At an event in New York City today, Samsung unveiled its new affordable phone — the Galaxy S24 FE — and its latest tablet lineup. The first flagship products powered by a MediaTek processor in the U.S., the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra and Galaxy Tab S10 Plus bring the best of Galaxy AI to the tablet lineup.
Both tablets build on last year’s Tab S9 series, but the smaller 11-inch form factor is dropped in favor of the 12.4-inch Tab S10 Plus and the 14.6-inch Tab S10 Ultra. They’re thin at just 5.6mm and 5.4mm, and fairly light at 571 grams and 718 grams, respectively. The Galaxy Tab S10 series are two of the thinnest Android tablets you can buy, and the armor aluminum build helps them feel well-built and premium.
I’ve just spent an hour with Samsung’s new tablets. Having owned the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, I’ve not seen a huge improvement this year, but a few things make this year’s tablets interesting. Let me explain.
The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra is still a very, very big tablet
When Samsung launched the Tab S8 Ultra two years ago, the Galaxy View was the first thing that came to mind. Samsung launched this 17-inch tablet as a one-off kitchen product a decade ago, and the Ultra range reminds me of its size and stature.
It’s a very big tablet, paired with one of the nicest Samsung displays I’ve used. Both tablets feature a bright and vibrant Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with a dynamic refresh rate of 1Hz to 120Hz. There’s no dual OLED technology like the iPad Pro, but it’s a great display nonetheless.
The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra also has an anti-reflective display designed to reduce glare under direct light and provide an Android alternative to the iPad Pro’s nano-textured glass. It’s not billed as such and doesn’t deliver as great an experience, but it’s a step toward eventually offering a direct competitor.
The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra’s big size makes it ideal for Samsung’s DeX mode, which is designed to offer a Windows-like desktop experience on the go. DeX mode can launch any Android app in desktop mode and supports resizable windows, as well as all the PC-like keyboard shortcuts that we’re used to.
From my experience with the Tab S9 Ultra, it’s clear that the Tab S10 Ultra is not a one-handed tablet. This is a noticeably large device that requires two hands and works best with a keyboard, but thanks to its svelte design, it is very portable.
A familiar design and camera setup
The Tab S10 Ultra follows the Tab S9 Ultra, and it features a dual 12-megapixel front-facing camera array designed to provide the ideal video call setup. The Tab S10 Plus features a single 12MP ultrawide camera, with both tablets featuring a 13MP and 8MP ultrawide dual-camera array on the rear. The front-facing camera on both tablets is featured in the middle of the bezel in horizontal mode, making it ideal for video calls but less so if you plan to use it in portrait mode.
On the rear, the Tab S10 Ultra’s antenna design has a small notch. Like the Galaxy Tab range before it, there’s a magnetic docking station for the included S Pen, but Samsung has also solved one of my biggest complaints. Instead of being flush — which made it easier for the S Pen to fall off — it’s now slightly dipped, which means the S Pen should be more secure. It certainly feels that way from my brief hands-on.
Many of the great things we’ve come to expect from Samsung tablets are also present, including IP68 dust and water resistance. This helps the Galaxy Tab S10 series stand apart from other tablets and is even more impressive, considering the thin profile of both tablets.
It’s all about the AI features that we’ve seen before
If you had watched Samsung’s announcement earlier today, you would have seen them mention AI a lot. The Galaxy Tab S10 series is being billed as an AI tablet, but it mostly offers the same AI features we’ve seen on other Samsung devices this year. That said, it’s the most capable AI tablet right now.
The Galaxy Tab S10 series brings the Galaxy AI features we’re familiar with to the tablet form factor.
The live translation features are now available in 16 languages, offering an easy way to bridge language differences during a conversation. The large display and included S Pen on both tablets — especially the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra — are perfect for Sketch to Image, which allows you to turn a simple prompt into an AI-generated image. Circle to Search is designed to offer an easy way to search anything you see on the screen.
The bundled S Pen is perfect for big displays and includes the range of S Pen features found on the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Galaxy Z Fold 6. The new Book Cover Keyboard has a dedicated Galaxy AI key — like the one found on the new Windows-powered Copilot+ PCs — that can launch Bixby or Google Gemini with a quick tap.
The first MediaTek-powered flagship device
None of these AI features are new or revolutionary, but the Galaxy Tab S10 series is designed to bring them to the tablet form factor. These are enabled by the most interesting part of the Galaxy Tab S10 series: the MediaTek 9300+ processor that powers both tablets.
The first MediaTek flagship device in the U.S. promises big gains in performance and efficiency.
This is the first MediaTek-powered flagship device in the U.S., and Samsung has made bold claims about its performance gains over the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor that powers last year’s Tab S9 range. These gains include an 18% increase in CPU power, a 28% increase in GPU performance, and a 14% increase in NPU efficiency.
We’ve tested other phones powered by the Dimensity 9300+ processor, and MediaTek’s current flagship processor also delivers excellent battery life. I expect this to be the same for the Galaxy Tab S10 series, with the 11,200mAh (Tab S10 Ultra) and 10,090mAh (Tab S10 Plus) batteries likely to deliver multiday battery life.
First impressions of the Galaxy Tab S10 series
Inconscipucous by its absence during the event was a successor to the Galaxy Tab S9, which featured an 11-inch display. It’s unclear whether Samsung still plans to launch a smaller tablet to fit into the Tab S10 range, but if you want a smaller Galaxy Tab, you’ll need to look at the Galaxy Tab S9 FE.
On its own, the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra and Tab S10 Plus are perfectly fine tablets. They offer the Galaxy experience with a huge display, especially in the case of the former. My key issue is their similarity to last year’s Galaxy Tab S9 series. These are nearly identical with no noticeable changes, so if you have a Tab S9 series, there’s no reason to upgrade. The AI features will eventually land with a future update for your tablet.
We will have a full review of the new tablets soon, but my first impression is mostly positive. On their own, they are excellent tablets that offer the best big-screen Android tablet experience. However, a $999 price tag for the Galaxy Tab S10 Plus and $1,199 for the Tab S10 Ultra means they require a second consideration. There are likely to be great trade-in deals, but like the best Android tablets, the biggest challenge to the form factor is the Android OS itself.
The Galaxy Tab S10 series is available to preorder today and will launch on October 3.
