Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 in review: Samsung convertible with bright display

Samsung has given the Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 a high-quality aluminum case. It's very robust and has a clean finish. The same applies to the hinges, which hold the display firmly in place. If the screen is folded into tablet mode, the maximum folding position is somewhat loose. As a result, the screen and base tend to slightly drift apart, which makes it a bit difficult to use the Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 as a tablet.

The Samsung convertible's dimensions place the Galaxy Flex 13.3 in the middle of our test field. Large differences compared to other 13-inch tablets aren't noticeable here. However, devices like the Microsoft Surface Pro 7 and the Fujitsu Lifebook U939X make tablet operation easier due to their significantly lower weight.

The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex doesn't offer any classic USB Type-A connections. Aside from the USB Type-C port, which is also used for charging, there are two Thunderbolt ports. With these, any desired ports can be reproduced, but you need to have the corresponding adapters for this.

The Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 allows the use of microSD cards, which are stored in a slot on the side. However, it can only be opened with a tool, which unnecessarily complicates the frequent swapping of cards. The card reader itself reaches 78.4 MB/s for copying and 88.3 MB/s for reading data with our Toshiba Exceria Pro M501 reference memory card. These rates are slightly above average, but other Windows convertibles achieve even better speeds.

Users can connect wirelessly via Bluetooth 5.0 and establish Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) network connections with the Samsung convertible. With our Netgear Nighthawk AX12 reference router, we achieve good speeds of 857 Mb/s on average for receiving data and 625 Mb/s for sending data.

The webcam in the Galaxy Book Flex has a low resolution of 0.9 MP. Our test chart is, therefore, only reproduced with moderate quality even under good lighting conditions and only shows blurry details. However, the image quality is sufficient for simple video chats. The photo of the ColorChecker Passport also shows that colors are captured much brighter than they should be.

Samsung equips the Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 with a fingerprint scanner. It can be set up quickly via Windows Hello, and it unlocked the system reliably at all times during our test. However, the setup of face recognition is not supported.

Included with the Windows convertible from Samsung is a USB Type-C power adapter and the S Pen. Other general accessories can also be found on the manufacturer's website.

Samsung grants buyers of the Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 a warranty period of 24 months.

Keyboard

The keys of the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 are very flat, but they offer a pleasant pressure point with clear feedback. The keyboard is quiet when typing and the labeling is also easy to read without the three-level backlight. The latter illuminates the keys evenly and without glare. While the "Insert" and "Del" keys are separated, Samsung places "Home", "End", and "Pg Up/Pg Down" as secondary functions on the somewhat small arrow keys.

The performance of the Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 is aimed at office users and creative professionals who don't need a strong graphics card for their work. Both the CPU used here and its integrated graphics unit are the only options Samsung offers. If you want a better system performance, you'll have to take a look at the larger 15-inch model, which offers an Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU as well as an Nvidia GeForce MX250 GPU.

In our test, the Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 refused to execute the PCMark 8 and 10 benchmarks. Both tests simply crashed after a short time without a visible error message. However, the Samsung convertible ran smoothly at all times in everyday testing and didn't show any micro-stuttering or the like. Programs were loaded quickly, and files were opened without any delays as well.

The performance achieved in our tests by laptops with similar hardware can be found in our CPU Benchmarks article.

The Samsung SSD installed here shows very good read and write speeds in our test. Although there are top models that still score a bit better, the storage device in use here is also very fast.

The performance of the SSD installed here compared to other storage devices can be found in our HDD/SSD Benchmarks article.

The Intel Iris Plus Graphics G4 integrated graphics unit handles the rendering of image content in the Galaxy Book Flex 13.3. It is suitable for applications with a rather low demand on graphics performance, but in part, it performs significantly better than the older Intel UHD Graphics 620, for example. Since the GPU shares the memory with the CPU, the Iris Plus Graphics G4 benefits from RAM in a dual-channel configuration, which is how it's set up in this case.

The results of the 3DMark benchmarks are slightly above the average of other devices with this GPU. Our GPU Benchmarks article shows what performance can be expected in comparison to other graphics cards.

The internal graphics unit of the Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 is only suitable for games to a limited extent. Users should restrict themselves to older or simple titles, whereby reduced graphics settings should also be preferred.

The gaming performance that can be expected from the Intel Iris Plus Graphics G4 can be found in our GPU Games article.

During our stress test, which lasted for about an hour, the core temperatures rose briefly to up to 99 °C (~210 °F). By the end of the test, these dropped to an average value of 75 °C (~167 °F), and the clock rates fell below the base clock speed of 1.1 GHz. After the end of the test, the system quickly stabilized again. Since the load caused by our stress-test scenario is almost impossible in practice, users don't have to expect limitations due to the temperatures being too high, though.