Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Pro Reviews

The Galaxy Note 7 took Samsung's best phone to date, the S7 Edge, stretched it to a 5.7-inch curved display and added an S Pen stylus. It has the same top-of-the-line camera and specs, but was meant for big hands with equally big wallets. Unfortunately, two recalls lead to its ultimate cancellation.

Honestly, the only thing that matters to me on phones anymore is the screen and camera quality. The Note 7 is among the best in both categories right now, and that’s the real reason the phone is so fun to play with. The Note 7's screen and the camera alone would be enough to lure me away from my Nexus 6P today. The stylus is a completely unnecessary addition, but if you spend a lot of time on you phone, it’s fun to use outside of the work setting. In short, the Note 7 is the best phone Samsung makes, and for a lot of people, the it’s the best Android phone you can buy.

The Galaxy Note 7 is the ultimate productivity machine that fits in your pocket.

The Galaxy Note 7 is the best no-compromise, big-screen phone you can buy if price is no object. All but the most devoted stylus lovers, however, will do just as well with the cheaper S7 models.

Samsung says the Note 7 is for the overachievers and the multitaskers of the world, for people who want to do more, while on the go. And while that’s true to some extent, I don’t necessarily fully agree. More often than not, the Note 7’s own features stand in the way of efficiency. With so much going on all at the same time, the Note 7’s sheer ambition can quickly feel overwhelming. If you tend to thrive in chaos, and don’t mind tackling several tasks at once, this may be just the right smartphone for you. After all, it has most of the essentials right, and it’s extremely powerful and flexible. If you're regularly going as far as to edit spreadsheets, or draw, or watch full-length movies, or have two apps open side-by-side – the Note 7 is, without a doubt, a great choice.

Right off the bat, if we compare the Note 7 to a 64GB iPhone 6s Plus, their prices are about the same (though you do have the option for a 16 GB 6s Plus at $100 less). However, with the latter scheduled for an the update come September, its price will likely drop by $100 very soon. Overall, however, things are quite complicted. Design-wise, the Note 7 has more sensible dimensions and better one-handed experience. Both come off as exquisite, though the 6s Plus appers to be more considered, with cleaner lines and more symmetric look all-around. On the display front, if you're fortunate enough to get a Note 7 unit with a well-balanced display (we assume this means most units in the US, but we can't be fully certain), then things would be pretty much on par (provided you're using the Basic screen mode on the Note). In case you're not so lucky, however, and get a Note 7 with a display that is way off (such as one of the two Note 7 units we got; probably most international ones), then the iPhone 6s Plus will consistently deliver the better viewing experience.

Samsung's always seemed a little confused about what options it wanted to offers shoppers in the phablet space: how large a handset, with or without a curved-edge display, and with or without the Note's S Pen stylus. It remains to be seen if we'll get anything like a Galaxy S7 edge+ (don't hold your breath), but at least with this year's lineup Samsung's simplifying the question: do you want smaller and touch-only, or slightly bigger and the stylus?

There are so many things the Note 7 does better than the Note 5, or offers features wholly missing on last year's model, that it's difficult to point to one main selling point for the new Note. Maybe the biggest downside – and this is a huge matter of personal preference – is the lack of a flat-screen Note 7. We're sure that a fair number of established Note fans will be mourning the loss of their familiar display geometry, but there's just so much else the new Note does well that it's hard to imagine the majority of them holding a grudge for long; they'll poke around at the new Edge UX interface, learn to appreciate the phone's smooth curves, and likely begrudgingly admit that Samsung didn't ruin anything with this change.