Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Performance Preview: Early Benchmarks Revealed

Samsung formally introduced its newest Galaxy S26 family of devices final week, powered by an unique model of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 cellular platform. The lineup consists of the flagship Galaxy S26 Ultra ($1,299), Galaxy S26+ ($1,099), and base mannequin Galaxy S26 ($899), all of which obtain some incremental updates.

In addition to leveraging Qualcomm’s newest mobile platformthe Galaxy S26 Ultra has just a few further tips up its sleeve, most notably is the brand new Privacy Screen characteristic. The design’s been up to date with an aluminum body and is thinner too at simply 7.9mm vs. the S25 Ultra’s 8.2mm. And the Galaxy S26 Ultra is a tiny bit lighter as nicely at 214g, in comparison with 218g for S25 Ultra.

Samsung additionally modified the digital camera bump for the complete S26 lineup to match the S25 Edge’s design, with metal-rimmed lenses protruding from a pill-shaped bump on the again. The optics are quicker / wider too, however we’ll save the entire deep-dive design specifics for our full opinions.

We recently got our hands on the top-end Galaxy S26 Ultra and figured we would pull collectively a fast efficiency preview to indicate you all how the gadget stacks up. As talked about, the S26 Ultra boasts Qualcomm’s 3nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, paired with 16GB of RAM and 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of storage. The S26 Ultra additionally features a redesigned vapor chamber for higher warmth dissipation.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Benchmarks & Performance

All of our benchmarks have been carried out with the gadget in as near a default state as doable, that means we did not allow any particular efficiency modes or “gaming modes” or some other such options which may have an effect on the benchmarks. Of course, we will not account for all behind-the-scenes vendor optimizations, as cellular gadget makers usually implement. Still, we expect these benchmarks ought to current a good image of what customers can anticipate when the Galaxy S26 Ultra goes up on the market.

Starting issues off with the ever-popular GeekBench 6 system benchmark we see a really robust displaying out of the gate. The S26 Ultra is available in with mainly similar efficiency to the OnePlus 15 utilizing the identical SoC, and barely behind the liquid-cooled RedMagic 11 Pro. Notably Qualcomm’s latest SoC delivers a multi-core smack-down to the iPhone 17 Pro Max, though Apple’s single-core speeds stay dominant. Overall, a powerful first impression.

In AnTuTu the S26 Ultra falls fairly a bit within the rankings, though it is nonetheless beating the iPhone 17 Pro Max. We’re not notably shocked by the RedMagic 11 Pro and the Snapdragon validation platforms beating the Galaxy S26, however the OnePlus 15’s dominant efficiency on this benchmark took us abruptly. It’s doable OnePlus is utilizing a extra aggressive thermal or energy provide technique that’s permitting the Oryon cores to stretch their legs on this check; we all know the chip is able to much more by wanting on the prototype outcomes. Still, high-end outliers apart, Samsung’s gadget is doing nicely.

The S26 Ultra is available in nicely forward of the S25 Edge in PCMark for Android’s Work 3.0 check, crushed solely by the gaming telephones which have high-end cooling and are designed for long-duration intense workloads. As the S26 Ultra is extra of a basic gadget that may additionally play video games, it is not actually designed for prolonged efficiency checks like this. Despite that, it nonetheless beats everybody in addition to the check platforms and the gaming telephones.

In the Browserbench Speedometer 3 net app benchmark, the S26 Ultra is available in behind solely the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and it is nipping on the heels of Apple’s best. This is an especially spectacular outcome, as a result of Apple has largely dominated this house for greater than a decade; This rating is aggressive with desktop CPUs from Intel and AMD that draw ten instances as a lot energy. An glorious outcome for Samsung.

Specifically testing on the neural processor of the telephone SoCs in Geekbench AI, we see Samsung delivering an excellent outcome within the benchmark’s “quantized” check that checks efficiency on fashions diminished to 8-bit precision, but the telephone’s 16-bit “half-precision” outcome continues to be fairly good. Apple owns the half-precision benchmark (at the least so far as telephones go), however Samsung is not far behind, whereas providing practically double the efficiency of the iPhone 17 within the quantized check. Great stuff right here for people preferring on-device AI.

For gaming checks, we used the multiplatform 3DMark benchmarks. In the Solar Bay Vulkan ray-tracing benchmark, the S26 Ultra is available in proper together with the opposite units based mostly on the newest Snapdragon chipset, though curiously all of them lose to the Oppo Find X9 Pro sporting the Mediatek Dimensity 9500 SoC. While the Dimensity might not be capable to compete with Qualcomm’s highly effective Oryon CPU cores, its giant GPU is kind of highly effective certainly. Of course, the outcomes from our high 4 units are all mainly inside margin-of-error.

We see comparable leads to the 3DMark Steel Nomad Light check, the place Samsung simply falls barely behind the Find X9 Pro and RedMagic’s 11 Pro gaming telephone. All of those are glorious outcomes, although, and near the outcomes from highly effective laptop computer built-in graphics components.

Last however not least, we’ve got the 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited check, which is mainly a reminiscence bandwidth benchmark because it checks in excessive 4K decision. Unsurprisingly, the RedMagic 11 Pro and S26 Ultra flip in practically similar outcomes, matching the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 check platform, with OnePlus’ 15 coming in simply behind and everybody else trailing.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Stay Tuned For More

Overall these numbers paint a reasonably rosy image of the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s efficiency. It practically retains up with devoted gaming telephones in intensive benchmarks, and its browser efficiency is mainly neck and neck with the newest iPhone. Those are each spectacular options for a general-purpose flagship gadget and our hats are off to Samsung’s Galaxy workforce, as the corporate appears to have accomplished an awesome job optimizing this technology at this early stage, at the least so far as efficiency goes.

Find The Galaxy S26 Ultra @ Amazon

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra formally launches subsequent week, however pre-orders are open now. You can hit up our previous coverage to see the deals; Besides a $200 Amazon reward card low cost, Best Buy can also be providing a trade-in credit score of as much as $900 relying on what gadget you are buying and selling in. We have a full assessment on the best way, after all, so if you happen to’re curious concerning the display screen, the digital camera, the battery life, and different options, keep tuned for extra quickly…