Gadgetory

the last time we got a Galaxy Note device for review I declared it to be too big for humans and handed it off like a pair of dirty gym socks to the nearest Linus Media Group employee in this case it ended up being Luke to do the video for me and yet here we are a mere two years later and not only have I been using the note 5 as my daily driver for a couple of weeks I might have even enjoyed it the mastercase 5 by coolermaster gives you the freedom to truly make your mid-tower pc case your own with a variety of modular parts and accessories check out the link in the video description to learn more so let's start with a physical tour of the Galaxy Note 5 at the back is a camera the flash and sexy leather finished vinyl skin courtesy of dbrand who provided our phone on the sides are the almost perfect lock button on the right and volume rockers on the left they've got great tactile feedback and are easy to feel for when you're not looking but I wish the lock button was just a touch lower so that I wouldn't accidentally mash the volume down while pressing it on the bottom is the headphone jack the hopefully not long for this world microbead charging port the retractable s-pen housing and a speaker that makes up for its poor positioning by being surprisingly loud without Distortion a definite calling card of the note series and then finally at the front is the stunner of a 5.7 inch 1440p AMOLED display with shockingly thin bezels a 5-megapixel selfie camera a satisfyingly tactile physical home button and a couple of difficult to avoid in landscape capacitive buttons for back navigation and multitasking something that I found myself wishing I could turn off in favor of on-screen buttons like with the oneplus 2 during the frequent times that I was watching videos on this device thanks to how gorgeous the screen is and yet the physical tour somehow doesn't tell the whole story of the note 5 somehow and I don't know how they did it but I'm not the only one who noticed the note 5 is big but it doesn't feel as ungainly and difficult to hold as other phablet class devices that I've played with in the past like the one Mac's iPhone six-plus and previous notes and there's more that's different about it as well while Samsung used to use the bulky size of the note series to cram every feature under the Sun and their fastest Hardware into what we argued at the time wasn't even really a phone anymore they've back pedaled on that a fair bit this time I mean sure almost everything the s6 can do the note 5 can do better it lacks a 128 gig model but it's got the same Exynos 7420 octa-core CPU and GPU a hefty bump up from three gigs to four gigs of low-power ddr4 Ram surely to assist with those uh TouchWiz multi window and split screen features that only really makes sense on a large screen device like this the accordion Gorilla Glass 4 topped display I know I already said this but it merits another mention is absolutely fantastic with pitch blacks vibrant whites and thanks to its a barely existent bezels a kind of like window into another place look to it and it's got all the usual tech specs NFC looking at u1 plus AC wireless quick charging both on a wire and wirelessly on the note and a fingerprint sensor on the home button whose speed and accuracy I didn't properly appreciate until I spent a couple of weeks with the ZTE axon along with of course an absolutely kick-ass 16 megapixels still 4k video rear camera whose lightning-fast launch times great low-light performance and generally amazing usability have contributed to a lot of captured moments of my kids that wouldn't have happened before I upgraded my wife to the s6 active which features the same camera but is that good enough well I guess there's also the s-pen now you click it and it Turtles out kind of like Luke's lightsaber and that scene on Jabba's Sail Barge then you unsheath it so you can unleash your ideas goals and dreams or some like that actually it's nothing to do with dreams it's just a stylus a pretty good and thankfully battery free passive stylus but still just a stylus it's low latency but not latency free it's not particularly ergonomic and while the palm rejection really is very excellent and the software does offer some handy features being able to press the button on the stylus to load up useful cloud syncing apps like OneNote or quickly scribble on a screen capture stood out to me I just didn't find myself using it much to jot down quick notes about like eggs I need to buy or whatever I mean maybe if I didn't type as quickly as I do on a touchscreen or if I needed to add little doodles in any of the seemingly infinite number of ink colors thicknesses and pen tips each with their own distinctive simulated writing sound it might make more sense for me but personally the benefit of quickly launching a note-taking app is quickly outweighed by the relative slowness of writing with a pen compared to typing but if you're like me and you don't care about the stylus never fear just put it into the phone backwards and you'll never be able to get it out again or you could just ignore it whatever is better for you now we're almost at the conclusion but I do have a couple of more notes TouchWiz adds a triple tap on the home button to get a smaller version that's easier to reach with one hand that's a winner for me the smart lock with trusted Bluetooth devices still sucks so much ass that it'll turn your teeth Brown I was using fingerprint authentication and when I'm in range of a trusted device sometimes and I can't quite find the pattern I actually have to press on lock slide the screen and finally I still have to use my fingerprint to unlock the freaking thing this is something that works just fine on other phones there's more good news though the battery life is surprisingly good considering the anemic 3000 milliamp hour battery and yeah I don't know yes okay we can get on with the conclusion it's like it's kind of an S series but bigger and ever so slightly better with a pen and maybe that's my issue here since when is the note series supposed to be the S series with a couple of my mute improvements and a bigger screen in the past it really had its own identity as a as a power user phone or productivity phone and while the stylus or s-pen remains gone is the removable battery that allowed creative users to stuff multi-day battery packs under modified rear housings gone is the expandable storage that allowed this user to equip his Note 2 with 288 gigs of storage back in 2013 and what do we get in return exactly Samsung well for me personally I guess I got a device that is ergonomically usable as opposed to one that feels completely derp tastic it's astounding how much of a difference a couple fractions of a millimeter make although I think Apple is taking it one step too far with their modified three-and-a-half millimeter Jack patents but I just don't know if that's going to appease the power users who have been using phablet since before it was cool in typical Samsung fashion they built an entire product category off of these folks and now that it's gone mainstream they've just left them hanging I mean they're still going to sell a metric wack ton of these anyway since and I understand this for most people a device that requires a plastic doodad like a fly grip just to hold it has zero appeal but this is still in my mind the kind of short-term thinking that is exactly what keeps Samsung focused on selling widgets to their customers rather than building relationships with their customers through long-term support and understanding and meeting their needs the way that someone like Apple does a point that was driven home by Apple's recent announcement that the iPad 2 a device from 2011 can now be updated to iOS 9 the same cannot be said about my Galaxy Tab 10.1 that I purchased a full year later and has barely any updates at all okay so putting all that aside when viewed in a vacuum is the note 5 a success yeah it is it's a beautiful masterpiece of a device but I just had to get that last bit out of my system four previous note users and anyone else who has an old Samsung device still running some antiquated version of Android and doesn't feel like Samsung puts enough effort into the long term support of these gadgets that we drop what in the case of this one is an awful lot of money on speaking of spending an awful lot of money on your gadgets why not drop an extra couple bucks over at D brand.com slash Linus Note 5 and get a vinyl skin that'll protect it from incidental scratches while it's in your pocket or sliding across the table because you're Canadian and you're doing you know phablet curling or whatever the case may be they've got a wide variety of different styles all precision cut to look and feel gorgeous on your device I mean we're talking they got leather finishes wood finishes carbon fiber finishes pretty much any color Under the Sun and it's not limited to just phones they've actually got skins for anything from phones to game controllers to game consoles to even selected notebooks so check it out that's debrand comm slash Linus note 5 which is also linked in the video description and a huge shout out thanks to G brand for hooking us up with the note 5 and sponsoring this episode so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know where that button is but if it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon buying a cool t-shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through our community forum and now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button in the top right corner to check out this awesome video I personally think it's awesome with a little biased where I build a wicked gaming rig with my three-year-old son he had a lot of