Notebook Samsung book s. Notebook Samsung book s

Notebook Samsung book s

Samsung’s first laptop with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx processor, the Galaxy Book S, is now available for purchase in the US from the Microsoft Store or Samsung’s website. It was announced over six months ago alongside the Galaxy Note 10 and the pre-orders for the thin-and-light laptop went live two weeks ago.

The 999 laptop has a 13.3-inch TFT LCD touchscreen display with Full HD resolution. Its quad-speaker setup is tuned by AKG Harman and features Dolby Atmos audio. This extremely thin laptop is equipped with the Snapdragon 8cx octa-core processor, 8GB LPDDR4X RAM, and 256GB SSD. There’s a microSD card slot, too. The Galaxy Book S runs Windows 10 Home and features always-on connectivity, thanks to an LTE (Cat. 18) compatible SIM card slot.

Other connectivity features include dual-Band Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.0, and two USB 3.1 Type-C ports. There’s a full-sized backlit keyboard, touchpad with Windows Precision drivers, and a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello authentication. There’s a 720p HD webcam and built-in GPS. The Galaxy Book S weighs just 960g and is 11.8mm thin at its thickest point. Its 42Wh battery promises all-day battery life (up to 25 hours) with a single charge.

The Galaxy Book S is available in two colors: Earthy Gold and Mercury Gray. You can choose either Sprint or Verizon as your carrier while making the purchase. You get 100 worth of Samsung credit if you choose Sprint or a free carrying pouch for the laptop if you choose Verizon. Those who had pre-ordered the laptop should get it shipped starting today.

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Samsung had unveiled the Galaxy Book S ten months ago, and it came equipped with the Snapdragon 8cx processor. Two months ago, it was revealed that the South Korean firm has plans to launch an Intel version of the lightweight notebook. Today, the company has confirmed that the Galaxy Book S with Intel’s Lakefield CPU […]

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Notebook Samsung book s

Review: Great battery life ACPC

Microsoft was the first to ship Qualcomm’s 8CX SoC the chip that they internally called Microsoft SQ1 inside the Surface Pro X. The machine did an impressive job with a nice screen, unique detachable design, and decent, but not great battery life. The Samsung Galaxy Book S came in a notebook form factor and significantly better battery endurance.

The Samsung Galaxy Book S was supposed to launch by Q4 2019 but eventually started shipping in the second part of February for a very attractive price of 999. Today it is selling for 899, beating Microsoft’s Surface Pro X to the punch. A Surface Pro X with cheaper keyboard, 8GB RAM, and 128GB storage currently sells for 1138.99 tax and if you want the same 8GB RAM, 256GB as Samsung Galaxy Book S machine, it will cost you 1,438.99, or 539 more. about this later.

The Samsung Galaxy Book S notebook is all about the Always Connected PC initiative started by Qualcomm. The Snapdragon 8CX shows promising performance in a passively cooled, always connect PC with a very good battery life. My last trip before the COVID-19 lockdown was with the Samsung Galaxy Book S machine as my only computer, and the machine lasted a few days with each day a few hours of work, video, and conferencing. One can genuinely leave the charger at home and still be fine for a few days.

About the Galaxy S hardware

The Galaxy Book S comes with a 13.3-inch Full HD screen device that will sell for 899 in North America, and it supports Verizon and Sprint for its 4G / LTE network. The Sprint version still sells for the original 999 with free shipping.

The device supports LTE Cat.18, Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac. You can save half of the price if you trade-in your previous tablet. Samsung offers 450 off if you swap it with a fully functional and crack free Galaxy Tab S6 10.5 inch, 256GB.

The South Korea giant is only offering one SKU with 8GB RAM 256GB storage in mercury gray and gold. The storage can expand to 1TB via a microSD card, but it won’t run that fast due to the limitations of the microSD interface. Of course, the notebook runs Windows 10 and that works as expected.

For people who like to finance things, the Galaxy Book S will cost 27.78 / month for 36 months and zero percent APR. Currently, you can buy it in South Korea and the USA.

Less than 960 grams, 42Wh battery

Samsung claims that the device comes with a 42Wh battery; it measures 305.2 x 203.2 x 6.2-11.8mm and weighs 0.96 kg (2.11 pounds).

Qualcomm has high hopes from the Galaxy Book S as it will offer a much better battery life compared to the other Snapdragon 8CX flagship device, Microsoft Surface X Pro. The Snapdragon 8CX has four performance cores clocked up to 2.84GHz, and four efficiency cores clocked at 1.8 GHz optimized for battery life. The SoC comes with Adreno 680 GPU capable of 1842.5 GFLOPs, Hexagon 690 delivering up to 9TOPS. Microsoft’s SQ1 version is clocked slightly higher to 3GHz, but we didn’t notice that in everyday work.

Let’s come back to the modem. The Snapdragon X24 LTE modem is Cat 20 with download up to 2 Gbit/s, 7x20MHz Carrier Aggregation, 256-QAM, 4×4 MIMO on five carriers. It is capable of upload speeds up to 316 Mbit/s, 3x20MHz CA, 256-QAM. A 5G version might be in the works, but as we reported recently, Lenovo Yoga 5G is set to be the first 5G notebook running Windows 10.

CX SoC

The Galaxy Book S runs the Qualcomm 8CX at default clocks. It is powered by Kryo 495, where four cores run at 2.84 GHz while the low power cluster of four runs at 1.8Ghz in both cases. However, Aida 64 discovered that the Snapdragon 8CX Galaxy Book S was running at 3070 MHz, at least in some cases.

The Adreno 680 GPU runs at 1842.5 GFLOPs. The Hexagon 690 DSP runs 9 TOPS and a Spectra ISP capable of 192 Megapixel camera support. Samsung chose a single 720P camera for video conferencing, and we do miss the Windows Hello authentication that we learned to appreciate with the Surface X Pro. Instead of camera authentication, Samsung has a fingerprint reader built-in the power button that can log you in just as fast and as easy as the camera recognition.

Microsoft uses Windows Hello camera in Surface Pro X, front five-megapixel, and ten-megapixel rear camera. Samsung obviously doesn’t believe that a notebook should come with a rear-facing camera and doesn’t have one.

One of the key value propositions of Samsung Galaxy Book S is the X24 integrated 4G LTE modem and always connected standby. The modem is a backbone of connectivity, especially for people on the move.

At the same time, even if one is using Always connected PC in an office environment, the modem can serve as a redundancy in case there is an issue with the home/office internet network.

Installation of a SIM card is a walk in a park. The rear side of the notebook hides a SIM tray door that also doubles as the microSD card slot.

Storage

The Galaxy Book S comes with 8GB ram and the 256GB UFS based storage. The notebook uses Samsung’s KLUEG8UHDB-C2D1 UFS 3.0 based drive that should be capable of up to 2100 MB/s read and 410 MB/s write, 68,000 read IOPS and 63,000 write IOPS.

The UFS 3.0 storage is usually found in phones and tablets, but Snapdragon 8CX is an SoC made with the PC in mind with strong roots in mobile. It is the same storage that the Samsung S20 Ultra 5G uses.

There is an additional microSD slot, and end-users can easily plug in additional storage. For example, an additional 256 GB UHS-I U3 with 100 MB/s read and 90 MB/s write speed sells for about 50 Euro / US, and 512 GB sells for about 90 Euro / US. The surface Pro X is using SSD from Kioxia with much from write speeds.

No Fan

One of the most significant value propositions is that the machine has an incredible battery life and no fan. Since it is fanless, there is no noise coming out of the hardware unless you play something on the stereo speakers. During our testing, we’ve seen above 15 hours of battery life in various tasks. It went multi-day on my last trip before COVID-19 surfaced.

During the workday with the Galaxy Book S notebook and used Word, Outlook watched a bit Netflix and videos, listened to some Spotify, and of course, heavily browsed while reading and filing stories. It went close to three days working, obviously less than eight straight hours every day, but certainly more than five hours a day.

Samsung uses a matt finish that is not that bad with fingerprints. There is a rather discrete Samsung logo on the back, but again it is not centered. Samsung has two color options, Earthy Gold and Mercury Gray.

The touchpad is as big as the space bar and right alt together, and it is wide enough too. We didn’t have any problems using it, and it worked just as intended. The keyboard is comfortable for writing 1000s of words at a time, something that pays for our electricity and food.

Connectors

The Galaxy S Book comes with two USB-C ports from each side. You can charge the notebook from left or right, which is helpful. Miraculously the 3.5-inch audio connector found its place too.

If the Bluetooth 5.0 doesn’t do the job, or you don’t have your Bluetooth headphones, the 3.5-inch connector will do. The machine has four quite loud speakers, and they sound great for the form factor.

The Galaxy Book is an extremely thin clamshell design. It won’t do Yoga stile complete 180- or 360-degree flip, but it will open just wide enough. The only other moving part is the nano-SIM tray that hosts the microSD.

While the Surface X weighs 1.037 KG or 2.286 lb pounds together with the signature keyboard and the pen, the Galaxy Book S stops at 961g or 2.12 lb.

Usage and Windows 1909

The machine comes in a neat package, and it takes seconds to open it up and boot. The box includes a charger, preinstalled SIM card, Wall/USB Charger, Type A to Type C USB connector, Quick reference guide, and terms and condition. The included USB charger and the wall charger are Type-C, and they resemble the look of a traditional Samsung Galaxy phone charger. The charger supports fast charging with maximal 25W, Power Delivery 3.0 PPS.

After booting up, there was an offer to update to Windows 1909, which I did, and it worked just fine. The updates come at the same time as for the X86 machines, which is refreshing.

I installed Chrome, Edge Chromium browser, Firefox, and they all worked just fine. Chromium Edge might have the battery advantage, and it works just fine. I used Pixlr for editing photos as well as Photoshop Express. Adobe reader worked just fine. Office 365 takes care of productivity and Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint worked well. With this machine, you just close the lid and let it wait for your next move in the connected standby. Next time you open it, even after hours or a day sitting, the battery will only be slightly depleted, and you will be able to continue where you left off.

Having 256GB storage is handy, and the fact that it is coming at close to 500 cheaper than a Surface X Pro with the same amount of storage, is a clear advantage for the Galaxy Book S. This is, of course, unless you want a detachable.

UFS 3.0 based hard drive scored 1908 MB/s sequential 1M eight cues, and one thread read, and 428 MB/s write, close to what Samsung recommends on its website for this kind of storage. The sequential 1M one queue and one tread write to get to 1363.19 MB/s while write gets to the same 428.19 MB/s limit.

The Random 4K with 32 queues and 16 treads write performance scores 405.77 MB/s while write performance ends up at 250.43 MB/s. The Random 4K with one thread and one queue stops at 20.83 read, and 35.88 write. The UFS 3.0 based storage clearly lacks the write performance that one gets from the Kioxia BG4 2230 SSD, and this is one of the major advantages of Surface X Pro.

Connectivity

LTE is the heart of this machine. The Snapdragon X24 modem is capable of LTE Category 20 (2000 Mbps) speeds in Downlink using a 7×20 MHz carrier aggregation and a maximum of 20 spatial streams. Since I tested this machine in Vienna, Austria, I swapped the Verizon card to my local provider, and it works fine out of the box. To answer your question of whether the machine is carrier locked, it is not.

The modem supports up to 256-QAM with up to 4×4 MIMO on five carriers, Full-Dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO). The uplink supports LTE Category 13 (316 Mbps) with 3×20 MHz carrier aggregation and 256-QAM. The actual modem feature support will depend on your local carrier.

Testing the machine and its Modem capability at the time as the two million people are trapped in the home office is not ideal for some great speeds, but it was fast enough and reliable.

Always connected part

I want to amplify the importance of the modem, especially in these extraordinary circumstances. The stationary internet tends to go down under heavy use. In case that happens with ACPC, the machine goes directly to LTE/4G connectivity and continues working.

Connectivity is essential for people on the move traveling. It just works wherever you are, and whether it is a plane or a coffee, the machine will always be connected. Ironically at the time of writing, we cannot use any of these scenarios due to Corona COVID-19 lockdowns.

Security is a big aspect these days, and your modem connection is likely more secure than a random coffee shop’s free Wi-Fi. It is most likely faster too.

Storage upgrade

You won’t be able to upgrade the UFS 3.0 based drive, but there is a microSD solution that we mentioned above. You can just plug in a card and enjoy the extra space. If you need more ports, there is a solution from the company called MINIX. MINIX Neo storage hub with 240GB sells for 99.90 while the 480GB version 129.90.

Apart from giving you much needed additional storage, this USB Type-C multiport SSD storage will add an HDMI 4K up to 30Hz, 2X USB 3.0 (Type-A), and USB Type-C with power delivery. The MINIX NEO Storage hub is originally made with Apple Mac in mind, but we have confirmed that it works with Galaxy Book S, Surface X Pro, Dell XPS 13 2018 and the Xiaomi 12-inch Intel Y-series based notebook.

Benchmarking is still a tough one. Most benchmarking applications won’t work, and the ones that do, including PC mark, are just X86 PC optimized. In real life, it is hard to notice any difference using office tools but according to some scores, X86 looks significantly faster. Such a score just doesn’t recreate the reality.

People also complained about the lack of VPN tools but PureVPN worked just fine. There will be some limitations as Snapdragon 8CX won’t run 64-bit Windows applications, but these are mainly high-end games and benchmarks. Microsoft has promised 64-bit support, but we don’t have a date to share now. I don’t think any AAA game looks decent on any integrated graphics, and this won’t change anytime soon, so we don’t see it as a major disadvantage. The Samsung Galaxy Book S is clearly a super thin and transportable multimedia machine for video and office work.

Battery life is where the machine glows. We saw close to 15 hours in combined mode and real-life use. Watching just video would stretch this number even further, but 15 hours is significantly better than what we saw with the Surface X Pro that didn’t even touch 10-hour mark. The battery life is what Samsung did much better, but again Microsoft has its advantages with more accessories and storage options.

Conclusion

The Galaxy Book S is an office machine that will do great for any home office. A Galaxy Book S with an LTE modem will help you through this tough COVID 19 plagued times. Even if your Wi-Fi and wired internet connection go down, the Snapdragon X24 powered machine will be able to connect to the nearby cell tower and help you continue your video chat, urgent email, or a Netflix movie.

Times like this remind us about the importance of connectivity and how important it is for our everyday life. Since the SARS outbreak in 2003, we have significantly faster-fixed internet speeds, 4G, and most recently 5G, smartphones and networks, and much faster computers. It all helps us work from home and shelter at home, as long as we can keep our kids out of the way.

Samsung Galaxy Book S is an impressive office machine that brings the always-connected angle in the equation. The excellent battery life, incredibly thin and lite and sub 2.2 pounds (1 KG) machine will be perfect for most people working home office. Once the situation clears out, it will be a great companion for travel, working outside your office or home.

Samsung did a great job with the Galaxy Book S and we praise the excellent battery life. While Surface X Pro has its advantages, including the detachable form factor liked by many, it lacks the battery life endurance and costs close to 500 more.

We hope to see other Galaxy Books in the near future, this time with 5G to make the speed up connectivity.

Samsung Galaxy Book S vs Galaxy Book Pro: Which is better for you?

Samsung Galaxy Book S vs Galaxy Book Pro. Comparing two of Samsung’s ultraportable Windows 10 laptops. Which should you buy?

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Samsung Galaxy Book S and Galaxy Book Pro are Samsung’s two ultralight and everyday use laptops. While the Galaxy Book S was introduced in 2020, the Galaxy Book Pro arrived this year. With these laptops, the company is targeting consumers who want a great on-the-go performance from their laptop. If you’re in the market for a good ultralight laptop and are confused between the Galaxy Book S and the Galaxy Book Pro, we’ve got you covered. In this article, we’ll dive into the specifications and features of the two laptops to help you decide which one is right for you.

Samsung Galaxy Book S vs Galaxy Book Pro: Display

The Samsung Galaxy Book S comes with a 13.3-inch full-HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) LCD touchscreen, whereas the company offers two options for the Galaxy Book Pro. a 13.3-inch full-HD AMOLED and a 15.6-inch full-HD AMOLED. As is true for any LCD or OLED display, the screen on the Galaxy Book Pro is capable of an amazing picture quality and will be a treat to enjoy movies and other visual content. Samsung also claims that the Galaxy Book Pro’s screen produces less blue light emissions than standard LCDs.

One positive for the LCD on the Galaxy Book S is that it’s going to be brighter and Samsung says it can offer up to 350 nits brightness in the normal mode and up to 600 nits in the outdoor mode. So if you’re planning to use your laptop outside a lot and need a touchscreen, Galaxy Book S is a better option, whereas the Book Pro is great if you’re consuming a lot of multimedia content.

Samsung Galaxy Book S vs Galaxy Book Pro: Design

While both Samsung Galaxy Book S and Galaxy Book Pro look like fairly standard Windows 10 laptops, the company has really tried to slim them down and keep the weight to a minimum. It’s amazing how light both these laptops really are. The Galaxy Book S is just 11.8mm thick and 2.09lbs (950 grams).

The 13-inch Galaxy Book Pro (aka Galaxy Book Pro 13), on the other hand, is barely 11.2mm thick and 1.94lbs (880 grams), while the 15-inch Galaxy Book Pro (aka Galaxy Book Pro 15) is 11.7mm thick and 2.31lbs (1.05kg). The company also offers a discrete graphics variant of the Galaxy Book Pro 15 and it’s 13.3mm thick and 2.53lbs (1.15kg). Samsung doesn’t sell the discrete GPU variant in the US.

For the chassis, Samsung has used an aluminum chassis on the Galaxy Book S, while the Galaxy Book Pro has been made out of aluminum-magnesium alloy, which is the reason why the Galaxy Book Pro 13 is lighter the Galaxy Book S.

Both laptops also pack backlit keyboards and a fingerprint sensor in the power button. While the Galaxy Book Pro has a full-size keyboard, the one from the Galaxy Book S ditches the number pad to give the keys more breathing room.

Overall on the design front, there’s not a whole lot differentiating the two Samsung laptops. You can’t go wrong with either of the two, at least considering their design, unless obviously you need a full-size keyboard.

Samsung Galaxy Book S vs Galaxy Book Pro: Internals

It’s the internal hardware of Galaxy Book S and Galaxy Book Pro where things get interesting. The Galaxy Book S uses Intel’s ‘Lakefield’ chip, the Core i5-L16G7, coupled with onboard UHD graphics. It’s Intel’s hybrid processor, designed for ultralight devices like this laptop. It combines one powerful CPU core with four lower-power cores for a total of five cores and five threads. Samsung earlier used to offer a Qualcomm variant of the Galaxy Book S but now it’s mostly out of stock everywhere.

The Galaxy Book Pro uses 11th-gen Intel ‘Tiger Lake’ Core i5-1135G7 and Core i7-1165G7 CPUs, paired with onboard Iris X graphics in the US. Some markets will see a Core i3 variant with UHD graphics as well.

In terms of RAM and storage, there’s just one variant of the Book S with 8GB LPDDR4x RAM and 256GB eUFS storage. But with the Galaxy Book Pro model, you’ll get up to 16GB RAM and up to 512GB NVMe SSD, depending on which screen size you go for.

In terms of the connectivity options and ports, the Book S includes Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, two USB Type-C ports, one 3.5mm audio port, and a microSD card reader. The Book Pro model comes with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1, one Thunderbolt 4 port, one USB Type-C port, one USB 3.2 port, one 3.5mm audio jack, and a microSD card reader. The 15-inch model also packs an extra HDMI port.

Among other specifications, you’ll also get a 1-megapixel webcam, 42Wh battery, Dolby Atmos support, Windows 10 Home, and quad stereo speakers with audio tuning by AKG, like the Galaxy Buds Pro, on the Galaxy Book S. The Galaxy Book Pro comes with a 720p webcam, 63Wh battery (68Wh on 15-inch model), Dolby Atmos support, and Windows 10 Home. The company also bundles a 25W USB Type-C charger with the Book S, whereas the Book Pro gets a faster 65W USB Type-C charger.

Overall in terms of performance, the Galaxy Book Pro is a better option as both Core i5-1135G7 and Core i7-1165G7 are more powerful CPUs than the Core i5-L16G7. Also, you’ll get more storage as well as the choice to get more RAM with the Galaxy Book Pro. over, you can upgrade the SSD in the Book Pro as it comes with an extra NVMe SSD slot, something that’s not possible with the Book S. The bigger battery on the Book Pro is another advantage as it’ll help you stay away from a plug point for a longer duration.

So if you’re looking for performance and battery life, the Galaxy Book Pro clearly beats the Book S.

Colors and pricing

Samsung offers two colors for both laptops in the US. The Galaxy Book S is sold in Mercury Gray and Earthy Gold colors, and it starts at 749 (was 949 earlier). The Galaxy Book Pro, on the other hand, can be bought in Mystic Silver and Mystic Blue, and starts at 999 (for 13-inch) and 1,099 (for 15-inch).

Conclusion: Samsung Galaxy Book S or Galaxy Book Pro?

While the Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy Book Pro are both ultra-portable laptops, there are a number of things that differentiate them. The Galaxy Book S is a good option for consumers who want a touchscreen laptop that provides good battery life and decent performance on the go. It’s fine for light workloads but heavy users will be disappointed.

The Galaxy Book Pro, on the other hand, is great for consumers who are looking for excellent performance, great battery life, and a superb display. The laptop also includes a good selection of ports than the Galaxy Book S, and more choice in terms of pretty much everything, including the display size, RAM, SSD, and processor.

Obviously, your budget will also play a big role in choosing one of the two laptops. If you’re a little tight on the budget front, the Galaxy Book S is a good 250 cheaper than the Book Pro. But if you can shell out 1,000 or more, you’ll be better off with the Galaxy Book Pro, which also features in our best Samsung laptops list.

Samsung’s Galaxy Book laptop is missing some basics yet still has a high price tag

Few laptops come without compromise, but even fewer come with as many compromises as the Samsung Galaxy Book (available at Best Buy for 699.99). Between a subpar display and a non-backlit keyboard that’s too shallow, even the basics like writing emails and participating in video calls feel like a chore on this laptop. Whether you need a reliable premium laptop or a cheap laptop that nails all the basics, there are better options available.

Recommendations are independently chosen by Reviewed’s editors. Purchases made through the links below may earn us and our publishing partners a commission. were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.

• About the Samsung Galaxy Book
• What we like
• What we don’t like
• Should you buy it?
• Related content

Cons

• Disappointing display
• Off-center, non-backlit keyboard
• The touchscreen isn’t very responsive

Despite decent performance and good battery life, the Samsung Galaxy Book feels more like a budget laptop with a high price tag.

About the Samsung Galaxy Book

Here are the specs of the laptop we tested:

• Processor: Intel Core i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz
• Graphics: Intel Iris Xe Graphics (Integrated)
• RAM: 16GB
• Storage: 512GB
• Display: 15.6-inch 1920x1080p LED
• Wireless connectivity: Wi-Fi 6 (Gig), 802.11ax
• Wired connectivity: Two USB 3.2, two USB Type-C, HDMI
• Webcam: 720p HD
• Battery: 55,979mAh
• Weight: 3.51 pounds
• Size: 14.04 x 9.02 x 0.61 inches

Looking at the main specs, the Galaxy Book has everything you’d expect a productivity laptop to have: performance, decent storage capacity, and a good number of ports. But it’s the other things—the little things—Samsung left out that have us scratching our heads.

What we like

Battery life lasts an entire work-day

In our battery test, Samsung’s Galaxy Book lasted a little over ten hours.

A good laptop should last at least a full workday on a single charge. You shouldn’t need to fiddle with additional settings just to get a decent amount of juice, either, and thankfully the Galaxy Book delivers on that front.

To test the battery, we ran a Chrome extension that cycles through a variety of websites until the battery dies. While the Galaxy Book Pro didn’t take the top spot (that still goes to the 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 Max), it still beats most laptops we’ve tested at just over ten hours.

Even in day-to-day use, which included browsing the web, working in Google Docs, taking several video calls, and Slacking throughout the day, the Galaxy Book managed to last longer than a typical workday with a bit of juice to spare.

It has a lot of ports

Many laptops will sacrifice ports in favor of thinness and overall portability. While the Galaxy Book is pretty light, it still manages to pack enough ports that you can confidently leave your dongle behind on your next weekend getaway.

On the left side of the laptop, there are two USB-C ports for charging and data transfer, an HDMI port to hook up to an external monitor, and a USB-A port for any older devices you need to connect to. The right side houses an additional USB-A port, a headphone jack, as well as a microSD card slot.

Good performance for getting work done

The Galaxy Book Pro, powered by an Intel Core i7-1165G7 and 16GB of RAM, has plenty of power to get you through a day’s work.

If you’re looking for a reliable laptop with enough power to get through a day’s work, the Galaxy Book is certainly up to the task. In our testing, it performed nearly as well as the Dell XPS 15.

In daily use, the Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor and 16GB of RAM gave the Galaxy Book enough power to perform tasks like sending emails, writing drafts, watching videos, and listening to music through the course of a workday, along with the occasional video call. Throughout it all, the Galaxy Book never got overwhelmed or struggled to keep up.

Despite all that power, the Galaxy Book still runs an integrated Intel Iris GPU, which will limit its graphic capabilities for things like gaming or 3D image processing and video production. If you’re not looking to do anything too serious, though, this laptop packs enough punch for your daily tasks and leisurely browsing.

What we don’t like

The display needs to be at the perfect angle

When viewed straight-on, the Galaxy Book’s display looks fine. When tilted forward or back, though, it gets distorted and everything is harder to see.

The Galaxy Book’s biggest weakness is its display. While its matte finish does a good job of deflecting light and glare, and its 1080p resolution is fine for everyday work and web browsing, its viewing angles are atrocious.

If you stare at it straight-on it looks fine, if a bit washed out thanks to the matte display panel. But if you tilt the screen the tiniest bit everything becomes either much brighter or much darker, depending on your backlight settings. In either case, the screen becomes impossible to read.

This wouldn’t be a dealbreaker if it only popped up in unique circumstances, but it happens no matter what you have showing on the screen. Take a spreadsheet, for example. If you tilt the screen forward just a bit all the cell shading goes away, which makes it impossible to differentiate cells from each other. If you tilt the screen too far back, everything gets so dark you can barely see it. These features might be good for screen privacy, but they’re not great for overall viewing angles.

So-so touch screen

While a touchscreen isn’t entirely out of place on a laptop, it needs a little finessing to be useful. That polish is totally lacking on the Galaxy Book, where the touchscreen feels more like an afterthought than a cleverly-integrated part of the computer.

As mentioned above, the display tends to get washed out when viewed from an angle. If you’re prone to tapping your laptop’s screen to hit buttons, or to scroll down the page like you’re using a tablet, that might cause the screen to shift a little bit. On other touchscreen laptops, like the HP Envy x360, this wouldn’t be an issue, since the hinge is designed to let you convert the laptop into a tablet. On the Galaxy Book, though, that slight shift in viewing angle is the difference between being able to read what’s on-screen and everything being washed out.

The touch screen is responsive enough to use, but it distorts around the point where you apply pressure. This gives the screen an unpleasant look if you’re swiping or scrolling with your finger. This might be fine on a cheaper laptop, but for a laptop that costs 1,000, the display should be able to withstand a bit more pressure.

Off-center keyboard, no backlit keys

The Numpad to the right of the keyboard throws it slightly off center.

Not every laptop keyboard is excellent, but most are at least passable. The Galaxy Book misses that mark in two ways: the Numpad to the right of the keyboard offsets it from the center of the laptop, which can be funky if you’re not used to it, and more importantly, it isn’t backlit.

The first one is easy to forgive if you’re used to working in number-heavy environments like spreadsheets or accounting software, but for those looking to get some writing done, it’s more of a hindrance than an aid. Adjusting to the keyboard, which is offset to the left to make room for the number pad, takes a bit of time.

Other than that, the keys are mostly fine: they’re big enough to consistently hit the correct key while typing, and spaced out enough to not feel cramped, though they’re a bit shallow.

The biggest issue with the Galaxy Book’s keyboard is that it isn’t backlit, which may be forgivable on a cheaper laptop, but the model we tested retails for over 1,000. For that price, you should be confident you can type even in a poorly-lit environment.

For significantly less, HP’s x360 Convertible Laptop offers a backlit keyboard, and it’s our best value laptop. The standard Dell XPS 13 also has a backlit keyboard and costs about the same as the Galaxy Book.

Should you buy it?

No, you can get more for your money elsewhere

The Galaxy Book has plenty of ports, so you can confidently leave the dongle at home.

This Samsung Galaxy Book retails for about 1,000. Most laptops in that price range offer more than the bare minimum in a capable laptop. Meanwhile, despite decent performance and good battery life, the Galaxy Book feels more like a budget laptop despite its high price tag. Even if you can find the Galaxy Book on sale, we still recommend exploring other options.

Its display gets easily washed out by mild viewing angles, which makes it hard to recommend for anyone who likes to read a lot or spend a lot of time getting work done. That poor display also isn’t great for streaming movies or video games, both of which you can obviously do on similarly priced laptops like the M1 MacBook Air or HP Spectre x360 14t with better displays.

The Galaxy Book is in a weird spot: it costs as much as laptops with the same or slightly better specs but doesn’t stack up very well against cheaper laptops, either. A bad display and mediocre keyboard hold this laptop back from being an otherwise decent package. But for 1,000, you should expect a little more decent.

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Samsung’s Galaxy Book S is a glimpse into our computing future

Last week we finally got our hands on the Galaxy Book S, Samsung’s ultra-portable laptop. On the outside, the Galaxy Book S appears to be a normal Windows 10 laptop, albeit in an impressively thin housing.

But this isn’t your typical laptop. Inside is a processor you’d normally expect to find inside a smartphone — and yes, that means it has built-in 4G LTE connectivity. It runs Windows 10, but there are some app limitations that could make or break your purchasing decision.

After a week of testing, we’ve come away convinced that the Galaxy Book S is a preview of our computing future – a future that we fully welcome.

Thin, light and just right

Inside the housing of the Galaxy Book S is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx processor. The ARM-based processor is the same type that’s used inside smartphones and tablets. That allows Samsung to shrink down the overall size of the Galaxy Book S thanks, in part, to the lack of fans. The Book S weighs slightly more than 2 pounds, making it light enough that you could almost forget it’s in your backpack.

When shopping for a Galaxy Book S, you won’t find any customization options for its specifications. Samsung makes just one model, with 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage. A combo micro SD and SIM card slot slides out from the side of the Galaxy Book S. You can add up to 1TB of storage via the micro SD card.

The 13.3-inch touchscreen display has a standard HD resolution (1920 x 1080), but it looks much clearer than that. At one point, we double-checked the system settings to make sure the resolution wasn’t higher than 1080p. When watching some gamers on Twitch, we thought the colors weren’t oversaturated, but instead were crisp and clear, even when there was a lot of movement. Blacks were dark, and didn’t blend in with different shades of gray. If anything, the screen is slightly too reflective if there are a lot of overhead lights or in direct sunlight, but adjusting the display’s brightness to 100 helped offset most of the glare.

On the right side is a lone USB-C port, with another USB-C port and a headphone jack on the left side. Either port can be used to charge the laptop or for tasks like syncing your phone.

There’s a 720p HD webcam above the display. Beneath it is a full-size keyboard, with a power button in the top right corner that doubles as a fingerprint reader. The keyboard was oddly satisfying to use. The keys are somewhat shallow, requiring very little pressure to activate, and pop back into place almost instantaneously. The trackpad is centered with the laptop’s housing and, we have to say, is one of the laptop’s most disappointing features.

Throughout a week of daily use, we found that the invisible line on the trackpad differentiating where a left click ends and a right click begins seemed to move around. Usually, the lower right corner is reserved for right clicks, but we’ve accidentally right-clicked many times — and most of them happened when pressing about halfway up the pad. Other times, when trying to right-click on something, we couldn’t trigger it no matter how many times we tried.

Left or right click issues aside, the trackpad is otherwise responsive, and one thing we really appreciate is that it’s big enough to drag files across the desktop.

Performance and app compatibility

The Galaxy Book S uses an ARM processor. It’s a type of processor that’s commonly found in mobile devices, like an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy phone. There are core (and very nerdy) differences in how an ARM processor works when compared with the far more common Intel or AMD processor, with the ARM processor requiring less energy, for example. But those differences also mean that developers have to build their apps specifically for an ARM processor, which, up to this point, has rarely been used in a laptop. As such, app compatibility is one area that you need to pay attention to with laptops like the Surface Pro X or Galaxy Book S. Of primary concern are 64-bit apps, such as Adobe Photoshop, which won’t run on the Galaxy Book S.

During our testing, we were able to install nearly all of the core apps we use to work every day: the new Edge browser (Microsoft’s latest Chrome competitor), Typora, Slack, Discord, Outlook, 1Password, VLC, and a VPN app for work.

We installed the Epic Games launcher to try to install Fortnite, but it’s not possible (exactly what we expected). That said, we were able to install and play Minecraft without any issues.

Apple’s iTunes is painfully slow and, to us, simply unusable. It installs and runs, but there’s a long wait with every click or scroll while the app loads or refreshes. Our password manager of choice, 1Password, is slow, but eventually it gets the job done.

Part of our testing involved running a couple of benchmark programs. These are programs that Underscored uses with every review to get a quantitative result for the given device. In this case, the Book S got put through its paces with common tasks, intense graphic rendering and general stress tests. We used PCMark 10, and the Book S scored a 4,493 during the PCMark 10 Applications test. This number won’t mean much, since we don’t have anything to compare it with, but at least going forward we’ll have a baseline to compare other ARM-based laptops with here at CNN Underscored.

Outside of the two apps we already mentioned, overall performance on the Galaxy Book S was impressive. Apps loaded fast, even as we multitasked by installing the Office suite and bouncing between apps at the same time. We didn’t install or use Chrome, as we instead chose the Chromium-based Edge browser. We were zipping around websites and YouTube without the same sluggish performance in Chrome we experienced when testing the Surface Pro X.

Battery life

One of, if not the, headlining features of the Galaxy Book S is its battery life. Samsung touts up to 25 hours of continuous video playback, an astronomical number for any laptop.

To test that claim out in the wild, we played a 4K video clip on repeat using VLC, with the display brightness set to 50%, Bluetooth and location services turned off, and the keyboard backlight disabled. Using a Wyze camera, we recorded a time-lapse video and, to our surprise, the Book S lasted 14 hours and 47 minutes. To put that into context, the entire Harry Potter series is right around 20 hours. So, in essence, you could watch 75% of the Harry Potter series on a single charge. Pretty bonkers.

The likelihood that any of us will binge-watch nearly 15 hours of video on a laptop is low, so how does the battery perform under normal, everyday use? It’s just as impressive.

We were able to go two days between charges with a mix of light and heavy use on Wi-Fi and LTE connections. It’s not far-fetched that we got around 10 hours of consistent use, with the screen brightness set to 100 at all times.

So, who is the Galaxy Book S for?

The Galaxy Book S is one of the most compelling laptops we’ve ever used and tested. It’s a mobile-first device designed with portability and connectivity in mind, but the apps it can run are full-fledged PC apps.

There are compatibility issues that Microsoft, Samsung, Qualcomm and developers will have to work through, but the app issues we did experience were few and far between.

We think the Galaxy Book S is best suited for someone who is always on the move, or at least wants the option of being mobile, and who doesn’t require professional video or photo editing tools.

Note: The price above reflects the retailer’s listed price at the time of publication.

Note: The above reflect the retailers’ listed price at the time of publication.

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