Samsung's Galaxy Book S is a very good mobile companion with integrated LTE
Samsung's Galaxy Book S is a very lightweight subnotebook at just 950 grams. The case still leaves a high quality impression and the stability is decent as well. Other advantages for the mobile use are long battery runtimes of more than 15 hours in our Wi-Fi test and 22 hours in our video test, respectively. LTE is already included into the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx processor, so you are always connected on the road. Samsung does not use a fan; the Snapdragon SoC is passively cooled.
The choice of the ARM processor does not only have advantages though, because as of this writing, the device only supports applications from the Windows store as well as 32-bit applications. You should definitely check that there are working versions of the software you want to use. If you primarily use Microsoft's Office suite as well as web-based applications, you should not have any problems. The subjective performance impression of the ARM laptop is good and you should not notice a difference to a regular x86 laptop when you perform lightweight tasks.
The keyboard travel is very shallow due to the slim construction, but it can still be used for longer texts. However, we did not like the green keyboard illumination, which is still too dark at the highest brightness and only usable in absolute darkness. There is also s slight delay of around one second before the illumination is turned on after you hit a key. We really liked the two speakers from AKG and they produce a very appealing sound for this laptop size. The 13.3-inch touchscreen is also decent, but the competition uses better panels.
This also brings us to the recently announced Galaxy Book S with Intel's new hybrid processor. Even though the base specs are similar, it is supposed to have a special outdoor mode and reach a brightness of up to 600 nits according to Samsung. The Intel processor is also compatible with 64-bit apps and offers faster Wi-Fi 6, but there is no LTE modem included and the battery runtime should be lower in return. A test sample of the Intel-based Galaxy Book S should arrive soon.
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