If you’re a photographer who spends weekends wedged against a barrier, dodging crowd surfers while trying desperately not to get a £2,000 camera covered in lager, eventually you’re going to face another problem:
How the hell do you edit all those photos afterwards? 😂🤘
For years, the obvious answer was a laptop.
MacBook. Windows laptop. Lightroom. Photoshop. Job done.
But tablets have become absolute monsters.
Two of the biggest contenders are the Apple iPad Pro and Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra. Both have gorgeous OLED displays, loads of performance and enough screen space to turn a festival campsite, hotel room, press tent or passenger seat into a makeshift editing suite.
But which one is actually better for photographers?
More specifically, which one makes the most sense for concert and festival photography, where you’re potentially dealing with hundreds — sometimes thousands — of RAW files?
The Riff Report has grabbed the metaphorical camera bag and gone investigating.
🍎 IN THE RED CORNER: THE iPAD PRO
Apple’s iPad Pro has gradually transformed from “massive expensive iPhone without the phone bit” into a genuinely serious creative machine.
And for photographers, it’s particularly interesting.
The current generation offers Apple’s stunning Ultra Retina XDR display, using Tandem OLED technology to produce the sort of contrast, brightness and colour reproduction that makes photographs look absolutely glorious.
When you’re editing gigs, that’s important.
Concert photography can be a nightmare.
You’ve got:
🔥 Deep shadows
🔥 Insane LED lighting
🔥 Red stage washes
🔥 Blue lights everywhere
🔥 Pyro
🔥 Smoke
🔥 Spotlights
🔥 Musicians moving at approximately Mach 7
Being able to properly see what you’re doing makes a massive difference.
The iPad Pro’s display is absolutely superb for this.
🤖 IN THE OTHER CORNER: SAMSUNG GALAXY TAB S10 ULTRA
Then Samsung walks into the room carrying something that looks less like a tablet and more like someone has ripped the screen off a laptop.
The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra has a whopping 14.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display.
FOURTEEN POINT SIX INCHES.
Mun.
That’s enormous. 😂
For photographers, though, enormous can be brilliant.
Open Lightroom on that thing and you’ve got loads of room for your photograph, editing controls and interface without everything feeling cramped.
If you’re sitting in a hotel room after a festival going through 1,500 photographs of sweaty musicians, pyro and people dressed as inflatable dinosaurs, that extra screen space becomes genuinely useful.
📸 DISPLAY BATTLE
Both tablets are absolutely cracking here.
The iPad Pro’s OLED display delivers excellent contrast, colour and HDR performance.
Samsung’s AMOLED panel is equally gorgeous and significantly larger.
For pure screen real estate:
🏆 Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra
For the overall combination of display quality, portability and professional creative applications:
🏆 iPad Pro
This one is much closer than you might expect.
⚡ PERFORMANCE
Here’s where Apple starts swinging.
The iPad Pro has ridiculous amounts of processing power for something you can hold in one hand.
Importing RAW photographs, applying masks, removing distractions, adjusting exposure and exporting large batches can all be demanding jobs.
Modern iPad Pro hardware handles those workloads remarkably well.
And that’s important because nothing kills your enthusiasm faster than sitting backstage watching an export progress bar crawl across the screen while somebody somewhere is already shouting:
“NEXT BAND STARTS IN FIVE MINUTES!”
Samsung’s Tab S10 Ultra is hardly slow.
Far from it.
It’s an extremely powerful Android tablet capable of handling demanding photo editing applications.
But for outright creative performance and optimisation, we’d give this round to:
🏆 iPad Pro
🎨 LIGHTROOM
Now we’re getting serious.
Adobe Lightroom has become one of the most important tools in modern photography.
For concert photography it’s practically essential.
Shoot RAW.
Import.
Adjust exposure.
Recover highlights.
Lift shadows.
Sort the white balance because the lighting engineer decided the entire stage should be radioactive purple.
Apply noise reduction.
Crop.
Mask.
Export.
Repeat approximately 800 times.
Both iPadOS and Android have Lightroom available, and both tablets can deliver an excellent Lightroom experience.
However, the iPad has traditionally enjoyed particularly strong support from developers building professional creative applications.
That gives Apple’s tablet an advantage if you’re planning on making the tablet your primary mobile editing machine rather than simply a companion device.
🏆 Winner: iPad Pro
🖌️ PHOTOSHOP
The same story continues with Photoshop.
Photoshop on iPad has become increasingly capable and works particularly well with Apple Pencil.
Want to remove something distracting?
Easy.
Want to mask part of an image?
Sorted.
Want to perform more detailed edits after finishing the initial Lightroom processing?
No problem.
Samsung can absolutely perform sophisticated image editing too, but Apple’s ecosystem remains extremely attractive for photographers who already use Adobe Creative Cloud.
🏆 Winner: iPad Pro
💾 AND THEN SAMSUNG DROPS THE MICROSD BOMB
Here’s where Samsung strolls casually into the argument and drops something enormous onto the table.
Expandable storage.
The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra supports microSD storage up to 1.5TB.
And for photographers?
That is absolutely bloody brilliant.
RAW photographs are huge.
A single modern camera can easily produce files somewhere around 30MB, 50MB, 80MB or even larger depending on resolution and format.
Shoot thousands during a festival weekend and suddenly your storage disappears faster than beer at a campsite.
Samsung lets you expand it.
Need another terabyte?
Stick a card in.
Apple?
Nope.
Whatever internal storage you buy is what you’re getting.
Of course, you can connect external SSDs to an iPad Pro — and that’s actually a brilliant workflow — but there’s no denying Samsung’s microSD slot is wonderfully convenient.
🏆 Storage flexibility winner: Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra
🔌 EXTERNAL SSDs CHANGE THE GAME
This is where the iPad Pro fights back.
Its USB-C/Thunderbolt connectivity means you can connect extremely fast external storage.
For photographers, that opens up a brilliant workflow.
Imagine you’ve just finished photographing a festival.
Back at the hotel — or campsite if you’re brave enough — you connect your memory card reader.
Import the photographs.
Back them up to an SSD.
Start selecting your favourites.
Edit in Lightroom.
Export.
Upload.
Job done.
Something like:
CAMERA
⬇️
SD / CFexpress card
⬇️
USB-C card reader
⬇️
iPad Pro
⬇️
Lightroom
⬇️
Photoshop
⬇️
External SSD backup
⬇️
Website / Instagram / Facebook
That’s a genuinely powerful mobile photography setup.
✏️ APPLE PENCIL VS S PEN
Both platforms also offer stylus support.
Samsung has the S Pen, while Apple offers the Apple Pencil Pro on compatible iPad Pro models.
For general Lightroom adjustments, you probably won’t desperately need either.
But once you start doing detailed masking, retouching or Photoshop work?
Lovely stuff.
Using a stylus can feel much more precise than trying to manipulate tiny selections with your finger like you’re playing some horrific photography version of Operation.
Both are excellent.
🤝 This one’s basically a draw.
🎒 PORTABILITY MATTERS MORE THAN YOU THINK
Here’s something specification sheets don’t properly explain.
Festival photographers already carry enough crap.
Camera.
Second camera.
70-200mm lens.
24-70mm lens.
Wide-angle lens.
Batteries.
Memory cards.
Power bank.
Rain cover.
Water bottle.
Pass.
Phone.
Chargers.
Possibly waterproof trousers.
And, because this is Britain, something designed to survive four completely different seasons occurring during the same afternoon.
Adding a massive laptop isn’t always appealing.
That’s where the iPad Pro becomes particularly attractive.
The 13-inch version provides plenty of editing space without becoming ridiculously cumbersome.
Samsung’s 14.6-inch display is glorious, but the tablet itself is obviously larger.
If you’re predominantly editing at home?
Samsung’s size could be an advantage.
If you’re constantly travelling between venues and festivals?
The iPad starts making more sense.
🏕️ THE FESTIVAL PRESS-TENT TEST
Imagine this.
You’ve just photographed three bands.
You’ve got another act starting in 45 minutes.
The press team wants photographs uploaded quickly.
You’re sitting inside a tent.
Somebody has stolen the only available plug socket.
The Wi-Fi appears to be powered by a hamster.
And outside it’s absolutely hammering down because…
WALES. 🐉🌧️😂
This is where tablets become brilliant.
Pull the iPad out.
Connect card reader.
Import.
Pick 20 photographs.
Quick Lightroom edit.
Export.
Upload.
Camera back around your neck.
Off to the next band.
No massive laptop bag.
No boot-up drama.
No balancing a 16-inch laptop on your knees while somebody walks past carrying six pints.
Proper job.
💻 COULD A TABLET ACTUALLY REPLACE A LAPTOP?
For some photographers?
Yes.
Particularly if your workflow mostly consists of:
- RAW importing
- Photograph selection
- Lightroom editing
- Basic Photoshop work
- Cloud storage
- External SSD backups
- Social media uploads
- Website uploads
There are still situations where a proper desktop operating system and full-fat desktop applications make more sense.
But tablets aren’t toys anymore.
They’re legitimate creative workstations.
🥊 iPAD PRO VS GALAXY TAB S10 ULTRA
Category
iPad Pro
Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra
Display
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Screen size
⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
RAW editing
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Lightroom
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Photoshop workflow
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Performance
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Expandable storage
❌
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
External storage
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Stylus editing
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Portability
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Festival photography
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐½
🏆 THE RIFF REPORT VERDICT
Both of these tablets are absolute beasts.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra has some huge advantages.
That enormous 14.6-inch AMOLED screen is beautiful for editing photographs, the S Pen is excellent and expandable microSD storage is an absolute gift for photographers producing mountains of RAW files.
If you love Android, want the biggest possible screen and value expandable storage, the Samsung deserves serious consideration.
But if the question is simply:
Which tablet would we choose specifically for professional photo editing?
🍎 iPad Pro.
Particularly the 13-inch model.
Its combination of performance, excellent OLED display, Thunderbolt connectivity, portability and creative software makes it a phenomenal photography machine.
For storage, we’d look towards 512GB or 1TB internally and then pair it with a fast external USB-C SSD rather than spending an absolute fortune maxing out the internal capacity.
That gives you something incredibly powerful without turning your camera bag into a portable branch of Currys.
📸🤘 PERFECT FOR GIG PHOTOGRAPHERS?
This is where the iPad Pro really makes sense.
Concert photography isn’t done in a lovely studio with unlimited desk space and fourteen power sockets.
It’s done backstage.
In press rooms.
On trains.
In hotels.
In festival tents.
Sometimes sitting on grass.
Sometimes sitting in mud.
Occasionally editing photographs while you can still hear the headline band smashing through their encore outside.
Having something thin, powerful and capable of processing RAW photographs in that environment is incredibly useful.
The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra is a fantastic alternative — and that enormous screen is seriously tempting.
But for a mobile Lightroom and Photoshop photography workstation, we’re handing the trophy to Apple.
🏆 RIFF REPORT PHOTO-EDITING WINNER: iPAD PRO
Camera charged. Memory cards empty. Lightroom ready.
Now all we need is some questionable festival Wi-Fi and a photographer shouting:
“WHO’S GOT THE BLOODY CARD READER?!” 😂📸🔥🤘
Proudly Welsh. Proudly Loud.
