Review – Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+: Upgrades that matter

Take a look at this new tablet from Samsung – it’s the first ever flagship Samsung device to be powered by a MediaTek chipset – and this Dimensity 9300+ is seriously powerful. But of course, a device is more than just the chipset – so let’s talk about it.

Display

So, let’s first take a look at the display of the new Tab S10+. The S10+ comes with a 12.4-inch screen, a resolution of 2800×1752 pixels, and up to 120Hz refresh rate. In other words, it’s using the same Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen.

And the quality of this screen is as guaranteed too. Now, we do have the color vividness slider in the settings menu – it’ll behave the same as any other Samsung devices. Click here to know more.

So, I just tested the color accuracy on the highest color vividness and it covers 100% of both sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts and has a pretty low ΔE number. Yeah, that max ΔE is high – but it’s an outlier since the average is so low.

The brightness is particularly at around 500 nits, which is okay. Remember, the measurement of nits is candela/m², and having a big tablet like this means that the total amount of light it emits is super high.

But that’s not the only great thing about this tablet – the Galaxy Tab S10 series has this anti-reflective screen and it just looks so damn good! Even if it’s super bright outside or there’s a lightbulb behind you, this screen can handle that easily. Effectively, if we’re using it outdoors, it does make that 500 nits screen “look” brighter than other screens because it’s just more legible.

Our friend from VTechGraphy has both the Tab S9+ and Tab S10+ and did a side-by-side comparison – and this is why that anti-reflection is such a big deal on the Tab S10+.

If we are putting on a screen protector though, then make sure it is the one from Samsung. Else, that anti-reflection would probably be rendered useless. Kind of a bummer since there is no anti-reflective tempered glass screen protectors in the market.

I just think that the under-display fingerprint scanner is a mistake. The location is just not usable at all. Please, integrate the fingerprint scanner on the power button. That will be actually usable.

Performance

With such an amazing screen, one of the best things to enjoy on the Galaxy Tab S10+ is gaming. This is the first ever flagship Samsung device to be using a MediaTek chipset and this Dimensity 9300+ truly does not disappoint. I should mention that the Dimensity 9300+ is technically a slight overclock over the original 9300, but I’m not sure if it’s a binned chip or not.

Either way, the result really speaks for itself. If you want to watch the full gaming test, then watch it here.

We turned up the render resolution to the absolute maximum for all the games we’ve tested and also enabled the alternate game performance management mode and it can maintain around 40-50fps for Genshin Impact version 5.1. That’s truly impressive!

Zenless Zone Zero the most surprising to me. It rendered at the native resolution of 2800×1752 pixels and managed to maintain a very smooth experience throughout this intensive 3 minute fight. There were no frame skips or stutters – and the experience is actually even better than on the ROG Ally X. I know it’s not a 1:1 comparison since the Android version of the game is different from the PC version – but still, the experience is just much better on the Tab S10+.

Wuthering Waves is also rendering at the native resolution of 2800×1752 and managed to maintain above 30fps all the time. Seriously, the Dimensity 9300+ is an amazing chipset.

COD Mobile is the same story as well – rendering at the native resolution but it maintains 120fps throughout the entire gameplay!

COD Warzone had some issues as it kept saying “connection lost” but I know this issue isn’t due to the WiFi but because of the game. This isn’t my first time experiencing this issue, by the way.

Fortnite is rendering nearly at the native resolution and even though the game isn’t particularly optimized for Android devices, we can still get around 30-ish fps without any frame skips or stutters. That’s great!

The Dimensity 9300+ is just a fantastic chipset for gaming. However, it’s no surprise that our comment section for the gaming test video turned into a warzone. There are many people who said they won’t buy it because it’s not using Snapdragon. Sorry to say, the 8 Gen 3 is not a good chip. It heats up too much and I’m actually glad that Samsung chose the Dimensity 9300+ for this generation of the tablet.

Some people will also say “why didn’t Samsung use the Snapdragon X Elite?” That’s an easy answer – X Elite is super high in terms of power consumption.

We’ll talk more about the chipset choice in another video – so do subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Battery life

Now, let’s talk about the battery life as well. The Dimensity 9300+ is certainly a funky chipset since all of them are high-performance cores. It doesn’t have any Cortex-A520 cores. Did that affect the battery life? Yes, but not much.

We can get around 8 hours and 34 minutes in our standardized battery life test and that is pretty much in-line with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2’s efficiency.

In real-life usage, having more high-performance cores could be beneficial as it finishes the tasks way faster, hence saving you time and also power in the long run.

Charging speed

The charging speed of the Tab S10 series remains unchanged – it takes in a maximum of 45W maximum and from our test, it can charge from 15% to 100% in about 107 minutes. Pretty good, but it can be better.

The little spikes mean that it is actually controlling the charging speed. It usually happens when the battery is too hot but as we can see, the highest battery temperature is only at around 36°C. There is quite a huge thermal headroom left, but Samsung doesn’t utilize it. I presume it can even take in 65W of power too.

Design

The design of the Galaxy Tab S10+ remains unchanged from the previous generation, so there’s really nothing out of the ordinary here. It is 0.1mm thinner than before – but I don’t think that will affect the accessories compatibility. Ours is in the Platinum Silver color, and it is also available in the Moonstone Grey color.

Speakers

I was talking with some friends and they pointed out that it is no longer having that “AKG speaker system” on their product page. Yeah, the new Tab S10 series speakers are different. How different is it, though? Well, we have a speaker test – so check it out in the video at the top of this review.

I don’t have a Tab S9+ with me so I can’t make a comparison but I do think it sounds great. It still does have the quad speakers, just not tuned by AKG. We still have Dolby Atmos, by the way.

There is also a new Dialogue Boost option that is found within the settings menu – and I highly recommend it. It does what it says – boosts the volume of people speaking only, so we can hear them better.

Cameras

The cameras are the same as before, and we do still have dual cameras at the back. I’m not a fan of tablet photography but I know many of you guys are using tablets in classes to take pictures of the whiteboard. To have a look at all the pictures taken with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+, watch our video at the top of this review.

Overall, I think the cameras are definitely good for that use case. It’s just that the cameras don’t have any form of stabilization – and that’s the same as before too.

Software

Let’s now talk about the software. The Galaxy Tab S10+ comes with Android 14 and One UI 6.1.1 out of the box. We have all of the features found on other Samsung devices, including the ecosystem connectivity and all of the AI features.

A few notable highlights that are found here – like the math solver. What’s impressive here is that it shows you the steps on how the math is done. Since it is housed within the Circle To Search feature, it pretty much just works on any documents that we’re viewing on the tablet. And this is great because again – people use tablets in their studies.

One of the great features of Samsung devices is Modes and Routines. I have been using it to do a lot of automation on my devices and I think it is very crucial on a tablet. I’ll just show you a teaser of what routines I have configured now. I’ll be adding a few more after this review – and we’ll talk more about this at another time. There are just way too many things to talk about.

Also, the Galaxy Tab S10 series will be getting 7 generations of Android OS upgrades and 7 years of security patches. While I can’t confirm it, I do believe that the upgrade to Android 15 that is coming in January is going to be counted as one generation of Android OS upgrades. But the 7 years of security patches are counted from the calendar day of the launch – so that is not a problem.

New Samsung DeX

I also want to have a section to talk about Samsung DeX. There is a different variant of DeX available here. By default, it changes to this mode that I have no idea how to describe. Any apps that we open in this new DeX mode will keep stacking on top. It has that type of window management system. I’m not sure how many different apps that we can open at once – but we opened a lot. Even multi-window on Google Chrome works in this way too.

I think the new DeX interface is kinda great since it practically becomes a multitasking powerhouse.

We can still change to the classic DeX mode by heading into the settings menu, and revert back to the old DeX too.

S Pen

As for the S Pen, it is included in the box with the tablet – and it is the same as before. It looks the same, feels the same, and also works the same way.

I’m not much of an artist but now I can be one thanks to the Sketch To Image AI feature. I mean… at least it beautifies by ugly drawing.

Jokes aside, I do think the S Pen is great whenever I need to use it. I actually have been exploiting some of the features of the S Pen with Modes and Routines for a long time – and we’ll show you next time. There are a lot of things to show.

A few more things to mention

And a few more things to mention before we end this video – both the tablet and the S Pen are rated for IP68, and the Tab S10 series does have a microSD card slot. However, there is no audio jack and that is to be expected.

This Book Cover Keyboard Slim with the AI Key – we’ll leave it for another time as well. There are a few features that we have to talk about and it’ll take quite some time to go through them.

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+?

So in the end – should you buy this Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+? I do think that the performance coming out of that Dimensity 9300+ chipset is magnificent. Combined with the magnificent anti-reflective screen, this is a unique tablet compared to anything else in the market right now.

The price of the tablet is RM4,599 or $1,000 USD for the 256GB version. For us here in Malaysia, it’s actually a whole lot cheaper than the other pro tablet that is on the market.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+ is also going to be my main tablet moving forward – and I just like it a lot.

Where to buy? (Affiliate links)

• Amazon
• Lazada
• Shopee
• Samsung US exclusive deal

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