Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra review

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra has dimensions that fly in the face of portability.

With a screen that measures in at 14.6 inches, it’s massive – bigger than a lot of laptops, and about as powerful as one too. If you’re looking for an Android tablet built for performance, on specs alone this has got to be a strong contender.

For movies on the go though, there’s a lot to love here too – and of course that large AMOLED 2X screen is a considerable part of that.

For people who don’t mind the extra heft in their backpack, and who can justify its equally hefty price, this could be one of the most cinematic ways to watch movies on the move.

Price

The Samsung Tab S11 Ultra is available in a number of configurations. There is a choice of either 256GB or 512GB of storage with 12GB RAM, or a 1TB storage option with 16GB RAM – plus you can also add up to 2TB of storage via microSD card.

In the UK, Europe and Australia, there’s also the choice of going for wi-fi only or opting for 5G cellular support across any of those configurations. However, the 5G version is not currently available in the US.

The wi-fi-only 256GB version costs £1089 / $1300 / AU$1799, with 512GB costing £1239 / $1500 / AU$1999 and the 1TB costing £1569 / $1900 / AU$2499.

For 5G, you will need to pay £1239 / AU$2049 for 256GB, £1389 / AU£2249 for 512GB, and £1719 / AU$2749 for 1TB.

There’s only one other tablet that’s sitting around these kinds of prices, and that’s the iPad Pro – though that is even more expensive still, in every configuration.

Considering the fact you’re likely Team Android if you’re considering the Tab S11 Ultra, how much the iPad Pro costs is probably of no concern to you – but it gives you an idea of where the Tab S11 Ultra sits in the overall tablet hierarchy.

To help turn this into the laptop replacement it wants to be, and to make its size feel less – well – sizeable, Samsung’s Slim Keyboard Cover is available as an add-on for £199 / $210 / AU$399, though it’s often offered for free on bundle promotions.

It’s a nice case with a decent keyboard for typing (but no trackpad), and it helps take the weight of the tablet out of your hands when watching movies. It thankfully doesn’t add too much extra bulk either, and also doubles up as protection for the tablet.

The new simplified S Pen stylus, also found with the S25 Ultra phone, is included with the Tab S11 Ultra for free.

Design

If you’re already familiar with Samsung’s Ultra line of tablets, you’ll notice that the S11 Ultra doesn’t break the mould of the last few years in terms of design. That’s no bad thing; it’s a smart-enough-looking tablet, with curved corners and flat, angled sides, available in a choice of grey or silver.

However, Samsung has managed to shave a few millimetres of depth compared with the Tab S10 Ultra, meaning it’s now slimmer than ever, measuring just 5.1mm thick – the same thickness as the iPad Pro, in fact. It’s lighter than its predecessor too, at 692g (wi-fi only), down from 723g.

Even with that weight off, it still feels quite heavy to hold one-handed for any extended amount of time, and its sheer size and 16:10 aspect ratio also make it a little unwieldy to use in portrait orientation – this is definitely a tablet that’s meant to be used primarily in landscape.

Considering what we look for in tablets, that certainly doesn’t bother us, but we can certainly feel the difference in our hands between this and the iPad Pro (579g).

For a pricey tablet, the S11 Ultra feels premium, but it’s reassuring to know that it’s pretty hardy too, using Samsung’s Enhanced Armor Aluminium (the same material used in the Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus) for its back panel, and Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for its display. It’s also officially IP68 rated, which is more than the iPad Pro, meaning it’ll be safe if it gets wet.

Elsewhere, the S11 Ultra keeps things pretty simple, with just the power button and volume rocker on the top left edge (if held in landscape), a USB-C charging port to the right, along with an under-screen fingerprint scanner for unlocking on the right side too. This can be a bit tricky to find initially but works just fine once you have, though face recognition feels like the better, more consistent bet for unlocking on first try.

The included S Pen stylus snaps magnetically along the top edge, and comes with an updated hexagonal design to mimic real pencils. It’s also simpler this time round, requiring no charging whatsoever. That means it drops its Bluetooth capability, and Samsung’s Air Actions along with it (that offered shortcuts and remote functions based on gestures and button clicks with the S Pen), but the benefit of the pen not needing charging far outweighs that to our way of thinking.

Features

The Tab S11 Ultra is Samsung’s flagship tablet, and it has a spec list to match. First up, a suitably beefy chipset, MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400+, ensures the Samsung moves seamlessly between apps, quickly loads and buffers streams, and has no problem with multitasking – even when using Samsung’s window-based desktop system, DeX.

We won’t dig too much into this, but if you’re buying a tablet for movies and hoping to also use it as something of a laptop replacement, Samsung’s Tab S11 Ultra is probably the experience to beat on Android.

It’s still a stretch to suggest it could match the productivity of a proper laptop – the experience is just not as slick and the app selection not as extensive – but the desktop view is easy to access, and you can quickly flip between that and a more standard tablet experience, with DeX launching automatically whenever you shrink down an app to multi-task.

There are three cameras on the Tab S11 Ultra, one selfie camera and two on the rear. If you’re using the main cameras – a 13MP main and 8MP ultrawide – to take anything other than the quick snapshot in a pinch, you may need to have a word with yourself. Your phone will be easier to use and will undoubtedly do a better job, but in good lighting conditions you’ll get a sharp, passable shot from the S11 Ultra, with decent colours and a good amount of detail.

The 12MP front-facing camera is arguably more important on a tablet, and the S11 Ultra’s does a pretty good job with that, offering an ultrawide lens for getting all of the family in on video calls and managing variable lighting pretty well too.

Video quality tops out at 4K 30fps no matter what camera you’re using. Once again, it’s fine, but it’s probably not going to launch any YouTube careers.

With an 11,600mAh battery, battery life is decent, and while Samsung’s stated 23 hours of playback is ambitious for real-world use (this is apparently based on playing a 720p video saved on the device, rather than being streamed), you can get well into a second day with medium to heavy use – as long as you keep an eye on your screen brightness.

The Tab S11 Ultra runs on Android 16, with Samsung’s One UI 8 running over the top. Samsung offers an impressive seven years of OS and security updates, meaning that your investment should be sound for at least that long.

Picture quality

The Tab S11 Ultra’s whopping 14.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display is really the biggest talking point of this tablet, and perhaps its biggest selling point too – particularly if you want big-screen movies on the go.

The resolution remains unchanged here from its predecessor, at 1848 x 2690 and 239ppi, and with its 16:10 aspect ratio, you get much slimmer black bars than you do on the iPad Pro when watching most movies. That means the size of this screen really does have an impact on your experience, making it all the more immersive. Movies look considerably bigger on this screen than on the iPad Pro.

There’s been a peak brightness boost to 1600 nits too, which matches that of the iPad Pro, and that really comes into its own in HDR scenes. We’re comparing it against the iPad Pro 13-inch M4, but HDR highlights certainly have a bit of extra punch on the S11 Ultra, and overall brightness levels are also slightly higher too.

In the fight between K and Sapper in Blade Runner 2049, the bright windows pierce into the gloomy room with noticeably more intensity on the S11 Ultra, and there’s also a touch more subtlety in the light reflected onto their faces.

However, at the other end of the scale, it’s a different story. Blacks are deeper on the S11 Ultra than those on the iPad Pro M4, but the iPad retains more shadow detail, meaning this dingy scene has more dimension to it on Apple’s slate.

Colours are generally well handled across the board and, once you’ve turned the default screen mode from Vivid to Natural, it skews a lot closer to the tone of the iPad Pro, which we have long praised for its colour balance. The S11 Ultra is still richer though, with punchier handling of colours and warmer skin tones, but not in a way that looks misplaced or unnatural – particularly when viewed in isolation. In fact, sometimes it works in its favour, creating a lively image that doesn’t look out of place.

However, it’s not just in the shadows where the iPad pips the S11 Ultra for fine detail; it does so in brighter scenes too. There’s a greater sense of depth in landscape shots, and more natural insight into the textures of skin, hair and fabrics. The S11 Ultra struggles to find quite the same nuance, and so we sometimes notice some oversharpening as it tries a bit too hard.

The S11 Ultra’s screen is anti-reflective, and while it doesn’t kill all reflections, it actually does a pretty good job of dulling them down – better than the iPad Pro M4 does, though we are yet to test the nano-texture glass on the M5.

While not perfect, there’s a lot to love about the way movies look on the S11 Ultra – and how immersive it feels remains a big part of that. The iPad Pro still takes it for the most natural and insightful images, but if you’re looking for the closest equivalent on Android, this has got to be it.

Sound quality

If you’re not using headphones, the S11 Ultra leans on four external speakers for its sound, one at each corner. Those on the bottom edges aren’t placed brilliantly though, as they sit very close to where your hands would generally hold the tablet, and it can muffle them.

Be careful with where you place your hands, though, and they go really loud, and because the screen is so wide, they sound big too, with audio that fills the screen and the space around it. There’s support for virtualised Dolby Atmos for content that contains it too, which only widens this further, though any expectations for a real sense of height should be managed appropriately.

Pull up the first ten minutes of 6 Underground, and there’s a soundtrack full of car chases, crashes and gunfire to contend with. The sense of immersion remains, and the S11 Ultra has more scale and presence than the iPad Pro. However, Apple’s slate has a richer and more solid tonal balance compared with the S11 Ultra, which can veer into sounding a touch fragile and sharp at volume.

Listening via USB-C audio to Go by The Chemical Brothers streamed on Apple Music, and the age-old story goes on. The S11 Ultra sounds just fine – it’s much more assured when listening via headphones, with a much better tonal balance than its speakers. It’s a punchy, clean and upfront sound that’s plenty entertaining.

However, the iPad just sounds warmer and fuller-bodied, with more fine detail retrieval that helps tie all the elements of a song together more cohesively.

Verdict

There’s no doubt that the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra is one of the most capable Android tablets you can buy, with a bright, sharp screen that makes watching movies on the go more immersive than you can find on just about any other tablet.

It is enormous though, which means it takes up a fair bit of space in a backpack. It’s expensive too, so you’re going to want to make use of at least some of its broader performance features for that price to make sense. But if you’ve got the budget and the space, this is the Android tablet to beat for movies and music on the go.

SCORES

• Picture 5
• Sound 4
• Features 5

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