I have had my Note 5 for about a week now. I have never had a Note before, my previous phones were (Samsung 5, Samsung 3 and iPhone 3). My wife has an iPhone 6 she got the same time as me and her battery life is no better than her iPhone 5 and I am going to have to get her a Mophie (she is a heavy user obviously).
With that said, I also will need to get one for my Note. I was hoping not as a friend of mine has a Note 3 and his works all day just fine.
The first day it was great, I was like this is awesome! But once I loaded everything on it and began using it productively it dropped fast. Now, it is much better than my S5. My S5 WITH Mophie would barely make it to bed time, without it I would get to about 3pm before it was dead if I didn't charge it.
The Note 5 with heavy usage gets me through the day usually, but last night for example it hit the 15% mark at around 7pm. I did notice when it set up my email (using auto setup) it was checking the pop account way too much (was 40% of battery usage) when I changed it to imap 2 days ago and every 15 minutes that helped a lot.
So, yes it is a huge improvement over the S5, but I was hoping that it would last much longer, because at this rate, either I have to lower my usage, darken the screen to where it's almost annoying or get a Mophie within the next 6 months. I know it will only get worse.
So, for my first experience having a Note? It's ok, not sure I would get another one, but then again I need to give it a bit more than a weeks time. In fairness, my wife's iPhone 6 didn't make me feel any better.