Samsung Galaxy Note 9 with 512GB of storage costs $1,249.99: What else could I buy for that?
Think Apple's iPhone X is expensive? Samsung's new Galaxy Note 9 pushes the envelope to new heights. The Note 9 with 512GB of storage will set you back $1,249.99. That's $100 more than the higher-end iPhone X, but it comes with twice the storage capacity and a whopping 8GB of RAM.
Also: Samsung Galaxy Note 9: 1TB of smartphone storage now a reality (at a price)
Samsung Unpacked
Compared to the 256GB iPhone X, and based on the tech specs, the Note 9 might be the cheapest super-priced smartphone money can buy.
But $1,249.99 is an eye-watering price tag, and that's money that will buy you a lot of gear.
It buys you a MacBook, with either 128GB or 256GB of storage, with a few hundred dollars left over.
For $1,149 you can get a 12.9-inch iPad Pro with 512GB of storage, but if you want the cellular option, that takes the price up to $1,279.
Outside of the Apple laptop ecosystem, things get a lot cheaper. For example, a 15.6-inch Dell Latitude 3590 with 500GB of storage and 4GB of RAM is only $450.
You could buy two of those for the same money as a 512GB Note 9, and have a few hundred dollars left over.
Sure, but you'll probably point out that the Dell contains a hard drive, but even systems with 512GB SSDs are pretty reasonable. Take the 15.6-inch ASUS Vivobook N580VD-DB74T. There you get an 7th-gen Core i7 chip, GTX 1050 4GB discrete graphics, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD for $1,199.
Having a smartphone with 512GB of storage is no doubt cool, but compared to easily-accessible cloud storage, you're paying a massive premium for that pocketable storage.
Compare the cost to cloud storage costs.
Also: How to use the updated S Pen with Bluetooth in Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 TechRepublic
1TB of Google Cloud storage costs $9.99, while you can get twice that amount from Apple in iCloud storage for the same price, while a whopping 10TB of Google Cloud storage costs $99.99 a month.
But then you can get a 2TB WD Elements external hard drive for only $65. You could buy a lot of those for the price of a 512GB Note 9.
No doubt, you're definitely paying a premium for the privilege of having a smartphone with 512GB of storage. But having all their data on a device under their control, that can be slipped into a pocket or bag, will no doubt be worth the premium for some, especially business users and content creators.
The question is, how many people will pay the premium?
Galaxy Note 9 event: First look at Samsung's new phone, Galaxy Watch, and Galaxy Home
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