Samsung has announced two shiny new Android tablets for immediate availability: The 11-inch Galaxy Tab S11 and the 14.6-inch Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra. I’m naturally eyeing the more flagship Ultra, because with a display that size, I can’t help but envision a very thin and very portable slab that I can easily use for Xbox Cloud Gaming, PlayStation’s Remote Play and Nvidia GeForce Now.
Admittedly, tablets currently occupy a rather niche space, in that they struggle to feel useful in a technological world filled with so many other options. They’re typically too big to carry around for any significant length of time and too small for anything more demanding than YouTube videos, email and Zoom calls. But the Ultra’s 14.6 inches of display real estate could ultimately persuade me to use it as a genuine laptop replacement, especially when paired with the refreshed keyboard attachment. And, of course, there’s the promise of gaming.
The Ultra sports a MediaTek Dimensity 9400+ processor, which should handle most native Android apps with relative ease, and features a 2960 x 1848 resolution Dynamic AMOLED 2X display that would be perfect for streaming games, I’d wager. I’ve actually been moving more into streaming lately, having recently played through the majority of Gears of War 2 by way of Game Pass on Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7. It played smoothly and without a single hitch, much to my surprise.
Gaming will arguably be all streaming at some point in the future, and I’ve become rather addicted to playing stuff without downloading software or needing beefy hardware to accommodate decent graphics. Even without a traditional laptop GPU, the Ultra could prove a solid portable gaming solution for me, given its huge screen and ridiculously thin profile (5.1mm).
It’s also equipped with Wi-Fi 7, so while you can’t plug the Ultra into your router via ethernet for ideal streaming speeds and stability, the latest wireless tech should help out immensely.
Additionally, unlike the aforementioned Fold 7 (which is a mini tablet in and of itself), the Ultra ships with full S Pen support, and having a 14.6-inch canvas for sketching and notetaking has me excited. The biggest drawback, as far as I can see, is the starting price of $1,199.99 for the base 256 GB model. The 512 GB and 1 TB variants only go up in price from there, and spending anything over $1,000 on an Android tablet in 2025 seems a bit much, given that you could buy competent gaming laptops for similar cash.
Still, the Tab S11 Ultra looks like a sleek piece of tech, if an increasingly superfluous one. But with remote gaming getting better and better every day, I wouldn’t mind using this as my dedicated streaming device.
