Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge sees the South Korean manufacturer go all in on AI largely to great success. The Snapdragon X Elite processor delivers on its lofty promises of lengthy battery life, near-instant boot-ups, and snappy performance whether working or getting creative despite lacking graphics power.

With that said, the Windows Copilot implementation feels like it’s in its primordial phase right now. A dedicated key to open the chatbot up works well enough, but the practical application of the NPU doesn’t seem too concrete now. If you invest in one of these machines now, you’ll be an early adopter for better or worse. It can be considered among the best ultrabooks, even if its AI functionality leaves a little to be desired.

Introduction

Instead of striving for raw power, the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge combines a sleek chassis with a punchy new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor and Windows on ARM to fully lean into the benefits of mobile. The result? A fast machine with a great battery life that can genuinely rival the Apple MacBook Pro M3.

Keep in mind that the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge doesn’t exactly come cheap. It starts at £1399 / $1349 for the 14-inch variant and £1699 / $1449 for the 16-inch version, however, the pricing may fluctuate when you consider the clock speed of the Snapdragon X Elite between 3.4GHz and 3.8GHz, as well as either a 512GB or 1TB NVMe SSD.

Yes, it’s not a cheap productivity laptop, nor does it occupy the midrange market, this is a premium product in pricing through and through.

As for what you get for your money, the Galaxy Book 4 Edge makes a strong first impression with its ultra-thin and light body, gorgeous screen, and all-day battery life. If you’re willing to give ARM a shot instead of the tried and true x86 architecture then there’s a lot to like here, even if the AI functionality doesn’t exactly blow you away.

Design

• Super sleek at only 1.19 kg / 2.6lbs
• Less than half an inch thick
• Packed with ports for enhanced connectivity

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is drop-dead gorgeous. Weighing in at less than three pounds and under half an inch thick, it fully delivers on its premium ultrabook potential.

This is compounded by a tapered edge and nicely rounded corners with its aluminium chassis. In short, it both looks and feels exceptional – and that’s before you turn it on.

There’s a full-size HDMI 2.1 port (supporting up to 4K@60Hz), two USB-C ports, USB 3.2 (Type-A), and a microSD card reader. You won’t need to break out any gangly adapters here to get work done, or plug in peripherals such as a mouse and keyboard when hooking up to an external monitor.

Speaking of the keyboard, the deck on the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is among the best I have ever used.

It’s low profile and tactile but also quiet without feeling spongey or unsatisfying. This extends to the large trackpad which offers slick and smooth gliding action. The build quality overall is second to none, and I am confident this machine could last many years of use.

Screen

• Dazzling 2880 x 1880 (3K) resolution
• Glare-resistant AMOLED panel tech
• Super responsive touchscreen functionality

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge’s display is arguably the star of the show here and the 3K resolution (2880 x 1880) AMOLED display is nothing short of incredible.

While it’s not quite 4K, it hardly matters on the 16-inch display which is sharp and responsive. This is bolstered by the 120Hz refresh rate which makes everything from typing away on a project to enjoying media playback a breeze.

In my testing, I was able to verify a peak SDR brightness of 406 nits which is nice and bright in daytime use. More interestingly, is the gamut coverage which is 100% sRGB with 95.3% Adobe RGB, and 97.3% DCI P3. However, the gamut volume reaches 116.7% DCI P3 (achieving Samsung’s claims of up to 120%) which is among the best I have ever seen on a laptop in all my years of testing them.

Additionally, there are thin bezels around the display which highlight its reach across the top of the panel. It is in line with the company’s smartphones with rounded edges, such as the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is pleasing to the eye and immersive when sat for hours at a time. In times of the “anti-glare” coating, it works well.

I used the laptop over several bright summer days at varying brightness levels and never had to squint or adjust the angle of the display.

Performance

• Lightning fast for media playback, productivity, and working
• Leading battery life of up to 18 hours
• ARM version of Windows has some compatibility problems

Generally speaking, the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is a strong performer for web browsing, word processing, image creation, media playback, and less intensive programs thanks to the nippiness of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor.

However, with Windows on ARM, there are some glaring compatibility problems, such as some of our usual benchmark software not being able to run. Simply put, a bulk of software made for Windows on x86 won’t play nice with ARM architecture, but the list of support is growing.

Most programs will work without issue, but you may notice reduced performance than when running natively on x86.

Speaking to the processor’s synthetic benchmarks, the Snapdragon X Elite achieved a single-core score of 2908 through Geekbench 6 and 1363 in Cinebench R23; strong figures for sure. Multi-core is equally impressive through the two programs with scores of 15428 and 9060 respectively. It’s not quite as competitive, but it’s far from the worst I’ve seen from an SoC (system on chip) like this.

Where you’ll run into a bit of a blockade is with the graphical prowess of the chipset. This is evident in 3DMark TimeSpy with a poor score of 2120. For reference, even entry-level dedicated graphics from five years ago like the RTX 2050 can outperform the Adreno GPU.

For instance, the Asus Vivobook 16X’s score of 3309 (a 56% increase) has already been outperformed by the likes of current-generation Intel Arc integrated graphics and RDNA 3 iGPUs. Simply put, this isn’t the machine you want for intensive 3D modelling and certainly not gaming.

Then we get on to the star of the show with the Windows Copilot functionality. The hype behind the “AI PC” movement has been massive, and Samsung hasn’t shied away from Galaxy AI here.

You’ve got a dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard which brings up the chatbot which can be used for a range of purposes from quick-fire answers to burning questions, to helping with your projects.

In a more visual sense, you can even use the tech with “Image Creator” inside of Paint to interpret what you sketch. Things work, sure, but they feel more like a gimmick or a proof of concept rather than something you’ll use every day. This is likely to change as more software is released optimized for NPUs on CPUs.

Battery Life

• Up to 18 hours of use on a single charge
• Streaming Netflix for an hour resulted in just a 7% battery reduction

Swapping from a traditional x86 processor such as an Intel Core or AMD Ryzen model for the Snapdragon X Elite has resulted in massive gains in the battery life department.

When streaming 4K video for an hour, the battery went down by only 7% which is among the best that I’ve tested to date.

Since getting the device, I’ve barely had to reach for the charger, which is very impressive. There’s absolutely nothing to fault the device on in this regard, and it’s hopefully a sign of things to come for other AI PCs once they hit the market, too.

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