The Galaxy Tab Gets An Update for 2023, Including 14.6″ Tab Ultra

Lastly for Unpacked 2023 we have the updates to the Galaxy Tab lineup, with a new Tab Ultra, Tab+ and Tab in the S9 series, and boy are they doozies.

Starting off with the big boy of the group, the Tab S9 Ultra, this tablet is an absolute behemoth with a 14.6” Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen, and 120Hz refresh rates, Samsung didn’t tell us the resolution but it would be asinine to assume that it would be lower than last years, so we would assume 2960×1848, once again, a truly insane resolution for a tablet. The size is identical to last year, though the WiFi version has gained 6g in mass and the 5G version 9g, we are picking hairs here. In fact, all three tablets have nearly identical dimensions to last year, and only the smallest 11” Tab S9 has lost a bit of mass down to 498g and 500g for WiFi and 5G respectively.

All three tablets are IP68 water and dust resistant, though with all three tablets being under 6mm thin, I’m not sure I’d personally take them out of the house as they feel like they might end up bent or worse. The Smallest Tab S9 has a single rear 13MP camera with autofocus, whereas the 12.4” S9+ and the 14.6” S9 Ultra get a pair of rear shooters with the same 13MP main, with an 8MP ultrawide snapper for all you Tablet photography aficionados. Looking at the front cameras, the S9 and S9+ have a single 12MP Ultrawide camera, whereas the S9 Ultra has a secondary 12MP sensor, likely a shallower field of view for better quality and visual effects such as portrait mode or an AI-assisted crop and zoom to follow you around the frame.

Speaking of AI-Assisted features, those come with a nice upgrade courtesy of the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 for Galaxy, and much like the version in the phones, this chip is an absolute baller, and given the previous series was the Snapdragon 8 Gen1, the gains in performance and efficiency by moving to this chipset is immense, Samsung is claiming 38% faster CPU performance, 41% better GPU Perf and 49% better NPU performance over last generation. Pair those performance improvements with the fact that this is now made by TSMC and not Samsung foundry, the tablet is no longer a furnace in your hands and can run sustained loads for longer, which is important given some of the exclusives that Samsung has been able to get for the Galaxy Tab series from iOS and the iPad. Things like LumaFusion, Clip Studio Paint, Good Notes and ArcSite very much benefit from more power but also not slowing down to a crawl after 5 minutes of use.

All of those applications also benefit from the nice new fast LPDDR5X DRAM, 8GB-16GB depending on the model you get, and with storage varying from 128GB all the way up to 1TB. Those applications also benefit from the S-Pen, which got a nice usability upgrade in that it can be docked either way on the rear of the tablet now, whereas before it would only charge when facing one direction. Samsung is also introducing a new Creator Edition S-Pen, this one is thicker with larger more sensitive tips that are replaceable and there are also different tips to emulate different writing implements, this looks a lot like the Apple Pencil, but that’s not a bad thing as it was very comfortable to use and hold.

Pricing here is a bit of a gut punch, but these are impressively specced devices and therefore come with pricetags to match, all of these are available to pre-order on the 26th of July with general availability on August 11th.

Tab S9

• Tab S9 WiFi, 128GB – £799
• Tab S9 5G, 128GB – £949
• Tab S9 WiFi 256GB – £1099
• Tab S9 5G 256GB – £1149

Tab S9+

• Tab S9+ WiFi 256GB – £999
• Tab S9+ 5G 256GB – £1149
• Tab S9+ WiFi 512GB – £1099
• Tab S9+ 5G 512GB – £1249

Tab S9 Ultra

• Tab S9 Ultra WiFi 256GB – £1199
• Tab S9 Ultra 5G 256GB – £1349
• Tab S9 Ultra WiFi 512GB – £1299
• Tab S9 Ultra 5G 512GB – £1449
• Tab S9 Ultra WiFi 1TB – £1549
• Tab S9 Ultra 5G 1TB – £1699