Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra review: this colossal creator is my ultimate Android tablet

Introduction

Android fans may not be spoiled for choice when it comes to top-tier tablets, but that doesn’t mean Samsung has been resting on its laurels. The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra is the Google-powered alternative to an iPad Pro, with a bigger screen and the sort of performance that’ll leave similarly sized laptops in the dust. It doesn’t do anything in half measures, with a simply humungous 14.6in display – but that was true of last year’s model.

This latest version shakes things up with the same anti-reflective screen wizardry as the Galaxy S24 Ultra smartphone, a double-helping of Galaxy AI-infused apps, and a MediaTek CPU – the first time Samsung has gone with Dimensity power rather than a Qualcomm chip or one of its in-house Exynos efforts.

It’s not short on power, then – but that performance comes at a price. The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra arrives at a considerable £1299, and climbs north of £1700 if you opt for the 5G-enabled headliner with 1TB of storage. And that’s before you buy the optional keyboard cover. But after a week spent glued to its gorgeous AMOLED screen, I can’t help but love how OTT it is.

Design & build: great slate

The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra does a convincing impression of its predecessor. It’s a little lighter, and a little slimmer, but you’d have to be paying very close attention to tell it apart from the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra. Both are simply giant slabs of glass and aluminium, here in your choice of Moonstone Gray or Platinum Silver colours.

Its still so heavy I wouldn’t really want to use it one-handed, even for reading, and still slimmer than virtually any smartphone at a mere 5.4mm. It doesn’t feel remotely flimsy, though, and IP68 resistance means it’ll survive a proper dunking – should you have a big enough sink or toilet bowl to drop it in. As before, the included S Pen’s party trick is underwater writing, though I can’t think when I’d actually need to do that. I wasn’t tempted to knock out some notes from the hotel pool on a recent trip, though you might feel otherwise.

The stylus magnetically docks and charges at the rear, next to the twin camera lenses. That Samsung includes one in the box is very welcome indeed, compared to the extra amount Apple demands for an Apple Pencil.

Pogo pins at the bottom edge of the tablet play nicely with Samsung’s official Book Cover Keyboard, available in versions with or without a trackpad; the former will set you back a wince-inducing £339, though one is included with the tablet if you buy before the end of 2024. It doesn’t float with the same grace as Apple’s official iPad Magic Keyboard, and I don’t think it’s quite as nice to type on, either. There’s a decent amount of key travel and the keys are all full size, but there was a hollowness to my typing that I wasn’t expecting given the price.

The under-display fingerprint sensor was just as speedy as the Tab S9 Ultra’s unit. On a device this big I prefer to use facial recognition, which the Tab S10 Ultra does perfectly well – though only for skipping the lock screen. It can’t log you into banking apps.

Screen & sound: super size me

Samsung might not have Apple beaten on panel tech now the latest iPad Pro has switched to OLED, but the Galaxy Tab Ultra still wins on sheer size. At 14.6in, this thing is gigantic. A 16:10 aspect ratio is ideal for working on two apps side-by-side, and coped well with 16:9 video content with less letterboxing than the Apple. The camera notch didn’t prove at all distracting, and the bezels are suitably svelte.

I didn’t have an iPad to hand for a side-by-side comparison, but the Galaxy hardly lets the side down with its wonderfully crisp 2960×1849 resolution panel. the 120Hz refresh rate ensured my S Pen sketches simply glided onto the screen as I drew, apps scrolled perfectly smoothly, and animations looked fluid.

Unsurprisingly the OLED tech delivered vibrant, dynamic colours, exceptional contrast and the sort of deep, inky blacks that’ll have you struggling to pull yourself away from your streaming service TV shows. It got fantastically bright during daylight hours, so I never struggled to see what was onscreen – even when stepping outside into direct sunlight.

That was thanks in part to the new anti-reflective coating, which worked wonders at minimising glare and meant I wasn’t staring at my own reflection whenever a dark scene came up while streaming videos. It didn’t seem to come with any penalty to contrast or viewing angles, either. If you spend a lot of time outdoors, or in brightly lit areas, this is definitely a reason to consider the Tab S10 Ultra.

The quad stereo speakers haven’t changed all that much from the previous generation, meaning they still put in an impactful performance. I have to give first place to the latest iPad, which has a generally more well-rounded sound, but you certainly won’t be rushing for a pair of headphones if you buy one of these.

Cameras: double trouble

There haven’t been many changes to photography, with Samsung bringing back the same four snappers as last year. That means a 13MP main unit and an 8MP ultrawide at the rear, and a pair of 12MP sensors in the notch at the front. They’re all good for 4K video capture. The centrally-placed front pair are in a convenient location for landscape video calls, but less useful if you hold the device in portrait.

Even with an extra year of image processing, quality appeared to be very similar to the Tab S9 Ultra; that means decent rather than exceptional snaps in good light, but bested in pretty much all situations by a similarly-priced smartphone. It’ll do just fine for document scanning, video calls and quick snaps when your phone is out of reach, though.

As to whether the ultrawide secondary cameras are actually bringing anything useful to the table, or are merely there because many shoppers still think “more equals better”? I’m not entirely convinced.

Software experience: AI all the way

Arriving with the latest version of Samsung’s OneUI Android interface, the Tab S10 Ultra is the new figurehead for Galaxy AI on big-screen devices. Everything that first appeared on the Galaxy Z Fold6 foldable phone shows up here, including a generative image editor that can remove objects, create new ones, and fill in the gaps when resizing tightly cropped snaps.

Transcribing, translation and summarising can all be handed over to artificial intelligence, with the Notes app now offering a split-screen view to make digesting long blocks of text that little bit easier. It’ll record and transcribe within the app, too, so you don’t have to jump back and forth between it and the voice recorder.

Circle to Search also makes an appearance, which is easily done using the S Pen. I liked Sketch to Image the most; it turns basic line drawings into more fleshed-out pictures in your chosen graphical style, from pop art to cartoons. Portrait Studio can also turn your friends into animated avatars, which are great for social media and chat apps.

It’s not like the Tab S9 Ultra is completely devoid of AI improvements, though: many were added in a software update, and I’d expect the rest to be appearing in reasonably quick time. And how much you’ll use them on the daily is still up for debate. Once I’d tested each one, I rarely went back to them – though if your work includes lots of meetings and note-taking, I can see the appeal.

Otherwise, Samsung’s Android UI works perfectly well on the big screen, with useful toolbars and shortcuts for launching apps in side-by-side view. DeX is available for a more laptop-like working environment, and Android’s file manager apps are far easier to use than anything on an iPad. You’ll get seven years of software support here, and Android 15 wasn’t too far away at the time of writing.

On the other hand, Apple still has the edge for creative software. You get full-fat Photoshop on an iPad, while the Galaxy Tab makes do with Photoshop Express. Final Cut and Logic Pro are figurehead apps for video editors and music makers, while Android has a much slimmer selection. Gaming is more limited on the Samsung, too. It definitely feels like you’re making a compromise by picking this over an iPad.

Performance & battery life: next Dimensity

As the first Galaxy Tab with MediaTek internals, the S10 Ultra has a point to prove. The Dimensity 9300 Plus is about as fast as it gets in Android land, promising performance hikes of between 15 and 30% across NPU, CPU and GPU-based tasks compared to last year’s Snapdragon-powered Tab S9 Ultra.

That rang true in my benchmark tests, with scores in the 7000 point range in Geekbench being a significant leap over the OnePlus Pad 2 and its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset – although still left in the dust by the M4-powered iPad Pro.

In daily use, however, the Tab S10 Ultra handled three-app multitasking with zero complaints, ran the most demanding apps without any stutter, and opened each new app in a flash. Sketching and image editing felt perfectly responsive, and graphics-heavy games ran perfectly well even after I’d cranked the detail settings. 4K video edits in LumaFusion weren’t a hassle, either, so it can compete with an iPad Pro for demanding creatives that don’t mind learning the ins and outs of a few new apps.

Pick up the model with 256GB or 512GB storage and you’ll get 12GB of RAM; go for the 1TB model and memory gets boosted to 16GB. It’s a shame you’ve got to spend so much extra for more RAM, given microSD expansion lets you add extra capacity later – and for a lot less cash. It’s something you won’t find on any iPad. All models get faster Wi-Fi 7 support, which is nice if you’ve got a compatible router.

The 11,200mAh battery inside the Tab S10 Ultra sounds humungous, until you realise it has to power that behemoth of a screen as well as a flagship-grade chipset. Happily I could eke days of use out of a single charge, even with lots of video streaming, gaming and image editing. It’ll go a full working day when truly put to task on 4K video edits, too.

Refuelling maxes out at 45W over USB-C, but only if you have a compatible charger; Samsung doesn’t include one in the box any more.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra verdict

Biggest doesn’t always also mean best, but I’d argue it most definitely does for the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra. Samsung’s flagship slate improves on its predecessor in all the right places: the reflection-busting screen is a joy to use on sunny days, the AI additions are genuinely useful if you do a lot of note-taking, and I’ll never say no to more performance. A longer software update promise is most welcome, too. With no-one else competing at this end of the Android tablet spectrum, this is the de facto new yardstick.

There’ve only been minor gains from the Tab S9 Ultra, though, so owners won’t find much reason to upgrade. And while it undercuts a 13in iPad Pro, Apple’s tablet still has the lead in terms of third-party creative software. I prefer Apple’s official keyboard addon, too.

It’s a niche product, then – but one that Samsung has filled very nicely indeed.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra technical specifications

Screen	14.6in, 2960×1848, 210Hz AMOLED
CPU	MediaTek Dimensity 9300 Plus
Memory	12/16GB
Cameras	13MP + 8MP rear, 12MP+12MP front
Storage	256GB/512GB/1TB, plus microSD expansion
Operating system	Android 14 w/ OneUI
Battery	11,200mAh w/ 45W wired charging
Dimensions	209x326x5.4mm, 718g