 It was just about a year ago that I sat here and told you that the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was the best take on a big smartphone ever made. Now we all know what happened to the Note 7 and it wasn't good, it basically caught on fire and had to be pulled from the market. But because of that Samsung changed the way it makes batteries so we shouldn't have to worry about that problem anymore. And now we're here to talk about the new Samsung Galaxy Note 8 which Samsung again hopes is the best big phone ever made. You probably already know what a Note is and the Note 8 has got it all. It's got a giant screen that stretches almost to the very edges of the phone's frame. It's got Qualcomm's fastest processor, lots of RAM, a big battery with both fast wired and wireless charging. And it's also Samsung's first phone with a dual camera system that lets you do interesting portrait effects that let you blur the background like an iPhone can do. And of course because it's a Note it comes with a stylus which has also gained a few new tricks. Now you're probably thinking to yourself, that sounds great, this sounds like a monster phone. And you know what, you're right, there's actually very little to complain about with the Note 8 aside from perhaps it's starting price of $930. But unlike the Note 7 last year which was head and shoulders above everything else before its fall from grace, the Note 8 isn't actually that much different than Samsung's other really good big phone, the Galaxy S8 Plus. Still there's a couple of reasons why you might want to pony up a couple extra hundred dollars for a Note 8 instead of a Galaxy S8 Plus, so let's dive in. This is Samsung's biggest premium phone and it comes with a massive 6.3 inch display. Just like the S8 and the S8 Plus, it's what Samsung calls an infinity display, so the screen stretches almost to the very edges of the phone's frame with just a little bit of bezel above and below. The screen is everything you expect from a Samsung, it's bright and punchy and great to look at and the sheer size of it just sucks you in when you're watching a video. The Note 8's build quality is also just what you'd expect from a high-end Samsung phone. It's metal and glass with a premium fit and finish just like the S8. And also just like the S8, it's IP68 water resistant so you can get it wet without having to worry about it. Now the Note 8 does have a slightly different shape, it's more square than the rounded off corners of the S8 or S8 Plus which makes it easier to use the S Pen with. But it also makes the Note 8 feel a lot bigger than the S8 Plus even though the two are almost the same size. Just like all the Note phones before it, the Note 8 makes no apologies for being a big phone. And if you want to compare it to the iPhone 7 Plus, it's a little bit taller, a little bit narrower, but has a way bigger screen. The Note 8's big size also makes it even harder to hit the fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone which is still super clumsy to use. Now I've been using an S8 Plus for a couple of months and I've gotten used to the fingerprint scanner's placement, but you can basically get used to anything. It would be a lot easier for everyone if Samsung would just put the scanner below the camera like every other phone does. And of course there's a dedicated button to launch Samsung's Bixby voice assistant. And of course it can't be reprogrammed to do something more useful because Samsung has committed itself to blocking all of the apps that come out to do so. Now inside the Note 8 has Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 processor and 6 gigabytes of RAM. This is the same processor that's found in the S8 but with 2 gigabytes more RAM. In all honesty, I haven't seen a noticeable performance difference between the two. Both are fast and smooth and really performance isn't an issue here. Likewise the Note 8's 3300 milliamp hour battery is big enough to last most people through a full day without having to recharge. In practical terms it gets me about the same battery life as I experienced with the S8 Plus despite its slightly smaller capacity. You've probably picked up on a theme here. There's not a whole lot different between the Note 8 and the S8 Plus. So let's talk about those two things that are different. The first is the Note's signature feature, the S Pen stylus. The Note 8 is basically the only phone on the market that you can buy that comes with a stylus and it lets you take notes, markup screenshots, doodle or just navigate the software with a finer point than your finger. Note diehards love this thing and according to Samsung the stylus is the main reason that Note buyers stick with the phone. The Galaxy Note 8 has gained a couple of new features. It's got a finer point and a little bit more pressure sensitivity than the stylus that shipped with the Note 5 two years ago. Samsung has also improved the note taking software and you can now take longer notes on the phone screen without even unlocking it which is pretty cool. But my favorite new feature is live messages which lets you draw pictures or write messages and convert them to animated GIFs which you can send to people or post to social networks. It's kind of like the iMessage handwritten note feature except you can post them anywhere that supports a GIF. The other big difference with the Note 8 is its new dual camera system. It has two 12 megapixel cameras both with optical image stabilization. This lets you zoom in closer on your subject or more interestingly take pictures with a blurred background like you can do with a DSLR mirrorless camera. The portrait mode is a lot like the iPhone 7 Pluses. Outdoors in good light it can produce some interesting effects but indoors or in poor lighting it looks pretty bad. And it never quite fooled me into thinking the picture was taken with a bigger camera. It kind of has this cardboard cutout effect and it messes up things like fine detail and hair which is pretty important for a portrait. It's basically not any worse nor any better than the iPhone 7 Plus's portrait mode. Both of these feel like first generation attempts at something and there's a lot of headroom for improvement in later iterations. The one thing that Samsung is doing differently is allowing you to adjust the blur before or after you take the picture. So if the blur effect is too strong you can roll it back a little bit. I found the best results were when I had the blur effect dialed just a tad back from its maximum. And since there are two cameras you can actually take both the wide angle and telephoto images at the same time. So if the portrait quality sucks you can always fall back to the wide angle camera which has a much higher quality sensor and a better lens. I feel like this is a little bit of a safety net but honestly I'm glad it's there. Otherwise the wide angle camera is exactly the same as the one you get on the S8. It's fast focusing, has a wide aperture, and takes really lovely photos. It's one of the best cameras you can get on a phone this year. There was once a point in time where if you wanted a big phone the Note was the obvious king of the hill. It had the biggest screen and the best specs and it didn't really matter if its price was a little bit higher than other phones. But now there's a lot of really great big phones on the market including ones made by Samsung itself that offer a lot of the same experience of the Note at a lower price. So it really comes down to two things if you want the Note. Do you care about the camera and do you care about the S Pen stylus? Since I feel like the camera could still use work to truly be great it basically comes down to this little piece of plastic and how much value you get out of it. If you're an S Pen die hard, go for it. You're going to love the Note 8. But the rest of us will probably be just as happy with any of the other big flagship phones.