Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra review

Display

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra has a 14.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display of 2,960 x 1,848 pixels or 239ppi density. It supports dynamic 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ streaming.

The panel has a small notch, which is a rare sight on a tablet and a controversial one, too.

The display protection is handled by a piece of Gorilla Glass, though the exact revision is unclear.

While the screen does support a wide color gamut, there is no 10-but color depth and hence the default 16.7 million possible colors. Samsung has no 1B display so far, and we didn't expect it to premiere one on this tablet anyway.

Let's start with our display measurements.

This generation of tablets introduces Vision Booster, which improves the text and photos, and other content, under bright light. It boosts the screen brightness and uses contrast improvements, and it can offer up to 1,750nits of peak brightness.

We measured 353 nits of maximum brightness when controlling it manually from the slider. The screen can go up to 642nits in Auto mode when faced with bright light. These are solid numbers for a tablet. The screen goes brighter when the white surface goes smaller, so we do believe it will go way over 1,000nits in a small area when needed.

The minimum brightness at point white was just 1.7nit.

Color accuracy

The Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra offers two color modes - Vivid (wide color, DCI-P3) and Natural (standard color, sRGB). The accuracy of both is consistently good across both models.

The Vivid mode has a slightly cooler color temperature compared to the Natural one, but you can tune the temperature via a dedicated slider and get similar results.

You can also tune RGB saturation to your liking if that's your thing.

Refresh rate

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra has two Motion Smoothness modes - Adaptive and Standard. According to the description, the Adaptive one switches automatically between different modes and can do up to 120Hz, while the Standard one does the same but only goes up to 60Hz for longer battery life.

According to the device hardware scanning apps, the screen supports these fixed steps - 30Hz, 60Hz, and 120Hz.

When using the Adaptive mode, we saw the screen use 120Hz across the interface and all compatible apps and many games (excluding those limited to 60fps). When the picture is static, then the software usually dials down to 30Hz.

Video streaming and playback are done in an adaptive fashion, too, depending on the actual video. For example, 24fps and 30fps videos are shown at 30Hz refresh, while above 30fps clips use 60Hz.

When using the Standard mode, the refresh rate behaves as in Adaptive but with a cap of 60Hz. Meaning it uses 30Hz, where applicable.

Streaming and HDR

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra displays support HDR10+, which is recognized by all popular streaming apps. And thanks to the Widevine L1 support, they all stream 1080p HDR10 content hassle-free.

Display options

Battery life

The Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra is powered by a large 11,200mAh battery. It supports 45W fast charging.

The Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra clocked 7 hours and 45 minutes on our web browsing script, which is an alright score for a tablet. Many of our pages have bright backgrounds, which usually affects the test significantly, given the large OLED screen that needs lighting up.

When it comes to video playback, the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra did 10 hours and 28 minutes before its battery dropped to 10% when playing looped videos in fullscreen view.

We don't calculate tablet endurance ratings as our formula for phones takes standby battery draw into account. Applying the same formula for tablets with their larger batteries doesn't make sense because their standby power draw is minimal, so we focus on the active screen-on tests instead.

Charging speed

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra supports up to 45W fast charging. There is no adapter supplied with the tablet. We used Samsung's 45W PD+PPS charger for our test.

The 45W adapter recharged the empty 11,200mAh battery to 17% in 15 minutes and up to 32% in 30 minutes. A full charge took 2 hours and 8 minutes.

The battery options include features like Power Saving mode, Adaptive Battery (puts some apps to sleep automatically), enable/disable fast wired charging. There is also the Protect Battery option, which limits the maximum charge of the battery to 85% for prolonged maximum lifespan.

Battery options

Speakers

The Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra has four speakers with support for Dolby Atmos, and they are quite loud.

The slate scored an Excellent mark on our loudness test! In addition to the impressive loudness, the Tab S9 Ultra also offers superb audio quality - the sound is rich from bass to highs.

We carried out the test with Dolby Atmos On. We tried it again with Dolby Atmos disabled, and we found the speakers sound almost identical, but slightly quieter.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.