Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra review

Samsung shook up its tablet lineup in a big way with last year’s Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, which brought a new high-end option to the mix for folks who wanted a gargantuan 14.6-inch screen for smooth multitasking and immersive entertainment. This year’s S9 Ultra simply refines on that foundation, augmenting Samsung’s plus-sized slate with perks like a faster processor, a splash-proof design and a screen that can better adapt to your surroundings.

This all combines for one of the most impressive premium Android tablets we’ve ever used, especially when it comes to display and battery life. However, between its high price tag — and the fact that Android apps still struggle on the big screen — the Tab S9 Ultra comes hard to recommend for most people.

Are you one of the exceptions? Here’s what I think after several days of using the Tab S9 Ultra for work, play and even writing this very review.

One thing I’m glad Samsung didn’t change much for 2023 is the S9 Ultra’s overall design — this is one of the biggest tablets ever, but it doesn’t feel that way. The slate’s airy 1.6-pound frame made it comfy to hold on the couch, and thanks to its slim 5.5-millimeter edges, you shouldn’t have much trouble sliding it into most backpacks.

Speaking of being on the go, the Tab S9 Ultra (along with the S9 and S9 Plus) is the first Galaxy tablet to earn an IP68 rating, meaning it should have no problem withstanding any specs of dust or splashes of water you may encounter when “working” by the pool. One of my biggest criticisms of last year’s model is that the Ultra only came in plain ol’ Graphite black — something that Samsung addressed directly with a new Beige option that’s been a delight to have on my desk. High-end and “pro” devices should still come in cool colors!

There aren’t many tablets with a massive 14.6-inch display, let alone one that looks and feels as good as what you’ll find on the S9 Ultra. Samsung’s rich AMOLED screen was a joy to use for work and play alike, thanks to deep blacks that made text easy to read and bold colors that allowed everything from the colorful gear of WWE superstars to the exotic paint jobs of Asphalt 9’s cars to really pop off the screen.

Samsung tablets have had 120Hz displays for a while now — which means twice the smoothness of many older and cheaper tablets — but I was still struck by how fluid everything looked and felt as I swiped through websites or engaged in high-speed street races. This year’s Galaxy Tabs are the first to get Samsung’s Vision Booster tech, which is built to optimize screen brightness based on your surroundings (particularly when you’re outside). I had a perfectly fine time using the Tab S9 Ultra on my balcony, though there was still a noticeable amount of glare to dark scenes both indoors and out.

It’s worth noting that while I tested the Ultra model, it’s the standard S9 that got the biggest display upgrade for this year. The entry-level member of Samsung’s tablet family finally made the jump to AMOLED, meaning you won’t have to spring for a Plus or Ultra model if you want to enjoy the same great screen experience I’ve outlined above.

Good speakers, sharp webcam and lots of Samsung perks

Samsung says the speakers on this year’s S9 Ultra are 20% larger than last year’s model, and I found them to be reliably loud and clear for most activities. They’re still too tinny for serious music listening — you’re better off with headphones or a bluetooth speaker for that — but they were crisp enough to pump out every bone-crunching detail during an especially visceral fight scene in The Boys.

The Ultra’s dual 12-megapixel webcam (up from just one camera on the smaller Tabs)  took impressively sharp selfies in my testing, and I’d feel perfectly confident using this thing to hop on most video calls. The rear cameras on the back — a 12-megapixel main sensor and an 8-megapixel ultrawide lens — took photos that were decently colorful and detailed, though I’m not sure who’s going to take a 14-inch tablet out in the wild to take pictures.

As with the iPad and iPhone or the Pixel Tablet and a Pixel phone, you’ll get the most out of the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra if you already use lots of Samsung devices. The tablet can sync up to your Galaxy phone for perks like Quick Share for (instantly beaming files from your phone to tablet) or Multi-Control for using your tablet as a second screen for your Galaxy Book laptop. Perhaps more significantly, the Tab S9 Ultra can also double as an external monitor for your Windows PC, much like how Apple’s Sidecar feature lets you use the iPad as an extension of your Mac.

Samsung’s Galaxy tablets continue to ship with an S Pen in the box, which gives them a big advantage over the iPads and Surfaces that still require you to shell out extra if you need a stylus for sketching. The S9 Ultra’s included S Pen was reliable for jotting down to-do lists and making bad doodles, and responded well to the various levels of pressure I applied whenever I wanted to go thinner or bolder.

The stylus also enables a wealth of handy and easy-to-use features, such as the ability to translate text by simply hovering over it with a pen or using the S Pen button as a remote control when snapping selfies on the camera. The S Pen continues to attach securely and magnetically to the back of the tablet for storage and charging, the latter of which is now bidirectional — meaning your pen will juice up no matter how you place it on the rear charging pad.

I did find myself missing the detailed haptic feedback of Microsoft’s Surface Slim Pen 2, which does a better job imitating the feel of actual pencils, pens and brushes. But considering that Microsoft’s stylus retails for $130 — as does the second-gen Apple Pencil — it’s hard to argue with free.

Great performance and superb battery life

Powered by the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor found in all of Samsung’s 2023 phones, the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra provides reliably zippy performance for just about anything you’d typically do on a tablet — and a few things you might not. I used Samsung’s slate as my main work machine for hours on end, and never ran into any crashes or moments of slowdown as I juggled apps like Slack, Outlook, Google Docs and tons of Chrome tabs at once while using the desktop-like DeX mode. The visually rich racing action of Asphalt 9 ran without a hitch even with the graphics set to their highest, and I had no issues watching a Twitch stream in picture-in-picture mode while simultaneously scrolling through a recipe I’d pulled up for dinner.

This zippy everyday speed was backed up by our benchmark tests, which tell the story of a tablet that’s one of the fastest around — but not the fastest out there. On Geekbench 6, which gauges general performance, the S9 Ultra beat out the Google Pixel Tablet and its Google Tensor G2 processor by a significant margin. Granted, the Pixel Tablet is more than half the price of the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, but you’ll still enjoy this superior speed if you opt for the starting $800 Tab S9.

We don’t have a perfect apples-to-apples comparison (no pun intended) with the latest iPad Pro, which was tested on the older Geekbench 5 benchmark. But accounting for the fact that Geekbench 6 scores skew higher than that of the old test, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and its Apple M2 processor still won out by a significant amount — there’s just nothing as fast as Apple’s own chips in this price arena.

Fortunately, the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra isn’t just fast — it’s also one of the longest-lasting tablets we’ve ever tested. Samsung’s plus-sized slate survived for just over 12 hours of nonstop 4K video playback on our battery test, clocking nearly the highest runtime we’ve gotten for a tablet (funny enough, it fell only to the much older Tab S6 Lite’s 13-plus hours). In terms of typical on-and-off use — which for me, included long hours of working in DeX mode and a fair amount of video streaming — the Tab S9 Ultra was able to get through more than an entire day before I even had to think about pulling the charger out.

One of the most appealing and unique features of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab devices is DeX mode, which gives your tablet a Windows-like interface that makes it especially easy to multitask between multiple apps. When you fire up DeX mode with a keyboard attached, using the Tab S9 Ultra can feel a lot like using a traditional laptop — if a laptop came with poorly-optimized Android apps, that is.

As I experienced on last year’s model, DeX mode does a remarkably good job of mimicking the look and feel of a Windows 11 computer. You’ve got your customizable taskbar at the bottom for quickly opening your go-to apps, easy access to the time and calendar on the bottom right, and most crucially, the ability to easily resize and rearrange multiple app windows — something that came in handy for, say, writing in Google Docs on one half of the screen and keeping tabs on my Slack chats on the other. Once I paired my Magic Keyboard and Logitech Lift mouse and propped the Tab up on a stand, I had a speedy little workstation that took up minimal desk space. If only this desktop-like interface had desktop-quality apps to match.

As well as DeX mode works in concept, you’re still using what are essentially mobile Android apps blown up on a big screen. This leads to a “desktop” experience that’s awkward and frustrating at best, and borderline unusable at worst. I wrote this entire review on the Tab S9 Ultra using the Google Docs app, which worked fine — until I realized that none of my usual keyboard shortcuts worked as they would on a computer and resulted in me accidentally opening apps and menus that just got in the way of what I was doing. Chat apps like Discord and Slack were far more limited than their desktop counterparts, browsing Google Chrome results in awkwardly narrow pages that were clearly made for mobile, and when I visit Reddit and Twitter, I’m prompted to download their respective mobile apps. Not exactly desktop-grade.

Was I still able to get most of my day-to-day work done on the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra? Yes. Did I have a good time doing so? Not often. This seems like more of an Android problem than a Samsung one, and I really do admire what DeX is capable of. The iPad Pro has its own quirks — particularly when it comes to its inferior multitasking capabilities — but I had a better time using Apple’s tablet as a laptop replacement simply because the apps felt better optimized. Plus, if you want a Windows-like experience on a tablet, you can just get a Windows tablet like the Surface Pro 9. Here’s hoping Google can catch up, because there’s plenty of potential here.

It’s hard to fault Samsung for sticking to what works, but if you’re an existing Galaxy Tab owner eager to upgrade — particularly from a Tab S7 or S8 range — the Tab S9 family is a pretty iterative improvement. The aforementioned performance, display and audio upgrades are nice, but if you just picked up last year’s Tab S8 Ultra, you’re not missing out on much this time around.

In fact, the most notable thing that did change is the price — and not in a good way. The Tab S9 Ultra starts at a pricey $1,200, which is a $100 increase over last year’s model. The included S Pen is nice, but if you want that full laptop-like experience, you’ll be paying an extra $350 for Samsung’s Book Cover Keyboard (though you can get this add-on for 50% off for a limited time if you bundle them together).

Even the 12.9-inch iPad Pro starts at a cheaper $1,099, though its price is roughly on par with that of the Tab S9 once you throw an Apple Pencil in — and Apple’s Magic Keyboard is just as expensive as Samsung’s counterpart. If you’re cool with Windows, the Surface Pro 9 is arguably the best value of the bunch, with a starting price of $1,000 that jumps up to $1,280 when you throw in a Signature Book Cover with Slim Pen 2. That’s only $80 more than the Tab S9 Ultra, and gets you a full keyboard cover and a better stylus (not to mention a much better desktop experience).

If you’re specifically looking for a giant, powerful Android tablet with great battery life, a gorgeous screen and an included stylus — and especially if you’re already a big Samsung user — the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra fills that niche exceptionally well. It’s a delight to use for streaming movies, playing Android games and doing some digital drawing, and while it won’t replace your laptop anytime soon, it becomes a solid secondary work device once you connect a keyboard.

However, $1,200 is a steep investment, and there are plenty of good alternatives at every price range. If you just want a great Android tablet for casual use, the smaller Galaxy Tab S9 has most of the same perks — including an AMOLED display and a fast Snapdragon processor — for a cheaper $800. If you’re deep in the Apple ecosystem, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is a better laptop replacement (and our best tablet pick for power users) due to its stronger software support, while the Surface Pro 9 can transform into a full-on Windows laptop with a keyboard attached. But if you’re set on Samsung — and just really want to splurge on the biggest tablet available — there’s plenty to like about the Tab S9 Ultra.