Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra review

Anti-reflective, privacy-oriented 6.9-inch OLED panel

The Galaxy S26 Ultra features a familiar 6.9-inch LTPO OLED display with 1440 x 3120px resolution, supporting up to 120Hz refresh rate. The screen also supports HDR10+ content, but omits the Dolby Vision certification that many other competitors have. The screen doesn't have 10-bit color depth either, it's an 8-bit panel with FRC. You don't get high-frequency PWM dimming either.

On the other hand, the display features that Samsung has focused on have universal benefits in real-world use. The DX anti-reflective coating improves outdoor legibility by a significant margin. And the new headline Privacy Display feature limits the screen visibility at an angle, making it hard for other people to see the content on your screen.

Galaxy S26 Ultra

Since the Privacy Display feature is mostly a hardware implementation, we were curious to see how it has affected the display performance. We are happy to report that the Galaxy S26 Ultra's screen is as bright as before. In manual mode, the panel easily peaked above 700 nits with the Extra Brightness setting turned on, while in Auto mode, the OLED panel reached 1,480 nits on our standardized 75% white patch. On a 10% patch, the display went above 2,800 nits, meaning you will get very good performance with HDR content. The minimum brightness we recorded was just 1.1 nits, which is a commendable number too.

Samsung introduced two more software features that enhance the visual experience. ProScaler improves sharpness and contrast on images and text, even if they are not native to the phone itself. It works with images and videos.

The mDNIe, on the other hand, improves color gradients, producing nicer soft shades and color transitions. One could argue that Samsung should have just used a 10-bit or 12-bit display to deliver these nicer gradients, though.

Privacy Display

The Privacy Display feature may not affect brightness by default, but things change once you turn it on. We discovered that with Privacy Display applied, the maximum brightness possible is halved in every scenario, which makes sense given how the tech works.

The way the feature is implemented is by applying a hardware filter on half the pixels, which are now separated into two groups - Narrow Pixels and Wide Pixels. The Narrow Pixels emit light directly forward, while the Wide Pixels, as the name implies, emit light at a wider angle. From what we understand, the Wide Pixels are your standard pixels, whereas the Narrow Pixels have a taller "wall" around them for lack of a better word, which makes them harder to see at an angle.

So when the Privacy Display toggle is turned on, the Wide Pixels' brightness is reduced significantly. Maybe even turned off by what we see under a microscope. So it's no surprise that when half of the pixels don't work, peak brightness is halved. Still, around 800 nits on Samsung's DX anti-reflective screen provides good enough outdoor visibility, even on a bright sunny day.

Privacy Display options

The pixel density also drops when you turn off these pixels, as evidenced by the OLED panel photos we took under a digital microscope. You can clearly see that fewer pixels light up with the Privacy Display ON. We've also added a photo of the Galaxy S25 Ultra's display panel for more context.

S26 Ultra Privacy On • S26 Ultra Privacy Off • S25 Ultra

The real magic of the Privacy Display feature is that it can work on specific areas only, unlike a privacy screen protector, for instance. You can turn it on only for incoming notifications, so pop-ups will be hard to see from someone standing next to you. The system recognizes PINs, passwords and patterns and activates the Privacy Display only for those fields. Unfortunately, the feature works only in system apps and on the phone's lock screen. Support for third-party apps in the future is expected.

Speaking of third-party apps, you can set Privacy Display to turn on only in select apps. It works with Routines as well. For example, you can set Privacy Display to turn on only when you are at the office or at a certain time every day.

You also have a Maximum Privacy Display toggle, too, which also affects contrast and color reproduction. Blacks, for example, become gray, and contrast falls off a cliff. It makes it much harder for anyone to stare at your screen, but since it affects the viewing experience so much, we wouldn't say it's meant to be used all the time.

Now, while the functionality seems cool and useful, it's not "amazing". In the standard Privacy Mode, you can still roughly see what's on the screen at an angle. The Maximum Privacy setting is what makes it really "private", although the viewing experience is severely affected.

Privacy Display: Straight On • At an angle

When the feature is turned off completely, the visual experience is not compromised at all, even if we compare the screen to the S25 Ultra's. Color reproduction, brightness and viewing angles are all virtually identical to the previous generation's screen.

We saw early reports online that there is a difference in perceived sharpness and definition. Still, after carefully comparing the screens of the S26 U and S25 U, we can definitely say that's not the case - at least with Privacy display turned OFF, which is its default state.

Refresh rate

The Galaxy's way of handling refresh rate is by offering two modes - Adaptive and Standard. Words don't mean much, though, since both modes are adaptive and will continuously switch refresh rates, but only the Adaptive one maxes out at 120Hz, while Standard is limited to 60Hz.

There are certain small differences, in our experience - if you're in Standard mode, 24fps and 48fps videos will get a 60Hz refresh rate, while in Adaptive, the screen will attempt to match the refresh rate to the framerate. We wouldn't say it really makes a visible difference, though.

When in Adaptive mode, Chrome, for example, will switch to 60Hz when you're not touching the display, even when there's moving content on screen.

Battery life

The Galaxy S26 Ultra runs on the same 5,000 mAh battery as last year's S25 Ultra model, so it's normal to expect similar, if not almost identical, battery endurance, as the screen diagonal and technology are also the same.

Well, Samsung was able to squeeze out a little bit more out of the 5,000 mAh unit, likely through software optimization. The S26 Ultra scored a bit better than its predecessor in two key tests - web browsing and video streaming.

But while the Active Use Score 16:23h is better than before, and solid on its own, it's still far behind the competition from China and from Apple.

Charging speed

The Galaxy S26 Ultra now supports an upgraded Super Fast Charging 3.0 protocol. It's again based on the Power Delivery protocol with a specific PPS profile (3A/20V), so it's not proprietary in any way. Any 60W USB-PD charger that supports this profile should be able to provide the fastest possible charging speed that the phone is capable of. Of course, Samsung is already selling its own 60W charger, and we obtained one for this test. Unlike the 45W chargers, this one comes without a cable bundled, but it doesn't need one, as the 3A cable supplied with the phone is enough to reach max power.

Wireless charging has also gotten an upgrade and can now go as high as 25W over the Qi v.2.2 standard. Notably, the phone lacks any built-in magnets, so you can access this charging power only if you use a magnetic case that will align the charging coil properly.

Reverse 4.5W wireless charging is on board too, but, just as before, the phone may not be able to initiate charging of all types of devices.

At first, we were skeptical about the wired charging speed upgrade, because we've seen our share of underwhelming charging power upgrades from Samsung before. 60W sounds considerably higher than the previous max of 45W. However, Samsung cited 75% charge after 30 minutes on the cable, which is just 5 percentage points faster than what we measured on the previous gen charging system, so that didn't get our hopes too high either.

However, in our tests on the S26 Ultra, we got 84% in 30 minutes, while at the 15-minute mark, the S26 Ultra's battery indicator showed a good 51%. A full charge took only 43 minutes, which means that the upgrade is not only a meaningful one, but makes the device much more competitive in this regard, too.

In fact, the S26 Ultra is now among the fastest-charging phones in tis class, albeit with a small caveat. The Ultra has the smallest battery of the bunch, except the iPhone 17 Pro Max, so at the end of the day, you get lower mAh per minute charging rate than the rest of the devices. But let's not get too nitpicky here. The S26 Ultra's charging power is finally competitive enough.

It's important to note that we tested the device several times with varying results by a few percentage points and minutes. We are showing you the best charging run we got.

We also measured the charging power, and we were just as impressed. The Galaxy S26 Ultra maintained 51-53W for quite some time before dialing down to around 40W. At no point did the current go above 3A, so you don't need a beefier 5A cable to get these charging times.

We also tried charging the S26 Ultra with a third-party 67W charger, and we got similar charging times, proving there is nothing proprietary about the charging system here. As long as you have a USB PD charger that supports the 3A/20V PPS profile, you should be good to go.

The S25 Ultra has a single battery care setting in its menu, but it's got a multi-tiered approach inside once you enable it. The 'Basic' setting prevents constantly charging to 100% if you keep your phone plugged in for a long time, instead waiting for the battery level to drop below 95%, and then starting to charge again.

The 'Maximum' battery protection limits the charging level to a custom limit, and you get a choice of either 80%, 85%, 90% or 95% charge.

In contrast, the 'Adaptive' is supposed to use the preset 'Maximum' ceiling during the night while you are sleeping and to switch to 'Basic' just before you wake up.

There are also toggles to turn off fast charging altogether (separate settings for wired and wireless).

Speakers

The Galaxy S26 Ultra features a set of hybrid stereo speakers. There's one at the top acting as an earpiece behind the tiny grille, and there's one at the bottom, which is the main one. Naturally, the bottom one sounds a tad louder than the top.

When it comes to loudness, the Galaxy S26 Ultra earned a -25.9 LUFS score, which is still ranked as "Very Good" but is a bit quieter than laast year's S25 Ultra.

However, we found the newer tuning to sound better than last year's. While there's no noticeable change in the low frequencies (bass), we noticed that tracks sound less vocal-heavy and squeaky. The S26 Ultra generally has more balanced speaker tuning this time around, offering one of the best loudspeakers in its class. Still, the iPhone 17 Pro Max remains king in this category.

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.