In addition to the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Smartphones, the South Korean company also presented the Samsung Galaxy Book S during the presentation. The ultra-slim notebook will also be launched in Germany, where Samsung has not offered any notebooks since 2014. With a battery life of up to 24 hours and a weight of less than 1000 grams, the Samsung notebook competes with Microsoft’s Surface series, among others, although the two companies recently announced a closer cooperation.
The metal case, which is only 11.8 millimeters thin, is 3.7 millimeters thinner than the Apple Macbook Air and 2.6 millimeters thinner than the Microsoft Surface Laptop. The Samsung laptop is not quite as thin as the 9.95 millimeter thick Acer Swift 7, but it has more than a battery life of ten hours.
Always-on usage and mobile Internet via LTE
The display of the Samsung Galaxy Book S offers a 13.3-inch diagonal with Full HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080 pixels), over which a 720p webcam is integrated in the narrow frame. To achieve the 24-hour battery life that comes with a 42-watt battery, Samsung relies on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx chip, which is extremely power efficient compared to Intel or AMD processors. The eight-core CPU with up to 2.84 GHz is designed for always-on use. The Galaxy Book S has an X-24 LTE modem from Qualcomm that supports a maximum of LTE to Cat.18 with up to 1.2 GBit/s in download and upload so that it is always connected to the Internet, even when mobile.
The processor’s performance is on a par with current Intel Core i5 models. In contrast to previous Qualcomm ARM notebook processors, the Snapdragon 8cx is no longer based on a smartphone chip and thus offers around 80 percent higher graphics performance and 60 percent higher CPU performance than its predecessor. Since the x86 architecture, which is otherwise used by computer processors, is replaced by the ARM architecture, unadapted applications have to be emulated, resulting in reduced performance.
Sufficient Performance for Office Applications
The other components show that the Galaxy Book S is a notebook that was mainly developed for office use. The passively cooled device has 8 GB RAM (LPDDR4X-RAM) and an SSD with 256 GB or 512 GB capacity. The storage capacity can be expanded to a maximum of 1 TB via a micro SD card. External devices are connected via two USB-C ports, one of which must be used for loading. Bluetooth 5, a fingerprint sensor and Windows Hello are also available.
Depending on the equipment variant and region, Windows 10 Home or Pro is used as the operating system. The smallest version costs 1,099 Euro. An official release date was not mentioned during the presentation, a launch between September and October is realistic. The Galaxy Book S in the colours “Earthy Gold” and “Mercury Gray” will be launched on the market.
