Samsung officially unveiled the Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra today, and it ships October 7 with a notable shift under the hood: MediaTek's Dimensity 9500 chip replaces the Snapdragon silicon that powered previous generations. It's Samsung's clearest signal yet that MediaTek has arrived as a credible premium player. But the processor swap isn't the story.
The real question is whether $1,399 buys enough tablet to justify that price.
The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra packs a 14.6-inch OLED display running at 120Hz with a 2960 × 1848 resolution, an 11,600mAh battery with 45W fast charging, and up to 16GB of RAM with 1TB of storage in the top configuration. Samsung promises seven years of OS and security updates, which puts it ahead of nearly every Android competitor on long-term support. The tablet includes an S Pen, IP68 water and dust resistance, and a four-channel speaker system with spatial audio. It's running Android 17 with OneUI 9, complete with Samsung's latest Galaxy AI features and a three-section multi-window layout.
On paper, it's comprehensive. In practice, the upgrades over the Tab S11 Ultra feel incremental. The design is nearly identical, with the same ultra-slim 5.1mm profile. The battery capacity hasn't changed. The dual rear camera setup—13MP primary, 8MP ultrawide—and 12MP front camera are carryovers. Even the display specs remain static.
What's new is the Dimensity 9500, and Samsung's betting that its performance gains justify the unchanged (or slightly higher, depending on region) pricing. The chip supports Bluetooth 6.0 and Wi-Fi 7, future-proofing connectivity, and early benchmarks suggest it's competitive with Qualcomm's latest.
But here's the tension: at $1,399 for the base 12GB/256GB model—$1,599 for 512GB, $1,999 for the 1TB variant with 16GB RAM—the Tab S12 Ultra is asking iPad Pro money for an Android tablet in a market where Apple still owns the premium productivity narrative.
Samsung's advantage remains DeX mode, S Pen integration, and the flexibility of Android's file system. If you live in Samsung's ecosystem and need a serious productivity tablet with a proper pointing device and desktop-class multitasking, the Tab S12 Ultra is still the best Android option available. The seven-year update promise alone sets a new standard.
But calling this an essential upgrade from the S11 Ultra requires squinting past the spec sheet. Samsung held the line on design, display, and battery while swapping the processor and raising the floor price. That's a hard sell when the previous generation is about to get very attractive on the secondary market.
The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra goes on sale October 7 in Gray and Silver. Pre-orders are likely live in select markets today.
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