The Galaxy Tab 9 Ultra – my review
It's really a rare pleasure to pick up a new device and be “wowed” from the moment you turn it on. First glance, the screen is absurdly amazing. Crisp, responsive, NITS flying everywhere. Performance is off the charts. The OneUI interface gets the job done. Build quality stellar.
Second glance, it's still an Android Tablet and for better or worse, will always be encumbered from apps that aren't built for this size of device. Samsung does a great job of scaling, nothing looks horrible – and many apps do enhance themselves with tablet friendly features.
Third glance – DeX mode is simply impressive. I reviewed an early early DeX device a few years ago and found it seriously lacking. This completely changed my mind and they've nailed all the major use cases. A few final polish items like consistent app and quick action listing (and grouping) between DeX and non-DeX, some jitter with moving lots of apps around, and some more polish on the build in apps (in DeX mode to take advantage of the capabilities) and it'll rival a Windows/Mac easily.
Great battery life – daily drove it for a week with dozens of Knox enabled apps open all day. Charging is oddly slow, even with a beefy Mac USB-C adapter on it (annoyed they don't give you a charger, just a cable). But if it can run literally ALL day in conference calls, video calls, remote desktops, Linux terminal sessions, VPNed the works – it can charge overnight and that's fine.
Overall-almost too perfect. Just a bit more polish.