Samsung Galaxy Book S

A lightweight, long-lasting laptop that’ll keep you constantly connected.

Samsung is a master in the phone space and when you consider that top end phablets are almost as powerful as entry level laptops, it makes a lot of sense for Samsung to be dipping its toe into the 2-in-1 space. The main benefit of using a mobile processor like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx is that it’s light on power consumption drawing just 7W, which means it doesn’t need any fans for active cooling. This is how Samsung can claim ‘multiday battery life’ with the 42Wh battery apparently holding enough juice to offer 25 hours of movie playback.

Despite the efficient design Qualcomm claims performance that approaches 15W Intel U series chips… being chips that require an active thermal array. We struggled to benchmark this unit fully since it was running Windows 10 S (which limits applications to what you can get on the Microsoft Store, curbing our usual test suite), but based on Geekbench 4 results it basically lines up with the performance of the first Microsoft Surface Laptop from 2016 … or the least powerful laptop chips currently available.

If you only plan to use your device for web browsing then the long battery life and option for constant 4G sim-card connectivity might be appealing enough to pay the $1,699 RRP. For this you get a 13.3-inch FullHD screen, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD (with microSD expansion) in a package that’s less than 1.2cm thick and weighs under a kilogram.

A long lasting premium ultrabook that offers exceptional portability and constant LTE connectivity.

“The main benefit of using a mobile processor like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx is that it’s light on power consumption.”