Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S12 Starts at $1,199. There’s No Cheap Seat This Time

Samsung made the Galaxy Tab S12 official today, and the headline is the price tag, not the spec sheet. The lineup is just two tablets: the Galaxy Tab S12+ at $1,199 and the Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra at $1,399. Both go on sale in the U.S. on October 7. There’s no base Tab S12 this year, so the cheapest way into Samsung’s new flagship tablets now costs as much as a well-specced laptop.

That’s a deliberate bet. Samsung is positioning these as work machines, down to preinstalling Photoshop. Whether that bet pays off depends on who you are.

What you get for the money

Both tablets run MediaTek’s Dimensity 9500 rather than a Snapdragon chip, a swap that will make some enthusiasts wince but has been competitive in benchmarks elsewhere. Both ship with One UI 9 on Android 17, include the S Pen in the box, and carry IP68 water and dust resistance plus an in-display fingerprint sensor. Samsung also promises seven years of OS and security updates, which is the kind of number that makes a $1,200 purchase easier to justify.

The differences are mostly about size and memory:

Android Central reports Samsung’s battery claims at 21 hours for the Plus and 23 hours for the Ultra, with 45W wired charging on both. The Ultra being thinner than the smaller Plus is a nice bit of engineering, though at 692 grams it’s still a two-handed device.

The Photoshop play

The most interesting part of the launch isn’t hardware. Samsung is shipping Adobe Photoshop preinstalled with four months of free access, according to 9to5Google, along with trials for Notability (six months), Goodnotes, LumaFusion, Notion and a six-month Google AI Pro trial. Samsung wants you to see this as a creative workstation, not a Netflix screen with a pen.

That’s smart positioning. Android tablets have long had the hardware but not the pro apps, and a real Photoshop on a 14.6-inch AMOLED with a bundled stylus is a stronger pitch than any spec bump. The catch is that trials end, and the long-term cost of those subscriptions stacks on top of an already steep price.

Where it falls short

The missing base model is the big one. For years, the vanilla Tab S was the sensible pick: flagship screen, flagship pen, a few hundred dollars less. This year Samsung is pointing budget-minded buyers back to last year’s 11-inch Galaxy Tab S11, which stays on sale. That’s fine as a stopgap, but it means the “new” Samsung tablet experience now starts at $1,199.

9to5Google also reports there’s no cellular version of the Ultra, which will matter to anyone who hoped to use it as a true laptop replacement on the road. And 9to5Google counts the Ultra’s starting price as a $100 increase over the previous generation, part of a broader industry pattern as memory costs climb.

Who should buy one

If you draw, edit photos or take handwritten notes for a living and you’ve been waiting for Android to get serious, the Tab S12 Ultra is the most complete package Samsung has made, and seven years of updates means it won’t age out quickly. The Plus makes sense if you want the same software story in something you can hold on a couch.

Everyone else should look hard at the Galaxy Tab S11 or wait for early discounts. Samsung tablets historically see price cuts within a few months of launch, and at these prices, patience is worth real money.

Sources: 9to5Google, Android Central, SamMobile. Photo by Shawn Rain on Unsplash.