleep Tracking thanks to that two-week Battery Life. While you’re sleeping, the GT 2e will measure your heart-rate and breathing in real-time and then provide you with eight sleep quality reports with suggestions on how to improve your sleep quality.  This is definitely my favourite feature on it and something that I wasn’t able to experience before with any other Smart Watch that I’ve used. 

We also get 24/7 Stress Monitoring, which will provide some advice on how to live a healthier, stress-free life. 

We do get some really cool small extra features that definitely do make this an even better Smart Watch. Things such as an Always-On Display, the ability to control your music straight from your Smart Watch, a remote shutter for your Huawei Smartphone’s Camera as well as the ability to locate your phone. A few more apps that the GT 2e has are: a Barometer for measuring the altitude, a compass for finding your direction, a weather app, a breathing app and more. 

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Value 

Finally, how much does the GT 2e cost and what is the overall value that you’re getting from it? Well, the GT 2e is now on sale and it costs £160 in the UK! Now, that’s significantly less than what I was expecting it to cost. It’s almost half the price of other Smart Watches or even more than that in some cases. 

While you are not getting as much customisability in terms of Bands, Watch Faces and apps, like you would do with some other Smart Watches, you are indeed getting one of the very best for fitness capabilities out there. It has the ability to measure your heart-rate while you’re swimming, 50M Water Resistance, a real time HR Monitor, an Oxygen & Stress level Meter as well as GPS. Of course, you’re still getting all notifications from your phone, right on your wrist. On top of this, you also get an insane two-week Battery Life with sleep tracking capabilities. 

If you’re looking to get one, I’ve left a link in the description of the video. If you use the coupon code AZONEoFTECH, you also get a £20 discount. Offer valid until April 30th 2020. 

Would we switch to the Huawei P40 Pro?

Huawei not only sent over two Huawei P40 Pro’s, one in Black and the other in the new Silver Frost colour, but they also wanted us to test this for an entire week and give you our thoughts on it. 

You’ve probably seen the Unboxing and our First Impressions of the P40 Pro, but now it’s time to dive in a little deeper into what this phone can do. Just a small spoiler, the Huawei P40 Pro has the very best Camera on any Smartphone out right now and getting all of your apps across is surprisingly easily. We were shocked to see that we could pretty much clone an entire Galaxy Fold onto the P40 Pro with ease.

But we’re getting carried away, so here is everything you need to know in terms of the P40 Pro when it comes to the: Design, Display, Camera, Performance, Special Features, Battery Life & Value.

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Apps

First things first, something that you’re all probably wondering, and something that we were definitely wondering when we got the P40 Pro, was how do we transfer apps? Google Apps & Services are no longer supported so how are we going to use apps on the P40 Pro? Well, to our surprise, it was actually extremely easy.

When you set up your P40 Pro, you will be get asked to download the Phone Clone tool on your other Smartphone. This tool will basically transfer pretty much every single app from your old phone, onto your P40 Pro. We were quite impressed that we had Instagram, Amazon, Philips Hue, Call of Duty mobile and even Apple Music. On top of this, you do have Huawei’s AppGallery which also has most popular apps, such as Tiktok, Snapchat, Amazon, Microsoft Office, Telegram, Fortnite, Asphalt 9 and more already on it. More apps are also being added every single day.

If there is indeed an app that you weren’t able to transfer and that you couldn’t find on Huawei’s AppGallery, you can always download the individual APK’s from official sources or download Third Party app stores and get them from there.

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Design

In terms of the design, there are three models of the Huawei P40. We have the regular P40, which comes with a 6.1” Display and a Triple Lens Camera Module. We then have the P40 Pro, the one that we have, which comes with a 6.58” Display and a Quad Camera Module Array. Finally, we have the P40 Pro+, which will be launching in June, this has the same 6.58” Display but with a Penta Camera Module Array. Probably the best news here is that, no matter which one you buy, you will still get the same Sensor on the Main Camera. This is, at the moment, the biggest Sensor on any Smartphone on the market.

The P40 Pro looks & feels like a premium, high-end device.

When we had a look at the P40 Pro, we have to say, we really do like this design. It’s not too big, not too small, it’s pretty much the perfect size to be able to use it with one hand, without necessarily sacrificing the Display size. We do have a similar design style to what we’ve seen on other Android phones, with a Dual Front-Facing Camera Cutout, but what’s quite unique about the P40 Pro is that it is one of the few Smartphones to implement a Waterfall design. This means that, unlike some Smartphones that just have curved sides, the top and the bottom are also curved. 

The Display however, doesn’t go until the end of the glass. Instead, it ends way before it. We would’ve loved to see a Waterfall Display and not just Waterfall Glass, but we guess this would’ve caused some serious accidental touch issues, so we’re not surprised that Huawei hasn’t done it.

Holding that Display in place, is a polished metal frame that matches the colour of your phone. On the bottom we have the SIM Card slot, which also holds Huawei’s proprietary NM Card, which can expand the 256GB Internal Storage by up to another 256GB.

On the right-hand side, we have the power button and the volume button, on the left-hand side we have nothing and finally on the top, we have a Microphone Port as well as an IR Blaster. Smartphones used to have this back in the day but pretty much all of them removed it. It allows you to control your TV, your DVD player and pretty much anything that has an IR Receiver. We’re glad to see that Huawei still has one, as it’s such a great feature to have.

Finally, on the back we have the Quad-Camera Module Array which we’ll be covering in the Camera section. This is one of our favourite backs, on a Smartphone, ever. You probably know that we’re a big fan of Frosted Glass backs on Smartphones, the P40 Pro is no exception. While you can indeed still get it in Black if that’s what you like, the Silver Frost back looks absolutely stunning. It is pretty much fingerprint proof and the colour of the back does slightly change depending on the angle at which the light hits it.

Also, it’s probably worth noting that the P40 Pro, even though it has the biggest Sensor on any Smartphone, the Camera bump isn’t as big or as thick as on other Smartphones, so the table wobble is much less than you would expect.

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Display

Moving on to the Display, the P40 Pro comes with a 2640x1200 Resolution Display, with a PPI of 441. This is an OLED Display, with a DCI-P3 Colour Gamut and HDR10, so if you’re into photo editing and grading, this is a perfect Display for that. Not only that, but Huawei also added a 90Hz Refresh Rate, making this display 50% smoother than any other regular 60Hz panel out there. 

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Camera

Moving on to the Camera, this is by far the P40 Pro’s key selling feature, and probably the main reason that people would want to go for the P40 Pro. So, here are a few reasons why the Camera on this phone just blows everything else out of the water.

Largest Sensor on any Smartphone

This has the largest Sensor or any Smartphone to date. It has a 1/1.28 inch Sensor with 2.44µm size pixels with a 50MP Resolution. The larger the pixels, the more light they can capture and the better the phone is in Low Light.

RYYB  Sensor

Rather than the sub-pixels on the Sensor being in the standard RGGB (Red-Green-Green-Blue) sub-pixels, the P40 Pro has a RYYB (Red-Yellow-Yellow-Blue) arrangement. This, according to Huawei, lets 40% more light in, which, combined with the massive Sensor size itself, makes the P40 Pro the best Smartphone Camera in Low Light…ever.

Best in Low Light

The P40 Pro makes something that was barely even visible with the naked eye and turns it into daylight. It pretty much works like magic and you don’t even need to have Night Mode enabled because, thanks to that massive Sensor, the P40 Pro is capable of achieving great shots like the ones we have featured in our video, where the competition struggles severely. 

Usually, Smartphones have an ISO of 1600 or 3200 in the most extreme cases, but the P40 Pro has up to 51200 which can be bumped even higher to 409,600.

What was the biggest let down with the S20 Ultra, is the main selling point for the Huawei P40 Pro.

Natural Bokeh

Now some of you might be familiar with how DSLR Cameras can get these very nice Depth of Field shots, where the subject is perfectly in focus and the background is all blurred out. This is caused by both the Lens itself as well as the size of the Sensor. Since the P40 Pro has such a massive Sensor, you can actually get shots with a very impressive Bokeh or Depth of Field, even when you’re not using Portrait Mode at all. This means that the background separation would be perfect, as this is done through hardware, rather than software. 

Leica Lenses 

Now, like we said, aside from the Sensor itself, the Lens also makes a very big difference and the P40 Pro uses Leica Lenses. Leica being one of the world’s most well-known Camera and Lens manufacturers. They make high-end Lenses for DSLR Cameras and they’ve teamed up with Huawei to make the Lenses used on the P40 Pro’s Camera.

Best 50x Zoom

The P40 Pro comes with a 12MP Periscope Camera Module that gives us 5x Optical Zoom and 50X Digital Zoom. We compared this Zoom against another Smartphone that has 100x Space Zoom and it turns out that Huawei’s 50x Module was significantly better than that other 100x Module. This seems to be the sharpest Zoom on any Smartphone that we’ve used. You can even use Night Mode on the Telephoto Module as well. 

Cinematic Ultra-Wide 

Then we have one more Module, which is a 40MP Ultra-Wide Angle Module. Huawei’s calling this a Cine Camera, which was specifically designed for video. We have to say, the video looks stunning on this, Stabilisation is great and Low Light performance, even on the Wide Angle Module, is just outstanding. The P40 Pro is also the best Smartphone that we’ve used for Low Light video. 

100% Pixels for Autofocusing

Finally, the last thing that makes this Camera so unique is that unlike some of the competition, that use Sensors almost as big as the P40 Pro but have some serious Autofocusing issues, the P40 Pro uses 100% of the pixels on the Sensor for Focusing and because of this, Focusing is pretty much instant, we haven’t had a single issue with Focusing on the P40 Pro. 

The P40 Pro really makes a splash when it comes to Slow-Motion.

A few more things that we want to mention when it comes to the Camera, is that we also get a Depth Sensor on the back, for improving Portrait Mode photography and the Front-Facing Camera is really good as well. It’s a 32MP Selfie Camera and the Low Light is outstanding there too. 

Slowest Slow-Motion

Then the P40 Pro, also has the best Slow Motion on any Smartphone on the market right now. Usually Smartphones top out at 240FPS Slow Motion, with some being capable of doing 960FPS, but the P40 Pro can actually do 7680fps Slow Motion whilst also being much clearer than the competition. 

Best Time-Lapse

The P40 Pro can also do 4K Time-Lapses, whereas other Smartphones are limited to 1080p Time-Lapses. This is pretty much the best Camera that we’ve ever used on a Smartphone. Definitely comment down below if you want to see a blind Camera Comparison against some of the other high-end Smartphones, similar to the ones we’ve done in the past! 

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Performance

Performance on the P40 Pro has been great. It comes with Huawei’s own Kirin 990 Processor, which is their highest-end model, as well as the Mali G76 GPU, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of Storage.

To be honest, that 90Hz Refresh Rate Display makes everything buttery smooth. We haven’t experienced any lag or any slowdowns whatsoever, performance has been perfect. 

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Special Features

The best of both worlds.

Aside from all the Camera features, there are a few more features that make the P40 Pro quite a unique device.

For example, not only do we have an in-display Fingerprint Reader, but we also have a true Depth Sensing Camera on the front. Similar to FaceID, we have an advanced face unlock system on the front, making the P40 Pro the only 2020 flagship so far to have both an in-display Fingerprint Reader and the true Depth Sensing Camera on the front. 

We also have IP68 Water Resistance, a Haptic Engine for when you’re typing an navigating the phone, full-onscreen Navigational Gestures, WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.1, a Gravity Sensor, that IR Blaster than we mentioned before, a Bone Conduction earpiece because we don’t have any earpiece cut-out on the top, as well as 5G and we even get an Always-On Display, which is one of our favourite features ever, on a Smartphone.

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Battery Life

When it comes to the battery itself, the P40 Pro comes with a 4200 mAh Battery and it also supports 40W Fast Charging right out of the box. As well as this, it supports 27W Wireless Charging and Reverse Wireless Charging, which means that you can not only charge other devices from the back of the P40 Pro, but you can also charge other Smartphones as well. 

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Value

When it comes to Value, the P40 Pro costs £900 in the UK. This is expensive but still more affordable than pretty much all of the competition. 

So, if you’re looking for the very best Smartphone Camera out there, this is the one. You will have to go through some hoops and do a bit of tweaking to get all of your stuff working, but the good news is that most apps did indeed work right out of the box. This will only get better once more and more apps start coming to Huawei’s AppGallery.

AirPods Pro - FULL Review (after 1+ month of use)

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These are the brand new AirPods Pro and you’ve probably heard all about them by now, some of you have even heard them in person.

When buying a pair of new headphones, I believe that there are six major things you need to consider:

1. Sound Quality

2. Comfortability

3. Battery Life

4. Special Features

5. Design

6. Value

I’ve been using the AirPods Pro’s since they came out on October the 30th, so well over a month now, and I’m finally ready to give you guys my full in-depth review on Apple’s highest end first party headphones.

Spoiler, they’re the best headphones I’ve ever used!

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SOUND QUALITY

First off I have to say, I am not an audiofile person myself. In terms of overhead “pro” headphones that I’ve used, I’ve used the Audiotechnica M70X’s which are studio monitors, the Audiotechnica M50X’s, and the Beats Solo 2’s. I, of course, have used countless in-ear headphones, from Apple’s original EarPods, to the new EarPods, to the Lightning EarPods, to AirPods, Samsung headphones, HTC headphones, Jaybird X3’s and a few more. So I’ve used a fair amount of headphones, but not as many as possible some of you guys. Just wanted to give you a bit of a background as to where I’m coming from in terms of the sound quality.

So how is the Sound Quality on the AirPods Pro’s? Well, they’re good. They’re not the best sounding truly wireless headphones on the market, the Sony ones are better and there’s a few other better options in terms of the sound quality, but they’re still very good.

When I compared the new AirPods to the originals I certainly felt that the new ones had much richer mids and definitely more bass than the originals. It’s kinda like the difference between the 2019 15” MacBook Pro and the new 16” MacBook Pro, where you can just hear more with the new 16”’s speakers, so that’s great!

The addition of the rubber seals means that sound is less likely to escape

But what makes the AirPods Pro sound even better now is the fact that they’re now finally in-ear headphones. They now have a rubber seal, which is something that you can find on pretty much any other pair of headphones on the market right now, which helps seal the sound coming from the AirPods, so that pretty much no sound escapes. You can pretty much say goodbye to people around you hearing everything that you listen to, at least on medium volume. But, this seal also improves the sound quality simply by the fact that less sound escapes from your ear.

More about that eartip once I get to the comfortability section of the video, but there is one more feature that improves the sound quality, and that is the Active Noise Cancellation. So like I said before, the ear tips help to prevent sound escaping from your ear, but at the same time they also help prevent external ambient sound from entering your ear. Overall, they do offer a passive noise cancellation on their own, but Apple’s added Active Noise Cancellation makes it even better. The way it works is that the AirPods Pro now have an outward facing microphone which is this long black grill on the stem which picks up all the ambient noise around you and then the AirPods themselves emit a counter noise of opposite frequency that cancels out the background noise.

I wasn’t sure how well this would work when I heard about it, but it works much better than I expected. If you’re in a place where there’s a lot of the same consistent noise, such as on a bus, a train, a plane, it’s very easy for the AirPods Pro to cancel out that background noise, since it can predict the pattern that’s coming up next. However, when it comes to cancelling out voices or unexpected sounds that don’t have a pattern, you’ll still be able to hear them, just not as loud. But I can definitely say that when I’m waking on the street and I have my AirPods Pro in, with Noise Cancelling on, it just immerses me so much in the music or the podcast that I’m listening to. It’s a world apart from the regular AirPods and even when I’m outdoors it sounds like I’m still in my bedroom with zero background noise.

The three new modes for the AirPods Pro allow you to control how much noise cancellation you want to have

Now, some of you might be like, “oh, well , we actually preferred the regular AirPods, since you can still hear your surroundings, rather than being cut out from the world entirely”, and I agree, I’m actually like that as well. But the good news is that you can still do that. You can actually turn off Noise Cancelling mode and just have the passive noise cancelling, but if that’s not enough and you want that regular AirPods open back feel to them, you can actually enable a third mode called Transparency Mode. What this does is that it uses the external microphones I talked about before, to literally let background audio in this time, so that you can hear everything that’s happening around you. To be fair, it’s pretty amazing! It’s not as open backed as the regular AirPods were, but it’s very close. My slight issue with it is that you can hear some distortion since the sound is picked up by the microphone rather than your ear, so you do feel like a cyborg in a way.

But to give you an example of how useful Transparency Mode is, I was able to go into a store, order some food and speak to the store assistant without even removing my AirPods Pro. I had them in my ear and I just held the side button which switches between Noise Cancelling and Transparency mode, and I was easily able to hear what the other person was saying, and when the conversation was done, I just re-enabled Noise Cancelling and boom, I was in my own world again. It was just amazing, this is something we do not have on any other headphones on the market right now, and it’s actually my favourite feature in a product of this year.

COMFORTABILITY

So as important as sound quality is, if a pair of in-ear headphones are not comfortable to wear they are near useless. So how comfy are the AirPods Pro?

Well, surprisingly, they’re more comfortable than the original AirPods, thanks to the silicone eartips. With these they just float in your ears so nicely, and they also fit so much better than the regular AirPods did, so that’s great!

Now when you open up the box you actually get three different pair of eartips; small, medium and large, with the medium ones pre-installed. This is something that you get with pretty much every single pair of in-ear headphones, but what’s unique about Apple’s eartips is that they have a brand new attaching mechanism. This means that they are extremely difficult to remove, to the point where I actually though that I was going to break them, but they are extremely easy to put back on, as they just click in place. The downside of this first party fitting mechanism is that you have to use Apple’s own eartips, which are good, but I would’ve loved to have the option to test some foam eartips as well, that expand in your ear and provide and even better seal. I’m pretty sure that third party manufactures will start selling those at some point, but until then you have to stick to Apple’s own eartips.

The Ear Tip Test lets you know if the tips you have attached are the right ones for your ears

Now, when you buy any other in-ear headphones, you need to try multiple eartips for each of your ears and see which ones fit best, which is fine. But the AirPods Pro have this really amazing feature where, they will emit some sound and tell you in the setup process itself, if you have a good fit or not. This is thanks to the external microphone which is able to pick up the amount of sound that escapes from your ear and if that amount exceeds a certain level, it will tell you to change the eartip. Nice!

Also, one of the main complaints that some people had with in-ear headphones is that some of them isolate so well, that they create this pressure in your ear canal and they actually hurt. But, I’m glad to say that the AirPods Pro do not have this issues, and that’s because the top grill is actually an air vent that helps equalise the pressure. I have to say, it’s not as good as not having overheads that don’t go in your ear, or even the regular AirPods, as you’ll still feel a bit of pressure but nowhere near as much as you would with any other in-ear headphones. So I really do like that.

So overall, they’re definitely more comfortable than the original AirPods, just with a tiny bit more air pressure, especially when Active Noise Cancelling is enabled.

BATTERY LIFE

Ok, pretty good so far! Great sound quality, great comfortability so now, how’s the battery life?

Well, it’s similar to the regular AirPods, as in we get 24 hours with the charging case on both, but the battery life on the AirPods themselves is a bit different. So rather than five hours like we get with the regular AirPods, we get four and a half hours with the AirPods Pro. But this is actually with Noise Cancelling turned on. If you turn it off, you would get five hours, which is the same as before. However, we do get up to three and a half hours of talk time compared to three hours on the regular AirPods, so talk time has actually been improved.

But I do have two small complaints in terms of the battery life. The first one being that they still have a lightning port, and I do get why, because the iPhone 11 Pro’s still have a lightning port. But the MacBook’s have USB C, the iPad Pro also has USB C, and USB C isn’t even the future anymore, it’s the present! If Apple does finally switch to USB C next year, the AirPods Pro would be the only one that would be left behind. So, that’s quite inconvenient.

Also, whilst they do support wireless charging, which is great, the iPhone 11 Pro max does not support reverse wireless charging like the Samsung Galaxy S and Note series, or Huawei phones do, meaning that you cannot charge them from the back of the iPhone, like you can with Samsung’s Galaxy Buds or even the AirPods Pro, if you do have a Samsung phone. But that is more of a complaint towards the iPhone 11 Pro’s, not necessarily the AirPods Pro themselves.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Now, what special features do the AirPods Pro have that make them stand out from the competition, I hear you ask?

Well, aside from things such as the Transparency mode and the vent and the EarTip test, which are all unique to the AirPods Pro, we do get quite a few new special features.

First, they’re sweat and water resistant now with an IPX4 rating. Unfortunately, this means that you can’t swim with them in, but if you’re outdoors running and it’s raining these would last fine, whereas the previous AirPods might have broken. Also if you do go to the gym, these are now even better thanks to the sweat resistance and the added rubber seals, which make them stay in place unlike the original AirPods.

Secondly, we have the Hey Siri support. This is something that the AirPods 2 came with, which were introduced back in March 2019. But it’s pretty awesome being able to just say the Siri command and play any song that you want, read messages, news, do anything that you would do with Siri on your iPhone, without having to take your phone out of the pocket. This is extremely useful when you’re running outdoors.

The small indentation seen here is the new control button for the AirPods Pro

Thirdly, you do have a brand new control button. So before, with the regular AirPods, you had to double tap on the stem in order for the accelerometer to detect the tap, which was quite bad because most of the times it didn’t work. With the AirPods Pro, we have a long button which you have to physically hold and then press. Then if you press it once you play or pause a song, if you press it twice you swipe forward, press it three times to skip backwards and then you press and hold to switch between Active Noise Cancelling and Transparency Mode. Also, something quite cool is that when you tap on the control button, you can feel and hear it click but it doesn’t move at all. Instead, the AirPods Pro create this sound that mimics a click.

Overall, it’s definitely an improved control system over the original AirPods, but I would’ve loved to see a volume control. You see, every time I need to change the volume, I have to either take my phone out to do it, or ask Siri which is awkward if you’re in a public space, or use the Apple Watch which does work very well but you need to have an Apple Watch as well in that case.

Then finally, what I consider to be the best special feature about the AirPods Pro is the Apple ecosystem. You just open up the lid and they instantly connect to your iPhone, and then you can easily switch to using them on your iPad, your Mac, your Apple Watch, your Apple TV, pretty much any Apple product and that’s just amazing! Now, I have had issues in terms of connecting to my Mac, which is something that I’ve had issues with with the previous AirPods as well. So while iOS connection is very smooth, connecting and switching to a Mac still has some occasional glitches. You can indeed connect them to any other non-Apple product as well, Android phones, Windows laptop and any other smartTV that has Bluetooth.

However, I would say to not buy these if you don’t have a least one Apple product you plan on using them with, because outside of the Apple ecosystem, the volume is extremely low on these for some reason, and the equaliser is all gone so they don’t sound as good. Noise Cancelling does work but you lose many of the Apple functionality like auto-play and pause when you put them in your ears and take them out.

DESIGN

Now, if a pair of headphones has nailed all of these categories, which the AirPods Pro have, then the last thing aside from the value that I care about, is the design.

A design comparison between the AirPods Pro (Left) and the original AirPods (Right)

Well, first off these are very different from the original AirPods design wise. They’re now short and fat, compared to long and thin, but they still have the same AirPods look where they just look odd and unlike anything else on the market right now. This means that they will definitely stand out in public, if that’s what you’re after. I personally don’t think they look bad, just unusual.

The same goes for the case itself, it’s short and fat compared to long and thin like the previous one was. It is noticeably wider, but at the same time it now opens horizontally, rather than vertically. So, if you put both of them side by side, vertically, there isn’t that much of a difference between the two. The Pro case is thicker and taller but it still fits in my pocket so I’m fine with that. It’s still noticeably smaller than any other wireless headphones case on the market, including the Galaxy Buds which already has one of the smallest cases.

They come in the same glossy white plastic, but personally I would’ve loved to see these in matte black. I’m guessing Apple is keeping that for a special edition or something, so that they can sell more but until then we only have white.

VALUE

Then last, but not least, the value, are the AirPods Pro worth it? Well, at $250/£250 in the UK they are quite expensive. They are a very similar price to the Sony WF-1000XM3, which do sound better, but have a gigantic case which isn’t pocketable by any means. But if you have an Android phone then get the Sony’s and not the AirPods.

Otherwise, they’re a very good pair of headphones, definitely the best option for any Apple user. But if you already have a pair of AirPods, unless you have the 1st gen and the battery life is really bad, I wouldn’t suggest upgrading to the Pro’s.

But if you do have the original AirPods or a different pair of headphones and you plan on getting the AirPods Pro, you won’t be disappointed in any way.

Google Pixel 4 XL - The ZONEofTECH Review!

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This is the Google Pixel 4 XL and you see, although the Google Pixel isn’t that popular of a phone, at least not when compared to Samsung, Apple or even OnePlus or Huawei, it’s actually one of the most interesting smartphones on the market right now.

You see, the reason why iPhones are so successful, why the UI is so smooth, why they get day one updates, and why they integrate so well in Apple’s ecosystem is that Apple makes both the hardware and the software. Then on the Android side it’s pretty much impossible for anyone to do that aside from Google because they make Android, and if Google made their own hardware they would be the only direct competitor to Apple’s crown.

And they have been making their own hardware for the past three years now, with their Pixel phones. This is their brand new fourth generation of Pixel phones that just came out in October, and this is my full in-depth review, and I have mixed feelings about this. You’ll see why in just a second!

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DESIGN

Ok, so starting off with the design, let’s be honest. Google hasn’t really been the best at designing things.

The Pixel 1 which came in 2016, looked like an iPhone 7 did, but we did have a massive on-screen navigation bar, which actually made the bottom bezel look even bigger so it wasn’t the best looking phone. Then back was equally as bad as we had a dual tone metal and glass back, but it was all dark grey and looked very odd. I was never a fan of the first Pixel’s design.

Then the Pixel 2 came out in 2017, and this was the year when smartphones drastically changed their designs, with the iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S8, which removed the home button and shrunk down the bezel considerably, in favour of a full-screen display design that we were all wishing for. But rather than doing that, Google gave the Pixel 2 massive bezels again, it was an improvement over the Pixel 1 but still pretty outdated when compared to the competition. However, I did really like the Pixel 2’s Panda look, I think that back was one of the best backs on any smartphone but the front was still outdated.

The design of the Pixel 1 (Left) 2 (Middle) and 3 (Right)

When the Pixel 3 then came out in 2018 we had that very deep notch, which was even uglier and deeper than the iPhone’s. But the Pixel 3 didn’t really have any smart tech inside of that notch, aside from a more powerful speaker and a wide angle camera module, which was just a single module. The back was improved again, so now it had a dual tone look, but all of it was glass. The top portion was standard glass, whilst the bottom portion was now frosted glass which had a really nice touch to it. The frame had a ceramic feel even though it was just polished metal, but overall the Pixel 3 had the most amazing back I’ve ever felt on any smartphone. Design wise and feeling wise, from the back at least, the Pixel 3 was just amazing. So things were getting better.

Now we have the Pixel 4, which is pretty much the same recipe as the previous Pixels. From the front it reminds me a lot of the Pixel 2XL from 2017, which wasn’t a bad design by any means, but we’re in 2019 now and phones have very thin bezels, and large and bright displays, but the Pixel 4 still looks like it came out three years ago, from the front at least. When you remember that the Pixel 5 will come out in October of 2020 which will make the Pixel 4 look even worse and even more outdated in the meantime.

So that’s the front, but the back is a completely different story. We now get a much bigger camera module than on the other Pixels, but don’t be fooled because even if this camera module looks extremely similar to the ones on the iPhone, the Pixel 4 only has a dual camera module rather than the triple one that, most other smartphones received in 2019. So Google’s again behind the competition in terms of the number of camera modules, more about that in the camera section of this video.

The Clearly White Pixel 4XL and the Oh So Orange Pixel 4

But I have to say, if the Pixel 3 had the best back on any phone for me, the Pixel 4 is even better! We now have a single smooth piece of glass, so no more dual tone this year, which is a bit unfortunate, but this glass is again frosted glass which feels absolutely amazing. You see, it leaves no fingerprints, yet it still has that glass feel to it. Then the frame of the phone has a matte plastic-like texture to it, but it’s not plastic it’s actually metal. It is hard to describe it, but in a way, it feel like paper. So overall, this is by far the best looking and feeling back I’ve ever seen and felt on a phone. The power button is also made of a different colour, which adds a very nice touch to it.

The Pixel 4 now comes in three colours. We have ‘Just Black’, which I’ve personally never held in my hands or even seen one in person, but that’s the only one that has a glossy back. The others, ‘Clearly White’ and ‘Oh So Orange’ have the same matte texture on the back, and yes, I’m absolutely in love with how the phone looks from the back. It’s got that Nintendo feel and look to it so to say, love it!

DISPLAY

Moving on to the display, the Pixel 4 comes with a 6.3” 3040x1440 resolution OLED display, which is actually pretty good. It’s very sharp at 537 PPI, it’s got a 100% DCI-P3 coverage, so it’s actually very colour accurate.

A colour comparison between the Note 10+ (Left) and Pixel 4XL (Right)

Now I do have two complaints regarding this display. The first being that the colours are a bit dull when compared to the Galaxy Note 10+ for example, but that’s more to do with Google’s colour profile than the display itself. Then my second complaint is the brightness of this display. So it’s just over 400 nits which is ok, it’s actually brighter than the OnePlus 7T Pro’s display by a tiny bit, but noticeably dimmer than the Samsung Galaxy S10, Note 10 or the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Now this is not necessarily a big issue, but if you use your phone outdoors a lot in bright sunlight, then this is something to consider.

However, my favourite part about this display is that just like on the OnePlus 7 Pro and 7T’s, we now have a 90Hz refresh rate! The means that everything you do on this phone, the UI, and all the animations are 50% faster and more fluid than on any other phone with a standard 60Hz refresh rate display. Also, after a recent software update, the Pixel 4 is pretty much at 90Hz all the time, compared to just when it had over 60% brightness, like it was when it was released.

Then something else that I really like about the Pixel, is that they’re are pretty much the only phones that come with an Always-On Display, aside from Samsung and some LG phones. For me, being able to see the time and notifications all the time, is a huge plus.

So overall, while the display is pretty good, I would’ve loved to see thinner bezels alongside a slightly brighter display.

CAMERA

The camera is an interesting one, because you see, Pixel phones have always been considered as one of the best if not even the best device, for mobile photography.

The Pixel 4, just like the 3 and 2 before it, has an incredible camera, but not as good as I would’ve hoped. You see, firstly the main back camera uses the exact same sensor as on the Pixel 3. It does however have a larger f/1.7 aperture compared to f/1.8 on the Pixel 3, so it does let more light into the sensor, but other than that it’s the same camera from the Pixel 3, which is quite disappointing. I was hoping Google to make some big changes with the Pixel 4’s main camera.

An example of the SuperRes zoom from the Pixels (Source: Slash Gear)

So whilst they haven’t changed the main camera they have added a second module. However, rather than Google adding a wide angle module, like everyone else is doing in 2019, Google decided to finally add a telephoto module, like everyone else was doing in 2017! Now, I’m not implying that Google should be up to date with the latest trends here, no. My point here is that the wide angle module is technically more useful than a telephoto module. You see, whilst you can zoom in digitally, you cannot take a wide angle photo without a wide angle lens. Google even had their SuperRes zoom before, which actually did a very good job, for a digital zoom, even rivalling some high end smartphones that had a dedicated zoom module. But what’s worse is that it’s not even a 5x telephoto module, it’s just a regular 2x optical zoom.

Also, I’m very disappointed with the video on this phone. The Pixel 4 still cannot do 4K60 video recording, which the iPhone added in 2017, again two years ago. All the major smartphones can do 4K60 now, even most of the mid-ranged ones can.

The front camera is good but Google has now removed that wide angle module, meaning that you cannot take group selfies anymore, since the front camera isn’t as wide. However, they have made the regular lens wider than the previous regular one, meaning that you still get an overall wider field of view, which is good! But what’s not good is that the front camera can only shoot 1080p 30fps, which compared to the iPhone 11 Pro’s 4K60 or the Note 10’s 4K30, is just terrible.

An example of the Astrophotography capabilities of the Pixel 4 (Source: Google AI Blog)

Night mode is great, same exact one as we have on the Pixel 3, however I did find the Pixels to add a lot of noise in some of the shots, so overall I actually ended up preferring the iPhone 11 Pro’s night mode and the OnePlus 7T Pro’s night mode, over the Pixel’s. But what Google has added with the Pixel 4, is a brand new Astrophotography mode, which is huge! You can now take photos of the night sky, similar to what you can take with a DSLR camera.

But that’s pretty much it. Aside from the Astrophotography mode, the camera is pretty much the same as before, even a downgrade on the front. I’m genuinely disappointed, and because of those issues I just cannot recommend the Pixel 4’s camera, as the competition offers a much better camera overall, with significantly better video, a significantly better front camera and a wide angle lens on the back.

PERFORMANCE

Performance wise, the Pixel 4 is ok. It’s very fast and fluid, I give it that. In our Ultimate Speed test between the Pixel 4 and the Note 10+, the Pixel 4 loaded apps just as fast as the Note, even-though the Pixel 4 has a much slower UFS 2.1 storage, compared to the twice as fast UFS 3.0, like the OnePlus 7T & 7T Pro or the Note 10+.

CPU wise, we don’t get the Snapdragon 855+, just the 855 which is almost a year old at this point. The 865 is now official, so Google’s already a year behind in terms of the CPU. This is down to their weird release cycle, where they release their phones in October, whereas Qualcomm announces a new CPU in December.

RAM wise, we do get a bump to 6GB of RAM from the Pixel 3’s 4GB of RAM, but even that’s still half of the 12GB of RAM that Samsung or OnePlus offer and that definitely shows. RAM management is pretty poor on this phone, it could barely keep any apps open in the background when compared to the Note 10+.

However, we do get day one updates and software support for around three years. The Pixel 1 from 2016 is still fully supported which is great. You cannot really get this level of customer support, unless you go with an iPhone. OnePlus is another great option, but they don’t offer you day one updates, you do have to wait a few weeks or months in order to get those.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Face Unlock is now available on the Pixel 4 XL

Now, when it comes to the Special Features, we do get one that stands out from the competition, and that is FaceUnlock. This is actually the reason for that big forehead, since that’s where all the 3D depth mapping sensors are housed. It’s essentially the same system that Apple uses for FaceID on their iPhone X and newer. But the difference is that Google also added a small Radar chip, which is from their Project Soli, that can detect your movement much more accurately than a camera could. This chip works in conjunction with the FaceUnlock system, in order to make the FaceUnlock process insanely fast. Literally, from the moment you pick up the phone, the Pixel lights up the display and in less than a second, it’s already unlocked. Which is pretty nuts! It’s noticeably faster than the iPhone’s FaceID system but it’s far from perfect. You see, third party app support is non existent at this point, so if you’re thinking of using your face to access your banking apps or anything like that, you cannot do it yet. Another slight issue is that it also works when your eyes are closed, which Google said that they will fix but we just don’t know when that’s going to be.

Now that Soli Radar chip I mentioned also allows you to control your music and interact with the Pixel by using your hand gestures, which is a really cool party trick, but in practice it just doesn’t work. It’s the Samsung Galaxy S4 from 2013 all over again and it just does not work the way it should, and the way maybe Google was hoping it would work. While you can indeed swipe left and right to go back now, it seems like Google forgot about the case where some apps use swipe gestures to bring the Menu up and the new Pixel Gestures are messing up with app menus because of this.

The speakers are no longer front facing, like on the Pixel 3, they do sound good, not as good as on the iPhone 11 Pro Max or the Note 10+, but still pretty good.

Apart from that, we don’t have WiFi 6, or reverse wireless charging, or a microSD card slot, or even more than 128GB of storage, which is the maximum amount that you can get on this phone. In fact Google has even removed some of the features that the Pixel 3 used to come with, such as the unlimited photo and video storage at full resolution for free, with Google Photos. That was one of the key selling features of the Pixel phone and Google removed it! What are you doing Google?

BATTERY

So you have probably seen a pattern so far in terms of how I feel about each section of the Pixel 4, and the battery is the same, it’s decent.

It is far from what the competition offers, and that’s because the battery itself is quite small, at just 3700mAh on the XL and 2800mAh on the regular Pixel 4. When you take into account that 90Hz turn on, it’s noticeably worse than on the OnePlus 7T Pro, which wasn’t that great already. So overall the Pixel 4 XL has an ok battery life with a decent fast charge of up to 50% in just 34 minutes, which is right on par with the competition, so there’s that at least.

VALUE

So the final question, is the Pixel 4 worth it? Sorry Google, but it’s a no from me.

It costs £830 or $900 which is cheaper than the Note 10+ which costs £1000 ($1100) and the iPhone 11 Pro which costs £1150 ($1150), but if you compare the Pixel 4 to the OnePlus 7T Pro which costs £700 or $550 for the OnePlus 7 Pro in the US there’s no competition, they are much better phones! The 7T Pro for example has better performance with the Snapdragon 855+, up to 12GB of RAM, up to 256GB of Storage, a more modern design, a larger display, a larger battery.

The cameras are worse on the OnePlus but not really by that much, and you can even install the Google Camera apk and get a much more improved camera that way. I was honestly bored with the Pixel, so much so that I just could not use it as my daily driver, because it was a downgrade from my iPhone, my Note and even my OnePlus.

So Google, I’m guessing fifth time’s the charm?

OnePlus 7T Pro Review - The PERFECT Android Phone of 2019!

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This is the OnePlus 7T Pro. It’s definitely not the best name in a smartphone, but hey I’ve seen worst. Before I get into this I do want to say that the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ is the best Android phone of 2019 in terms of the amount of features that you get, there’s absolutely no denying that. We did a full review video after over two months of use. So feel free to check that out here.

But the OnePlus 7T Pro is the best Android Phone of 2019 in terms of value. You get pretty much everything you could ask for in a phone, at a much much lower price than the Galaxy Note 10+.

So without any further adieu, here is my full review covering my final thoughts on the OnePlus 7T Pro!

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DESIGN

Ok, so most of you reading this are probably familiar with OnePlus as a company and what their vision stands for. In case you’re not, they’re basically trying to make flagship smartphones at affordable prices.

A design comparison between the OnePlus 7T Pro (Top) and the OnePlus 7 Pro (Bottom)

Now they do have to cut some corners in order to achieve that, which I’ll talk about in this review. To give you one example the OnePlus 7T Pro pretty much takes the crown when it comes to the least amount of changes from the previous generation ever. The OnePlus 7T Pro which came out in October is almost an identical copy of the OnePlus 7 Pro that we got back in May.

But it is still an incredible phone, and that’s because the 7T Pro is still one of the only phones in 2019 that does not have a notch or even a camera cutout at all. We get is a full screen display with zero interruptions for you to watch your content, which is just incredible! 

Now, the screen-bezels, or should I say the frame of the phone, is indeed thicker than on other phones such as the iPhone 11 Pro Max or the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, but considering that you don’t get any cutouts in the display itself, I’m very happy with this tiny trade-off. The 7T Pro simply looks like a phone that came from the future, 2020 or even 2021, where smartphones are just a full-screen display. It looks incredible and I’m absolutely in love with the design of this phone!

The back is made out of glass, but it does have this frosted glass texture, same as the iPhone 11 Pro’s or the Google Pixel 4, so it’s this very soft glass that doesn’t catch any fingerprints at all. This is therefore another plus for the OnePlus.

The 7T Pro only come in Haze Blue, and then also has a McLaren edition

Now, unlike the OnePlus 7 Pro which came in Mirror Grey, Almond & Nebula Blue, the OnePlus 7T Pro only comes in Haze Blue and then there’s also the McLaren Edition which has a more unique look to it on the back, which I do like a lot. However, if you’re looking for just a standard black or even the gold, you’re out of luck. I have to say, I actually do prefer the old Nebula Blue over the 7T’s Haze Blue, since it is a bit darker and feels more mature than the Haze Blue, to me at least.

The sides are made out of polished aluminium so they do look very premium but something that I don’t like about the 7T Pro design wise is just how bulky and big it feels in the hand. You see, at 8.8mm thick the 7T Pro is noticeably thicker than the 7.9mm thick Note 10+ and the 8.1mm iPhone 11 Pro Max. So overall this is a pretty chunky phone. Luckily the sides do curve, so it doesn’t feel that fat, but it does feel thick when holding it in the hand. When you also consider that the display is also quite large, at 6.67”, you can tell that the 7T Pro is definitely not a phone that you can easily use with one hand. 

Finally, even-though the 7 Pro and the 7T Pro basically look identical, aside from the different blue colour, there is one visual identifier and that is the Laser Autofocus is now outside of the camera module rather than inside of it, like it is on the 7 Pro. Also, the ring surrounding the camera module is now shinier and the megapixel count is now gone, but other than that, these phones are identical. 

DISPLAY

Moving on to the display and it’s good. Overall I would say that this is the best display on a smartphone but it doesn’t nail that in every single category and you’ll see why in just a second.

The 7T Pro has the exact same display as the 7 Pro did. So that’s a 6.67” Samsung made AMOLED display panel, with a resolution of 3120x1440 which translates to a PPI of 516. It’s a very sharp display, the black levels are perfect, the colours pop. It features a DCI P3 colors gamut with 100% coverage, so if you’re into photo or video editing on the go this is a amazing choice for that. Also, if you’re into consuming media, the 7T Pro does support HDR 10+ content. In addition, since there is no notch or display cutout, I actually crown the OnePlus 7T Pro the best phone for watching and viewing content!

But wait there’s more!

The 7T Pro comes with a 90Hz refresh rate panel, meaning that everything you do on this phone is 50% more fluid than on any other smartphone on the market right now that come with a standard 60Hz panel.

When you put the 7T Pro next to the Note 10+, or even the iPhone 11 Pro Max, you can see how much smoother the animations and UI really are. To see this in the video jump to 6 Minutes and 21 Seconds 

Games can also run at a much higher frame-rate, which they already do on other phones, but you would not be able to see frame-rates higher than 60. Whereas on the OnePlus 7T Pro, you can see up to 90fps.

A brightness comparison between the Note 10+, 11 Pro Max, Pixel 4XL and 7T Pro

So, the display on the 7T Pro seems like the best display ever on any smartphone and so far. But you see there is one complaint that I have, which might be a big issue for some users, and that is the brightness. We’ve actually used a professional colour and brightness measuring tool and on a pure white full-screen window, the OnePlus 7T Pro only achieved a maximum brightness of 457 nits, which whilst still higher than the Pixel 4 Xl’s 443 nits, it was significantly lower than the 723 nits on the Note 10+ or the 785 nits on the iPhone 11 Pro Max.

CAMERA

This is where the OnePlus 7T Pro gets really interesting, because you see, when I said that OnePlus had to make some trade-offs to keep the price low, the camera is usually the biggest trade-off in pretty much every single OnePlus phone.

But then, the OnePlus 7 Pro came out in May and it was OnePlus’s first premium smartphone, so to say. It had many innovative features from the design, to the popup front camera module, to the 90Hz refresh rate display and it also had a triple lens camera module, which was supposed to be great. But in the end it was only okay. It was better than the OnePlus 7’s camera but still nothing close to an iPhone’s camera, or a Samsung Galaxy S, Note, or even a Google Pixel. It was just a better mid-range camera, that was it.

And the 7T Pro has the exact same camera for the most part that the 7 Pro does. So does this mean that the camera is bad? Well, actually since the 7 Pro launched in May OnePlus has just slammed us with constant updates and improvements to their camera app, to the point where now, in our latest Blind Camera Test between the 7T Pro, the Pixel 4 XL, the iPhone 11 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, the OnePlus 7T Pro got 2nd place, after the iPhone 11 Pro Max! I gave it the same score as the Pixel 4 XL and an even higher score than the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+.

In a lot of cases, it had the best night mode out of all 4 phones. Stabilisation was great, HDR was very good. So OnePlus have managed to turn mid-range camera hardware into pretty much a flagship level camera and I’m very surprised. The pop-up front camera module was very good as well, with perfect exposure, a wide viewing angle, and even the low light shots with the front camera were very good and my favourite out of all these 4 phones!

So what’s the catch? Well, the front camera can only do 1080p video at 30fps compared to 4K30 on the S10 and Note 10, or even 4K60 on the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Also the wide-angle lens isn’t as wide as on the iPhone or the Note and it’s also fairly soft and pretty bad in low light. But aside from that it’s very good, especially after the recent software updates.

The 7T Pro does have a Macro mode now, which is actually a hardware feature where a mechanism inside the phone adjusts the focus motor to focus up close. You can actually see how much of a difference this makes. If you take a look at the image you can see how sharp the coin is on the 7T compared to all the other phones which don’t have a macro mode. So, that’s pretty awesome and this is something that we didn’t have on the 7 Pro before.

PERFORMANCE

If you’re not yet convinced on getting the 7T Pro, this is the section that will definitely convince you. The OnePlus 7T Pro is by far the fastest and most fluid phone that I’ve ever used. Faster than the iPhone 11 Pro Max, faster than the Note 10+, the Pixel 4 or anything else.

But what do I mean by this? Well, spec wise, we get the Snapdragon 855+ processor, which is an overclocked version of the 855 that we got in the 7 Pro a few months before. The GPU is now 15% faster than on the 855 and the CPU is about 5-8% faster, so you should see a few extra frames in games, but nothing major.

But where it gets interesting is when we look at the RAM. You see the OnePlus 7 Pro came in 6GB, 8GB and 12GB of RAM options, however the 7T Pro only comes in 8GB. This is also a reason why the price has actually gone up by quite a bit now. However, if you do get the McLaren edition of the 7T Pro, that’s when you get 12GB of RAM.

But the reason why this phone feels so fast is because of that 90Hz refresh rate display and that UFS 3.0 storage, which neither the S10 or Pixel 4 have. The Note 10+ does have UFS 3.0 but it doesn’t have a 90Hz refresh rate display, same goes for the iPhone which has NVMe flash but no 90Hz. So the 7T Pro just flies through everything and OnePlus also has their Oxygen OS skin which is an extremely light skin. Pretty much stock android with just a few nice modifications, such as the ability to change the background colour of your UI, the accent colour of your buttons, you can re-order the menu buttons as well, and things like that that just give you more customisation options compared to a Pixel 4 for example.

Also OnePlus is the 2nd manufacturer, right after Google in terms of releasing software updates and it’s not that they’re fast with updates but they’re also supporting their devices for a really long time. Take the OnePlus 3 that came out in 2016 for example, that device is still receiving updates from OnePlus, and the OnePlus 5 & 5T which came out in 2017 will both be receiving an update to Android 10 in Q2 2020. 

So yeah great performance, day 1 updates and years of software support. Pretty happy so far! 

SPECIAL FEATURES

Like I mentioned at the beginning, the 7T Pro takes the crown when it comes to the least amount of changes from the previous generation ever, but unfortunately that means a lack of special features that make this phone stand out.

The 7T Pro still lacks wireless charging, which is something that all of OnePlus’s competitors have put into their flagships. OnePlus did say that the reason why they didn’t add wireless charging is because it’s not fast enough yet but that’s not strictly correct. The Note 10+ supports up to 15W wireless charging speeds, which is 3 times faster than the stock 5W iPhone charger.

In addition to the lack of wireless charging, there is no official IP water resistance rating or even dust resistance. OnePlus did add a rubber seal to unofficially add water resistance but they haven’t paid for the rating itself. I have seen cases where people submerged their OnePlus 7 Pro in water and it survived but at the same time, I’ve also seen cases where it didn’t. Considering the fact that we have that pop-up camera module now I wouldn’t submerge this in any way!

The 7T Pro follows the trend of other smartphones by no longer having a headphone jack

The headphone jack is also gone now. The speakers are good but not great.

There’s no microSD card slot, no crazy features like an S-Pen or anything like that, so yeah, it doesn’t look that great so far. 

But I do have two very positive things to say here. The first is that the in-display fingerprint reader on the 7T Pro is the fastest in-display fingerprint reader on any phone. It’s crazy fast. Then the second thing is that the 7T Pro has a haptic engine, similar to the one inside the iPhone 11 Pro Max, which brings haptics to the entire UI and it’s one of the best on any android phone, right on par with the Note 10+ and the Pixel 4XL. 

BATTERY LIFE

Now, when it comes to the Battery Life it’s good but not great. The 7T Pro comes with a 4085mAh battery, which is slightly larger than the 4000mAh battery that the 7 Pro had. However, now that we have a large 6.67” display that’s also 90Hz, the battery lasts noticeably less than on the Note 10+, the iPhone 11 Pro Max or even the Samsung Galaxy S10+. 

You can switch to 60Hz refresh rate to improve battery life

You can indeed switch to 60Hz on the display, which will improve the battery life but considering that 90Hz is one of the main key selling points of this phone I don’t think the trade-off is worth it really.

You do get a 30W charger inside the box, which is 6 times more powerful than what Apple used to ship until the iPhone 11 Pro’s. In our fast charging speed test, the 7T Pro charged to 50% in just 24 minute and up to 100% in just 1 hour and 7 minute. Insanely fast for a 4085mAh battery!

But, like I mentioned in the last section it doesn’t have wireless charging. 

VALUE

Now we finally come to value. Is the OnePlus 7T Pro worth it?

Well, the OnePlus One used to cost $300 back in 2014. The 7T Pro now costs £700, or $910 if you convert, because interesting enough it is not available in the US this time around. 

So whilst the 7T Pro is 3 times more expensive than what the first OnePlus phone used to cost, it’s still cheaper than the Note 10+ which costs £1000, and the iPhone 11 Pro Max which costs £1150.

And for the most part, you get the same experience. Just no wireless charging, no official water or dust resistance rating and a slightly worse camera. But considering that you do get faster performance, a full-screen display, a pop-up front camera module which is a great party trick, I do think that the 7T Pro is worth it so much more than any of the competition. The only exception being the non-Pro OnePlus 7T, which actually offers the exact same specs, same exact camera, just a slightly older looking design that still looks great and that starts at £550. So I do think that that phone is actually worth it even more than the 7T Pro is.

This Laptop Has Two Displays - The ASUS ZenBook Duo!

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So every few years we get one product that changes everything! We saw it back in 2007 when the first iPhone launched, we saw it back when Ultrabooks started becoming a mainstream and we’ve also seen it when 2-in-1 laptops that were both a tablet and a laptop started appearing and now it’s that time again!

So, I’m very excited to show you what ASUS believes is the future of laptops, and I actually think they’re right. I think that this is indeed where laptops are heading towards, because you see this is a brand new generation of laptops! 

Let me introduce to you the ASUS ZenBook Duo! This laptop not only has Intel’s latest 10th generation processors but it also comes with two displays, Pen support, dedicated Nvidia graphics,an insane twenty two hour battery life and so much more! 

Also, the ZenBook Duo is actually a brand-new product that just came out, so it’s not to be confused with the ZenBook Pro Duo, which is its larger brother. The ZenBook Duo is smaller, more portable but it still comes with two displays making this the best laptop for productivity that you can easily take with you on the go, so huge thanks to ASUS for not only sending over the ASUS ZenBook Duo but also sponsoring this project!

So now, let’s take a look at what makes this laptop so special!

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DUAL DISPLAYS

This is by far the main feature of this laptop, I mean it is literally in the name. 

But you see, what’s really unique about ASUS’s implementation of this secondary display is that instead of this display being sort of like a control panel for your laptop, like some other manufacturers have tried and failed, it literally is a secondary display. What I mean by this is that Windows itself sees this as a secondary monitor which means that you can do all sorts of things with it. You can drag and drop windows from the main display onto the secondary, in fact ASUS even added a dedicated button on the keyboard, so that you can easily snap an app directly on the secondary display and full-screen it at the same time. But you can also use this in extended or mirror mode. 

The second screen can be used as a place to put your colour grading tools when editing

And there’s so many use cases for this display! You can use it when you’re video editing, and have your colour grading tools right there, if you’re a gamer you can have your chat boxes and discord on the secondary display, while having the game on the main screen. But probably my favourite part is that you can even merge the displays and have one massive continuous display with you anywhere you go! That’s amazing! 

But wait, there’s more! The secondary display is also a touchscreen, meaning that you can now comfortably navigate your browser tabs with just a swipe of a finger! The main display is not a touchscreen panel, but for me at least, I’m perfectly fine with that. I always find it very uncomfortable holding my arm up and using a touchscreen laptop. However, if that display is sitting flat, like the secondary display sits, it’s much more comfortable to use, as I’m not straining my arm. 

Furthermore the ASUS ZenBook Duo also supports Pen input on the secondary display, meaning that if you’re a graphic designer or someone that uses Photoshop a lot for their work, the ZenBook Duo will make your life so much easier.

There’s really not a single laptop on the market that can do this, have two displays in such as small and portable form factor.

The dual display makes for a truly unique laptop

The main display is also very good for photo and video work. It’s got 100% sRGB coverage, 1080p resolution, and you’ll see why this matters once we get to the battery life section of this video. However, my favourite part about this display is just how thin the bezels are. We have a 90% screen-to-body ratio so add this to the dual display and this looks like a laptop that truly came from the future! 

We also get FaceUnlock thanks to the built-in Windows Hello support which is made possible by the Infrared Cameras that ASUS mange to include into this very slim bezel. 

PERFORMANCE

The second feature that makes this laptop so unique, is the performance.

So, the ZenBook Pro Duo (the larger sibling of the ZenBook Duo) is pretty much a beast! That one comes with the Intel i9 9980HK, which has a 45W 8-core processor, 32GB of 2666MHz RAM, the RTX 2060, up to 1TB of PCIe flash storage and a 15.6” 4K OLED panel. But whilst it is a monster of a machine, it’s also bigger, heavier and thicker. The ASUS ZenBook Duo is not as powerful as the ZenBook Pro Duo, but it is much more portable, thinner and lighter. 

However, what surprises me is that we still get very good specs on this! You get the Intel 10th generation i7 10510U processor, which is a 15W Quad-Core CPU that can turbo up to 4.9GHz. We get 16GB of 2133MHz LPDDR3 RAM, up to 1TB of PCIe flash storage and the Nvidia MX250 graphics card. So while this isn’t as powerful as it’s bigger brother, for a 14” laptop that you can very easily take anywhere with you, having Intel’s latest U-series i7 chip, and a dedicated GPU, and two displays is just something unheard of before! 

By design the ASUS ZenBook Duo lifts its keyboard up to not only allow for better cooling but also ergonomics

Something that I really like about the design of the ZenBook Duo is how it also helps cool down the entire unit. So when you open up the lid the hinge actual raises the laptop close to 2cm from your desk, meaning that airflow would be just perfect on this, when you’re doing anything intensive such as gaming or rendering a video. Not only that but this hinge also puts the keyboard at an angle and the typing experience on this is actually very good. The keys have enough travel to make them easy to see even when you’re in the dark. They’re actually back-lit too by the way, and I personally like the track-pad on the right.It makes much more sense to have it there, since that’s how you use a mouse, so overall the performance, the ergonomics, and the usability of this laptop have impressed me more than any other laptop has yet.

Now, while the ZenBook Duo is not made with high end gaming in mind, you can actually play most games at 1080p on Medium settings and get 30-60fps, or even higher in some cases. So if you’re into more casual gaming the ZenBook Duo can easily handle that.

And performance in Adobe Premiere or Photoshop is great on this laptop. It can handle 4K footage in Premiere quite easily, and Photoshop on this, like I said before with the Pencil especially, is a experience you cannot really have on any other laptop, unless you have the ZenBook Pro Duo of course.

BATTERY LIFE

Now, all that performance and all those features would mean nothing on the go, if the battery life isn’t great. Now, I’m not sure how ASUS did it but it’s actually very good!

ASUS claims up to twenty two hours of battery life on this or two full days of work, but that’s only if you keep the secondary display off and keep the display brightness to just 150 nits. In a more realistic scenario you should expect around eight-ten hours of battery life at least! 

In my case, the first day I got it I fully charged it and then started installing apps on it, windows updates, games etc, and those apps were literally installing over night and the next evening, the battery was at 42% and the ZenBook Duo still had about 6 hours left.

So that’s very impressive! Of course overnight the displays were both off and the ZenBook was installing everything in the background, but still, I’m very impressed with the battery life. Even when I was using it with both displays on, the battery was still barely even dropping, whereas something like my MacBook Pro would’ve long been dead. What really helps here is that 1080p display. If we were to have a 4K panel on this, then the battery life would've been severely impacted. 

CONNECTIVITY

Now when it comes to connectivity, we not only do we get the latest Bluetooth 5.0 on this, but we also get WiFI 6, or 802.11ax, which is the next generation of WiFi, with speeds up to 9.6Gb/s. However, whats more important about this is that if you have a WiFi 6 router, and more WiFi 6 devices on your network, they will manage themselves much better than they could on WiFi 5. This means that if you have a fast connection, you will experience 0 slow-downs or traffic congestion on any of your devices. 

The selection of ports available on the ASUS ZenBook Duo

We also get a great selection of ports on this as well. We have the power input, a HDMI port, a USB type A which is actually USB 3.1 gen 2, and then a USB type C port which is also USB 3.1 gen 2 in terms of its speed. We then have another USB A port on the right, this one is 3.1 Gen 1, we then have the 3.5mm headphone jack, and we also get a microSD card slot, which I’m quite surprised to see as you don’t normally get this in laptops.

But since you can now easily find even 1TB microSD cards for quiet cheap, you can upgrade the storage very easily in this, or you can just use a microSD to SD Card adapter and use that card in your DSLR camera, meaning you could easily transfer your footage directly to your laptop.

I just wish that ASUS included a thunderbolt 3 port on this. It would’ve been the perfect laptop for me in that case, since I do need thunderbolt for work and thunderbolt also lets you connect an eGPU. However, if you really want this specific laptop design with a thunderbolt 3 port, then the ASUS ZenBook PRO Duo does actually have one. 

PORTABILITY

The last thing that makes this laptop so unique is just how portable it really is! At 1.5kg, this is very similar to the weight of other 13” Laptops out there.

But you see, I use two monitors at work, and whenever I’m travelling I find myself yearning for a second monitor, just because I find it much more productive to have two, and I’m very used to having two displays. Yes, you can connect a tablet to a laptop and have two displays that way, but you have to carry the tablet with you and it will also cost you a ton buying both a laptop and a tablet. 

So, to me at least, it seems like ASUS has found a solution to all those issues, and that solution is the ZenBook Duo a truly one of a kind laptop.

Huawei nova 5T - The £399 Flagship?

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This article is about the Huawei nova 5T, and in case you haven’t heard of this phone it is a £399 smartphone that comes with some truly flagship specs.

We have the Huawei Kirin 980 octa-core processor, which is actually the exact same processor that you can find in the Huawei P30 Pro, arguably the best smartphone that Huawei has even made, as the Mate 30 Pro isn’t out in all regions just yet. Aside from this we have 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. We also get a massive 3750mAh battery with SuperCharge, which is Huawei’s fast charging technology, with which you can charge this up to 50% in just 30 minutes.

We have a massive 6.26 inch display with a resolution of 2340x1080, with some very thin bezels and no notch aside from just the front camera cutout which is an insane 32MP sensor. But the back camera is even more impressive. We have a quad-camera module, with a regular 48MP sensor on the main module, a 16mp wide angle module, a 2MP macro module and then another 2MP module that’s used for portrait mode. 

The colours of the nova 5T (Black, Crush Blue, and Midsummer Purple)

It also has a side mounted fingerprint reader, and probably one of the craziest colours that I’ve seen on the back of any phone! It comes in a very vibrant Midsummer Purple, a Crush Blue variant, and finally the classic black colour that we have.

So as you can probably tell, this is a truly unique device! Huawei was kind enough to not only send one over but also sponsor this entire project. So what I did was use the nova 5T for an entire day, took it out, took some photos, and used it as I would when I’m on holiday because that’s when I’m using my phone the most, and see how a £399 phone with flagship specs actually performs! 

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Before I even set off, I installed all of the apps that I use in a regular basis, so everything; from Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Creator Studio, Gmail, Hootsuite for scheduling my social media posts, and I’ll be keeping track of the battery life and performance through-out the entire day.

The first thing that I did was to go around the the city centre area and test out the camera. Unfortunately, it was a rainy day and it was also quite cold, but nonetheless the shots ended up being very impressive, and you’ll see what I mean in just a bit.

So whilst on the tram to the city center, I took a few selfies and the way those have turned out, blew me away.

An example shot from the nova 5T’s front facing camera

This is a 32MP selfie and it’s the sharpest photo with a front facing camera that I have ever seen coming from a phone. All of that is thanks to the massive 32MP sensor, my hair is unbelievably sharp and you can zoom in a considerable amount, without seeing any noticeable pixelation at all, something that is not at all possible with a regular smartphone. 

So when seeing these on my computer, I was blown away. But it gets even better. I then took a few regular photos with the regular module on the back and they were pretty good. They had a great exposure, great colour, pretty much a perfect white balance and they were generally good shots, too bad the weather wasn’t on our side. 

But you see, this phone actually has four camera modules on the back and I wanted to put every single one of them to the test. 

So starting with some zoom photos, thanks to that massive 48MP sensor, we can zoom in up to 10x times digitally. Here’s an example of before and after the 10x zoom.

An example of the 10x zoom

We then have the two fun lenses. The Wide and the Macro Lens. 

The wide-angle is something that we’ve started seeing on pretty much every flagship smartphone today, with a few exceptions, so I’m very glad to see Huawei adding a wide angle lens to a mid-range phone. Now I was expecting the wide angle modules to be just okay since even on high end phones the wide angle module is usually the one that’s noticeable worse than the other two. But take a look at this shot.

This was the shot taken with 2x zoom, I have also put in the same shot taken with regular lens, and the wide angle lens. Not only do we get much much more in the scene but I don’t really see any severe softness that wide angle modules usually have.

We took some more wide angle shots of the Manchester Cathedral and what we did next is that we actually went inside of the cathedral to test out the night mode and see how the lenses perform in a fairly dim environment. I think the results speak for themselves, dont you? The nightmode shot is one of the best night mode shots that I’ve seen on a smartphone. It’s extremely sharp but what’s probably even more impressive is that I actually took this with the wide angle module! Just take a look at the picture below, perfect exposure, perfect sharpness, the colours are very accurate as well so I’m very impressed so far.

A wide angle nightmode shot taken in Manchester Cathedral

Ok, next up I wanted to test out that Macro Module. This is actually something that we don’t really have on many other smartphones out there, so it’s a very new and unique feature and I could get extremely close to a leaf with water on, I was about 4cm or even closer than that, and the leaf was still perfectly in focus.

An example Macro Lens shot

Back Portrait mode also works surprisingly well and has good background separation, although it does work better outdoors than indoors, since you do need a fair bit of light. 

The nova 5T can also shoot 4K video, up to 30fps. The footage itself is pretty sharp and well exposed. So again, good marks for Huawei on this.

So those were the four modules of this phone and I’m very impressed, especially when you consider that this is a £399 phone, less than half of what a flagship smartphone costs and the results were still very impressive. 

But there’s actually a very special feature that this phone has. So the main module is actually a 48MP sensor. But you see taking 48MP photos will eat up your storage four times faster than what a regular phone’s 12MP camera would. So what the nova 5T does is that it actually uses just the 12MP area of the sensor to take the photos and then it uses the remaining area of the sensor, to improve the clarity. But if you go into the settings menu, there’s actually a secret 48MP mode that allows you to take full 48MP photos and here’s an example. 

A comparison shot between the 12MP Camera and the 48MP secret option

You can probably see that weirdly enough the 48MP shot is a bit softer, and that’s because in the 12MP mode it’s actually doing that sharpening that I was talking about before. But the real difference between the two lies if you zoom in. When digitally zoomed in the 12MP one starts to look pixely, while the 48MP shot is noticeably sharper. If we had had a bright day with lots of sunlight, the results would’ve been even sharper on the 48MP mode since you do need to be in a well light environment, for the very best results.

So after taking all those photos, Connor and I decided to go and get something to eat. We went to this Italian restaurant where we took some more indoor shots. This was another dimly lit area, so I’ve been using night mode for pretty much all the shots. Now, something that I haven’t mentioned yet, is that the nova 5T also has an AI camera. This means that the camera can detect what it actually shoots and it will automatically adjust based on that.

Above are a couple of examples of the AI Camera. Number one is a picture that I took. Picture one is of my pizza, and you can probably see how sharp the pizza is, and how vibrant the nova 5T made the colours of it look.

Picture two is a photo of a water bottle and same story here, you can see how the AI camera made it stand out from the background, even though this was actually not taken with portrait mode but with the regular photo mode instead.

And finally picture three is a selfie that I took in the restaurant, and whilst it is a bit softer than the outdoor one, it’s still very sharp for low light indoor selfies. 

Ok, so we did get quite a bunch of shots and what we wanted to do was to find a place to sit down, transfer these shots and do some work. In my case, start scripting the main part of the video and drafting this article. We did go to the Central Library but ended up at a coffee shop after I had transferred all the shots. Speaking of, this was a very easy and quick process, thanks to that USB C port that the Huawei nova 5T has, so I had zero issues getting the shots off of the phone.

Many users guessed the images posted on Twitter and Instagram were from the iPhone 11

I wanted to take a few more indoors shots with night mode enabled to see how they would turn out, and like before we got some very impressive shots, especially the one with the floor lamp where the nova 5T made a fantastic job of separating the shadows from one and another. I even posted some of the images that I’d taken with the nova 5T on Twitter and Instagram as stories. Now I did this to to see how many of you got the name of the phone right and pretty much everyone either said that it was an iPhone 11 Pro or a Pixel 4. So from your own thoughts this clearly measures up to flagship quality photography at its £399 price point!

After I had done my first drafts I started watching Marques’s Pixel 4 review, read some news articles, browsed the web. I haven’t really talked about the display, but it’s great. We haven’t really had a sunny day to fully test it outdoors, but in the overcast weather that we had an indoors, it was very easily viewable.

Now you may be wondering how the battery was doing by this point in the day. Well, it was at 80%, however when I was transferring the photos before, I did have it connected to my laptop and the battery charged from 70% up to 90% during that time, in about 30 minutes or so which was quite impressive. 

By this point, since the days are quite short towards the end of the year, it was getting quite dark, so I took a few actual night time shots in some very low light conditions and below are a few of them. They actually have that Pixel style look which I really like! They’re very processed but overall, they’re good, especially when you consider how little this phone costs! 

When we finally got back into the office, the battery was at 75%, but do keep in mind that it did charge 20% while transferring the photos, so the real number would be around 50-55% which is pretty good, considering that I took loads of photos with it all day. 

I wanted to put it on charge and see how fast it would charge. Now, as I mentioned at start, the nova 5T does support Huawei’s SuperCharge which lets you charge up to 50% in just 30 minutes, but what I want to see here, is how fast it would charge from 75%, up to 100%. Charging from closer to 100% is always very slow as the phone tries to preserve the heal of the battery life, by trickle charging or slow charging, the closer they get to 100%, and this was pretty much the case here as well. It took close to a full hour to charge the remaining 25%, but charging up to the first 50% can indeed be done in just 30 minutes. 

CONCLUSION

In conclusion I am pretty impressed. This is a £399 phone and the night mode on this camera and the daytime selfies left me saying “wow” the moment I opened them on my computer, they’re really that good!

You also have the wide angle module which one famous flagship smartphone that costs more than double than this one does, lacks! And we have the macro module which turned out to be quite useful!

The performance was very good. I haven’t noticed any lag or any slowdown whatsoever, and that’s thanks to the Kirin 980 processor and 6GB of RAM on this unit. 

The Side Mounted fingerprint unlock is insanely fast. Literally the moment you rest your finger on it to unlock the phone, since that’s also the power button, it instantly unlocks.

Something I didn’t mention was that it also has an LED notification light inside the top speaker grill. Pretty cool! 

At £399 you get the perfect blend of performance, features, battery life and camera. It comes out on the 8th of November and you can purchase it on all major carriers here in the UK.

iPhone 11 Pro Max Review - The COMPLETE Review!

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This is the iPhone 11 Pro Max, definitely not the best name for a phone. Apple should’ve really called this the iPhone Pro, which would then come in two sizes, 5.8” and 6.5”, so that they have the same naming scheme on the iPhone as they do on the iPad and MacBooks. We don’t have a MacBook Pro 5 Max or iPad Pro 3 Max on those so why do we have iPhone 11 Pro Max?

But leaving the bad naming scheme aside, this is by far the best iPhone Apple has ever released, like it should be because it’s the newest one, but actually this one fixes all the major issues that the iPhones have had for years, and I’m pretty impressed!

I’ve been using this as my daily driver since it came out in mid-September, and this is my full in-depth review of the iPhone 11 Pro Max, covering my final thoughts on the Design, Display, Camera, Performance, Special Features, Battery & Value!

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DESIGN

A design front on design comparison between the iPhone 11 Pro Max (Left) and XS Max (Right)

Starting off with the Design, from the front, the iPhone 11 Pro Max looks very disappointing. It’s got the exact same design as the iPhone XS Max from 2018, which is the same design as the iPhone X from 2017. That means we still have that massive notch, which does have some high end tech inside for mapping your Face in 3D and unlocking the phone, so there is an actual reason why it is this big.

But when you compare it to the Note 10’s design, the Samsung Galaxy S10’s or especially the OnePlus 7 Pro and the 7T Pro, both of which have no notch and no camera cutout at all, you can probably see where I’m going with this. The iPhone 11 Pro Max just has a very boring look to it, that will in fact change next year luckily, but until then we’re stuck with this two year old design until late 2020. 

However, there are a few things that have changed design wise. The back now has that famous triple lens camera module which I’ll get into more detail in the camera section of this article.  But Apple has also changed the back glass now. It is now a frosted glass rather than the traditional glass back that we had on the XS, which means that it won’t leave any fingerprints, and it’s also much smoother to the touch so your finger glides much easier, whereas before you would have a tiny bit of resistance. So this does make the iPhone 11 Pro Max the best feeling iPhone that I have held in my hands, but at the same time it also makes it the slipperiest.

Luckily, Apple did say that they’ve added the most durable glass in smartphone into this, which is very likely a slightly modified version of Gorilla Glass 6. And there have been quite a few drop tests done by other tech outlets and channels and long story short, it’s still glass so it will break. It’s just that it won’t break as easily as the previous iPhones did. But you see, the way glass works is that if you want it to be more durable to drops, you need to add more plastic into it to make it more flexible, which also decreases the scratch resistance. So I don’t know if you’ve seen my twitter post, which I’ll link here, but I actually managed to get my iPhone 11 Pro Max scratched very heavily, and I ended up having that replaced because of it. 

Now, there are a few more design changes that Apple has made, such as moving the Apple Logo towards the middle now, which I do believe looks better now than ever before. We also have no more iPhone branding on the back, and no regulatory information either, unless you have the European model which still has those unfortunately. But other than that, you get an extremely clean look on the back. Now something that I do like is that the inside of the camera module now matches the colour of the iPhone, unlike the mock-ups that we had, where it was entirely black so I do think that it looks better this way. Something else that I like about this is that Apple has actually made the inside of the camera module glossy, while on the regular iPhone 11, we have the exact opposite, a glossy back and a frosted glass camera module. 

Also the iPhone 11 Pro & Pro Max are still one of the only ones on the market that come with a stainless steel frame. All the other ones come with either an aluminium, magnesium, or polished aluminium frame in the case of the Galaxy Note 10+ for example.

A slight design change with this years models is thickness. At 8.1mm thick, these iPhones are one of the thickest flagships on the market right now. The regular iPhone 11 is a bit thicker at 8.3mm, but aside from that the only iPhone thicker than those is the iPhone 4 from 2010.  Ever since then, Apple kept making their iPhones thinner and thinner to the point where batteries also had to be made thinner, and the battery life ended up being affected. But in the more recent years, Apple has decided to do quite the opposite. Make their iPhones thicker and thicker every single year and also extend the battery life as a result. I’ll talk more about the battery life once we get to the battery section of this article, but when it comes to how the 11 Pro Max feels in the hand, the moment I got it, I could definitely tell that it was bulkier than my XS Max, was which was already bulkier than my X was, and so on. It’s not a fat phone by any means but it does give you that solid feel in the hand when you hold it, because of its thickness and that premium stainless steel frame.

The colours of the iPhone 11 Pro Max

Now, the final design change when it comes to these new iPhones are the colours. We get four colours this year; the regular Space Grey, Silver, Gold, and now we also get a brand new Midnight Green colour. The Space Grey has a very clean and matte black look now which I absolutely love! The silver now has a frosted white look, where the Apple logo is barely visible at all, and if I’m being honest there’s something about the White model that kind of makes me regret going for the Space Grey for my personal one. The Midnight Green one looked good but extremely similar to the Space Grey one, aside from the stainless steel frame which was indeed dark green. The gold one looks ok, but I do think that the previous gold XS looked much better.

DISPLAY

Moving on to the Display, we have the same 5.8” and 6.5” sizes as last year with a resolution of 2688x1242 on the 11 Pro Max and 2436x1125 on the 11 Pro, and both at 458PPI.

Apple has this weird thing where they adjust the resolution in order to keep the same PPI number. They do this so that they can keep the app scaling consistent across their devices and to make it easier for developers to optimise their apps.

We still have the True Tone Display from the years before but we no longer have 3D Touch. Apple added 3D touch with the iPhone 6S and it let you have a secondary tap, a right click so to say, when you applied pressure to certain elements of the UI. The problem with 3D touch was that it wasn’t clear which elements supported 3D touch and it also increased the thickness of the device by quite a bit, space which they could’ve been used for stuff like a larger battery. So instead of 3D touch, you now have to hold for longer and then you get a vibration to let you know that it worked. This means that with the new iPhones and iOS13 you have to do a long hold on the apps and then you get the 3D touch options, and then if you hold for longer they will wiggle and then you can move them around. Previously this was pressure based and I honestly prefer it this way. Before, if I just wanted to arrange the apps I had to press soft enough for the icons to jiggle, since if I pressed harder, 3D touch would activate and I had to repeat the process until I got the icons to jiggle. 

A brightness comparison between the iPhone 11 Pro Max (Top) and XS Max (Bottom)

Now, when it comes to the actual display quality Apple has actually made some improvements. We now have what they’re calling the Super Retina XDR display, again another horrible overly complicated name. Essentially this phone has a Samsung panel and it’s Samsung newest generation of AMOLED displays. Part of the same generation that they’re using in the S10 and the Note 10 from a few months ago. This means that when compared to the XS Max from last year, the display can get up to 1200 nits when playing back HDR content compared to around 1000 nits. When you use it outdoors, it can now go up to 800 nits from 625, so it’s easier to view when outdoors. I also found this display to actually be brighter than the Note 10’s in both outdoor and manual brightness. 

We’ve actually bought a professional display colour calibration tool and here are the results that we got out of the 11 Pro Max’s display. So on a white surface with a maxed out manual brightness, we got 524 nits, while on the exact same image the Note 10+ for comparison got 349 nits.

So while this is overall the best display on any smartphone, I do actually prefer the Note 10’s display, just because of the lack of a notch, and the even more vibrant colours. I wish Apple would allow you to change the colour profiles like Samsung does, since I do personally prefer punchier colours rather than the more natural one that Apple has. But if you’re into editing photos and videos on the go, than the iPhone 11 Pro is perfect for this. With a DCI-P3 coverage and iOS, this is the best platform to post your Instagram photos and stories from.

Aside from the Notch, the only thing that I really dislike about this display is that you cannot watch videos on YouTube higher than 1080p. Even though we have a close to 3K display on this. This is because Apple doesn’t support Google’s VPN codec, and Google doesn’t support h.265 which Apple does. This is a current issue with all of Apple’s products. iPads cannot play 4K YouTube videos, not even the 4K Apple TV can which is quite ironic! The only way to watch 4K YouTube videos on an Apple product is to use a Mac and download Chrome.

So because of this whilst the iPhone 11 Pro’s display is the best display for editing photo and videos, scrolling through your social media feed, and just reading content, it is not the best display for watching content on YouTube, because of the notch and the resolution limit on videos to just 1080p. 

CAMERA

Now remember when I said that the iPhone 11 Pro fixes all the major issues that the previous iPhone’s had? Well, I was actually referring to two major issues, and the first one was the camera.

You see, back in the days of the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 6, the iPhone had the best camera in a smartphone! But then, with the more recent releases, the camera quality started falling behind the competition. Manufacturers like Huawei included a 10x optical zoom camera, Samsung added a wide angle lens, and Google added a night mode which Apple was still missing. Samsung even had 4K video recording on the front, a wider angle module, and QHD recording on the front ever since the Galaxy S6 which launched in 2015. Apple was still lacking all of these on the iPhone XS Max from 2018 which was quite ridiculous at that point. 

But luckily, Apple has now fixed all of their camera issues, and ironically the iPhone 11 Pro & Pro Max now have the best camera on any smartphone at the moment!

So, what changed?

A sample of the wide front facing camera, the iPhone 11 Pro Max on the Left and the Pixel 4XL on the right

Well, the front camera did get a resolution bump to 12MP from the 7PM that we have had since the iPhone 7. But instead of Apple just giving you all that resolution, the selfies are still 7MP in resolution, but you can now zoom out and use the entire resolution of the sensor to capture more in the scene. So with this technique we actually get a wide angle front facing camera, which now happens to be the widest one on any smartphone of 2019, just on par with the Pixel 4. 

Then, we also get significantly improved video on the front. Before the iPhone 11’s we only had 1080p 60fps max, but now we can record in up to 4K 60 on the front! Which is just nuts! No other smartphone can do this! Apple went from behind in last place to literally being first just like that! And I’m really impressed with the quality of the front facing camera on the 11 Pro! Colours are natural, the image is still very sharp and the exposure and dynamic range is just incredible! 

My only complaint regarding the front camera is that we don’t have a Night Mode like we do have on the Pixel. So light low shots with the front camera aren’t great but daytime ones are very very good.

Astrophotography on the iPhone 11 Pro Max (Top Left), the Note 10+ (Top Right), the OnePlus 7T Pro (Bottom Left) and Pixel 4 XL (Bottom Right)

Speaking of Night Mode, whilst we don’t have it on the front, we do have it on the back! And unlike the one on the Google Pixel which can be enabled manually, the iPhone one is automatic. This means that once you’re in a low light scenario, the night mode indicator will appear and then from there you can adjust the duration of the exposure. I found Night Mode to actually work very well, even better than on the Pixel 4 in a lot of cases. The only case where it wasn’t as good was in tripod mode, which is Apple’s automatic long exposure mode which activates when it detects that it’s on a tripod. It was still better than on the OnePlus 7T Pro and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, but the Astrophotography mode on the Pixel 4 is just on another level. But aside from that, Night Mode on the 11 Pro is extremely good! Also, it works with both the main and telephoto lens. It doesn’t work with the wide-angle lens unfortunately, for that you’d have to use a 3rd party app such as NeuralCam. 

Now in terms of day to day shots, because we now have that third wide angle module, which Apple is calling an ultra-wide, but in my eyes that’s wide. We can take some very wide angle shots now. We can even take wide angle panoramas, and portrait with both the telephoto and regular modules now. 

So with these three cameras, we can take a zoomed in shot, a regular shot, and then also a wide angle shot. We can capture so much more in the scene and by having this wide angle module and I have the perfect combo of lenses right in my pocket. Now Apple were not the first to have three lenses on a phone, they were one of the latest ones to the party, but at least we finally have a wide angle on the iPhone as well now. And what I really like about Apple’s implementation is that all modules are very similar. They’re all 12MP sensors, different sensor sizes unfortunately, but they can all record 4K 60 video which is something that no other smartphone can do with the wide angle lens. In addition, they all try to match the colour and exposure between them so that you can have a consistent shot when switching through the lenses.

There will be a big new feature coming in iOS 13.2 called Deep Fusion, which will take multiple photos at different exposure levels even before you tapped the shutter button and then merge them, for an even sharper image. What this will do is noticeably improve low light shots that are taken when night mode isn’t yet available. So indoor dimly lit photos would get the biggest bump here. 

Here are a few samples of Deep Fusion from twitter user Tyler Stalman (@stalman)

So overall, the camera is a very big improvement from the XS from last year, but the thing is aside from the wide angle lens which is a hardware feature, things such as Deep Fusion and Night Mode can, in theory, be enabled on older iPhones easily, but for whatever reason Apple won’t enable them. It’s likely that they are doing this so that people just buy the iPhone 11’s instead.

Now, if you do want to learn more about the camera do watch our ultimate camera comparison at the link here, where we compared the iPhone 11 Pro Max against the Note 10+, the Pixel 4 XL and the OnePlus 7T Pro. There are 30 Individual Test Categories, most of them with multiple samples, so you can get a very good idea of how good these cameras really are! But like I said, overall the iPhone 11 Pro Max does have the best camera in any smartphone thanks to its industry leading video capabilities and very good HDR and Night Mode processing as well.

PERFORMANCE

When it comes to the iPhone 11 Pro Max’ performance I have mixed feelings. It comes with Apple’s newest A13 processor which is still around one to two years ahead in terms of raw performance, when compared to the competition. Long story shot this means that your low light photos will get processed much faster than on something like a Pixel 4. High frame rates such as 4K 120fps are indeed something that this chip can handle in real time, which is just insane! 4K 120? Yes, the iPhone 11’s all record in 4K 120fps and then the final 4K 60fps output is actually a processed HDR video with wide dynamic range.

Benchmark scores for the iPhone 11 Pro Max and the 2019 15” MacBook Pro

So the RAW performance is definitely there but unfortunately it is not being used as much as I wanted. Yes, you can edit 4K videos on your iPhone and export them noticeably faster than any other smartphone out there but I kind of want more. I would love it if Apple had something similar to Samsung’s DeX, where you connect your smartphone to a monitor and it loads up a desktop UI on the monitor. If you then added a mouse and keyboard, you’re pretty much turning your smartphone into a full desktop PC. The iPhone definitely has the power to do that as single core wise it is actually more powerful than a top of the line 15” 2019 8-core i9 MacBook Pro, which is just unbelievable on a smartphone! 

So Apple’s definitely in the lead when it comes to smartphone processors, it’s just that I would prefer to see them used more. Hopefully that changes in the future.

Speaking of change, we unfortunately did not get any RAM upgrades. We still have 4GB of RAM on both the 11 Pro and the 11 Pro Max which is at least two times less, if not even three times less than what other manufacturers use. The Note 10+ for example comes with 12GB of RAM. Now, iOS is more efficient than Android when it comes to system resources so less RAM may not seem a big issue, but I’ve actually had some pretty bad experience with RAM management on my 11 Pro Max, where YouTube for example would not be kept in the background most of the time. I’ve had this issue with multiple apps, hopefully this will get better with future software updates, but the issue here is Apple sticking to 4GB of RAM in 2019 where even low to mid range phones today have 6GB of RAM or even 8GB.

SPECIAL FEATURES

When it comes to the special features, there’s not a lot of new features in this iPhone.

We do get an improved water resistance, up to 4M up to 30 minutes, which is the highest level of water resistance on any phone. Aside from this, we do have WiFi 6 or WiFI 802.11 ax support which is the next generation of WiFi. It not only supports top speeds of up to 9.6Gb/s from around 7Gb/s of WiFi 5, but it will also eliminate network congestion almost entirely, as long as you have a WiFI 6 enabled router and multiple WiFI 6 devices as well. So this is more of like a future-proofing feature.

Now, something that I was not expecting to see with the iPhone 11 Pro’s was improved speakers. Not only are they louder now but they also support something called Spatial Audio, as well as Dolby Atmos. Essentially whenever you’re watching movies that support Dolby Atmos, which are mostly the ones from iTunes and AppleTV, you would get this virtual 3D sound effect. It does work nicely, but don’t expect anything like a theatre quality experience, since this is still a smartphone speaker. I do like the fact that they’re louder now, since I always listen to podcasts while taking a shower, and I actually need a very powerful speaker in that case. So I could easily tell that my 11 Pro Max was louder than my XS Max. The regular 11 Pro is not as loud as the 11 Pro Max is, but it’s still very good for a smartphone.

There’s also a brand new U1 chip that improves AirDrop file sharing and precisely locating the iPhone. But aside from this we don’t really get anything new. 

At the moment only Huawei and Samsung have phones that support reverse wireless charging

We have the same haptic engine as before, the same USB 2.0 lightning port, which is pretty bad in the first place. By not having USB C transferring files via an SD card from your camera is horribly slow, on what’s supposed to be a Pro phone. 

There’s still no always on display and still no reverse wireless charging like it was rumoured and leaked to come with, so this means that if you have the new second generation AirPods with the wireless charging case, you’ll need a Samsung phone ironically to charge the AirPods from the back of the phone, as you cannot do that with an iPhone yet. 

There’s also no 90Hz refresh rate display, and nothing else that really makes the 11 Pro stand out feature wise over the competition. 

BATTERY

The second issue that was fixed with the 11 Pro was the battery life, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the iPhone 11 Pro Max has the best battery life in any smartphone that I’ve used!

This thing can finally last me for an entire day of use easily and even 2 days. Last weekend I was out pretty much all day and using my iPhone constantly to take photos and at the end of the day I still had 40% battery life, so this thing it just insane! 

This is thanks to the larger 3969mAh battery up from the 3174mAh one that the XS Max, which was made possible thanks to the removal of 3D touch, the thicker body, and thanks to the Apple A13 chip which is also much more power efficient with up to 40% less power consumption for the GPU.

We also get a fast charger inside the box at last! This is an 18W Charger compared to the 5W one that we got before, which can now charge your iPhone to 50% in just 30 minutes!

So I’m very glad and quite surprised to have an iPhone that lasts longer than the Note 10+ or any other android phone on the market, since the iPhone has always been a meme because of its poor battery life.  Also, pro tip, if you do use dark mode on iOS 13, battery life would be noticeably better. Phonebuff did an amazing video on that, which I’ll leave linked here.

VALUE

Ok, so in the end what are my thoughts on the iPhone 11 Pro Max? Is it worth it’s huge £1,150 starting price tag?

Well, aside from its name which is straight up stupid and it makes no sense because, let’s be honest, this is not a Pro phone. The camera is very good but it’s not a pro camera, otherwise we would have custom luts, first party mounts, and at least the ability to change the resolution and frame-rate from the camera app. But the camera is noticeably better than last year and the battery life is the best one there has been on any iPhone and any phone for that matter! 

In addition there’s no 90Hz refresh rate display like other ”Pro” phones have, and there’s no USB 3.0 or especially USB C on this.

However, if you do want those 2 features, the regular iPhone 11 has pretty much everything that the Pro and Pro Max do, aside from an OLED display and a zoom camera. And that’s honestly worth it so much more!

Check out the review of it here!

Note 10 Plus FULL REVIEW - The Best Tech Product of 2019!

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Every few years there’s this one product that comes out that changes my perspective on tech entirely. You see tech today, mostly smartphones, are quite boring. They all look almost the same, they do the same things, and after using so many smartphones over the years, it’s become quite rare for me to get excited and truly enjoy using a new smartphone, like I used to when I got my first iPhone the 3G, or my Galaxy S4 or my 2013 Retina MacBook Pro. Those were devices that I’ve enjoyed using so much.

But nowadays it’s very hard for me to get excited and hyped about new smartphones, since nothing really changes. However the Note 10+ is a bit of a different story. This has been for me, by far the most enjoyable smartphone I’ve used in years and the second most enjoyable piece of tech of 2019 for me, right after the Oculus Quest.

So, get some popcorn and drinks ready and here’s my full in-depth review of the Galaxy Note 10+, after two months of use, as my daily driver.

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DESIGN

Ok, so starting with the design, the Note 10+ is by far my favourite looking phone ever! I’ve enjoyed using the S10+ a lot, and even that was my daily driver for around 2-3 months, until the OnePlus 7 Pro came out but the Note 10 for me at least, looks so much better.

A design comparison between the Note 10+ (Left) and S10+ (Right)

It’s got a more squared off design when compared to the S10+, even thinner bezels, and a smaller camera cutout. It just looks about a year ahead of the S10+ in terms of the looks, even though it only came out five months after. 

Then if you compare it side by side to the iPhone 11 Pro Max, the Note looks about two years ahead in terms of the design! There’s no notch, much thinner bezels on the sides and the top, and the bottom ones are almost identical as well. 

I would say that the only phone on the market right now that might look better than the Note, at least for me, is the OnePlus 7 Pro and the OnePlus 7T Pro. These phones have no camera cutout at all, but they do have slightly thicker bezels all around the phone. 

So design wise, I’m very much into this phone. It is a bit uncomfortable to hold and use, I can definitely say that. You see, because of the squared off shape the corners of the phone will feel a bit sharp in your palm, when compared to the corners of the S10+ for example, which are more rounded.

Add that massive 6.8” display to this and you can probably tell that the Note 10+ is closer to a small tablet in size. It’s definitely the biggest phone that I have ever used and I actually love it! Clearly not a one-handed smartphone but for viewing content and productivity, this is the best one there is.

DISPLAY

Speaking of viewing content, let's talk about the display.

The Note 10+ comes with a gigantic 6.8” display, which is also Samsung’s latest generation of AMOLED panels for smartphones, which is actually the same display generation that the iPhone 11 Pro Max also uses. It’s a 3040x1440 resolution panel, with a 498 PPI so it’s very sharp. It supports HDR10+ and full DCI-P3 coverage, and it’s honestly the most gorgeous smartphone display that I’ve ever seen.

Outdoor screen brightness comparison between the iPhone 11 Pro Max (Left) and Note 10+ (Right)

Now displaymatte actually gave the crown to the iPhone 11 Pro’s display, which does indeed get brighter outdoors in direct sunlight, when compared to the Note. And same goes for manual brightness you can bump the iPhone 11 Pro higher than you can with the Note. But they both go up to around 1200 nits when playing HDR content, so that’s all good. 

However, I can honestly tell you when seeing both in person, indoors at least, the Note 10+’s display does look better. The colours are punchier, and whilst the brightness is lower than on the iPhone it’s not that noticeable indoors as it is outdoors. When you also add in the fact that you can watch videos on YouTube in higher than 1080p, which you cannot do on the iPhone, makes the Note 10+’s display for me at least, the best display on any smartphone for watching videos and reading content. 

We’ve actually bought a professional display colour calibration tool and here are the results that we got out of the Note 10+’s display. On a white surface with a maxed out manual brightness, we got 349 nits, while on the exact same image on the iPhone 11 Pro Max, maxed out brightness again, we got 524 nits.

When it comes to the camera punch hole, I honestly forgot that it was even there after about 10 minutes or so of use, so honestly don’t worry about it. I even like it more than on my S10+ since it’s smaller and also centred and Samsung and the Community have made some amazing wallpapers just for Note 10!

CAMERA

Now, when it comes to the camera it’s pretty good! It’s definitely in the top 3, right after the iPhone 11 Pro’s camera.

So it’s got three lenses on the back; a regular module, a zoom module, and a wide angle module. As well as some extra features which I’ll cover in the Special Features section of this video. I won’t go into too much detail here as we’ve already done two insanely detailed camera comparisons between the Note 10+ and the Pixel 4, the iPhone 11 Pro Max and the OnePlus 7T Pro, the most recent of which I’ll link right here.

And those include thirty individual test categories, each with multiple camera samples ranging from; macro Shots, to HDR front and back, stabilization in 4K, stabilisation with the wide angle, portrait mode, slow motion, timelapse, panorama, night mode, night mode with zoom and night mode with telephoto and many more. So if you do want to see how this camera performs, do check those videos out!

But long story short, it’s got the second best video recording capabilities in the phone, right after the iPhone 11 Pro Max. So It cannot do 4K 60 with the wide angle lens or 4K 60 with the front, but other than that, this is an amazing camera.

The wide angle is even better than on the iPhone, mostly because it bumps the highlights, shadows, and the vibrancy even more and for me at least, the images were slightly more pleasing to the eye. Night mode shots were very good, not as good as on the Pixel 4 or iPhone 11 Pro but pretty close. It definitely has the best portrait mode when it comes to the background separation, thanks to the extra TOF sensors, which I’ll cover more in just a bit. Where the Note 10+ excels is really just regular photos. HDR shots taken indoors and outdoors are just stunning, so if you care a lot about the camera the Note 10+ will not disappoint.

You can see an example of each of these below:

The only disappointment that I do have with this camera is that it’s very similar to the S10. Aside from the zoom module which now has an f/2.1 aperture from the f/2.4, the main camera is the exact same camera as on the S10, which fun fact, was the exact same camera as on the S9, and the S8, and the S7. I mean yes, Samsung has released brand new image sensors for these phones and they have improved the image processing over the years, so the pictures have improved from each generation, but the sensor specs have remained exactly the same since the S7. We have the same 12MP resolution 1/2.55 inch sensor with 1.4 micron sized pixels, with dual pixel technology on the sensor for focusing.

However there are rumors that are suggesting that Samsung may release a new generation of cameras with the Galaxy S11. Therefore if you’re holding off getting a new phone, and camera is your number one focus, the S11 will be a pretty big jump in camera quality from the Note and you should wait for that.

PERFORMANCE

Ok, so now, what about the performance? Well, it’s pretty good for the most part.

The Exynos 9825 chip is new to the Galaxy line, as the S10 came with the 9820 (Source: Digital Trends)

We have pretty much the best specs you can have on an android phone today. We have the Exynos 9825, which is actually a brand new processor from the 9820 that we got with the Galaxy S10 just five months before. So this is now based on a new 7nm process now and in benchmarks at least, this is the processor that scores the highest, in an android phone at least.

Now, if you get the US variant of the Note 10, it will come with Snapdragon 855 and interestingly enough not the 855+ like it was rumoured to come with, and like what the OnePlus 7T & 7T Pro come with, which is a bit of a let down. But the 855+ is just an overclocked 855 anyways, so you’re not really missing out on much.

We also get 256GB of storage as the baseline model and 12GB of RAM by default which is just nuts on a phone! RAM management on this has just been incredible. In a lot of cases, I opened an app that I had open a few days before and it was still there perfectly loaded in the background and perfectly usable!

So I’m very impressed with the RAM management and overall performance on the Note 10, however it’s not perfect. I did have quite a few stutters and app crashes on my Note, definitely way more than I’ve had on my iPhone or Pixel, but the thing is that this phone comes with so many features, that a few crashes and slow downs here are there, are passable for me at least.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Apps Edge on the Note 10+ allows you to quickly access your choice of apps

First off, Samsung’s skin OneUI is just amazing! Design-wise, I like it the most out of any other Android Skins, even more than OnePlus’s OxygenOS or the Pixel Launcher. The reason for this is mostly because it looks very clean and it also offers a lot of customisation. Aside from changing the icons, the text font, the wallpaper to an actual video, and even the always on display style, something that as far as I’m aware no other launcher can do, is having app folders inside of Apps Edge. This means that you can essentially have an iPhone style home-screen in the app drawer, while keeping your home-screen very very clean.  And you also have this edge panel which allows you to easily access apps and tools, with a swipe from the right side of your screen. Some people might call this a gimmick but personally, I actually ended up using this feature a lot, keeping most of my delivery apps there, my alarm, and the apps that I use quite frequently that I just don’t want to have on my home-screen. Samsung has also sped up their update cycle quite a bit. OneUI 2.0 is coming very soon, with Android 10 support, and the Beta is already out on the S10. This means that the S10 and the Note 10 will then be the world’s third manufacturers to release Android 10, right after Google and OnePlus, which is pretty amazing to hear, especially when it comes to a Samsung phone.

But it’s not just that, we also get a ton of special features that we don’t really get on many other phones.

We do have an always on display which Apple still lacks on the iPhone, and this is also noticeably better than Google’s always on display, since it does give you a ton of more customisation options. 

We also have a microSD card slot for adding even 1TB of extra storage to this, for a total of 1.5TB which is just a complete overkill on a phone but hey, if you store a ton of games and have all of your movies locally, then the Note is the perfect phone for this.

The Note also comes with reverse wireless charging, which allows you to now only charge another phone from the back of it but also charge wireless accessories such as the Samsung Galaxy Buds, or even the AirPods, from the back of the Note 10. What’s ironic is that you cannot do this if you have AirPods and the newest iPhone 11 Pro. 

Speaking of wireless, one of the new features that the Note 10+ comes with is WiFi 802.11ax, also known as WiFi 6, which is pretty huge. WiFi 5 or 802.11 ac, which is the current standard that most devices use, launched back in 2014, so there’s a 5 year technology leap in between the two. WiFi 6 gives you a theoretical speed of up to 9.6Gb/s or 1.2GB/s which is just incredible! But the best part about WiFi 6 is that if you have a lot of WiFi 6 enabled devices, and a WiFi 6 router as well, they will manage themselves much better than WiFi 5 could and pretty much get rid of any traffic congestion entirely.

Along with improved speaker quality, the water resistance is still here, with IP68 certification for up to a 1.5m submersion up to 30 min. I’ve taken multiple Samsung phones with me to the seaside and the pool and I’ve never had an issue with any of them breaking but if they do break from water damage, do keep in mind that this isn’t covered under warranty. 

Now aside from these features, there are three more that are unique to the Note and these three are the features that truly make the Note a one-of-a-kind phone.

The S-Pen is certainly a useful tool but may go unused after a while by some consumers

The first one being of course the S-Pen. This is the built-in stylus that Samsung has in their Note line of smartphones, and this year it gets an accelerometer and gyroscope so that you can control some apps, such as the camera app, with gestures in the air, which is pretty cool. But honestly, I found myself not using the S-Pen after the first few days, mostly because of the app support. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad but if you want to use the S-Pen to its fullest you need to use Samsung Notes. The problem here is that it only works on Android, so no desktop or cloud app for your laptop or tablet, and it only works on Samsung devices. Which kinda turns the Note 10 into a physical notebook, where you only have your notes on that specific device. You can still use the S-Pen in OneNotes or Google Keep, but it’s just not as fluid and the functionality is still far better with Samsung Notes. Also since I’m always much faster at taking notes with a keyboard than I am with a pen, I found myself avoiding to use the S-Pen unless I was editing photos. For me, this has been by far the best functionality of the S-Pen. If you use it in Lightroom and Photoshop Express for masking things, making a selection, or even just adjusting the highlights dial for example it is such an amazing thing to have right in your pocket! 

The second big new features is that TOF (time-of-flight) sensor right next to the camera, which allows the Note to not only take some amazing portrait mode shots, like I mentioned before, of both people and objects, but you can also use it to 3D scan objects. This is a very cool thing to do but it doesn’t really work that well, and same as the S-Pen, I only found myself using this once or twice and never used it again since. 

But the third unique feature is pretty big, and that is DeX! When you connect your Note 10 to a monitor via USB C, it will actually boot into a desktop UI mode, and then you can connect a mouse and keyboard and literally use this similar to how you would use a Windows PC. You have full access to desktop apps such as Microsoft Office and Google Chrome so that’s pretty amazing! So if you’re the kind of person that mostly uses their smartphone and doesn’t really need a full laptop or a desktop PC, then getting a Samsung phone with DeX is a pretty good option. All Samsung phones from the S8 onwards do support DeX, although the S8 and Note 8 do need a separate dock.

But the Note 10 can actually do an extra thing that previous Samsung phones couldn’t. You can now connect it to your laptop as well, and open up the DeX UI on your laptop. Personally, I don’t really get the point of you doing that since one, you do need a cable and two, the whole point of DeX is to turn your smartphone into a PC. But if you’re already carrying a PC then what’s the point? But if you do care about this feature, the S10 did get a recent update to support this as well! 

So as you can see, the Note 10+ is packed with features! There’s not a single smartphone on the market that has more features than this phone does, and while some of them are indeed gimmicks, like drawing with the S-Pen in AR, at least you do get a ton for what you’re paying for! 

Now Samsung has actually removed the headphones jack from the Note 10, making this their first major smartphone to lack the 3.5mm jack. For me this hasn’t really been an issue at all, since I do use wireless headphones all the time, but I do see why some people might be outraged especially when Samsung didn’t include a 3.5mm to USB-C adapter in the box, meaning you do have to buy it separately now. 

BATTERY LIFE

So with all those special features in mind, the huge display on this thing, and the internals, how is the battery?

Well it is actually pretty great! The Note 10+ comes with a 4300mAh battery and it can easily last me through a full day of use, unless I’m travelling. When I’m travelling I’m always on my phone and I haven’t found a phone yet that can last me a whole day in that case. But for my day to day use, the Note 10+ can even last me two days, so it’s been pretty amazing for me.

We also have a much faster fast charging of up to 45 Watts! Yes, the Note 10+ has the fastest charge on any smartphone on the market right now! Now out of the box, we do not get that 45W charger, so you need to buy that separately from Samsung, but we do get a 25W fast charger which can charge the Note up to 50% is just about 30min which is pretty amazing. You can get a full charge in around an hour and twenty minutes or so. With that 45W charger you get a full charge in around forty five minutes or so from what I’ve seen.

VALUE

So in the end is the Note 10+ worth it?

Well, the Note 10+ costs £1000 or $1100 in the US, which is actually the exact same price than the iPhone 11 Pro Max starts at. However you get so much more with the Note, the 256GB compared to the 64GB of storage, as well as microSD card expansion. 12GB of RAM compared to 4GB. A larger display, and the ability to play 4K videos on YouTube compared to just 1080p. The S-Pen, reverse wireless charging and so much more, the Note 10 is the true Swiss army knife of smartphones, and I would recommend this to anyone who wants the ultimate experience in a smartphone! 

Samsung does have the smaller Note 10 variant which I didn’t really talk about since the true new Note this year is the Note 10+.