Is The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra My Favorite Tech Of The Year? - FULL REVIEW

I think this is going to be my favorite piece of tech for 2023. Ok, the reviews over! Well, it does have a couple of issues that I’m not quite excited about but we’ll get into those.

This is the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, the biggest of the 3 in the S9 series, and my favorite new shiny thing. As someone who put Linux on my old Nexus 7 tablet and haven’t delved into tablets til this year - now I’m sporting a Google Pixel Tablet and this S9 Ultra - this was a fun review to write. If you’re into in depth reviews, I do a ton of them here and I usually buy these devices out of pocket. Watching and subscribing to my channel is a huge way to support my small business without spending a dime, and you’ll get quality content to boot!

It came out on August 11, props to Samsung for shipping preorders out early. The two color options are dull - there’s graphite and beige, and the price starts at $1200 for 12 gb RAM and 256 GB storage. Samsung did and is offering some trade in discounts and bundle deals. If you need more storage, there’s also a 512 GB option and a 1 TB option with 16 gb RAM, but given how zippy this 12 GB RAM model is, I don’t think you need the 1 TB option because this also packs in… a microSD card slot with capacity up to 1 TB. I know - I was excited about that too.

Usually I jump right into the design but… I really want to talk about the user experience on this tablet. Samsung’s OneUI 5.1 is included, mine is now up to date with 5.1.1. Even though this isn’t vanilla Android - which is my preferred way of using Android, I find that OneUI is very streamlined for tablet use. For example - Samsung made little choices with the UI that make using it super intuitive on this big screen. Like the taskbar at the bottom can show you 2 to 4 recently used apps, and you can hold down to hide the taskbar. The icon in the bottom left pulls up your app dock, so you don’t have to swipe up or to home to find an app.

Multitasking is incredibly useful - whether that’s side by side or top / bottom, it’s actually usable on this big screen either way. I can open 3 different apps in docked panels, then open another one in a floating panel, and can switch them with ease.

Samsung also built in DeX support so you can connect the tablet to a bigger tv or monitor via wireless or HDMI. Samsung’s quick share and Androids nearby share work flawlessly. This is still a rather huge display to work with though, so typing can be a hassle, I’m planning to purchase a keyboard cover for mine so I can use it for script writing.

But the included IP68 SPen is really nice to use on here. The palm rejection really helps given I’m a lefty, and the rubberized tip gives you a nice bit of friction, sort of like using paper - it’s not too slippery on the screen and the response is really impressive. It’s also about the same width as a normal pen or pencil so it’s comfortable to hold in hand. Even though it charges both ways on the back, it doesn’t charge while it’s magnetically attached to the rim - and that’s something of a con for me given that’s usually where I attach my pen.

Games look lovely and are fun to play on such a big screen. In both productivity and gaming use cases, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 with the Qualcomm Adreno 740 (which includes Ray Tracing) really shine. [ show 3d mark test scores ]

I’m using it quite a bit and on my heavy usage days, I can get about 11.5 hours of screen on time. Usually it’s a lot more because I don’t have the screen on full brightness all day long. For example, one day I left it at home and didn’t even turn it on - I turned it on the next day and the thing still had 100% battery - even though I didn’t charge it overnight. So that tells me the standby battery drainage is incredibly low. You will not have to charge this thing every day, and given the battery is an 11,2000 mAh size, this is a big positive. Wired charging via that USB C 3.2 gen 1 port can hit 45W Super Fast Charging with a compatible charger, which is not included in the box, though a cable is. A bit disappointing given this can be used as a laptop replacement, having a high end charger included would’ve been nice.

While the face unlock works smoothly and quickly, I was excited to see there’s a fingerprint sensor too - it’s in screen, so not a capacitive button sensor like on the fold 5 and flip 5. It’s not ultrasonic like the one in the S23 lineup, though. It’s optical. Qualcomm put the faster ultrasonic sensors in the S23 phones but optical is slower and requires light to read your fingerprint. I was disappointed that it’s not using ultrasonic - you can see tests of these side by side in my fingerprint sensor deep dive video.

While Wifi 6E is super fast, I was also disappointed that the larger S9 Ultra doesn’t have an option for 5G LTE. But the smaller S9 + does. That would’ve been nice for travel too, since I don’t necessarily want to connect to public wifi for security reasons, and hotspotting from my phone is quite slow.

You’d think this device would be super fragile but I’ve been carrying it around for about two weeks and it doesn’t have a scratch on it. It’s definitely built to withstand some banging around. The casing is “armor aluminum” with an aluminum frame and back. The front is gorilla glass. And it’s IP68, one of the only tablets with that durability. It’s only 1.62 lbs so definitely portable, and it’s incredibly thin at 5.5mm or 0.21”. [show dimensions on screen - 12.85" x 8.21" x 0.21”].

The display is great for entertainment, too. It’s a 14.6” dynamic AMOLED 2x display, with support for HDR10+. The 120Hz refresh rate really shines on here, as does watching HDR content. The aspect ratio works well for movies and tv shows, and it’s pretty bright for outside viewing.

Show on screen:

14.6" Dynamic AMOLED 2X HDR10+

90.7% screen-to-body ratio

239 PPI

1848 x 2960 Pixels

16:10

120Hz

950 nits

The speakers pack a punch. And there’s four of ‘em. They are tuned by AKG, a leading audio company, and they also support Dolby Atmos, though you do have to enable that in the settings. The screen is beautiful, and I find myself choosing this device just to have this big gorgeous display to look at.

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Now you probably noticed the camera cutout at the top. It’s really not that obvious when using the Tab S9 Ultra. There are two front facing cameras, nothing outstanding but if you do Google Meet calls or similar, they’re high res enough to look better than average and you can also use Auto Framing when in ultrawide 16:9.

Show on screen:

• 12 MP, f/2.2, 26mm (wide)

• 12 MP, f/2.4, 120˚ (ultrawide)

• 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30fps

There are cameras on the back too, and they’re good but no where near the quality you’ll get out of today’s phones. Please don’t be that person who holds up your tablet to take photos. Use your phone instead, get the best quality you can get out of the device you have in your pocket. But these rear cameras are useful if you’re video calling someone and want to show them something.

• 13 MP, f/2.0, 26mm (wide), 1/3.4", 1.0µm, AF

• 8 MP, f/2.2, (ultrawide)

• 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30fps

It ain’t perfect. It definitely isn’t. But man, I really am loving this form factor for my lifestyle. It’s so nice and lightweight and slim but has that big beautiful display that I often times find myself needing for work. It definitely is expensive, but as an android user, this is the kind of device that fills a gap.

I’m really glad that I opted to buy the biggest one since I have been using it so much. Samsung could definitely fix a few of those little issues I noticed, but they’re small problems when looking at the device as a whole.

Thanks again for watching and subscribing. Bye yall!