Samsung takes thin-and-light laptops to a whole new level with the Galaxy Book Pro 360. Available in either a 13-inch screen size or the 15-inch one we're looking at here, this 2-in-1 convertible laptop is among the most “ultra” of the ultraportable laptop category. Samsung manages to fit a roomy Super AMOLED touch screen, a 360-degree hinge, an 11th Generation Intel Core i7 processor, and unique software features into a laptop that weighs just 3 pounds. We haven’t finished testing our $1,499 review unit, but so far all signs point to this being the best Galaxy laptop yet.
A Vivid AMOLED Screen...But No 4K
A 3-pound weight might not seem that impressive, considering that there are plenty of ultraportable laptops out there that tip the scales at as little as 2 pounds. But most of these other notebooks have 13-inch or 14-inch screens and lack the extra hardware required for a 360-degree screen hinge. Not only can the big Galaxy Book Pro 360 rotate 360 degrees, letting you use it as a tent, easel, or tablet, but it also has a roomier screen that measures 15.6 inches on the diagonal.
And what a screen it is (or could be, were it not for one puzzling omission). This is Samsung’s first Windows laptop with an AMOLED panel. After making its debut on Galaxy mobile devices and the Galaxy Chromebook, the technology is ripe for advancement among mainstream laptops. Similar panels have shown up in a few laptops from competing manufacturers that we’ve tested recently, and they’ve mostly offered stunning picture quality.
I’ve only spent a few minutes gazing at the Galaxy Book Pro 360’s AMOLED pixels, but I can already appreciate how much more vivid they are than those of the average LED or LCD screen. They can display 100% of the P3 color space, and offer far deeper blacks than I’m used to seeing thanks to a sky-high contrast ratio. AMOLED screens achieve all of this by lighting pixels via a self-emitting organic layer instead of a separate backlight. When electric current is applied, the red, green, and blue subpixels become their own source of light.
Samsung calls the display in the Galaxy Book Pro 360 a Super AMOLED panel because it incorporates touch support directly into the screen, instead of via an additional capacitive layer that adds bulk. I appreciate that an improved S Pen digital stylus is included with all Galaxy Book Pro 360 configurations, so you can take full advantage of the touch support. The new S Pen is smaller than most digital styli, but it’s easy to hold in one hand, has a ridge to prevent it from rolling off the desk when you’re not using it, and snaps magnetically to the back of the laptop’s display lid for temporary storage.
There’s one key drawback to the Galaxy Book Pro 360’s screen: You can’t get it with a 4K resolution. This is puzzling to me, since 15-inch 4K AMOLED screens exist already, and they offer far crisper text than the full HD resolution of the Galaxy Book Pro 360’s screen. Larger screens benefit even more from higher resolutions than smaller ones do, and it’s a shame that Samsung isn’t at least offering a 4K version of the Galaxy Book Pro 360 as an option.
Mystic Navy or Bronze?
Sure, the Galaxy Book Pro 360’s 3-pound weight is impressive, but perhaps even more stunning is how thin and gorgeous the chassis looks when it’s closed. The laptop stands just 0.47 inch tall—compare that with the 0.6-inch height that is a common thickness measure for other ultraportable laptops. The Galaxy Book Pro 360’s slimness gives it classiness in spades, and so does the unique deep-blue color scheme of our review unit. Samsung calls it Mystic Navy, and it’s far and away my preferred option over Mystic Bronze, which is the other color choice.
Samsung offers other blue laptops, including the Galaxy Book Flex, which also stands out as a unique ultraportable laptop. I wish more manufacturers would buck the Space Gray trend and go for blue.
Part of creating a slim, sleek laptop means giving up bulky input/output ports like HDMI outputs and Ethernet ports. The Galaxy Book Pro 360 doesn’t have those, but it does have a generous complement of three USB-C ports. One supports Thunderbolt 4, but any of them can be used to charge the laptop or connect external displays via an adapter or a special cable. There’s also a microSD card reader and a headphone jack.
Unique Software Security
The Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 comes with the new Samsung Security app, which has four unique features that could protect your privacy and thwart hacking, as well as physical theft.
I find the most useful to be the Privacy Folder. Using the app, you can designate any folder to be the Privacy Folder, as long as it’s not on the desktop or in the Windows system files. After the folder’s assigned, pressing the Windows key plus F11 will hide it from view. To show it again, use the same key combination, enter your Windows password, and the folder will reappear.
Will this fool dedicated hackers? Probably not, since it works by changing the folder’s properties in the Windows File Explorer, which isn’t necessarily secure. Also, you unlock it with your Windows password, so anyone with that password can view your files.
Still, if your PC is frequently shared among others after you log into your account, and it contains moderately sensitive (but not top-secret) information, the Privacy Folder could be useful.
Plenty of 'Tiger Lake' Power
As innovative and distinctive as most of the 15-inch Galaxy Book Pro 360 is, its component offerings are rather ordinary. There’s a Core i7-1165G7 processor from Intel’s latest 11th Generation “Tiger Lake” family. This is the go-to CPU for most of the premium ultraportable laptop set. The 15-inch Galaxy Book Pro also offers a generous 1TB SSD and 8GB or 16GB of memory.
Though we haven’t run our benchmark tests on the laptop yet, based on those specs it ought to easily power through ordinary tasks such as web browsing or editing documents. Still, it lacks the extraordinary multi-threaded oomph of AMD’s latest 5th-generation Ryzen CPUs, or the fanless, silent, but still powerful Apple M1 processor. Samsung is rumored to be designing its own in-house processors similar to the M1, but if that’s the case, they’re not ready yet.
The Galaxy Book Pro 360’s keyboard is also nothing to type home about. It’s nice to have a dedicated number pad on the 15-inch version, even if the keys are narrower than the main part of the keyboard. But all of the keys have the same 1mm of vertical travel distance. That’s shallow and makes for a less-than-comfortable typing experience, though with such a slim chassis, Samsung’s engineers probably had no room to increase the distance and comfort.
We’re in the process of testing the Galaxy Book Pro 360’s performance and giving it a final rating, and we’ll update this preview after that’s complete. Until then, check out our guide to the best ultraportable laptops we've tested.
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May 05, 2021 at 07:56PM
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Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 (15-Inch) Preview - PCMag
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