Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra Review: Hands-on with the top-end tablet

Introduction

Samsung has unveiled its new top-end tablet at IFA 2025: the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra.

While it might look very similar to last year’s capable Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra, Samsung has made a few tweaks that make all the difference in real-world use – at least that’s what I experienced during my hands-on time with the tablet ahead of its launch.

While I’m not yet ready to deliver my final thoughts, here are my initial impressions of the new Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra and how it compares to the Android tablet competition. 

Design and screen

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra might look a lot like last year’s S10 Ultra at a glance, but look a little closer and you’ll notice a range of smaller tweaks and new features that fix some of the long-time complaints with Samsung’s top-end tablet.

First and foremost, the accompanying S Pen – which still comes in the box – no longer magnetically attaches to the rear. 

Instead, it snaps on the long side of the tablet for charging and storage, just like the OnePlus Pad 3, iPad Pro M4 and pretty much any non-Samsung tablet in the market. I’ve long felt that Samsung’s rear stylus storage was a bit of an oddity, as it gets in the way when holding the tablet and also had a tendency to fall off when stored in a bag, so this is a welcome change in my book.

Speaking of the S Pen, that has also had a bit of a facelift this year. It now sports a hexagonal design like a traditional pencil, complete with a cone-shaped tip. I also feel like the S Pen is substantially lighter this year, which made doodling during my hands-on session a little nicer – but with a regular slippery glass screen, it still doesn’t replicate the true pen-and-paper experience for drawing and note-taking. 

Elsewhere, the Tab S11 Ultra has been slimmed down – now just 5.1mm thick and weighing a pretty decent 692g considering its XL footprint. It’s still a big tablet that I wouldn’t exactly describe as portable, with a massive 14.6-inch screen – but it should make some difference when holding the tablet one-handed or storing it in a bag. 

That screen, by the way, is still the reason to go for the Tab S11 Ultra over many competing Android tablets – for something smaller, there’s always the regular 11-inch Tab S11.

The 14.6-inch OLED screen is a sight to behold; blacks are deep, the colours are vibrant, and when combined with an LTPO-enabled 120Hz refresh rate, everything felt super smooth during my hands-on. The bezels are slim at just 5.2mm thick, and with a boosted 1600nit peak brightness, it should fare much better in outdoor lights – though that’s not something I could confirm from my indoor hands-on experience. 

It’s clear, not only from the top-end display tech but the 16:10 aspect ratio, that this is more of a media machine than a work one, but with upgraded DeX tech, it should double up as a surprisingly competent laptop replacement –  more on that a little later.   

The tablet also sees the continuation of Samsung’s commitment to offering IP68 protection in its flagship range – something we’ve still not seen from any other premium iPads or Android tablets – and like last year, it’s available in fairly muted (but still stylish) grey and silver colour options.  

Cameras

Cameras are never a focus for tablets, which is why it was so surprising when Samsung equipped previous entries in the series with not one but two front-facing cameras. It meant that you essentially had a normal selfie camera and an ultra-wide alternative for video calls, but it also meant that there was a pretty noticeable camera cutout in the middle of the screen. 

Well, it seems like Samsung has decided to forego that experience this year, dropping the number of selfie cameras back down to one, with a much less noticeable camera cutout interrupting the otherwise top-end screen experience. The 12MP snapper should still suffice for video calls and quick selfies, though I’ll be putting that to the test for my in-depth review.

Flip the tablet over and you’ll find a familiar combination of 13MP main and 8MP ultrawide lenses, complete with an embedded flash for illuminating the environment. Despite Samsung’s camera prowess in phones like the Galaxy S25 Ultra, the cameras on the rear appear to be just fine – but again, tablets aren’t really designed for photography, so it’s not much of a surprise.

It should still be good enough for document scanning or the odd quick photo, but I’ll likely recommend using whatever phone you have in your pocket for more serious photography.  

Features and software

Unlike Samsung’s phone range, which tends to use Snapdragon-branded chipsets, the company’s tablets tend to come with MediaTek-branded alternatives. The Tab S10 Ultra featured 2024’s MediaTek Dimensity 9300+, and that continues with the Tab S11 Ultra’s use of the upgraded Dimensity 9400+ and either 12- or 16GB of RAM, depending on the variant you get.

While that’ll likely mean it’ll trail behind the OnePlus Pad 3 and its Snapdragon 8 Elite and the iPad Pro M4 in benchmark testing, in real-world use, the tablet feels fast and responsive with no real loading time when opening apps. I’ll be interested to really put the tablet to the test once we delve in for our full in-depth review.

It’s an important year for performance too, with upgraded Samsung DeX capabilities as part of the Android 16-based One UI 8 experience. While you can still connect the tablet to an external monitor and get a Windows-esque UI, it’s now also baked directly into the tablet experience with movable and resizable app windows – and there’s even separate desktops you can use to separate work apps and entertainment apps, for example. 

It’s a feature present on the competing Honor MagicPad 3, and it’ll also be a feature of iPadOS 26 when it comes out in September, so it’s far from a unique experience, but it feels way more polished than Honor’s alternative so far, with more intuitive gestures and window resizing tools. 

I’ll certainly be interested to see if this upgraded DeX tech turns the tablet into a true laptop alternative, especially when combined with the S11 Ultra’s optional keyboard case – but we’ll have to wait and see for now.    

Of course, being a flagship Samsung product, you’ll also get access to Galaxy AI including new elements – like Now Brief – along with upgraded elements. Google’s Circle to Search can now work in games, and Gemini now takes up a small portion of the massive screen – and also supports drag-and-drop so you can move photos and text between it and your other apps more easily.

As I’ve said before, I don’t think any of these features will truly change the way you use the tebalet, but they’re certainly nice to have – if only for occasionally editing a photo or rewriting a chunk of text. 

Battery life should also be solid, with an 11,600mAh cell that’s 400mAh larger than its predecessor – though it does have a much larger screen to power than the likes of the OnePlus Pad 3 and its 12,140mAh cell, so it likely won’t be the best battery life on any tablet. 

Still, I’ll put that to the test once I spend more time with the tablet – it could always surprise me, after all.