 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 Master Case 5 by Cooler Master 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 a sexy leather finish 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 micro-B 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 and 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 Max, iPhone 6 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 backpedaled 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 128GB model, but it's got the same Exynos 7420 octa-core CPU and GPU, a hefty bump up from 3GB to 4GB of low-power DDR4 RAM, surely to assist with those touchwiz multi-window and split-screen features that only really make sense on a large screen device like this. The Corning 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 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 you, OnePlus, AEC 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 16MP 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. You click it and it turtles out, kind of like Luke's lightsaber in that scene on Jabba's sail barge, then you unsheath it so you can unleash your ideas, goals, and dreams, or some s*** 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-sinking 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 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 unlock, 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 mAh battery. And, yeah, I don't know, I guess, 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 minute improvements and a bigger screen? In the past, it really had its own identity as a power user phone or a 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 derptastic. 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 3.5mm jack patents. But I just don't know if that's going to appease the power users who have been using phablets 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 whackton of these anyway, since, and I understand this, for most people, a device that requires a plastic doodad like a flygrip 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 received barely any updates at all. Okay, so putting all of 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 for 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, you should not drop an extra couple bucks over at dbrand.com slash LinusNote5 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, fablet 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 dbrand.com slash LinusNote5, which is also linked in the video description. And a huge shout out thanks to dbrand 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. I'm a little biased where I build a wicked gaming rig with my three-year-old son. We had a lot of fun.