Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra vs Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra: expectations

Last year, Samsung jumped with both feet into the "oversized tablet" category with the bold and beautiful Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra. For some — an overkill tablet, for others — a great workhorse of a machine.

It seems the tablet was met with positivity from the userbase, as Samsung decided to re-do the launch with a new Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra. And it's basically a redux of last year's model, just adding some quality of life improvements, like water-resistance and enhanced cooling.

The Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra is already massive — with a footprint of a laptop, it's definitely not a "one hand device". You will more often have it laid on a table or propped up with a keyboard to do work (or binge Netflix).

The Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra looks exactly the same. A huge canvas, included with an S Pen and a magnetic strip for charging the stylus on the device. The extremely thin and high-tech, but without a headphone jack.

We are greeted by the same, huge, 14.6-inch AMOLED panel with vibrant colors and 120 Hz refresh rate. And even the same notch for the selfie cameras.

Display Measurements:

They even have the same screen comfort options, where you can choose between punchy or realistic colors, blue light filtering, and fine-tune temperature if you so wish.

Obviously, a new device will have the newest hardware — the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra is set to have a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Made for Galaxy like the Galaxy S23 phones that launched in early 2023. It's a slightly overclocked Snapdragon that Samsung has developed in partnership with Qualcomm. Cool.

That aside, though, the Tab S9 Ultra also gets an upgrade to UFS 4.0 storage — which is twice as fast as the previously used UFS 3.1. And LPDDR5X RAM, which is slightly faster than the non-X equivalent.

And, as you can see, in raw benchmark tests, the Tab S9 Ultra crushes it — great upgrade, for sure!

That won't instantly make the Tab S8 Ultra obsolete, no. Rest assured, it was a beast of a tablet last year and will continue to be one. But, if you are just now shopping for one, maybe the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra's future-proof hardware will be more enticing.

Tablets — especially ones of this side — aren't really used as cameras a whole lot. You want really good front-facing ones for video calls, yes, but the rear camera module isn't of much importance so long as it can capture the details in documents.

That said, the Tab S8 Ultra has a duo of 12 MP cameras on the front for wide or ultra-wide view. Of course, a face tracking option was also included. There's the very same setup on the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra's front side as well.

On the back, we have the same 13 MP main cameras. And then, the ultra-wide camera saw a small upgrade — up to 8 MP from last year's 6 MP.

Quad speakers in stereo setup and massive sound. That's what the Tab S8 Ultra had and we get the same setup on the Tab S9. They sound big, loud, spacious, and detailed. Great speakers for either watching a show or even enjoying music. Naturally, talking head YouTube videos sound just fine on them.

Unfortunately, we don't get headphone jacks on these massive slab tablets.

With the very same 11,200 mAh battery inside the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, we were holding hope that the new Smapdragon 8 Gen 2 Made for Galaxy and the new UFS 4.0 storage might extend the battery life due to their efficiency. 

As for battery life, we aren't too concerned. UFS 4.0 is comes with 45%-ish improvement in energy efficiency, and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 should be slightly less of a drain for the same amount of muscle, right? We expect very similar battery life from both of these tablets.

Here are the core specs compared. For a full sheet, check out the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra vs Tab S8 Ultra specs comparison page.

Yep, the Tab S8 Ultra doesn't drop in MSRP, it just becomes slightly cheaper with the entry-level 128 GB variant being $100 below the Tab S9 Ultra's 256 GB tier. We are unsure why anyone would choose to buy a 256 GB Tab S8 Ultra over a 256 GB Tab S9 Ultra, though.

A Galaxy Tab Ultra is a long-term investment for sure. These tablets do not come cheap, but thankfully, have the powerful hardware and a commitment for 4 years of Android updates to keep them ticking for a while.

All that said, we have a feeling that owners of the Tab S8 Ultra — or ones that buy one during Amazon Prime Day — will be just fine for quite a while.

But by all means, if there's no deal on the horizon, just go ahead and pick up the Tab S9 Ultra. Even the 256 GB model will give you plenty of upgrade in speed and performance thanks to that UFS 4.0 chip, the internal cooling, and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Made for Galaxy.