In context: Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra has received mostly excellent reviews, with many hailing it as the best Android tablet available today. But does its massive 14.6-inch display and ~0.24-inch thickness make it susceptible to breaking in half?
The excellent JerryRigEverything YouTube channel carried out one of its famous durability tests on the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra. For something that appears quite fragile, it took the abuse very well.
Samsung has positioned the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra as the Android rival to the current top tablet, the iPad Pro. The Tab S8 Ultra has a larger display than its Apple competitor, a thinner screen, and is only very slightly heavier.
JerryRigEverything’s Zack Nelson starts by noting the size difference between the S Pen that ships with the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra and the one that comes in some Samsung phones, noting that it’s the same hardware packed inside a larger housing.
Following a series of scratch and burn tests, after which the in-display fingerprint reader continues to work, Nelson moves on to the bending phase. It’s an area where previous generations of iPad Pros failed miserably, cracking in two with ease. That changed with the M1-powered tablet (below), but would the bigger, thinner Tab S8 Ultra also survive?
While Samsung’s slate does bend, it does not break, defying Nelson’s belief that it would crack in two—he puts it down to “physics-defining black magic” by Samsung. The Tab S8 Ultra still works even after being put under what looks like a large amount of force. It also appears to hold up better than the M1 iPad Pro, which saw its screen move away from the frame more noticeably during the test, and it retained the bent shape more prominently.