Samsung's thinnest tablet yet: Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra ships at 5.1mm starting October 7

Samsung officially unveiled the Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra and Galaxy Tab S12 Plus on Wednesday, with sales starting October 7 at $1,400 and $1,200 respectively. The headline spec isn't the screen size or the chip — it's the body. At 5.1mm thick, the Tab S12 Ultra is the thinnest tablet Samsung has ever shipped, despite packing an 11,600mAh battery and a 3D vapor chamber cooling system into that frame.

The thinness matters because it comes without the usual trade-offs. Samsung claims up to 23 hours of battery life on the Ultra and 21 hours on the Plus, both with 45W wired charging, numbers that would have been difficult to credibly claim on a tablet this thin even a generation ago. The Ultra carries a 14.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display at 2960x1848 resolution with a 120Hz refresh rate and 1,600 nits of peak brightness; the Plus steps down to a 12.6-inch panel at 2800x1752 with the same brightness ceiling.

The more consequential change is under the hood: both tablets run MediaTek's Dimensity 9500 rather than a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, a notable shift for Samsung's tablet line and one that tracks a broader industry trend of manufacturers diversifying away from single-vendor silicon dependence. The chip swap comes paired with One UI 9 on Android 17, and both models ship with Samsung's S Pen included rather than sold separately.

Samsung also moved the fingerprint sensor under the display on both models — a change from the previous generation's side-mounted sensor — and gave the Ultra two rear cameras (13MP main plus 8MP ultrawide) against a single 13MP rear camera on the Plus. Both tablets carry an IP68 water and dust resistance rating, support microSD cards up to 2TB, and come in black and silver finishes. The Plus also offers an optional 5G/dual-SIM configuration that the Ultra does not.

Storage options run from 256GB up to 1TB on the Ultra (with 12GB or 16GB of RAM) and 256GB or 512GB on the Plus (fixed at 12GB RAM). Samsung has not detailed pricing for the higher storage tiers beyond the base configuration's $1,400 and $1,200 starting points. Pre-orders are open now ahead of the October 7 on-sale date, positioning the Tab S12 series as Samsung's answer to Apple's iPad Pro lineup heading into the holiday shopping season.