The $1,299 Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is a phone that does a lot, and its huge 6.9-inch screen has a lot of power. So how long will it hold a charge? According to our tests, the Note 20 Ultra's durability is very good, but not as great as we expected.

The Note 20 Ultra has a 4,500 mAh battery, which is not as large as the 5,000 mAh battery in the even more premium $1,399 Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra. As such, we did not expect it to last as long as this model. However, the Note 20 Ultra fell behind the OnePlus 8 Pro, which has a slightly larger battery and is priced $400 less.

We ran our Tom's Guide battery test on the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. For this test, we used a cell phone (in this case 5G) and continued surfing the web at a screen brightness of 150 nits. For consistency, we tried to use T-Mobile's 5G network whenever possible.

The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra lasted a solid 10 hours and 26 minutes. This is a good runtime, but all of the devices on our Best Smartphone Battery Duration list last 11 hours or more.

The Note 20 Ultra's battery life was 2.5 hours shorter when in 120Hz display mode. This is similar to what we have seen on other phones with 120Hz displays; the Note 20 Ultra has a dynamic display that allows the refresh rate to go up or down depending on the content, but surfing the web is a particularly demanding activity. In addition, many sites now autoplay videos.

By comparison, the OnePlus 8 Pro lasted 11 hours and 5 minutes in 60Hz mode and 9 minutes and 2 seconds in 120Hz mode. And this is due to its 4,510 mAh battery, which is slightly larger than the one in the Note 20 Ultra.

The Galaxy S20 Plus was comparable to the Note 20 Ultra, which is not surprising considering it has a 4,500 mAh battery of the same size; the S20 Plus lasted 10 minutes 31 seconds at 60Hz, but at 120Hz it was significantly better at 8 minutes 55 seconds. The S20 Plus was 10 minutes 31 seconds at 60 Hz, but 8 minutes 55 seconds at 120 Hz.

The Galaxy S20 Ultra, with its 5,000 mAh battery, surprisingly lasted much longer at 11 hours 58 minutes, dropping to 9 hours 13 minutes in 120 Hz mode.

The iPhone 11 Pro Max battery was smaller and lasted longer, 11 hours 54 minutes. but according to the latest leaked information, that may not happen.

Last year's Galaxy Note 10 Plus lasted 10 hours 47 minutes with a 60Hz display, which is slightly better than the Note 20 Ultra.

Anecdotally, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra should be able to get through a full day of use with room to spare, depending on how heavily used it is.

I unplugged the Note 20 Ultra around 9 a.m. and tested it over the course of a day, watching "Umbrella Academy" on Netflix for over an hour, streaming Spotify for 1.5 hours with the screen on, and playing "Fortnite" for about 40 minutes. He also used Twitter for nearly an hour, surfed the web, checked email, and took pictures.

At the end of the day, at 9pm, I still had about 27% juice left. Not bad.

In short, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra delivers fairly strong battery life, but it's simply not as good as longer-lasting phones.