Last year, the global tablet market was up 8.5% in Q1 as people started to replace devices they bought during the pandemic. Apple led the quarter with 13.7 million units shipped, up 14.0%, while Samsung was around half that with 6.6 million units shipped, down 5.2%. Samsung usually starts shipping its new flagship tablets in late Q3 or early Q4, so that decline was a bad look for the Tab S11 slates.
Now attention turns to the Samsung Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra. The Ultra series is the only Tab S model that gets regular yearly upgrades, but this year's changes are modest. Samsung upgraded the chipset, dropped the base 128GB version and introduced new shades of gray. The chipset is last year's Dimensity 9500 rather than MediaTek's newer Dimensity 9600 Pro. Official numbers show a 32% single-core and 17% multi-core improvement over the Tab S11 Ultra, but battery life posted a nearly identical result to its predecessor, with capacity unchanged at 11,600mAh. The base 12/256GB model costs $1,400 / €1,540 / ₹150,000.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S12+ replaces the two-year-old Tab S10+ and offers a bigger performance leap over the Dimensity 9300+ in the 2024 model. Its display grows only marginally, to 12.6 inches from 12.4 inches, and its battery rises to 10,600mAh from 10,090mAh. Samsung also dropped the 8MP ultra-wide camera. The Tab S12+ starts at $1,200 / €1,300 / ₹130,000.
For comparison, the 11-inch iPad Pro also starts at $1,200 and uses Apple's M5 chipset with a tandem OLED display, while the 13-inch iPad Pro starts at $1,500 with a smaller display than the Tab S12 Ultra's 14.6-inch panel. The poll asks readers whether they have a use case for a large flagship tablet, whether the Tab S12 Ultra is that tablet, and whether they would pay extra for the Ultra over the Tab S12+, which offers similar performance and features at a lower price.
Source: GSMArena · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing