If you’ve been reading my reviews you’d know I love big screens. No 6.2-inch smartphones for me, please. Give me that oversized 6.8-inch display and I’m hooked for good. Imagine my surprise then when the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra landed on my desk. I was stumped. For once, a big screen seemed too big for me! An almost 15-inch display? I’d never used a tablet this big. I dove right in, a little tentatively, to see how this ultra-premium tab with its unique aspect ratio would take care of my multimedia needs.
Design
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra is very horizontal! That’s when it’s in landscape mode. The aspect ratio is a very unique 16:10, making it look almost like a laptop’s display. When used in portrait, it’s again very weirdly, and uniquely, tall! The display spans 14.6 inches across and there are very few tablets you’ll find in this size in 2024. Whether that’s a good thing or not is up to you to decide, based on what you using a tablet for.
Multimedia
There are some things I absolutely loved doing on the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra. First, it was watching movies and TV series. I start with Culinary Class Wars on Netflix. With its captivating visuals of food, plating, culinary styles, and some rather good-looking Korean chefs, there was ample content to drool over.
The tablet’s quad-speaker setup delivers robust sound even at mid and low volume. Propped against the wall on my work desk in landscape mode, the speakers remain unobstructed. I never felt the need to go beyond 50 per cent volume, irrespective of the content playing.
Reading on the tablet was a bit of a mixed bag. News websites, articles, and features that I read online needed a lot of scrolling because, in landscape mode, the “height” of the webpage isn’t much. I also had to zoom in quite a bit to get rid of all the blank space on the sides of articles. On the positive side, the zoom-in lets me really focus on the written word and tune out all the distractors from any given website. Another fabulous experience was reading comic books and graphic novels in the tall-ish portrait orientation. I never had to zoom in to read the speech bubbles, the illustrations looked great and I didn’t have to scroll to catch any details of a given panel. It was awesome.
The variable refresh rates of up to 120 Hz, would ideally make the tablet a great device to play casual games on, but the form factor makes the gaming experience feel burdensome.
Productivity
Typing on the tablet’s massive virtual keyboard felt cumbersome. Thankfully, the S-Pen is bundled with the device. Although I’d think a keyboard would come in more handy. The S-Pen rests at the back of the tablet, on a dedicated magnetic charging strip. While it’s convenient when I’m not using the tablet, it does fall off its designated space when I’m carrying it around in my backpack.
I have to mention that despite the huge display, and a massive battery, the tablet is still super slim at only 5.4 mm. It also weighs just over 700 grams, which is not too bad for the size. There are two pretty staid-looking colours available - Moonstone Grey and Platinum Silver.
The tablet sports a 13 MP main sensor and an 8 MP ultrawide lens at the rear panel. No one who wants sharp pictures ever uses a tablet for that purpose. So the real-life use case may be limited to enabling face recognition, scanning documents or QR codes, and of course, joining meetings with the 12 MP ultrawide front camera.
AI features
Like on its flagship smartphones this year, Samsung has included AI features on this flagship tablet too. You’ll ahve access to features such as Note Assist, Drawing Assist, Chat Assist, Interpreter mode, and more on the tab. Some apps such as Notes, now have split-screen support, recording, and transcription in-app. You can check out my earlier reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Flip 6 for a deep dive into the Samsung suite of AI apps.
Tech Specs
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra runs on a MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ chipset. A departure from its usual Snapdragon collabs, the MediaTek processor does handle everyday multitasking well. The tablet runs on One UI 6.1 and optimises various apps and websites well to the tablet’s unique format. It’s got 12 GB RAM and two storage variants - 256 GB and 512 GB. The tablet is also rated IP68, making it dust and water-resistant to a certain extent. The brand has also promised seven years of OS upgrades and security patches.
Battery
The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra packs in a massive 11,200mAh battery which I ended up charging once in about 3-4 days, based on how much content I consumed. On average, a 1-hour episode of Culinary Class Wars on Netflix would drain the battery by 10-15 percent.
Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra plays to some of the brand’s core strengths - excellent build quality, brilliant display, robust audio quality, decent battery life, and some AI smarts. However, what might keep the device from being an instant hit is its very unique 16:10 aspect ratio. And, the exorbitant price tag.
Price - ₹1,08,999 onwards
Pros - Excellent AMOLED display, capable speakers, decent battery life, perfect aspect ratio for watching videos, S-Pen included
Cons - Not the most typing-friendly dimensions, the aspect ratio doesn’t work across all tasks.