MTG: The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra Is £1,399. That £200 Step Is the Real Story
£1,399.
That is the number to start with.
Samsung announced the Galaxy Tab S12 series on 30 September 2026, with the Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra starting at £1,399 in the UK. It is due to go on sale from Wednesday 7 October in Grey and Silver.
The previous Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra launched at £1,199 in September 2025.
So the Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra is £200 more expensive than its predecessor at launch.
That is the honest headline. Not the processor. Not the brightness. Not another collection of words about artificial intelligence doing things we did not ask it to do.
Samsung has made a better tablet. It has also made a more expensive tablet. The interesting question is whether it has made a tablet that is sufficiently different to justify replacing the one you already have.
MTG: What genuinely changed
The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra is thinner than the previous generation, measuring 5.1mm. Samsung describes it as the thinnest Galaxy Tab it has produced.
The Wi-Fi model weighs 692g, while the 5G model weighs 695g. It still has the large 14.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display, with a 2960 x 1848 resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate and peak brightness of 1,600 nits.
Those are useful improvements, but they are not a new category of device. It remains a large Android tablet with a very good screen.
The more important changes are less glamorous.
The tablet has an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance. The bundled S Pen has IP68 protection too. Samsung’s published explanation is based on lab testing in up to 1.5 metres of fresh water for up to 30 minutes, so this is not a suggestion that you should take it swimming. It is simply useful protection against the sort of accidents that happen around kitchens, workshops, bags and tables.
The other important change is support. Samsung says the Tab S12 Ultra will receive up to seven generations of operating system upgrades and seven years of security updates.
That matters more than a marginally faster animation or another clever demo. A tablet that remains supported and secure for seven years is easier to justify as a long-term purchase.
The new processor is the MediaTek Dimensity 9500, built on a 3nm process. Samsung claims that the Tab S12 Ultra is up to 61% faster in NPU performance, 19% faster in CPU performance and 17% better in GPU performance than the Tab S11 Ultra.
Those are Samsung’s own comparisons, not independent benchmark results. Until the device is available and tested properly, they should be treated as claims rather than settled facts.
There is also a new 3D vapour chamber in both the Ultra and the Tab S12+. That is intended to help manage heat during demanding workloads. Again, the sensible view is not that this transforms the tablet, but that it may help the tablet remain consistent when it is being asked to do more for longer.
MTG: What did not change
It is still a tablet.
That sounds obvious, but it is worth saying because launch events often try to make a familiar product sound like a replacement for everything else you own.
The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra can handle notes, documents, browsing, media, creative work and multitasking. Samsung DeX and a keyboard may make it feel more like a small computer, but the tablet is still dependent on the apps you use and the way those apps behave on Android.
The previous-generation Tab S11 Ultra can already do tablet things. It can display documents. It can run apps. It can take notes with an S Pen. It can be used for watching films, browsing the web and carrying a large screen around in a bag.
The new model does not suddenly make the old one useless.
Samsung also offers the smaller Galaxy Tab S12+, starting at £1,199. It has a 12.6-inch display, is 5.3mm thick and weighs 553g for the Wi-Fi model or 555g for the 5G model. It uses the same MediaTek Dimensity 9500 processor and has the same headline support and durability features.
The Ultra gives you the larger display, the larger 11,600mAh battery and Wi-Fi 7. The Plus has a 10,600mAh battery and supports up to 21 hours of video playback, compared with up to 23 hours for the Ultra.
Both support 45W wired charging, with Samsung quoting roughly 95 minutes from 0 to 100%. The charger is sold separately.
MTG: The Photoshop reason is real
The most convincing software story is Adobe Photoshop.
Samsung says Photoshop is preloaded on the Galaxy Tab S12 series, marking the first time the app has been preloaded on an Android tablet. The package includes four months of the Photoshop mobile plan.
That is more useful than a marketing line if you actually want to work on a tablet.
There is a difference between a tablet being technically capable of creative work and a tablet making that work straightforward to start. Photoshop, an S Pen and a large display create a clear route for editing photographs, working on graphics or making changes to visual material without immediately reaching for a laptop.
That does not mean the tablet replaces a desktop setup for every professional workflow. It means Samsung has removed one of the arguments that Android tablets are mainly for consumption.
The same package includes offers for Notability, Goodnotes, LumaFusion, Notion and Clip Studio Paint, although the terms vary and some offers become paid services after their trial periods.
The practical value depends entirely on whether these are apps you would have paid for anyway. Free trials are not the same thing as savings if you never intended to use the product.
MTG: The trade-offs are sitting in the box
The S Pen is included, but it loses Bluetooth support this generation.
That means the pen remains useful for writing, drawing and navigating the screen, but Bluetooth-dependent features are not available. If you have used the S Pen as a remote control or relied on its additional wireless functions, this is a step backwards rather than forwards.
The charger is not included either. The tablet supports 45W charging, but the adapter is sold separately.
That is not a surprise in 2026, but it still belongs in the price calculation. The headline figure is £1,399 for the tablet. It is not necessarily the final amount required for the tablet, a charger, a keyboard cover and any storage accessories you may want.
Storage options for the Ultra are 256GB, 512GB and 1TB, with 12GB or 16GB of memory depending on the configuration. There is also microSD expansion of up to 2TB.
That flexibility is welcome, although a microSD card is another separate purchase.
MTG: Samsung is moving while Apple waits
There was no new Apple consumer hardware last week.
Apple’s next major piece of hardware is the foldable iPhone Duo, which is still some weeks away. Pre-orders are due to open on 16 October, with the phone going on sale on 23 October from £1,999 in the UK.
That makes the timing interesting.
Samsung is moving first, bringing a new premium device to market while Apple waits for its foldable phone to arrive. But Samsung is also moving its prices upward. The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra is £200 more than the S11 Ultra was at launch.
That is the wider story. The companies are not merely competing on specifications. They are testing how much customers will accept for the next version of a device they may already own.
MTG: Apply the three-question test
Before spending £1,399, look at the tablet you own now and answer three questions:
- Does it do what you need?
- Is it still receiving security updates?
- Does its battery still last for the session you bought it for?
If the answer to all three is yes, then £1,399 buys you a nicer screen, a thinner body and more performance headroom. Those things may be desirable, but they are not necessarily capabilities you do not already have.
If your current tablet is no longer receiving security updates, or its battery is failing before you finish the work, the calculation changes. The seven-year support window and the improved durability become much more meaningful.
That is where the Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra begins to make practical sense: not because a new model has arrived, but because your existing one has stopped being reliable.
My general rule with technology remains fairly simple: replace it when it breaks, not when a new model arrives.
The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra will be available in the UK from Wednesday 7 October 2026. Until then, this is an announcement and a published-price discussion, not a hands-on review. I have not used one, tested one or held one.
The £200 step is the story. The question is whether your current tablet has given you a reason to cross it.
if anything I've said today struck a chord with you and you'd like a chat or if you have a particular challenge with energy, power & infrastructure, business generally or you might like to use the studio, drop me an email at andrew@aelhawley.com - if you've watched the video version of this blog you can drop a comment below and, I think I'm supposed to say like and subscribe but I won't. See you on Sunday in the field.. that to be clear, isnt my garden.