Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Performance Preview: Early Benchmarks Revealed
The Samsung Galaxy S6 Ultra With Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Put To The Test
In addition to leveraging Qualcomm’s newest mobile platform, the Galaxy S26 Ultra has a few additional tricks up its sleeve, most notably is the new Privacy Screen feature. The design’s been updated with an aluminum frame and is thinner too at just 7.9mm vs. the S25 Ultra’s 8.2mm. And the Galaxy S26 Ultra is a tiny bit lighter as well at 214g, compared to 218g for S25 Ultra.
Samsung also changed the camera bump for the entire S26 lineup to match the S25 Edge’s design, with metal-rimmed lenses protruding from a pill-shaped bump on the back. The optics are faster / wider too, but we’ll save all of the deep-dive design specifics for our full reviews.
We recently got our hands on the top-end Galaxy S26 Ultra and figured we’d pull together a quick performance preview to show you all how the device stacks up. As mentioned, 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 also gains a redesigned vapor chamber for better heat dissipation.
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Benchmarks & Performance
All of our benchmarks were performed with the device in as close to a default state as possible, meaning we didn't enable any special performance modes or "gaming modes" or any other such features that might affect the benchmarks. Of course, we can't account for all behind-the-scenes vendor optimizations, as mobile device makers often implement. Still, we think these benchmarks should present a fair picture of what users can expect when the Galaxy S26 Ultra goes up for sale.
Starting things off with the ever-popular GeekBench 6 system benchmark we see a very strong showing out of the gate. The S26 Ultra comes in with basically identical performance to the OnePlus 15 using the same SoC, and slightly behind the liquid-cooled RedMagic 11 Pro. Notably Qualcomm's newest SoC delivers a multi-core smack-down to the iPhone 17 Pro Max, although Apple's single-core speeds remain dominant. Overall, a strong first impression.
In AnTuTu the S26 Ultra falls quite a bit in the rankings, although it's still beating the iPhone 17 Pro Max. We're not particularly surprised by the RedMagic 11 Pro and the Snapdragon validation platforms beating the Galaxy S26, but the OnePlus 15's dominant performance in this benchmark took us by surprise. It's possible OnePlus is using a more aggressive thermal or power supply strategy that is allowing the Oryon cores to stretch their legs in this test; we know the chip is capable of even more by looking at the prototype results. Still, high-end outliers aside, Samsung's device is doing well.
The S26 Ultra comes in well ahead of the S25 Edge in PCMark for Android's Work 3.0 test, beaten only by the gaming phones that have high-end cooling and are designed for long-duration intense workloads. As the S26 Ultra is more of a general device that can also play games, it isn't really designed for extended performance tests like this. Despite that, it still beats everyone besides the test platforms and the gaming phones.
In the Browserbench Speedometer 3 web app benchmark, the S26 Ultra comes in behind only the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and it's nipping at the heels of Apple's finest. This is an extremely impressive result, because Apple has largely dominated this space for more than a decade; this score is competitive with desktop CPUs from Intel and AMD that draw ten times as much power. An excellent result for Samsung.
Specifically testing on the neural processor of the phone SoCs in Geekbench AI, we see Samsung delivering an outstanding result in the benchmark's "quantized" test that checks performance on models reduced to 8-bit precision, yet the phone's 16-bit "half-precision" result is still quite good. Apple owns the half-precision benchmark (at least as far as phones go), but Samsung isn't far behind, while offering nearly double the performance of the iPhone 17 in the quantized test. Great stuff here for folks who prefer on-device AI.
For gaming tests, we used the multiplatform 3DMark benchmarks. In the Solar Bay Vulkan ray-tracing benchmark, the S26 Ultra comes in right along with the other devices based on the latest Snapdragon chipset, although curiously they all lose to the Oppo Find X9 Pro sporting the Mediatek Dimensity 9500 SoC. While the Dimensity may not be able to compete with Qualcomm's powerful Oryon CPU cores, its large GPU is quite potent indeed. Of course, the results from our top four devices are all basically within margin-of-error.
We see similar results in the 3DMark Steel Nomad Light test, where Samsung just falls slightly behind the Find X9 Pro and RedMagic's 11 Pro gaming phone. All of these are excellent results, though, and close to the results from powerful laptop integrated graphics parts.
Last but not least, we have the 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited test, which is basically a memory bandwidth benchmark as it tests in high 4K resolution. Unsurprisingly, the RedMagic 11 Pro and S26 Ultra turn in nearly identical results, matching the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 test platform, with OnePlus' 15 coming in just behind and everyone else trailing.
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Stay Tuned For More
Overall these numbers paint a fairly rosy picture of the Galaxy S26 Ultra's performance. It nearly keeps up with dedicated gaming phones in extended benchmarks, and its browser performance is basically neck and neck with the latest iPhone. Those are both impressive feats for a general-purpose flagship device and our hats are off to Samsung's Galaxy team, as the company seems to have done a great job optimizing this generation at this early stage, at least as far as performance goes.
Find The Galaxy S26 Ultra @ Amazon
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra officially launches next week, but pre-orders are open now. You can hit up our previous coverage to see the deals; besides a $200 Amazon gift card discount, Best Buy is also offering a trade-in credit of up to $900 depending on what device you're trading in. We have a full review on the way, of course, so if you're curious about the screen, the camera, the battery life, and other features, stay tuned for more soon...
