Take a look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra’s battery recharging speed, and how its two refresh rate options affect its battery life!

 

Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra : Two Refresh Rate Options

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra tablet offers two refresh rate options (Settings > Display > Motion smoothness) :

• High : Get smoother animations and scrolling with a 120 Hz screen refresh rate
• Standard : Get longer battery life with a 60 Hz screen refresh rate

You may think that this is similar to the Galaxy S22 Ultra’s 120 Hz display, but you would be wrong.

The Galaxy S22 Ultra has an Adaptive mode that dynamically refreshes between 1 Hz and 120 Hz for better battery life.

The 120 Hz refresh rate option in the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra is fixed at 120 Hz. This guarantees you an ultra-smooth 120 Hz refresh rate all the time, at the expense of battery life.

In the next section, we will look at how the two refresh rate options affect the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra’s battery life.

Read more : Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra : Hands-On Experience!
Read more : Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra Unboxing : What’s Inside?

 

Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra : Battery Life Comparison!

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra comes with a massive 11,200 mAh battery, which is more than the size of the Galaxy S22 Ultra’s battery!

To test its battery life, we turned off Automatic Brightness, and set its display brightness to 50%.

Why 50%? That is actually slightly higher than the average indoor brightness level of 40% during the day, and is what we usually use in all our mobile battery life tests.

It is important to fix the brightness level, to make sure the screen brightness does not change as the ambient brightness changes.

We then ran the PCMark Work 3.0 battery life test until its battery capacity dropped to 20% several times, and this was the best result we obtained with 60 Hz and 120 Hz refresh rates :

Astoundingly, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra only has a battery life of 6.5 hours with High refresh rate enabled, and a more acceptable 8 hours with the Standard refresh rate!

This is a slight improvement over last year’s Galaxy Tab S7 Plus. There is no doubt that its much larger 14.6-inch Super AMOLED display is a significant drain on battery life.

Let’s compare its battery life against the Galaxy Tab S7 Plus, and the Galaxy S22 Ultra smartphone which uses the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 mobile SoC.

Standard Refresh Rate (60 Hz)

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra delivers the best battery life with the Standard refresh rate of 60 Hz.

The Tab S8 Ultra appears to use 9% more power than the Tab S7 Plus, but I have to point out that it has a 39% larger display.

Fortunately, the battery life deficit is “covered” by its 11% larger battery.

Work 3.0	S22 Ultra (60 Hz)	Tab S7 Plus (60 Hz)	Tab S8 Ultra (60 Hz)
Display Size	6.8-inch	12.4-inch	14.6-inch
Battery Capacity	5,000 mAh	10,090 mAh	11,200 mAh
Battery Life	14 hrs 15 mins	7 hrs 55 mins	8 hrs 3 mins
Utilisation per min.	4.68 mAh	16.99 mAh	18.55 mAh

High Refresh Rate (120 Hz)

Switching on the High refresh rate of 120 Hz cut its battery life by 17.6% – almost 1.5 hours!

But the data shows that its larger 14.6-inch display only used 3.4% more power than the Tab S7 Plus.

Work 3.0	S22 Ultra (120 Hz)	Tab S7 Plus (120 Hz)	Tab S8 Ultra (120 Hz)
Display Size	6.8-inch	12.4-inch	14.6-inch
Battery Capacity	5,000 mAh	10,090 mAh	11,200 mAh
Battery Life	10 hrs 38 mins	6 hrs 11 mins	6 hrs 38 mins
Utilisation per min.	6.27 mAh	21.76 mAh	22.51 mAh

 

Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra : Battery Recharging Speed!

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra supports up to 45 watts of wired fast charging, but unfortunately, does not come with the charger in-the-box.

So we relied on the standard 15 watt Samsung fast charger than shipped with their previous smartphones and tablets – something we believe most users will end up doing.

Recharging Speed	Tab S8 Ultra	Tab S7 Plus	S22 Ultra
Display Size	14.6-inch	12.4-inch	6.8-inch
Battery Capacity	11,200 mAh	10,090 mAh	5,000 mAh
Charger Output	15 watts	15 watts	15 watts
Battery Life	86.5 mins	86 mins	64.5 mins
Recharging Speed (per minute)	103.6 mAh	93.9 mAh	62.0 mAh

Interestingly, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra recharged faster with a standard 15 watt charger, than the Tab S7 Plus or even the Galaxy S22 Ultra!

This is really good news. It means that Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra owners need not worry too much about its recharging speed with the older 15 watt chargers.

In fact, you don’t need to splurge on a new 45 watt fast charger. The Tab S8 Ultra fully recharges its massive battery from 20% to 100% in just under 1.5 hours with the standard 15 watt Samsung charger!

 

Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra : Price + Availability

Samsung is offering the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra in five RAM + storage capacity options globally :

• 8 GB + 128 GB
• 12 GB + 256 GB / 512 GB
• 16 GB + 256 GB / 512 GB

But over here in Malaysia, it is available with 12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage for RM 5,899 (about US$1,387 / £1,063 / A$1,877 / S$1,892.

Here are some online pre-order options :

• Malaysia : RM5,599 | RM5,719 | RM5,899 | RM5,899
• Singapore : S$1,645 | S$1,689 | S$2,125
• United States : US$1,689 | US$1,389
• United Kingdom : £1,066 | £985

 

 

Recommended Reading

• Samsung Galaxy A73 Unboxing + Hands-On Preview!
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra : Hands-On Experience!
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Video Recording Performance!
• Samsung 980 Pro : Why It’s Now A Fast + Affordable SSD!
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra Unboxing : What’s Inside?

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