Forget iPads! TAB S9 ULTRA is the Real Deal! 6 Months Review 👑

6 months ago I was unconvinced that the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra could top the already amazing tab S8 Ultra boy was I wrong let's dive into the upgrades that won me over some that didn't really along with your burning questions as well and a huge thanks to all of you in the community for sending me your questions I love when you get involved it does help me make this content more useful for you cheers and that's what this channel is about really for example Griz Li yeah it does see seriously though let's talk about the obvious which is the size of this tablet even though I've been using the tablet say Ultra since launch I should really be used to the design by now but every time I pick up the S9 Ultra I still think wo that is a big tablet you do become a little bit more self-conscious of the size when you are in public of course because it does turn some heads because of its sheer size in my experience when you get this out of a bag in a meeting for example know people do ask questions you know what is this thing you know it's amazing because it is an impressive piece of tech and so thin so light the word that comes to mind every time I use it is Elegance sure it's still massive there's no kind of going away from it but it's such a pretty device I decided to try the beige this time and I'm super happy with it the display is one of the main features really this aspect ratio here is awesome for entertainment but in my opinion it's even better for getting work done the colors are incredible and the contrast rati on this display makes watching content on it almost like having your own personal cinema screen so too much true that we'll talk about how I use this for work in a moment but as you can see here this new display is fantastic even when using in bright space like this can't really tell you right now cuz it's it's dark is after work but I do have lots of Windows here and you know lots of Reflections and direct sunlight sometimes and when it comes to the specs it is still the same size and resolution as the tabsa ultra but the tech here is different this is dynamic Amed whereas the tabsa ultra was Super AMOLED to put it simply in plain English what that means is that we're now getting ridiculous contrast ratio on this 2 million to one in terms of contrast ratio against 100,000 to1 on Super AMOLED which was already pretty good absolutely gorgeous right when it comes to the weight it's incredible how even with the keyboard cover you only weight about 1.4 kilos without the keyboard he only weighs about 730 G which is insane given how big this thing is talking about that keyboard by the way Victor oak tree is asking here what the typing experience is like to be honest with you I returned this keyboard for my TSA Ultra I didn't get on with it and I still don't really like it and recently I decided to give it another go soon as you plug it in I I've got decks going on here we'll talk about decks in a minute but I'm still not a big fan of it but I do think that that's because of you know I've used the magic keyboard for such a long time and it really is when it comes to tablet keyboard is very hard to beat if you are coming from an iPad and you have used the magic keyboard you're going to be disappointed if you expect anything close to that because it's just not as good as that and that's because to use this you have to really be on a flat surface it's usable on on the lap but it's not that comfortable this is still extremely nice to use it feels and it sounds very pleasing as well and to be fair has more functionality than the magic keyboard it's just a larger keyboard it has an entire row of function keys it lights as well and the trackpad is a very decent size as well I hope that answers your question more about the accessories and different ways in which I use the tabs 9 not in a bit when we talk about Samsung decks now I have a bit of a gripe about accessories in general but I thought it was important to bring up the weight aspect here because this does make the tabs 9 Ultra a very powerful tablet for commuters out there and in many situations can indeed even replace a laptop I'm not saying you should buy this device instead of a laptop but depending on what you do this tablet is definitely bridging that Gap and almost like blurring the lines between what's possible on a tablet versus a laptop for instance this is all for the questions that I was getting about performance you can even emulate games and play them without any problems I've tried 3DS SNS different consoles as you can see here this shouldn't really be a surprise considering we've been able to do this for a few years now but I do feel like we're able to do this on a Taps 9 Ultra incredibly smoothly now even though some of the games don't look like they demand a lot of the processor emulating gaming consoles in general is quite taxing on the chipset but that 4 NM chipset the Snapdragon H gen2 really shines here and with more modern games like genin impact and Call of Duty all set to the highest settings possible also play really really well on this tablet the display is great connecting a controller to this is super easy and it makes the whole gaming experience really superb and if that's not enough to convince you about the performance we did some 4K video editing too let me show you I did add you know quite a few different types of Clips there's 120 FPS in here here 60 FPS uh screen recording cuz I know those things are quite taxing on even on my M1 Max MacBook Pro so I wanted to really push these devices there's only about two layers of video in here and I'm exporting 4K the iPad does seem to be a little bit faster maybe the media engine is a little bit better on this but the video editing itself you know scrubbing through footage you know chopping the clips you know just manipulating the video as an editor is what I care about the most the export is probably when I go have a coffee and wait and when I come back is usually done any anyway and they're both going to be done within one or 2 minutes of difference you know by the looks of it and here's a couple of quality of life features that I really enjoy on this tablet as well I kind of take it for granted now but I should definitely mention it one is something that not many tablets do which is haptics sounds trivial but it does make a nice difference to the experience here depending on what you're doing the other is the fingerprint reader this under display reader is extremely accurate and you know I much prefer that to the face recognition and that I'm sorry to say hasn't really improved approved from the TSA Ultra is not something that I trusted a lot before if you change your look slightly cap No Cap glasses no glasses beard no beard this whole thing starts to struggle a little bit I'm always keing to learn about stuff that I don't know yet so yeah please do share if you know any any more little features like that that are kind of hidden gems let me know talking about hidden gems let's talk about the SP Spen this one is a little bit I don't know I'm getting a bit of mixed feelings about this one almost I don't want to say disappointing what I mean by that is the latency issue I'm going to try and show it here on screen in slow motion hopefully that will that will come up but it's basically yeah the kind of the time it takes for something to appear in the screen and you touching the screen it's a tiny little fraction of a second but it is noticeable if you've used other pencils or you like the apple pencil other stylist there's definitely a difference between them and I think the apple pencil is a little bit faster uh than the Spen on the positive side I really like how this feels in General on the tablet I always thought even the previous version of this pen that it had a much softer feel than the apple pencil for example which I've got it here the writing experience in general is much better though when you use the Note Paper cover where is that gone back in the B all that we hit 100K just today yeah more on that lat so this note paper cover I didn't know this was an accessory with the tabsa ultra I wish I did because I would have got it some didn't seem to talk about it much what I really like about this accessory is that after you've done writing your drawing it's not stuck to the display right it's just connected by magnets so you can just detach it and go about your day it does give you a little bit of extra privacy not entirely private like those privacy covers that we see on laptops but definitely better than nothing and talking about doing work on the ts9 ultra we've got to talk about Samsung decks I like to set it up so that attaching the keyboard cover or connecting to an external monitor will trigger decks automatically or you can trigger your manually as well by swiping from the top you know just kind of selecting decks or even pressing the decks button on the keyboard now Samsung did something weird recently with decks I have to call them out on this they're calling it the new decks or something I'm not too sure about that one at least not yet when I want to use decks I want that deck desktop experience and can we take a moment here to appreciate how flexible it is to work on the classic decks I still think that this is one of the most underrated least talked about features on any Samsung device I love deck and I really do use it for work it kind of annoys me a little bit and I'm talking about myself here as well because in my previous videos even about the tabs Ultra I don't show enough right and apart from showing a few Clips we Tech reviewers in general don't spend enough time talking about decks moving windows with freedom resizing them making everything just the way you like for your workflow it is truly powerful how it lets you use the apps exactly how you are used to on your desktop when you need to authenticate for purchases or passwords it's really seamless and if a call comes in for example no problem everything just stays connected throughout and that is only decks you know which is a powerful feature but let's not forget we don't need to trigger decks for multitasking and being productive with this device because of this lovely display and oneui itself of course you are able to run multiple windows open in a comfortable impr practical size you know sometimes you can say yes we can multitask but when you start opening two three Windows Areo hang on I can't actually you have to kind of be moving the things around with the tabs 9 Ultra you can comfortably multitask you're able to resize them too and that sometimes is all you need to do and perhaps that is where Samsung is seeing more potential for that new deck I'm not sure what they're trying to do to be honest with oneui 6.1 you can now use your Galaxy smartphone as the camera and that is incredible I know Apple users would be like we've been doing this since I don't know 2022 or whatever it was one thing that I shouldn't shy away from Asing is the quality of Android taet apps I just try to use uh you know this camera sharing thing which in theory should just work right uh but it doesn't you know after 6.1 you have to try a few times uh it doesn't give you any error messages that say it's connecting uh I found that if you have a mouse and keyboard connected to it it works so just just a tip but then you've got issues with Google meets that you know the camera doesn't look great uh Zoom as you can see I'm using the phone uh in vertical mode if you turn it around the image getss all screwy so you kind of you go sideways it's just not friendly I mean it's not a massive issue but it does annoy me a little bit that things don't work straight away out of the box you know you do have to fiddle with it I had to read some Reddit articles and as much as I don't like what Apple have been doing with the iPad recently you know things most of the things anyway just work straight away you know the compatibility with other things is limited but whatever is in there kind of just works I really Samsung would continue to improve the experience here and I think they are doing it you know pushing the boundaries with tablets I know it's not just app to Samsung the Realties the app developers may still focus on iPad OS apps first which is a shame because the potential Index right now is so much higher in my opinion than what I see today with iPad's stage manager onei 6.1 brings in a whole load of features that actually made me go back to the tabs 9 Ultra and use it even more recently if you're new here you might not know this but for the last couple of years I've transitioned no wait cut that off no oh my God leave it in I switched completely from the iPhone and the Apple ecosystem of course I still review the iPhone for this channel but personally the s24 ultra is my main device now and I do fall back sometimes to the fold 5 usually in the evenings now that the dust has settled all the phones are being launched right maybe fold 6 will come out and that will change a little bit but the reason I'm saying all of this is because some of the Galaxy AI features that are now second nature on the s24 for Ultra make even more sense now on this tablet taking notes summarizing voice recordings summarizing websites I don't really use Circle to search as much in fact I only use it in these videos to show off in me using it but on a day-to-day basis it's not used but writing assist for example is a huge time saer for me I use that all the time responding to your lovely comments on YouTube in fact let's have a little game here add 100K to your comment to let me know that you've watched this far but there's a lot of these features that I haven't even tried so it's worth checking them out which brings me to something that helps me a lot not just with the tablet but with all my Samsung devices which is good luck and I'm not going to cover a lot about this here but do make sure to download it it really opens a whole new set of functionalities that make this tablet or any Samsung device really even more powerful so many cool features including running Dex in 4k which by the way took me a while to figure out on the tabsa ultra but I learned my lesson now if you've got the right monitor that's really going to help you okay but what about the cameras on this tablet I'm just joking I'm not going to waste your time on this they are decent it's a tablet but on the other hand I don't want to sound too dismissive Samsung did a bit of work here especially on the front-facing cameras it allows you to move around the space a little bit and be followed by the camera because it's got that wide angle which whilst I don't use it personally I do appreciate that you might use that feature and from what I can see it's really good even in low light conditions now talking about the config that I went for I went pretty much for the base model here Samsung still allow you to extend the storage with an SD card which is fantastic is one of those things that this alone actually might be the reason to choose this tablet over anything else something else that you get here that you don't get with other tablets is ip68 which is water and dust resistance I do believe that this is the only tablet on the market that has this I could be wrong though let me know and when it comes to the battery not much to say about it because even on busy days when I was like using the tablet for my travels all day long I didn't have to worry about charging until you know much later in the day when I charge overnight anyway it's not the fastest to charge so if you want to do something during the day and recharge it during the day just bear in mind that it's I think only 45 volt charging but it really doesn't bother me the tabis ultra can 100% be used by itself in fact that's how I used my tabsa ultra you know without any accessories apart from from a stand but it really comes to life when you do use it with decent accessories the best ones for me right now are one this leather sleeve that I've got here from Harbor London not sponsored by them either they have sponsored the channel before and they have sent me this stuff for free and they are really durable classy looking accessories dangerous website to visit it's awesome the second one is the magnetic stand from Lula look that name always gets me I find it hard to recommend it though because it does mess around with the Spen the magnets are really really strong when you're trying to do very precise movements it will mess with the Spen a little bit it's fine for most use cases including mine but if all you're trying to do is to have the tablet elevated and for it to be nice and sturdy whilst you're using it this is fantastic it really is the best I found and trust me I I bought a few of these and try them all there are others on Amazon that are getting better there's actually a newer version of this as well which looks great and to be honest if what you're trying to write or Draw doesn't need to be 100% accurate then this is actually still perfect I'd love to have one of these arms like the one I've got here for the iPad but I haven't found a decent one yet and answering the questions about how it compares with the iPad I just love how Samsung is like here you want to plug your device into a monitor and be productive with no issues have about it with a cable wirelessly we don't care literally every possible way to be productive they give it to us the customers we can't really say the same about Apple the iPad for instance is amazing but it will only work with an external monitor if you use the pro devices or the latest iPad Air I believe with Samsung external monitor support has been you know it's been around for a while I think even going back to the Galaxy Note maybe maybe earlier than that I don't know but the iPad does have an advantage if all that you want is a tablet with very polished apps stage manager is getting better in my opinion not forgetting the fact that graphic design apps for example are just better on iPad OS it's not impossible to be an artist and use the tab S9 Ultra in fact you're going to find lots of great examples of that here on YouTube but I still don't think we have as many high-end apps for graphic designers like we do have on iPad OS and when it comes to Performance as you've seen here today the tabs 9 Ultra does allow you to do more with it in comparison with the iPad when I have to pick one to be productive this is the one I go for I don't pick the iPad to do work not at all and sometimes I see videos on there and people like doing I I just use the iPad for everything it's like I don't know I I'm very skeptical when I see those please do keep your comments coming as well thank you so much for helping me achieve 100k today that really means the world to me and I'll see you soon if you buy the pro devices fine [Music] whatever I should all the way around my neighborhood I'm ruminating I feel no good

Channel: Alex Gear & Tech

Views: 87,373

Keywords: Alex Gear and Tech, tab s9 ultra, galaxy tab s9 ultra, tab s9 ultra vs ipad pro, tab s9 ultra vs tab s8 ultra, tab s9 ultra review, samsung galaxy, samsung, samsung galaxy tab s9 ultra, tab s9 ultra vs m2 ipad pro, letloose, appleevent, ipad pro 2024, new ipads 2024

Id: qDf57wJ7P1k

Length: 17min 22sec (1042 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024