Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra Review!

**The Samsung Tab S8 Ultra: A Powerhouse with Some Compromises**

As I held the Samsung Tab S8 Ultra in my hands, I couldn't help but think about its size. It's an extremely large tablet, measuring 14.6 inches diagonally, and it's clear that this is not a device intended for everyday use on-the-go. However, when you look beyond its physical dimensions, you'll find a powerhouse of a tablet with impressive performance and features.

**Display**

One of the standout features of the Tab S8 Ultra is its display. The screen is massive, and it's clear that Samsung has spared no expense in making sure it looks and feels great. The panel itself is an OLED, which provides exceptional contrast and color accuracy. I found myself getting lost in the visuals when watching videos or browsing through websites. However, as with any large display, there are some drawbacks to consider. The tablet can feel a bit scratchy at times, even for those who aren't particularly sensitive to texture. Additionally, while it's not an issue for most users, I did notice that the screen didn't quite feel like natural paper. It's a minor complaint, but one that's worth mentioning.

**Performance**

Under the hood, the Tab S8 Ultra packs a punch. With its Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip, this tablet can handle demanding tasks with ease. However, it's worth noting that the chip is underclocked to accommodate the device's thickness. This means that performance might not be as smooth as you'd expect from other smartphones on the market. In my testing, I found that the Tab S8 Ultra struggled with high-performance Android games, which may be a concern for some users.

**Battery Life**

Despite its large display and powerful hardware, the Tab S8 Ultra has surprisingly good battery life. In my tests, I found that it lasted around seven to nine hours on a single charge, depending on the screen's refresh rate. This is comparable to other tablets in its class, but not particularly impressive. However, the device does have a large 11,000mAh battery, which should last you a while.

**Charging**

Speaking of charging, it's worth noting that the Tab S8 Ultra requires a fast charger to reach full capacity quickly. While the device can support up to 45W of power, slow chargers may take longer than expected to top off the battery. This is a minor inconvenience, but one that's worth being aware of.

**Additional Features**

One feature that sets the Tab S8 Ultra apart from other tablets is its inclusion of the S Pen. While it's not as robust as some users might like, I found the stylus to be surprisingly accurate and responsive. The tablet also comes with a range of software features, including support for Google's Play Store and Samsung's own One UI.

**Second Screen**

One feature that caught my attention was the tablet's ability to connect as a secondary screen for your PC. This allows you to use the Tab S8 Ultra in conjunction with your desktop or laptop, which can be incredibly useful for productivity tasks. However, there is some latency involved when using this feature, and it doesn't support full S Pen functionality.

**Conclusion**

Overall, I found the Samsung Tab S8 Ultra to be an impressive device with plenty of features and performance to back it up. While it may not be perfect – particularly in terms of its charging speed – it's clear that Samsung has put a lot of thought into creating a tablet that's designed for productivity and creativity.

**Performance in Use**

In my testing, I found the Tab S8 Ultra to be incredibly responsive, even with demanding tasks like video editing and gaming. The display was stunning, and the S Pen proved to be accurate and responsive. However, as mentioned earlier, performance might not be as smooth as you'd expect from other smartphones on the market.

**Price**

One of the biggest considerations for potential buyers is price. With a starting point of $1,100, this tablet is certainly not for everyone. While it's true that you do get a range of features and software included with your purchase, including an S Pen and case or keyboard case, it's worth considering whether these extras are worth the extra cost.

**Size and Portability**

As I mentioned earlier, the Tab S8 Ultra is extremely large, which may be off-putting for some users. However, I found that this wasn't a major issue in my testing – after all, most people won't be carrying this tablet around with them on a daily basis.

**Art and Gaming**

In terms of art and gaming, the Tab S8 Ultra proved to be a formidable device. With its impressive display and responsive stylus, it's easy to see why artists and gamers might find themselves drawn to this tablet.

**Connectivity and Battery Life**

Overall, I found the connectivity on the Tab S8 Ultra to be solid, with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 providing reliable connections for streaming and communication. As mentioned earlier, battery life is surprisingly good, although it may not last as long as you'd expect from a device of this size.

**Conclusion**

The Samsung Tab S8 Ultra is a powerhouse of a tablet that's sure to impress those looking for a device with plenty of features and performance. While there are some compromises along the way – particularly in terms of charging speed and portability – it's clear that Samsung has put a lot of thought into creating a device that's designed to meet the needs of creatives and productivity enthusiasts.

**Rating**

Based on my testing, I'd give the Samsung Tab S8 Ultra an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars. While it may not be perfect – particularly in terms of charging speed – its impressive display, responsive stylus, and range of features make it a compelling choice for those looking for a device that's designed to meet their needs.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enokay so I first tested out Samsung's tab S8 Ultra a couple weeks ago and my first reaction was like this thing is huge it's like comically big and there was this Notch at the front of the whole device that seemed unnecessary but having had this for a bit this thing is awesome and I think that this is gonna be a very popular device way more popular than I thought it would be when I first saw this thing and apparently Samsung suspended the pre-orders on this thing because they were selling out of it so quickly now the screen on it is a 14.6 inch monster it's a very big display but it's also a very thin device it's only five and a half millimeters thick if you hold it in your hands it feels abnormally thin like it doesn't feel like a regular tablet but one thing to keep in mind is despite its size like when you look at that you're like this is definitely bigger than the iPad right it's actually narrower than the 12.9 inch iPad so when you hold it in portrait mode it doesn't feel weird or anything it's a little top heavy slightly but I think for most people they would find it relatively normal it's only when you hold it in landscape mode that the width feels different than a regular tablet now I still don't feel like this is an uncomfortable or like unwieldly experience it's big but it's okay because with big tablets you're not holding it in your hand the whole time you're kind of holding it to set something up get into a program and then you'll place it down to watch a show or play your game or do some work whatever it is it's rarely a fully handheld experience with the bigger tablets now this device has very thin bezels around the whole screen it's a very nice design aesthetic and I think a lot of people enjoy the look of it right however when you have a tablet with thin bezels like this when you hold it into hands and it's not cased or anything the meat of the palm of your hands often triggers the screen and it gets super annoying now this only occurs on this product if you don't have a case on it but the moment there's any kind of bumper around the edge the problem disappears it's just that not every case has that kind of raised Edge so some of the keyboard cases or some of the Slimmer profile cases they don't have that kind of edge protection so you're still going to have that problem if you're using the device handheld the display is really good it's big the colors are fantastic on it it's 120 hertz and one UI does a really good job maintaining a high refresh rate on it throughout the whole OS I do wish it was brighter though so I'm measuring the screen at just under 400 nits which is perfectly fine for Indo use you don't get that pop with HDR content like that super bright spot that you sometimes see in some shows and this is not great for outdoor use like if it's super sunny or if you're like a really bright environment it can feel a little dimmer like in bright Studio lighting I'm like I wish this would just go a little bit brighter but that's not my issue with it it's the fact that this is their premium tablet right this is a product that's supposed to be the best tab product they make and it's like a reasonably bright screen but it should be brighter especially when you compare to Apple stuff that can break over a thousand nits at the top end but overall it's a really good screen now with this large screen you get a lot of real estate and it's great for multitasking with split screen and you can have a few more functional Windows than you normally would on a smaller device and with Samsung Dex there's just more real estate right there's just more stuff to have all your resizable windows and repositionable windows and Dex it's like a Windows like environment right so having more screen makes it exponentially more useful if you connect up a keyboard and a mouse to this device you can get a a lot of stuff done you can obviously connect it to an even bigger external screen if you want but the real magic behind the tab S8 Ultra is with media consumption because when you have a big screen like this that is as wide as this screen it's a really nice experience so shows and movies look really nice on this OLED panel and even though it doesn't have a 4K display it is able to take the higher bit rate streams like 4K streams and make use of that higher bit rate to display it so some devices can't do it but this accepts the codec which is great now the speakers are awesome there's four of them they're tuned by AKG they get loud and I'd say they're at least on par with what Apple's bringing on their 12.9 inch iPad potentially better thank you all right so the notch up here has two cameras there's a wide and an ultra wide and the image quality on these is so much better than what Samsung had previously so this is being shot in the ultrawide I think it looks pretty good there is no image stabilization though so if you're hand holding these shots might be a little bit shaky and this is the wide and I think this looks really good for a camera coming off of a tablet but again there is no image stabilization there's also the auto framing feature which tries to track you around as you move your face it doesn't do a great job like I feel like you know I'm gonna put this down to give it a proper representation of it but I feel like Apple's Center Stage like the original version of this is so much better this is it's not as responsive as I feel like it should be there's like a bit of lag in it kind of I don't know it kind of jerks around as you move it but it's okay if you're looking for something like this now when I first saw this Notch I was like come on dude do you really need to put a notch on a tablet like it's just it's coming from Samsung too right this is a company that chirped Apple for putting a notch on their phone it just felt really weird and if you look at the housing in this thing it doesn't really seem like you need the extra space from that Notch but the image quality is good I'll give them that now these devices including the ultra but all the lower ones as well come with an S Pen that doesn't cost extra and it attaches magnetically to the back of the device like so or the top of the device and it's a really nice pen but you can only charge it if it's attached to the back if it's on the top it doesn't charge now this S Pen has a soft rubber tip that feels quite different from the hard tip of an apple pencil it's hard to say which one's better or worse I think it's a very personal preference I will say though that this mimics a pen to paper feel better than the apple pencil does I feel like that's just like it's hard surface with a hard tip and it's just much more scratchy this has a little bit more friction but it doesn't feel like natural paper either it does have very low latency at 2.8 milliseconds it's not completely lag free but it's pretty close and it's got great pressure sensitivity and the Palm rejection is solid and there's a lot of good drawing apps on Google's Play Store nowadays there's also a very neat feature on Samsung's tablets now called second screen and it allows you to connect this Tablet as a secondary screen for your PC so like your desktop or your laptop you can connect it effortlessly and it now has a secondary screen so it's built into one UI it's very easy to set up but there is some latency in that connection and you don't get full S Pen functionality on that second screen but it's not bad as an art tablet connected to your PC now in terms of performance this is the base model eight gigs of RAM 128 gigs of storage and it's it's running that Snapdragon 8 gen 1 their newest chip and performance is great in terms of just the fluidity of the UI and regular tablet stuff is fantastic however if you Benchmark this thing you can tell that this is an underclocked chip now I think the reason why Samsung had to do it is because of the thickness of this device this is only five and a half millimeters thick and when you think about how this chip is traditionally cooled and all the smartphones that we've been testing those are big devices well bigger devices you know eight nine millimeters thick this is very thin and when you're trying to cool this super powerful super hot chip and you have very little Z height you just you just can't right you can only put so much heat pipe you can only use so much material in here to try to get that heat off of the Chip And I think what they've done is they just run at a slower clock so if you're buying this product and you're like I'm gonna be the world's best gentian player on it because I could no you can't because it doesn't get the best frame rates which is unfortunate if that's what you're buying it for for like high performance Android games it's not the best at that but I think for for the rest of you I think you're good uh okay now I want to wrap up oh battery life the battery life on this was surprisingly similar to the iPad so I tested this with three different scenarios one with 120 hertz I got seven seven and a half hours of screen on time battery life uh another time I did with 60 hertz screen the exact same test and I got nine and a half hours so significantly better with the 60 hertz screen but then the third scenario I just ran it in Netflix and I just did it in a loop with the screen at 250 nits and I got just over 10 hours of screen on time so it's good battery life but it's nothing super special or anything like that now in terms of charge time this has a huge battery it's over 11 000 milliamp hours and in order to Juice It Up at a respectable rate you need to pump like the full 45 Watts that it can take so at Max charge rate 45 Watts it takes just under two hours to go from zero to a hundred like an hour and 10 minutes or something like that but if you plug this thing up to a slow charger like heaven forbid you have a five wire charger and that's all you have it's gonna take you like three weeks to charge this thing up it's a big battery you need to have a fast charger to have this thing in just an enjoyable experience okay so there you have it the tab S8 Ultra I think when you look at this product the the first thing your that your mind is going to go to is like who needs a tablet of that size like it's insanely large if you look at it like look at this thing I'm like I'm looking at the monitor here I'm like it looks so big in my hands but uh it's just functionally it's awesome like it's straight up an awesome tablet now the price that's the other thing so it's eleven hundred dollars you get the S Pen and a lot of the pre-orders have some kind of case or keyboard case that comes with it it's just that if you look at this make sure you're not buying it with the intent of using it in your hands all the time like it's not like a handheld tablet for you because if that's your goal go for a smaller one it's just it's not built for that I really don't think it is okay there you have it the tab S8 Ultra hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it see you guys next time foreignokay so I first tested out Samsung's tab S8 Ultra a couple weeks ago and my first reaction was like this thing is huge it's like comically big and there was this Notch at the front of the whole device that seemed unnecessary but having had this for a bit this thing is awesome and I think that this is gonna be a very popular device way more popular than I thought it would be when I first saw this thing and apparently Samsung suspended the pre-orders on this thing because they were selling out of it so quickly now the screen on it is a 14.6 inch monster it's a very big display but it's also a very thin device it's only five and a half millimeters thick if you hold it in your hands it feels abnormally thin like it doesn't feel like a regular tablet but one thing to keep in mind is despite its size like when you look at that you're like this is definitely bigger than the iPad right it's actually narrower than the 12.9 inch iPad so when you hold it in portrait mode it doesn't feel weird or anything it's a little top heavy slightly but I think for most people they would find it relatively normal it's only when you hold it in landscape mode that the width feels different than a regular tablet now I still don't feel like this is an uncomfortable or like unwieldly experience it's big but it's okay because with big tablets you're not holding it in your hand the whole time you're kind of holding it to set something up get into a program and then you'll place it down to watch a show or play your game or do some work whatever it is it's rarely a fully handheld experience with the bigger tablets now this device has very thin bezels around the whole screen it's a very nice design aesthetic and I think a lot of people enjoy the look of it right however when you have a tablet with thin bezels like this when you hold it into hands and it's not cased or anything the meat of the palm of your hands often triggers the screen and it gets super annoying now this only occurs on this product if you don't have a case on it but the moment there's any kind of bumper around the edge the problem disappears it's just that not every case has that kind of raised Edge so some of the keyboard cases or some of the Slimmer profile cases they don't have that kind of edge protection so you're still going to have that problem if you're using the device handheld the display is really good it's big the colors are fantastic on it it's 120 hertz and one UI does a really good job maintaining a high refresh rate on it throughout the whole OS I do wish it was brighter though so I'm measuring the screen at just under 400 nits which is perfectly fine for Indo use you don't get that pop with HDR content like that super bright spot that you sometimes see in some shows and this is not great for outdoor use like if it's super sunny or if you're like a really bright environment it can feel a little dimmer like in bright Studio lighting I'm like I wish this would just go a little bit brighter but that's not my issue with it it's the fact that this is their premium tablet right this is a product that's supposed to be the best tab product they make and it's like a reasonably bright screen but it should be brighter especially when you compare to Apple stuff that can break over a thousand nits at the top end but overall it's a really good screen now with this large screen you get a lot of real estate and it's great for multitasking with split screen and you can have a few more functional Windows than you normally would on a smaller device and with Samsung Dex there's just more real estate right there's just more stuff to have all your resizable windows and repositionable windows and Dex it's like a Windows like environment right so having more screen makes it exponentially more useful if you connect up a keyboard and a mouse to this device you can get a a lot of stuff done you can obviously connect it to an even bigger external screen if you want but the real magic behind the tab S8 Ultra is with media consumption because when you have a big screen like this that is as wide as this screen it's a really nice experience so shows and movies look really nice on this OLED panel and even though it doesn't have a 4K display it is able to take the higher bit rate streams like 4K streams and make use of that higher bit rate to display it so some devices can't do it but this accepts the codec which is great now the speakers are awesome there's four of them they're tuned by AKG they get loud and I'd say they're at least on par with what Apple's bringing on their 12.9 inch iPad potentially better thank you all right so the notch up here has two cameras there's a wide and an ultra wide and the image quality on these is so much better than what Samsung had previously so this is being shot in the ultrawide I think it looks pretty good there is no image stabilization though so if you're hand holding these shots might be a little bit shaky and this is the wide and I think this looks really good for a camera coming off of a tablet but again there is no image stabilization there's also the auto framing feature which tries to track you around as you move your face it doesn't do a great job like I feel like you know I'm gonna put this down to give it a proper representation of it but I feel like Apple's Center Stage like the original version of this is so much better this is it's not as responsive as I feel like it should be there's like a bit of lag in it kind of I don't know it kind of jerks around as you move it but it's okay if you're looking for something like this now when I first saw this Notch I was like come on dude do you really need to put a notch on a tablet like it's just it's coming from Samsung too right this is a company that chirped Apple for putting a notch on their phone it just felt really weird and if you look at the housing in this thing it doesn't really seem like you need the extra space from that Notch but the image quality is good I'll give them that now these devices including the ultra but all the lower ones as well come with an S Pen that doesn't cost extra and it attaches magnetically to the back of the device like so or the top of the device and it's a really nice pen but you can only charge it if it's attached to the back if it's on the top it doesn't charge now this S Pen has a soft rubber tip that feels quite different from the hard tip of an apple pencil it's hard to say which one's better or worse I think it's a very personal preference I will say though that this mimics a pen to paper feel better than the apple pencil does I feel like that's just like it's hard surface with a hard tip and it's just much more scratchy this has a little bit more friction but it doesn't feel like natural paper either it does have very low latency at 2.8 milliseconds it's not completely lag free but it's pretty close and it's got great pressure sensitivity and the Palm rejection is solid and there's a lot of good drawing apps on Google's Play Store nowadays there's also a very neat feature on Samsung's tablets now called second screen and it allows you to connect this Tablet as a secondary screen for your PC so like your desktop or your laptop you can connect it effortlessly and it now has a secondary screen so it's built into one UI it's very easy to set up but there is some latency in that connection and you don't get full S Pen functionality on that second screen but it's not bad as an art tablet connected to your PC now in terms of performance this is the base model eight gigs of RAM 128 gigs of storage and it's it's running that Snapdragon 8 gen 1 their newest chip and performance is great in terms of just the fluidity of the UI and regular tablet stuff is fantastic however if you Benchmark this thing you can tell that this is an underclocked chip now I think the reason why Samsung had to do it is because of the thickness of this device this is only five and a half millimeters thick and when you think about how this chip is traditionally cooled and all the smartphones that we've been testing those are big devices well bigger devices you know eight nine millimeters thick this is very thin and when you're trying to cool this super powerful super hot chip and you have very little Z height you just you just can't right you can only put so much heat pipe you can only use so much material in here to try to get that heat off of the Chip And I think what they've done is they just run at a slower clock so if you're buying this product and you're like I'm gonna be the world's best gentian player on it because I could no you can't because it doesn't get the best frame rates which is unfortunate if that's what you're buying it for for like high performance Android games it's not the best at that but I think for for the rest of you I think you're good uh okay now I want to wrap up oh battery life the battery life on this was surprisingly similar to the iPad so I tested this with three different scenarios one with 120 hertz I got seven seven and a half hours of screen on time battery life uh another time I did with 60 hertz screen the exact same test and I got nine and a half hours so significantly better with the 60 hertz screen but then the third scenario I just ran it in Netflix and I just did it in a loop with the screen at 250 nits and I got just over 10 hours of screen on time so it's good battery life but it's nothing super special or anything like that now in terms of charge time this has a huge battery it's over 11 000 milliamp hours and in order to Juice It Up at a respectable rate you need to pump like the full 45 Watts that it can take so at Max charge rate 45 Watts it takes just under two hours to go from zero to a hundred like an hour and 10 minutes or something like that but if you plug this thing up to a slow charger like heaven forbid you have a five wire charger and that's all you have it's gonna take you like three weeks to charge this thing up it's a big battery you need to have a fast charger to have this thing in just an enjoyable experience okay so there you have it the tab S8 Ultra I think when you look at this product the the first thing your that your mind is going to go to is like who needs a tablet of that size like it's insanely large if you look at it like look at this thing I'm like I'm looking at the monitor here I'm like it looks so big in my hands but uh it's just functionally it's awesome like it's straight up an awesome tablet now the price that's the other thing so it's eleven hundred dollars you get the S Pen and a lot of the pre-orders have some kind of case or keyboard case that comes with it it's just that if you look at this make sure you're not buying it with the intent of using it in your hands all the time like it's not like a handheld tablet for you because if that's your goal go for a smaller one it's just it's not built for that I really don't think it is okay there you have it the tab S8 Ultra hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it see you guys next time foreign\n"