Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra 512GB Drops To $1299, Trade‑In Cuts It To $399 At Best Buy

Barring any special offers in the future, your current device's trade-in value will never be worth more than it is right now. The reason this matters is because Samsung has launched its Galaxy S26 series and is offering a free upgrade from 256GB to 512GB of storage when you preorder one, saving your $200 right off the bat. On top of that, Best Buy's trade-in program will effectively knock up to another $900 off, bringing the price down to just a few hundred bucks.

So here's the deal: Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra 512GB is on sale for $1,299.99 at Best Buy (save $200), which brings the price down to the same as the MSRP for the 256GB model. If you're buying this phone, it's a no-brainer to opt for the 512GB model, as the 256GB config is not on sale.

Best Buy is not the only place offering the free storage upgrade. So is Amazon, for example, which sweetens the pot with some bonus offers, such as a $200 gift card and 15% off the Galaxy Buds4. To help level the playing field, Best Buy is countering Amazon's offer with its trade-in program and pitching to buyers that they can score the Galaxy S26 Ultra 512GB for as little as $399.99.

That's contingent on an eligible trade-in that fetches the full $900 value being offered. The good news is, there is some flexibility. We played around with the online trade-in tool and discovered that Best Buy will issue a $900 trade-in-credit on all three storage configurations, including the base 256GB model. Without a purchase, the value plummets to $300 in the form of an electronic gift card.

A couple of other examples include $700 in trade-in credit on the Galaxy S25+ (512GB or 256GB) and $750 in trade-in credit on Apple's iPhone 17 Pro Max (2TB, 1TB, 512GB, and 256GB). It's nice to see that Best Buy isn't dinging users who opted for lower storage configurations.

You can score boosted trade-in values on Samsung's other Galaxy S26 phones as well (Galaxy S26+ and Galaxy S26), though not to the same extent as the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

If you don't have a phone to trade in, Amazon has the better offers on tap. You can get the same storage upgrade at Amazon, plus some nice bonuses. We already covered these in a previous article, but to recap...

• Galaxy S26 512GB (No extras): $899.99 (18% off)
• Galaxy S26 512GB + $100 Amazon Gift Card: $899.99 (25% off)
• Galaxy S26 512GB + $100 Amazon Gift Card + Buds4 Pro: $1,112.48 (23% off)