Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra vs Fire Max 11: Is the 2024 Model Worth the Change?
Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra or Fire Max 11? We compare price, measured performance and real-world trade-offs to work out which is the better buy.
Maya Okonkwo
The short answer
Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra 8h 10m, Fire Max 11 10h 30m — the same test, run the same way. Where they part company is who they suit: the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra is the one to get if you are note-takers and anyone who wants one device for media and light desktop work, the Fire Max 11 if you are media consumption on a strict budget, and nothing else.
Price difference: The Fire Max 11 undercuts the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra by £950. That gap only matters if the extras below are ones you will actually use.
Specifications side by side
| Specification | Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra | Fire Max 11 |
|---|---|---|
| Price | £1199 | £249 |
| Our score | 4 / 5 | 2 / 5 |
| Display | 14.6in AMOLED, 120Hz | 11in IPS, 60Hz |
| Chip | Dimensity 9300+ | MediaTek MT8188J |
| RAM | 12GB | 4GB |
| Storage | 256GB | 64GB |
| Weight | 718g | 490g |
| Battery | 11200mAh | 7500mAh |
| Screen-on time | 8h 10m | 10h 30m |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent ten days as the reviewer’s only portable screen, with the keyboard and stylus the maker sells. Screen at a metered 200 nits, the same eleven apps on every unit, and Wi-Fi 6 on a fixed access point three metres away.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Screen-on time | A scripted day — three hours of browsing and documents, two hours of video, thirty minutes of stylus work — repeated three times and averaged. |
| Sustained performance | A thirty-minute 4K video export, reporting the figure at the end rather than the peak. |
| Stylus latency | High-speed capture at 240fps against a ruled grid, measured from contact to first ink. |
| Charging | From 2% to 100% with the charger in the box, at 22°C ambient. |
| Weight in use | Held one-handed in portrait for as long as comfortable, timed, by three testers. |
We deliberately do not report manufacturer battery claims, which are measured at brightness levels nobody uses.
The honest caveat: Stylus figures are specific to the pen the maker supplies; third-party styluses were not tested.
Where the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra wins
- The S Pen is included, which no competitor at this price does
- DeX is the closest a tablet gets to a desktop
- Expandable storage via microSD
It also has the edge on the intangibles: the 14.6in panel is large enough that two documents side by side is actually usable.
Where the Fire Max 11 wins
- The cheapest usable large-screen tablet we tested
- Battery life is genuinely excellent
- An aluminium body at this price is unexpected
And in day-to-day use, lock-screen adverts are still present unless you pay to remove them.
The trade-offs
Neither is flawless. The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra has one clear weak point — 718g is too heavy to hold for long — and the Fire Max 11 has its own: fire OS is a storefront with a tablet attached. Weigh those against how you actually work rather than against the spec sheet.
The value case
The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra costs £950 more and scores 2 points higher — roughly £475 per point of difference. Whether that is good value depends on whether the extra buys you the S Pen is included, which no competitor at this price does, or only a number. In our testing it is the former, but only just.
If neither quite fits
Look at the iPad Pro 13 (M4) at £1299 — it scored 5 out of 5 and suits illustrators and video editors who already work inside the Apple ecosystem. If the budget will not stretch, the Galaxy Tab S9 FE at £449 is the cheapest option in this category we would still put our name to.
Living with each of them
On paper the gap looks like a specification difference; in use it is a habits difference. With the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra the thing you adjust to is 718g is too heavy to hold for long, and you do adjust — within a week it stops registering. Its display (14.6in AMOLED, 120Hz) is the part you stop thinking about. The Fire Max 11 asks for a different accommodation: fire OS is a storefront with a tablet attached, against a display of 11in IPS, 60Hz that holds up better than the number suggests. Neither compromise is severe. They are simply different, and which one you would rather not think about is a more useful question than which is objectively smaller.
Which one ages better
The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra is 1 year newer, which usually means 1 more year of security updates at the far end of ownership — the part of the decision nobody weighs at the till and everybody feels at year four. The other half of ageing is the weak point you already know about: 718g is too heavy to hold for long on one side, fire OS is a storefront with a tablet attached on the other. Weaknesses of that kind do not improve with firmware, so assume you are buying them for the life of the device and price the decision accordingly.
Our recommendation
For most people we would take the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra, which scored 4 out of 5 in our testing against 2 for the other. That said, a score is a summary, not a substitute for knowing what you need.
Buy the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra for the S Pen is included, which no competitor at this price does. Buy the Fire Max 11 for the cheapest usable large-screen tablet we tested.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the tablets we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra vs Galaxy Tab S9 FE: Is the 2024 Model Worth the Change? and Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra vs OnePlus Pad 2: Is the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra Worth £700 More?.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
