Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra review

Display

The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra packs a 14.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen with 2,960 x 1,848 pixels (239ppi, 16:10), 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ support.

It has thin bezels and a small notch around the front camera.

Samsung advertises the screen for its excellent outdoor legibility. The official numbers are 1,000 nits for maximum automatic brightness and 1,600 nits for peak brightness.

We measured a maximum manual brightness of 708 nits with the Extra Brightness option enabled. Without this feature, the maximum brightness the screen can offer is 437 nits.

When using Automatic Brightness, the display gets quite bright - 1,031 nits - matching exactly what Samsung promised.

Finally, the peak brightness we measured on a 10% white patch was 1,514 nits, an excellent result for a tablet.

The minimum brightness on a white screen was 1.6 nits.

The screen supports a dynamic refresh rate up to 120Hz. Oner UI offers two options for smoothness: Adaptive and Standard. Both modes are refresh rate ceilings - adaptive allows for up to 120Hz, while standard - up to 60Hz.

Naturally, Adaptive mode is the default one, and it offers a wide range of refresh rates.

The screen goes down to 1Hz for static content, no matter whether Adaptive or Standard has been chosen. The display will boost up to 120Hz when browsing, working with most apps and HRR-compatible games in Adaptive mode.

We also tested with various videos - 48fps ones are shown at 48Hz refresh rate, 30fps - 30Hz, 60fprs - 60Hz, etc.

The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra's screen is HDR10+ certified, and all popular streaming services readily served high-resolution HDR content in our testing.

Battery life

The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra is powered by an 11,600mAh battery, the same capacity as the cell inside the S11 Ultra.

In our battery tests, the Tab S12 Ultra posted impressive times on all on-screen tests and earned a 13:23h Active Use Score, matching the class-leading endurance of its predecessor.

Charging speed

The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra, just like the Tab S11 Ultra and plenty of other Galaxy smartphones, supports up to 45W fast wired charging. The tablet ships without a charger, but you get the 3A-rated DN980 Samsung cable.

We used Samsung's own 45W power adapter for the following charging test.

The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra's battery went from 1% to 21% in 15 minutes, and reached 41% charge after 30 minutes. A full charge required 84 minutes, which is quite good for a battery of such large capacity.

You can turn on or off the fast charging, and battery protection options like adaptive charging and charging limit are available.

Speakers

The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra packs four symmetrical speakers that support 4-channel audio output for the most immersive experience.

The speakers scored an Excellent mark on our loudness test, and we can confirm the Tab S12 Ultra is nicely loud when playing music or watching movies. The sound is boomy and immersive.

As far as audio quality is concerned, it's good: there is a lot of bass and great vocals, but the high frequencies are somewhat lacking.

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.