If you have other Samsung products, it also ties into that ecosystem very nicely.
So, what does a company need to truly compete with Dell in this space?
This review was made possible with a review sample provided by Samsung.
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The company did not see the contents of the review before publishing.
May 23, 2024 Samsung recently announced new ARM-powered Galaxy Book4 Windows PCs.
However, that doesn’t mean the Book4 Ultra is suddenly obsolete.
But you’ll only have an RTX 4060 instead of the more powerful RTX 4070.
It’s expensive, but worth it.
It’s a clean and practical design, but more importantly it’s put together extremely well.
The Samsung logo on the back reflects in all the shades of the rainbow.
The 16-inch OLED display dominates the front and looks quite sleek with rounded corners, too.
I personally really like the understated look of this laptop.
One oddity, though, is the rubber feet on the bottom.
There’s a lot of good stuff here, but it’s not all amazing.
That brightness also limits the effectiveness of the HDR support.
NVIDIA GeForce GPUs make short work of any intensive graphics job, including gaming.
It’s a traditional clamshell design, but the build quality is nearly perfect.
During it all, the Book4 Ultra also remained cool and stable…
If a bit loud at times.
Two, when it comes to GPU performance, the XPS 16 simply can’t compete.
A microSD card slot, USB Type-A 3.2 port, and 3.5mm audio jack.(Image credit: Windows Central | Zachary Boddy)
Yes, you’re free to also play all thebest PC gameswith it.
Those fans can get loud, but it’s a low and consistent hum.
The laptop never gets too hot to comfortably touch, either.
An HDMI 2.1 port, and two USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports.(Image credit: Windows Central | Zachary Boddy)
Combined with Samsung’sPhone Linkintegrations in its phones, and the Book4 Ultra is a powerful tool.
It’s your standard membrane keyboard with relatively shallow travel.
This isn’t my favorite laptop keyboard, but it’s comfortable and consistent.
Sharp, vibrant, accurate, and responsive… Do you need a display to be anything else? Besides bright.
I wish it was ahaptic touchpad, but I otherwise can’t complain about this touchpad at all.
Finally, the function row shortcuts are well-thought-out, although I do miss having dedicated media keys.
It’s all good.
With Vision Booster disabled and on the standard color profile, the Book4 Ultra is pretty color accurate.
This laptop is the definition of a “jack-of-all-trades.”
Finally, audio performance is solid.
you might pick up the Razer Blade 16 (2024) for$2,999.99 at Best Buy.
This rear-facing vent is hard to see but does its job well.
The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) is a prime example of one such laptop.
On top of everything else, the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra does well, that’s the finishing touch.
The Book4 Ultra is right in line with other premium Windows laptops in terms of SSD speed.(Image credit: Windows Central)
Here, the Book4 Ultra pulls ahead of the XPS 16 by a sizeable margin.(Image credit: Windows Central)
History repeats itself in the latest Cinebench test.(Image credit: Windows Central)
The XPS 16 puts up a slightly better fight in CrossMark, but still loses.(Image credit: Windows Central)
Once again, the XPS 16 falls behind, but we did test the configuration with a Core Ultra 7 CPU.(Image credit: Windows Central)
The Book4 Ultra performed well here, while the XPS 16 fell behind many other Core Ultra 7 laptops.(Image credit: Windows Central)
For creative tasks, the Book4 Ultra was bested by dedicated gaming laptops but soundly beat the XPS 16.(Image credit: Windows Central)
Despite having the same GPU, the Book4 Ultra performed significantly better than the XPS 16.(Image credit: Windows Central)
A big laptop with a big battery, but not always a big runtime.
The Dell XPS 16 dominated in PCMark 10’s battery test, but in actual usage the battle is closer.
That’s a lot of Samsung apps to uninstall if you don’t need them.
It’s not my favorite keyboard, but it’s still a good one. And you get a number pad.
The four-speaker system is hidden under these sleek metal mesh openings.
The 16-inch version of the ROG Zephyrus G14 is a great alternative.
Samsung did a great job crafting a powerful, portable, and capable Windows laptop, even if it’s not the most exciting.
