now if you find yourself seduced by the impressive portability an incredible battery life of a Chrome OS laptop they can’t quite bring yourself to ditch windows for the more restrictive Chrome OS then one possible solution is the incomprehensibly skinny galaxy book s from Samsung this right here is a fully fledged Windows laptop but with one crucial difference it’s powered by qualcomm snapdragon it’s the X platform rather than an Intel or AMD chipset this is Qualcomm’s most premium computing platform designed for more demanding users although that said it is most definitely not up to more demanding creative tasks like video editing or gaming so been using the galaxy book s is my full-time laptop for everything apart from video editing for over a week now to see if this super slim Samsung really is the ideal portable pal and let me tell you it took a few ticks to get that super slim Samsung bit right since my full galaxy book s review and from one the latest greatest tech whose new book subscribe ending that notifications Bell says now first up ya there in exactly much call for traveling about the place right at this moment in fact the furthest I ever took the samsung
galaxy book s in the past fortnight I saw was a sunny spot in the corner of my garden it has to be said 2020 is probably the worst possible time in history to launch an ultra portable laptop but once life eventually stops being completely balls and if you do happen to find yourself going off on business trips and things like that again then you’re gonna absolutely love the design of this laptop every time I use the galaxy book I feel like some kind of hench oversized beefcake because it’s absolutely teeny it’s something you could probably use it to chop spuds and it weighs a measly 960 grams so definitely ideal for carrying about all day and despite the skinny finish Samsung’s all metal chassis Sony seems tough enough there’s only a little bit of flex when you apply pressure and that metal surface and doesn’t seem to scratch up at all either so quite happy to build a chuck it in a rucksack or something without any kind of protective cover nor worries that sleek design isn’t quite perfect however the trackpad may be a decent size and pleasingly responsive by also fun at the bottom left corner occasionally got a little bit stuck when I left clicked and as usual with ultra portables you do have to make a few sacrifices to get that really skinny
build for instance the selection report is unsurprisingly limited to a pair of type-c USB s as well as a sim and micro SD memory card slot and a headphone jack so as well as connecting peripherals goes where you can only have two at a time here on the galaxy book yes or just the one if you’re charging the laptop at the same time unless your spunk out a bit more cash for one of those adapters thankfully the keyboard is a good size despite that compact form factor complete with a double raw Enter key and arrow keys that aren’t obnoxiously tiny but of course the travel is extremely shallow which not everyone will enjoy personally I finally adjusted to it pretty quick and managed to get up to a satisfactory touch typing speed in North time at all although the overall experience isn’t too dissimilar from typing on an iPad or a Microsoft Surface cover keyboard there’s obviously no satisfying mechanical click and next to no response and why you do get three different levels of keyboard backlight and all three of those levels are unsurprisingly weaker then it kind of supermarket owned by and lager still it is just about powerful enough to see what you’re doing in the dark while you also get all of the function shortcuts that you’d expect so there is
bugger all to complain about really plus that dinky power button also doubles as a surprisingly great fingerprint sensor similar to while we is made booked laptops although I admittedly fairly often I did accidentally hit up how a key when I was actually aiming for the Delete key which is mildly irritating to say the least good thing then that it starts up again in a heartbeat on the inside of that laid you get a 13.3 inch TFT display frames by rather skinny bezels and the good news is it’s a touch screen as well so you can actually completely bypass that touchpad with its wonky corner if you like and it’s good news all around for media fans and creative users because that panel is definitely up to the job the Full HD resolution keeps everything sharp while the colour reproduction is accurate enough for photo editing 98% of the srgb gama and 75% of the Adobe RGB gamut are covered off the color temperature is close to ideal for daytime use but the usual night filter on board to make things warmer in the evening and that panel maxes out at 400 nits as well which is perfectly adequate for working outdoors I brought this entire review while Sauer day oh my god basking in the sunshine saw a job done and the Samsung Galaxy podcast bought some pretty beefy stereo speakers for something so slim as well on top volume audio comes to certainly plenty powerful and nice and clear as well so it’s great if you’re in a noisy kitchen trying to watch a bit Netflix or
something while stirring up the casserole and a 720p webcam is housed in that slender bezel just above the screen which proves fine for Skype and zoom calls it’s central position and it does a decent job of picking up your mug even in low-light but of course one of the more unique features of the Samsung Galaxy Book s which helps to set it apart from other Ultra portables and other laptops in general is that Qualcomm Snapdragon 8c X platform which replaces the traditional intel or AMD chipset and it’s backed by a healthy 8 gigs of ram to help keep things moving smoothly and this setup proves absolutely fine for working in Chrome streaming media portal editing and the like although you will want to stop short of edited video or indulgent in some proper gear man thanks to the basic integrated graphics the adrenal 680 GPU can handle simple titles like point-and-click adventures nor worries and there were surprising number refused to even Lord let alone play well but more recent or demanding games will have the galaxy book S right on its ass even the likes of Serious Sam 3 which is a game that came out over eight years ago was a proper struggle that stuttery framerate bit about as much fun as playing catch the weasel by strapping a mouse to your todger but in better news at least the galaxy book yes doesn’t overheat any kind of troublesome degree when you’re putting it
under duress you don’t have to worry about it just completely collapsing and Freddie benchmark fans out there Geekbench 5 puked out a single core score of 6 here too which is beaten by the likes of the MacBook Air I thought that multi-core score of 2670 is much more competitive good news if you want to juggle a few tasks at once you’ve got around 200 gigs of free storage space to play around with on the galaxy bookcase when you first prize it out of its shiny wrapper which into bad again considering the size of this thing authority in the nippy s drive around unfortunately my tests registered Reed scores of around one gigabyte per second and write of 4 6 2 Meg’s but for getting online you’ve got standard Wi-Fi 5 and that worked fine for me media streaming out in the garden but if at some point in a virus free future you do have to stray outside of any good Wi-Fi networks and Nori’s at all you can just slap a deer the sim in the galaxy book yes and enjoy a nice bit of gigabit LTE support and if you’ve got one of the more premium Samsung phones like the new s 20s you can also link to the Galaxy book s using the Samsung Dex software you can marry your phone screen on the laptop or access your apps and files with a proper Windows style interface so it’s another way for instance of getting online on the book s when you’re away from good Wi-Fi you can also give you a bigger screen to work with for the likes of 4 to editon I’ll just enjoying some video but you do have to keep the laptop on the phone headed together at all times using a USB cable which is gonna be kind of awkward especially when you’re
traveling out and about and such forth I definitely prefer the wireless solution that Y we have for instance on it smear books and its new flagship P series smartphones but anyway besides that super slim form factor the main reason forget the Snapdragon laptop these days is that crazy good battery life and sure enough the galaxy bug s goes on for longer than a last of the summer wine marathon you’ll get about 10 full hours of working in Chrome while streaming music before the battery is fully depleted much better than many other rivals and the Booker sticks just under two hours to recharge to full again and so that is what I think of the Samsung Galaxy Book yes as you can see the portability is definitely a priority then it’ll do the job although of course performance wise it is rather limited compared with a lot of other laptops especially around this sort of price points you might want to shop around if you want to do some proper video edits in game and a more creative tasks and I would say that if you can live with working in the cloud and portability as a strong priority for you then definitely check out Chrome OS because there are plenty of great Chromebooks out there for a fraction of the cost of this thing so what do you reckon at Samsung Galaxy Book s have you been using it as your laptop B gritter your thoughts down in the comments below please do poke subscribe ding that notifications Bell do all the usual YouTube shenanigans and I’m yourselves all of the week people deserve on love you
Read More: Preview Huawei P40 Pro Plus Full Tour
