The numbers don’t lie: If you — or someone you know — bought a tablet over the last few years, it was probably an iPad. Apple is far and away the biggest name in tablets, which leads to an obvious question: Where are all the great Android tablets?

They're closer than you might think.

This week, Samsung officially revealed its first wave of shiny gadgets for 2022, including a trio of new Galaxy S22 smartphones. But for the first time in over a year, Samsung is taking a big swing at the tablet market, too.

Enter the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, a tablet with a screen so large that it would feel downright comical if it wasn’t so thin. That size comes at a cost, too: $1,099 for the S8 Ultra, though Samsung also announced two smaller, less-expensive S8 tablets at the same time. And if Samsung and Google (Samsung’s tablets run on Google’s Android operating system) get their way, these devices will herald a new wave of Android tablets that could appeal to people in ways older models couldn’t.

The Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra is the kind of machine that seems tailor-made to pose a question: Do you really need a proper PC to do all the things you need? If all you really do is watch movies, jump around on Zoom calls and poke around in a Web browser, then no, probably not.

A tablet this pricey and this ostentatious runs the risk of feeling like overkill for many of those same tasks, but Samsung says that's exactly what some of its most vocal tablet fans wanted.

Consider, once again, how big this thing is. The Tab S8 Ultra packs a 14.6-inch screen — that’s larger than the one in Apple’s biggest iPad Pro — into a frame that’s a little thinner than its rival. (That said, the S8 Ultra is also 0.1 lbs. heavier than the iPad Pro, and every ounce counts when we’re talking about a device you’re meant to hold.)

Hassan Anjum, director of product management for Samsung Electronics America’s New Computing team, said that 90 percent of the people who bought its last big tablet actually wanted an even bigger screen — something closer to the 15-inch displays found on many laptops. That’s not just good news for people who want to see more things at once; it also means more room to display zoomed-in text if your eyes are, like mine, not what they used to be.

That design does, however, mean the Tab S8 Ultra is plain and unpleasant to use for some things. Sure, movies look gorgeous on it, and there’s plenty of room to take notes with the included S Pen. (Meanwhile, Apple’s analogous Pencil costs at least $99 extra.) But holding it vertically and trying to read a news article honestly feels a little silly — it’s so long that you can’t help but wonder if it will eventually topple out of your hands.

For people who want a more manageable tablet, Samsung has two smaller models that use the same speedy Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor. The standard $699 Tab S8 is the most portable, with its 11-inch screen, while the $899 Tab S8 Plus model comes with a 12.4-inch display.

In typical Samsung fashion, though, not all of these tablets will share the same features when they go on sale later this month. The enormous S8 Ultra is the only tablet of the three with two front-facing cameras, making it the best choice for people who spend ages on video calls. If you want a tablet you can connect to a 5G network for working on the go, the middle child that is the Tab S8 Plus is, for some reason, your only option. And if you’ve run into trouble with in-display fingerprint sensors in the past, only the smallest Tab S8 puts a sensor in the power button.

Beyond Zoom calls and bingeing movies, Samsung’s new Tab S8s further insist on blurring the line between tablet and PC. Notes you scribble with the S Pen can automatically sync to a companion app for Windows PCs, and Samsung says you’ll be able to use a Tab S8 as a wireless, external monitor for certain, compatible computers.

If you’re an Apple person, these features will probably sound familiar — they’ve been hallmarks of the tight connection between the company’s products. But if there’s one area where Samsung’s tablets have an edge over Apple’s iPads, it’s their ability to act like a proper laptop when needed.

When you connect a keyboard and a mouse to an iPad Pro, the software doesn't change much. Apple has added multitasking features over the years to make this kind of work more palatable, but make no mistake — you're still working on a tablet. But for the last few years, some of Samsung's flashier tablets came equipped with software that, with just a bit of fiddling, gave you the same kind of desktop look you're already used to.

That feature, called DeX, returns in Samsung’s new models, and runs a lot better than it used to. You can resize windows for more apps than before and can hook up another screen in case one wasn’t enough.

As an ersatz laptop, Samsung comes out on top, but iPads have historically felt like better general-use tablets. And that’s because one of the biggest knocks against Android tablets was that many of their apps were just stretched-out versions of what you’d see on a smartphone.

Samsung’s Anjum says the company is “working very close with Google” on talking to app creators about optimizing their software for bigger screens, which — speaking as an owner of Android tablets — hasn’t always felt like a priority. But even that is beginning to change.

Google, which has made its own generally well-received Pixel smartphones since 2016, hasn’t produced an Android tablet since the tail end of the Obama administration. (It did make a tablet using the same software you’d find on a Chromebook in 2018, but it wasn’t very good.)

But in a recent job listing, the company revealed it was on the hunt for engineers that could help deliver on its vision, one in which “the future of computing is shifting toward more powerful and capable tablets.” Among the people it appears to have tapped is Rich Miner, one of the original creators of the Android software who now serves as Google’s chief technical officer for Android tablets. What’s more, Google has been openly testing an updated version of its mobile software — Android 12L — specifically for tablets.

None of this is definitive proof that Samsung — which was responsible for just under 16 percent of all tablets shipped last year — or anyone else will unseat Apple from the top of the market. But it does mean you can expect to see smarter, more sophisticated competition before long. And that means every company clamoring for your money is going to have to try even harder.