it gets a It’s been a while since I’ve used a laptop with a screen larger than 13 or 14 inches for any extended period of time. It’s refreshing to have room to spread out my apps… even if it no longer fits in my backpack. Perhaps tucking your bag under the seat in front of you is overrated.
Compared to the army of 13 and 14 inch laptops passed by my desk, Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra, with its 16-inch touchscreen (2,880 x 1,800 pixels), is a behemoth. At 3.9 pounds (but only 19 mm thick), it packs a punch backed by top-notch specs, including 32GB of RAM, a 1-terabyte SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. At the heart is the new Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor, the current top processor in Intel’s Core Ultra CPU line.
Photo: Samsung
When comparing benchmarks, the Galaxy Book4 ran rings around all the other Core Ultra laptops I’ve tested in the past few weeks since the new chip launched, even though none of them had an Ultra. 9 or discrete graphics processor. In some CPU-based tests, the system doubled its performance Lenovo X1 Carbonand in graphics-based tests, I regularly achieved three to five times the frame rates I saw on machines using Core Ultra integrated graphics processors. The Book4 is certainly reliable to use as a gaming device if desired. Plus, with a battery life of 12 hours and 43 minutes, as tested by my full-screen YouTube summary test, you don’t need to worry about being away from an outlet all day.
The larger chassis gives Samsung space to squeeze a number pad into the picture, although I wish there were full-sized arrow keys when working with the device. The responsive keyboard is paired with one of the largest touchpads I’ve seen on a laptop. At 6 x 4 inches, it is significantly larger than a standard passport—arguably also large, as there’s barely any room on the left side of the touchpad to rest your palm. Overall, I didn’t enjoy working with this touchpad as I found it frequently missed clicks and accidentally recorded unintended touches.
Photo: Samsung
