iPad Pro M4 vs Samsung Tab S10 Ultra Compared

Pick almost any tablet comparison online and you'll get the same template. Specs table at the top, a paragraph under each category saying "both are good but one edges ahead," and then a conclusion that picks the iPad. Most of them miss what's going on.

The iPad Pro M4 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra start from completely different ideas about what a tablet should even be. Apple wants a really, really polished tablet. That means apps made for the form factor, a tight ecosystem, and everything feeling intentional. Samsung wants it to be everything at once: a laptop, a drawing pad, a TV, and a desktop workstation once you snap on a keyboard.

The more useful way to think about them is that they're good at different jobs. The iPad Pro suits design work and note-taking at a desk, while the Tab S10 Ultra's huge screen makes it the better couch tablet for YouTube and Netflix, with DeX when you want a desktop-style layout. This comparison draws on both companies' specs, India pricing and published reviews; we didn't test our own units.

The screens tell you everything

Apple's big display move this generation is Tandem OLED, which means two OLED panels stacked on top of each other. Sounds like marketing. Then you see HDR content on it, with brighter highlights and deeper blacks, and the 1,000-nit full-screen SDR brightness finally makes outdoor use workable. Every iPad before this was basically unusable in direct sunlight. This one isn't.

	iPad Pro M4 (13")	Tab S10 Ultra
Size	13 inches	14.6 inches
Panel	Tandem OLED	Dynamic AMOLED 2X
Resolution	2752 x 2064 (264 PPI)	2960 x 1848 (239 PPI)
Peak brightness (HDR)	1,600 nits	~930 nits
Refresh rate	10-120Hz ProMotion	1-120Hz adaptive
Aspect ratio	4:3	16:10
Anti-reflective	Nano-texture option	Standard

Samsung did something Apple still won't: they made it big. 14.6 inches is wild for a tablet. The first time you hold it your brain sort of short-circuits, because it's a laptop screen without the laptop. Movies love it. The 16:10 ratio means less letterboxing on widescreen content, so a typical film fills far more of Samsung's screen while the iPad's 4:3 leaves bars top and bottom.

So the iPad has the better panel on paper: sharper per inch, brighter, and better at HDR by a decent margin. The Tab S10 Ultra is still nicer for watching anything widescreen. For documents and note-taking, though, I prefer 4:3, because PDFs don't feel squeezed and books look natural in portrait mode.

I keep going back and forth on which display I'd pick if forced. Probably depends on what day you ask me.

Reading on the Samsung in portrait is awkward, by the way. 14.6 inches at 16:10 feels like holding a small surfboard upright. Landscape works fine for comics, where two-page spreads look great, but for books and articles the iPad's proportions suit much better.

Performance, and whether it matters

I'll probably annoy some people with this section. Yes, the M4 chip destroys the MediaTek Dimensity 9300+. On paper it isn't close:

Benchmark	iPad Pro M4	Tab S10 Ultra	iPad advantage
Geekbench 6 single-core	~3,800	~2,200	73% faster
Geekbench 6 multi-core	~14,800	~7,100	108% faster
GPU (Metal vs Vulkan)	~52,000	~18,000	189% faster

Those GPU numbers are absurd. Nearly three times faster. The M4 is a desktop-class chip crammed into something 5.1mm thin, and you can scrub through 4K timelines in Final Cut Pro, stack hundreds of Procreate layers, or mix tracks in Logic Pro while the iPad barely gets warm. Samsung can't touch that kind of raw output.

What most comparisons leave out is that it doesn't matter for the vast majority of buyers. If you're watching Netflix, taking notes, hopping between email and WhatsApp, or browsing the web, both tablets feel identical. I saw no lag on either. The Tab S10 Ultra handles everything short of professional creative work without missing a beat.

The M4's power starts to count if you edit video on the tablet, push Procreate past a hundred layers as a digital artist, or produce music in Logic Pro. Everyone else is paying a premium for headroom they won't use. I like headroom too, so I get it. Just don't buy the iPad for the benchmark numbers unless you do that kind of heavy lifting.

Storage deserves a mention. The Samsung takes microSD up to 1.5TB on top of its internal storage, but with the iPad you get what you bought, and at Rs 99,900 for 256GB (that's the 11-inch model), that matters.

The whole stylus thing

Apple Pencil Pro costs Rs 11,900, sold separately. The S Pen comes in the box for free.

That alone changes the conversation, though price isn't the whole story.

For serious digital art on a tablet, the Apple Pencil Pro is the best stylus you can buy right now. I use the squeeze gesture for quick tool switching constantly when drawing. Barrel roll tracks the angle of the pencil, which makes a real difference for calligraphy and shaped brushes in Procreate, and the haptic feedback gives you a little click on squeeze while hover detection shows where you're about to mark before the tip touches the glass. It snaps magnetically to the iPad's edge and charges wirelessly while it sits there. Slick design.

The S Pen goes another way, with fewer pro art features and more everyday usefulness. Screen-off memo is probably the most useful everyday feature on the Samsung: pull out the pen and scribble a quick thought without even waking the tablet. The pen clips magnetically onto the back of the tablet, so you never forget it or leave it behind. The Apple Pencil, by contrast, tends to end up loose in a bag, because there's nowhere to stow it on the tablet unless you buy a case with a holder. Samsung Notes has also become good at handwriting recognition, and write-to-text works system-wide instead of inside one app.

For note-taking (Samsung Notes vs GoodNotes 6) and art (ibisPaint vs Procreate), the picture is mixed. Writing feels excellent on both; the S Pen's screen-off memo is more practical day to day, while the Apple Pencil's palm rejection and latency are fractionally better in GoodNotes. Drawing is another matter. Procreate with barrel roll and squeeze for tool access is a combination of hardware and software polish that the Android side (Clip Studio Paint, ibisPaint, Infinite Painter) doesn't match, so for art the Apple Pencil Pro wins clearly.

Keyboard cases and the laptop question

The Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro is Rs 29,900. Almost thirty grand for a keyboard case. Typing on it rivals a MacBook Air, the floating cantilever design is clever, the haptic trackpad is large and responsive, and there's a USB-C passthrough port so you can charge while you work. It's a premium accessory in every sense, price included.

Samsung's Book Cover Keyboard is Rs 19,999, and it feels noticeably cheaper to type on, with less key travel, a smaller trackpad, and a kickstand that wobbles on your lap more than the Magic Keyboard's rigid cantilever. Pair it with DeX mode, though, and you get a taskbar, resizable floating windows and a desktop browser. It works.

The full setup costs are interesting:

Accessory	iPad Pro	Tab S10 Ultra
Stylus	Rs 11,900 (Apple Pencil Pro)	Included
Keyboard case	Rs 29,900 (Magic Keyboard)	Rs 19,999 (Book Cover)
Total accessories	Rs 41,800	Rs 19,999

The 11-inch iPad Pro base (Rs 99,900) plus all accessories comes to roughly Rs 1,41,700, against roughly Rs 1,37,998 for the Tab S10 Ultra base (Rs 1,17,999) plus keyboard. Samsung edges ahead on total cost because the S Pen is free. The 13-inch iPad from my display table starts at Rs 1,29,900, so at that size the gap gets a lot wider.

Skip the keyboard entirely, though, and the 11-inch iPad at Rs 99,900 is eighteen grand cheaper than the Samsung at Rs 1,17,999. The value math depends completely on what you buy with it.

Can either one replace a laptop? That depends on what you mean by "laptop."

DeX mode is Samsung's real weapon here. Plug in the keyboard and the Tab S10 Ultra turns into something that looks a lot like a desktop OS, with a taskbar, a system tray, freely resizable windows, a proper file manager and a desktop-class browser, and for email, documents, spreadsheets and web-based work it holds up better than you'd expect.

Apple's Stage Manager does overlapping windows too, up to four on screen and more on an external display, and its animations are smoother. It's more restrictive, though. You can't resize windows to any size you like, not every app supports it properly, and it still feels like iPadOS pretending to be a desktop.

For email-and-documents work, I think either tablet can pull it off. For specialized software, proper file management or multi-monitor setups, neither is there yet. If you're seriously thinking about a laptop instead, our MacBook Air M4 review covers the closest alternative.

Apps, where the iPad pulls ahead

For a lot of people this section probably decides everything, and I think most comparisons underweight it.

The iPad has Procreate. Android doesn't. For many artists that one app is enough.

It goes further, though. Final Cut Pro on iPad handles multiple 4K streams, Logic Pro brings real music production tools, and the Affinity suite (Photo, Designer, Publisher) runs natively with touch optimization. GoodNotes and Notability beat anything for notes on Android tablets. Add LumaFusion for video editing and developer tools like Swift Playgrounds, and the list of iPad-optimized professional apps gets long. It's still growing.

Samsung has real strengths of its own. You get full file system access without Apple's weird sandbox restrictions, you can sideload any APK you want, and game emulators like RetroArch and Dolphin run freely. Samsung's own apps (Notes, Gallery, the DeX suite) are solid, and Android customization through launchers, widgets and Tasker automation gives you control Apple won't allow.

Samsung's apps aren't the Tab S10 Ultra's problem. Third-party apps are. Most Android apps still aren't built for a 14.6-inch display, and too many are stretched phone layouts that look awkward at that size. Google has been pushing adaptive design and things have improved over the past couple of years, but the gap with iPadOS tablet apps is still obvious, and when you've paid over a lakh for a tablet, stretched phone interfaces sting.

For creative work, get the iPad. For general flexibility and openness, get the Samsung. Neither one has fully taken the other's territory yet.

Battery, media, and living with them

Battery life goes to Samsung, and it's not particularly close:

Scenario	iPad Pro M4 (13")	Tab S10 Ultra
Video streaming (WiFi)	~10 hours	~13 hours
Web browsing	~9 hours	~11 hours
Note-taking (stylus)	~8 hours	~10 hours
Heavy creative work	~5 hours	~6 hours

The 11,200 mAh battery gives Samsung two to three extra hours in most cases, and on long flights or marathon study sessions you feel that. It charges faster too. Samsung needs about 80 minutes to full at 45W, while the iPad takes roughly 100 minutes with a 30W charger that Apple doesn't include in the box.

For movies, the Tab S10 Ultra wins. Bigger screen, an aspect ratio that suits widescreen, and quad speakers that fill a room better thanks to the larger body. The iPad's speakers have slightly better spatial precision, but Samsung's are louder and more immersive for casual viewing.

For reading, the iPad wins. Portrait mode at 4:3 just works better for books, articles and PDFs, and I already mentioned the surfboard problem with the Samsung in portrait (trust me, it doesn't get more comfortable over time).

Pricing at a glance

Configuration	iPad Pro M4 (11")	Tab S10 Ultra
Base	Rs 99,900 (256GB, WiFi)	Rs 1,17,999 (256GB/12GB, WiFi)
Mid	Rs 1,19,900 (512GB)	Rs 1,31,999 (512GB/16GB)
Top	Rs 1,59,900 (1TB)	Rs 1,45,999 (1TB/16GB)
Cellular add-on	+Rs 20,000	+Rs 12,000

At the base tier the iPad is eighteen grand cheaper. At the top tier the Samsung is fourteen grand cheaper. With all the accessories Samsung comes out slightly cheaper overall, and without them the iPad does, so which one is "better value" depends entirely on the configuration and the accessories you need.

For students

I'd lean Samsung here. The S Pen is included, which saves Rs 11,900 straight away, Samsung Notes is free and built in while GoodNotes costs Rs 849, and the Book Cover Keyboard is ten thousand less than the Magic Keyboard. If you're also shopping for a phone to match your tablet, our best smartphones of 2026 roundup covers the top picks.

The iPad is the premium option, with better apps and a better drawing experience. That premium shows up at every step. Most students are on a tighter budget than they'd like.

Where this lands

There's no confident winner here, which tells you how close they are.

The iPad Pro M4 is the better tablet. Its display technology is better, its creative apps are better, the M4 has power nothing else comes close to, and the Apple Pencil Pro is the best creative stylus around. If you draw, edit video, produce music or design anything, just get the iPad. That part's easy.

The Tab S10 Ultra is the better device, if that distinction makes sense. It has the bigger screen for watching things, the stylus comes free, DeX gives you a laptop-like setup that holds up for basic tasks, the battery lasts longer, the accessories cost less, and Android puts fewer walls in your way.

If you have to pick one and live with it, the iPad Pro edges it, maybe 55/45, because the app gap is still too big to ignore at this kind of money. The 14.6-inch screen is the thing you'd give up, though. Samsung got the size right.