The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra’s giant size will be divisive but beyond that this is a super-powerful, if super-expensive, tablet that’s great for work or play. Its S Pen, powerful chipset and good-looking screen all make it incredibly useful. You’ll need to buy a case for it, though, because it feels a little fragile. And their screen is very expensive in the market so handle with care.
With the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, we can see that someone at Samsung has watched Spinal Tap because the company has really taken the popular line
In the constant game of one-up-manship between Samsung and Apple, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro has owned the title of ‘biggest tablet’ for quite some years now, but the Tab S8 Ultra shows Samsung turning its own slate size up to 11 (metaphorically, not literally), with its giant 14.6-inch display.
This is a huge tablet, there’s no way around that fact, and depending on your gadget preferences that’s either a major selling point or an insurmountable issue that’ll put you off. We haven’t seen a tablet that big before; even laptops don’t always hit that size. This is a leviathan.
There are certainly reasons why you might like a slate as gigantic as this. The massive amount of screen tablet is great for note-taking and sketching with the included S Pen stylus, as well as viewing multiple documents at once or one large sheet or timeline. Plus, it’s great as a portable screen for playing games or watching movies.
However, the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra is large and unwieldy to carry around, and it feels pretty fragile thanks to its size. The magnetic S Pen strip is in a silly location – Android simply isn’t iPadOS when it comes to functionality – so you’ll probably need to buy a case to protect it. And of course, a chunky display means a chunky price tag.
On the plus side, lots of the key selling points of the Galaxy phones are shared between them: they’re super powerful thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset; they come with a useful S Pen stylus, which makes sketching and note-taking convenient; they use good-looking AMOLED screens; and there’s 5G connectivity available.
So there are plenty of reasons to opt for the tablet, especially if you want one of the best Android tablets and money is no object. (If money is an issue we’d look to another Tab S8 or a slate from Lenovo or Amazon.).