Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra: A Monster Tablet!”.
Hey what’s up mkbhd here and this this is the best android tablet out right now and it looks like it’s from the future or something like. If you show this to someone 15 years ago, they would think it’s impossible. I guess it’s impossibly thin. 1.6, pound powerful medium machine with speakers that somehow fill a room, a massive battery and an entire desktop computer interface inside i mean it’s so thin, you’d swear. You could just snap it in half super easily, which i’m not going to try it. But someone keep this thing away from zach, so this is the galaxy tab.
S8 ultra. So yes, there is a galaxy tab s8 and a tab s8 plus both of them far more reasonable, far less expensive and, most importantly, smaller. But you know what there’s a real interest in huge tablets like this mega tablets, because there is an actual benefit to tablets that are this big.
I would know because i’ve been using this one and the benefits of this massive nearly 15 inch screen are for media watching gaming, multitasking and, of course, the huge canvas for the stylist they’re, all very real. There are also some real drawbacks, though, so, if you are one of the many people who have been tweeting at me, asking about this thing wondering if it’s a legit ipad pro alternative well, this is everything you need to know so, really the number one standout piece Of this tablet is the top-notch display. Sorry, i had to we’ll get there, but the screen is just awesome and there’s a bunch of things that combine to make it probably the most impressive i’ve ever seen in a tablet. Number one is just, of course, the sheer size of it 14.6 inches diagonally, which definitely suits the ultra name.
It’S got these thin symmetrical bezels. All the way around. Aside from the dual cameras now we’re working with a 16 by 10 aspect ratio at 2960 by 1848 resolution, which sounds really high in person.
It’S not the sharpest thing i’ve ever seen, just because it’s so huge, so it checks out to about 240 ppi. And if you get close enough with this pixel arrangement, you can actually start to see the soft edges of some text and icons and things like that. But it’s definitely not a problem at all for normal viewing distances and then it’s oled.
So i think this is the largest oled touchscreen i’ve ever used. We all know about the mini, led displays and some laptops and even the ipad pro with their tons of local dimming zones, but this is a full size, basically laptop size screen where every individual pixel lights itself, so you’re getting those pitch black inky, blacks, you’re. Getting an incredible contrast, ratio and watching videos that take advantage of it are very impressive, there’s also an optical fingerprint reader, underneath the display, on the right hand, side. The only thing really that’s not world class about this display honestly, is that it’s not ltpo. It’S just 120 hertz all the time and the max brightness it maxes out at 380 nits, which is actually totally reasonable inside, but it’s not actually doing much if you go out in the sun, if you’re the type of person to use a tablet in your window. So that’s just something to keep in mind just for context. The m1 ipad pro gets up to 600 nits and the s22 ultra the phone. I just reviewed, gets up to 1750 nits, but you know that’s a phone you use outside. So let’s talk about the notch, then right so huge display up at the top in the middle there’s this little tiny notch with two cameras in it. That’S two 12 megapixel 4k webcams one regular and one ultra wide they’re, both too big to fit in the thin bezels that they fitted all the way around the tablet, so it punches in a little bit. They put this little notch up here. It’S tiny! It’S way smaller than the iphone’s notch and in a display that’s way bigger honestly, it doesn’t bother me at all.
You use the screen for three seconds and it disappears to your eye and you forget about it now. Is there a hilarious irony that this is the same company that made these commercials making fun of the notch every chance they got and now they’re the first to put a notch on their tablet? Yeah. Absolutely that’s really funny, but i don’t actually mind it here.
What i will say is they did put them in the right place, which is on the horizontal long side of the bezel, because this is a tablet. That’S basically meant to be used horizontally. All the time.
You know an ipad, maybe you can argue. Sometimes you use it in portrait like a notebook and a clipboard, sometimes in landscape. This one feels pretty ridiculous. Holding it vertical and i think samsung knows it’s going to be horizontal, a lot with this aspect ratio, and so they put the webcam on the top and the fingerprint reader over there on the side is easily reachable with your thumb, it’s great and then dave2d said Something really interesting, really smart in his video, which is we don’t actually usually hold these huge tablets while we’re using them, like sometimes you do sure, maybe you’re leaning back on the couch holding it up watching a video, maybe typing something out real, quick, but actually most Of the time we’re using a tablet, we’re sitting it down somewhere, it’s like propped up or it’s in a folio case. I don’t think my ipad pro has left its folio case in like a year just because i prop it up all the time, and so there is a book cover case available for the s8 ultra, but it costs 350 dollars. So there’s your kickstand get to prop it up, watch stuff, but this plus the keyboard three hundred and fifty dollars. So i’ve been using this total at least fourteen hundred fifty dollar package for about a week, and it’s great honestly, it’s great the performance and animations have been consistent. It’S amazing for media consumption youtube netflix games.
That is not a surprise. What’S interesting is the snapdragon 8gen one in here it turns out it’s actually underclocked a little bit. This actually benchmarks lower than phones running the same chip, but i’m telling you that’s because a phone is eight millimeters thick and it can actually fit a new cooling solution for this hot new chip. This tablet is too thin and can’t fit that so this tablet will get a little bit warm and under clock a little bit.
So then the battery life is okay, so it has. It has a surprisingly large, 11 200 milliamp hour battery in here, despite being so thin, but it also has a huge screen so evens out, i was getting about eight hours of screen on time on a heavy day, which is a bit more than a really good Phone, but you definitely do still have to charge it at the end of a heavy day if you use it a lot, but if you use it occasionally, you know the standby time is excellent. It can last you several days. I just have a feeling if you’re spending this much on a tablet, convertible thing you’re going to want to actually get a lot of use out of it, so we’re probably already fully entrenched in the what is a computer conversation.
So this computer is very much still a large android tablet, so that means it has all the pros and cons of every other android tablet, meaning there’s still no instagram app that scales properly my to-do list, app tick tick, doesn’t really take advantage of the whole screen. Soundcloud doesn’t work, there’s lots of apps that don’t look amazing on this huge screen, because that’s the way it is with android tablets and that’s on the developers. Yes, but that’s a pretty consistent, android tablet thing, but you know what there’s one way you could say is maybe a way around it and that is samsung’s dex, so dex is samsung’s, desktop ui, that’s built into a lot of their devices.
So if you were to plug into a keyboard and a monitor – or in this case the book cover keyboard and hit the shortcut key, it switches you into dex mode, which kind of feels like a chromebook. So you’ve got a dock at the bottom that actually matches what you had in tablet mode, plus a windowed ui. Now that lets you multitask and move things around, you can do file management and treat it a lot more like a real computer, or at least the chromebook. So the trackpad is decent, it’s just overall, a next level of versatility that makes this thing way more useful. If you are trying to turn it into your primary computer, you can also change the opacity of windows for some reason.
It’S great. It’S definitely not perfect, though there’s plenty of apps that don’t play well with the scaling. The whole system still has the same problem too.
That the ipad has, which is it’s very top-heavy – all of the weight, is in the tablet and it’s genuinely difficult to use it on your lap, like a normal laptop, but i still say this: this is clearly better than the ipad’s attempt at being a computer. It does a lot of things better, it does the floating window support way better than the ipad ever has. It has a micro sd card slot which the ipad has never had, and it also has the cameras horizontally in the right place and in much better quality than the ipad.
So for video calls or recording videos with the front facing cameras, these cameras are actually really good. The ultra wide camera even has auto framing, although it’s not nearly as responsive or smooth as the ipad pro, and it cuts down to 1080p in this mode. But at least it looks like you’re looking at the person you’re talking to on a zoom call and then last but not least, drawing stuff.
Now, i’m not even going to pretend to be an artist who can take advantage of the differences between this and the apple pencil versus others, but here are some things that i definitely did notice so number one. This pen still charges on the back of the tablet. Here, in only this specific orientation, which is kind of easy to scrape off and and get knocked off, if you move around too much, which is unfortunate but what’s funny is they did make a case.
This book cover case, and you can see it has a little indentation here. So if you slap it on the back, it actually holds the pen in place. If you align everything just right, so it’s charging and can be accessed like that cool. The other thing is, it actually does now attach magnetically to the top, but it doesn’t charge there.
So that’s a good place to leave it temporarily. I guess if you’re going back and forth between using it and not using it but yeah if it doesn’t charge there, don’t forget about it. At least you have the option then number two: this pen is actually included with this tablet, so you can mess around with it. If you want to you’re kind of encouraged to play around with it and try stuff the features pop up and just make themselves known whenever you pull the tablet off of the back of the thing. But you know it’s really good at just drawing and sketching, and things like that. The palm rejection with these tiny bezels is good enough that i don’t have to think about it and it has lightning quick, basically, real-time 2.8 millisecond response times that make it feel like real paper.
Remote, controlled air actions are still here. Samsung notes is as powerful as ever with the handwriting recognition and pen up is also included, for you know more digital drawing type stuff, and it’s good. You know i’ll defer to some actual digital artists to make the call on whether it’s actually better than other options out there in their reviews. But i like this overall package and then bonus points. The tab. S8 ultra has the second best speakers. I’Ve ever heard in the tablet right behind the larger ipad pro, but it’s got all this space. So it’s got this huge quad, speaker, setup, dolby, atmos support very loud, not quite as full and bassy as the ipad pro but easily fills a room plenty for watching movies and videos, and things like that really good speaker setup.
So if it sounds like, i like this tablet a lot, because i do i really like this. I think this is the best android tablet out right now: um and it’s even gon na be getting better. They said they’re gon na add they’re they’re working on adding lumafusion to the galaxy store, which is that video editing app on tablets which could make it even more powerful. So then do i recommend it? Well, you got ta know what you want and if you were looking for a tablet that actually fits the ultra name, this is the first one that actually does it.
The huge screen is kind of unrivaled than any other tablet, and then it’s so capable with decks and with all this other stuff they’ve built in that it’s actually genuinely one of the most versatile computers you can get. So that’s been it thanks for watching catch. You guys the next one peace .