The S8 Tab Ultra is great, but...

[jelo_]

It has as many flaws as it is "great", and Samsung doesn't seem willing to notice these small stuff because they like to pretend that they do a good job. 

Hi and welcome to my negative review that's originally supposed to be just a complaint about the functionality of the wallpapers on landscape and portrait view!

I kinda regret getting the S8 Tab Ultra. For starters, the battery life is too short. I like to use the tablet to goof off on certain apps and play around before actually doing my work. 

Usually, when that "time to work" comes, the tablet's already on pretty low battery and I'll only have a short time to do it before I'll have to charge it again. Not to mention, the new "Protect Battery" feature in which limits your maximum charge to 85% makes it even shorter. 

Well, I like to do whatever I can do prolong a gadget's lifespan anyway.

Hardware

• The too large screen is both unnecessary and a liability to the tablet itself. I draw stuff and thought a larger screen would be nice for my canvas, but it's really unnecessary. The 12-inch variation is enough, and easier to carry too. I bring my canvas with me everywhere and the too large screen makes me feel like I'm constantly flaunting my $2,000 tablet on everyone in the room.
• The screen is great though, I can use it outdoors where the bright sun shines.
• I can play mobile games (🤮) on high quality with high frame rate, I guess.
• The speaker sounds nice, but who cares for that when I use earphones and BT speakers anyway. 
• The camera is nice? At least that's one thing I like about Samsung gadgets... 

Samsung apps and Android itself

• This may be a problem within Android itself but the functionality of landscape and portrait view **bleep**. Plenty of apps don't work properly in landscape mode, even if it's on portrait mode while the tablet's aligned horizontally. 
  
• Plenty of features in the gallery has me thrilled, especially the remaster feature and the copying texts from an image feature, but again, it's come to an end and has left me to frustration instead because of missing features. Sometimes albums would go missing and appear again later. After grouping albums, I can't reorder them anymore. The order of the pictures from extracted .ZIP or .RAR files are a COMPLETE MESS. I had to go in the albums one by one to sort them out ONE BY ONE. 
• I don't know what the purpose of Samsung DEX is aside from pretending that the tablet is a laptop instead. I wish they just made it possible to also use Windows 11 on the tablet instead so that I could run PLENTY of programs that can't run on Android. (I do rigging animation)

wee, I'm a laptop but can't function like one!

Accessories

• Finding a legitimate 45W charger was such a challenge, as the official Samsung stores on my area couldn't provide them, and there were a lot of fakes online. I have found a legitimate one, but who knows how long it will last because the adapter heats up so much when it's charging the tablet.
• The pen is too light and feels like it's just plastic, and I have doubts on its pressure levels. I have a hard time adapting from a graphic tablet that had 8000+ pressure levels to this, in which I wasn't able to check the full specs before purchasing. 
  
• The pen's position and the book cover is so INCONVIENIENT. Who the hell thought of this? Although I love the omni-adjustable stand, that's all to it, I can't even use the stand for portrait mode. I have tried using an iPad before and why couldn't the tablet's designers just do what Apple did, and just put the magnet of the pen on THE EDGE! Is Samsung trying hard to be different from them? I'm constantly rolling my eyes everytime I try to return the pen on the magnet, but I've gotten used to it anyway. It still **bleep** though. 🙄

Imagine having to put your pen in there EVERYTIME!!!

• Oh, guess what, I rarely use the free keyboard because of how inconvenient it is! I typed this whole thing on the screen keyboard on portrait mode! It feels nice whenever I'm using the keyboard, but that's it! It's not close to being efficient at all! I have to remove the keyboard everytime I want to use the tablet itself! Because if I just flip it over and put it on the back, it's a complete nuisance!

For such an expensive tablet, there were some aspects that went beyond my expectations, and at the same time, there were parts that left me disappointed. They can't even optimize the wallpaper for both landscape and portrait orientation. 

Samsung please just let me set a separate crop on both landscape and portrait view of the lock screen wallpaper and maybe my hatred for you would easen up a little bit. 

Maybe you need a little bit more context, so here:

This is a picture of my lazy **bleep** cat, and I'm setting her as my lock screen right now in LANDSCAPE mode.

Wallpaper set! Now, I will rotate my tablet to go to PORTRAIT mode. 

Tada! See what happened there? The wallpaper picture ZOOMED IN absurdly! Therefore, compromising the quality of my wallpaper AND MY LIFE

So, I will now proceed to set the wallpaper while in PORTRAIT mode this time. 

Setting the wallpaper ~

There's no option to crop the image on another orientation as you see.

Wallpaper set, look at how much better that is! Well, at least IT'S NOT ZOOMED IN like earlier.

But then, what happens if I rotate it back to landscape mode?! Can you guess what?!

Well look, it's a bit fine, but I still didn't get to crop it the way I wanted to! 

I had to retake the image because the stupid AI detected the pic as the same image just because it looked really similar. There's a crop difference as opposed to the first picture, just so you know. 

If you're just a regular person wanting to regularly buy a regular tablet, and you like the feeling of feeling good while you're using the gadget, and otherwise don't care about tech and small details, this tablet is so for you!!!

There's probably a lot more complaints to add, but as I'm typing this on PORTRAIT MODE, I got hungry. I gotta eat, and hopefully the food won't be as disappointing as Samsung 💖

[OoniUni]

There is a bunch of factors here that is beyond Samsungs control (PS I'm typing this half awake so pardon me incase I misunderstand some portions)

1. The too large screen
-The S8 Ultra has been advertised heaps for its ginormous screen with no competition elsewhere even from Apple, you found it unnecessary so I believe that was an issue on your behalf since usually you should have pictured your use case when picking a device (I.E a tablet) the large screen as a canvas is good so you calling it unnecessary kinda confused me.

2. Windows 11 on the tablet
-afaik is both not possible but also possible, Waiting for Samsung to drop windows 11 on their tablets would be more impossible than Rockstar Games releasing GTA 6 this year, however you can tip into using this alleged PC windows emulator that uses alot of juice but "usably" "works" and will kill the battery faster than you'd expect

(PS, I agree that DEX is useless kinda. But its neat to have since it'll only get better)

3. Accesories (45w charger)
-This can't be much a device specific issue more off a general Samsung issue so yeah.

4. The pen is too light and feels like it's just plastic
-I understand that thats what it probably feels like, I held it in stores and tried the s pen on galaxy phones. But have you heard of the "S-Pen Pro" or whatever it was called? Its supposed to perform exactly like an Apple Pencil (Bigger chunkier etc)

(PS 2 I do agree how **bleep** the pen placement is for the tablets, its almost unnecessary to have the placement be different than normal)

5. The Wallpaper issue
-I get it, the wallpaper is **bleep** as hell for some reason and it hasn't been addressed. But maybe you can just change the wallpaper to something that better looks or is more optimized acceptable looking on both angles?
I get that it's like "Oh! I spent over 2000 dollars on a tablet so it has to be flawless from every corner!!!" it's a fair thought process, but this one issue seems to be the main reason that you dislike the tablet this much which just feels unreasonable, like I get the logic but its easily counterable by just having a wallpaper that looks better than being upset that 1 wallpaper doesn't work well on that 1 device.

Once again I will reiterate, I understand this is a *one sided* review where cons outweigh the pros but some of these feel more like either a general Samsung issue OR the buyers issue. In the sincerest way possible. And also I'm also reiterating that I'm once again typing this half awake 😄

(PS 3 I never have yet fully used a modern Galaxy tablet, this can be the point you pull up when countering my take, but I am pretty experienced with One UI on phones and I'm pretty certain the tablet version is virtually the same with just a few differences)