Samsung’s Galaxy Book 2-in-1 is a great but annoying laptop

advantages and disadvantages

pros

• solid performance
• Battery life
• Great screen

Defect

• Too much Samsung software
• Touchpad is almost too big
• The numeric keypad isn’t big enough to be useful

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When Samsung recently announced a Galaxy S23 phone trioThe company also announced a line Galaxy Book 3 Windows laptop. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been testing the Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360. Its name sounds familiar, I agree.

This 2-in-1 laptop features a 16-inch display that rotates nearly 360 degrees (hence the name!), to double-duty as a tablet. It even comes with Samsung’s iconic S Pen in the box, so you can jot down notes or sketch directly on the gorgeous display.

There’s a lot to like about the Book 3 Pro 360, at least when it comes to hardware. It’s the software with which the Samsung laptop experience begins to fall apart. Let me explain.

Design

Arguably, the standout feature of the Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 is its 16-inch screen. It’s the first thing you notice when you open the lid, and for good reason. It’s big, bright, and crystal clear. Samsung used a 16-inch 3K AMOLED touchscreen here — it’s the same kind of screen technology used in all Samsung’s high-end smartphone. AMOLED displays are known for deeper blacks and more accurate color saturation, and the Book 3 Pro 360 lives up to those promises.

My only complaint about the screen is just how reflective it is. I struggled with overhead glare during my time testing it.

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The bezels around the Book 3 Pro 360’s screen are thin, with just enough room at the top for a 1080p webcam that looks like a regular laptop webcam. It’s good enough for personal and work video calls, but you won’t hear from anyone commenting on how great your feed looks.

Similarly, the speakers are suitable for video calls, but when listening to music or watching YouTube, their sound is almost blank. They just don’t have any hype for them.

Below the screen, on the laptop’s deck, is a full-size keyboard with chiclet-style keys, with a large trackpad located in the center of the keyboard, not the laptop case. The keyboard is easy enough to type on, requiring only minor adjustments to get the position of the land. However, I’m not particularly interested in the very small number pad on the right. It’s too small for any real keystrokes a number cruncher would want. I just like to use the number row at the top of the keyboard.

The trackpad is great to use, if you ever adjust its size and off-centre position. I feel frustrated because I got to what I thought was the middle of it, but ended up right clicking almost 100% of the time.

Just above the number pad, in the top right corner of the keyboard footprint, is the power button that also houses a fingerprint sensor that works with Windows Hello to unlock the laptop or log you into apps, such as such as a password manager. Setting up and using the fingerprint sensor is easy; it’s something Samsung has perfected in smartphones and now laptops.

The Book 3 Pro 360 has several ports: On the right side of the case is a microSD card reader, a USB-A 3.2 port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the left side of the deck are two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports that are also used to charge the laptop, along with an HDMI port. There is also a small indicator light that shows the charging status of the laptop.

An S Pen is included with the Book 3 Pro 360’s box, although Samsung doesn’t give you a place to store the pen when you’re not using it. Well, you can technically attach the S Pen with a magnet to the laptop lid, but it doesn’t feel very sturdy and falls off easily.

The Book 3 Pro 360 measures 13.99 x 9.93 x 0.5 inches and weighs 3.66 pounds. It’s not a huge laptop, even though it has a large screen. And its weight matches other laptops of this size — the 16-inch MacBook Pro, for example, weighs 3.6 pounds. It’s a laptop you’ll feel comfortable in your backpack to take around campus or on a business trip.

Overall, the design of the Book 3 Pro 360 is good, if not a bit boring, with no features to really frustrate or disappoint you.

Efficiency

When you choose the Book 3 Pro 360, you can choose between two storage capacities — there’s a 512GB model for $1,699.99 and a 1TB model for $1,899.99, giving you double the storage. Either way, you’ll get an Intel Core i7–1360P processor, Intel Iris Xe graphics, 16GB of memory, Wi-Fi 6E 802.11ax, and Bluetooth 5.1.

Depending on your configuration, those prices are slightly higher than 9 . professional surfacebut less expensive than MacBook Pro 16 inchand they make sense for what you get with the Book 3 Pro 360.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been using the Book 3 Pro 360 for my casual computing needs. That could mean one day I’ll spend a few hours in Microsoft’s Edge browser researching a story or shopping on Amazon, and the next day I’ll be following up on emails, writing in Google Docs, and communicating. messages in Slack, while streaming music from Apple Music. I also did some light photo editing and trimmed some video clips in the Microsoft Photos app. The Book 3 Pro 360 handles it all like a champ.

The recently released Geekbench 6 benchmarking tool; it helps measure the performance of your computer or smartphone when performing everyday tasks. I ran it three times on the Book 3 Pro 360 and took the average score. The single-core score is 2,219, with the multi-core score of 8,916. I also ran the same tool on my Apple MacBook Pro 2020 M1 and it got an average score of 2,300 for single-core and 8,025 for multi-core.

Objectively, the Book 3 Pro 360 has the same single-core performance as my MacBook Pro M1 and outperforms it in multi-core tasks. Subjectively, I can’t tell a performance difference between the two.

All that said — with the Book 3 Pro 360, you get a laptop that delivers stellar performance on par with first-generation Apple Silicon processors.

Using the S Pen on the Book 3 Pro 360 feels smooth and responsive, with a Samsung knob. When the pen is near the laptop screen, you can bring up the Air command menu by pressing the pen’s only button. Options included in the menu include creating a new note in Samsung’s Notes app, Samsung’s Smart Select tool for taking screenshots, and adding your own shortcuts. I don’t often use a stylus on any computer, but if I owned a Book 3 Pro 360, I would use it.

Software

Book 3 Pro 360 runs Windows 11 Home right out of the box. You’ll find all the standard Microsoft apps and services pre-installed on it, but beyond that, Samsung adds its own software to the Book 3 Pro 360 in a very heavy-handed way (just like it does with smartphones). Android phone).

I counted more than two dozen Samsung-branded apps installed on the Book 3 Pro 360. Two dozen apps! Some of them you will definitely never use. That’s in addition to the unnecessary McAfee LiveSafe antivirus.

Also: Galaxy S23 Ultra vs S22 Ultra: Should you upgrade?

There are several Samsung apps that are worth using if you already use Galaxy products. Samsung Notes are a staple on any Galaxy device, from the Note series and now the S22 Ultra and S23 Ultra. Samsung’s SmartThings platform is also useful for those who use it to manage their smart home.

If you have a Samsung phone or tablet and a Galaxy Book 3, you can use the mouse and keyboard on your laptop to control and input on your phone. It only took me a few clicks on the trackpad to set it up, then my mouse would magically appear on my Galaxy S23 whenever I move the pointer away from the right side of the screen. That’s the kind of software feature Samsung should focus on building and implementing on its laptops.

But do you need the Samsung version of the Live Wallpaper app? Or the Samsung Gallery app? Or what about Samsung Studio Plus? Quick search? There are already good versions of those features built into Windows.

Battery life

After several weeks of use and testing, I had no issues with the Book 3 Pro 360’s battery life. It powered through a full workday, including video calls, writes in Google Docs, streaming music and opening too many tabs in Edge while dealing with my emails and Slack messages. The battery doesn’t have enough capacity to last two workdays, so you’ll want to take the charger with you on short trips.

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Whenever I test the laptop, I play a 4K video file over and over, with the screen set to 50% brightness, all other apps closed, and any extra connectivity features (like Bluetooth) are disabled. Then, I shot a timelapse with 1-minute intervals to track battery life.

Running that test on the Book 3 Pro 360, the battery powered 9 hours and 9 minutes of video playback. That’s respectable usage, and more than enough to watch a few movies on a cross-country flight.

bottom line

Samsung’s Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 is a respectable 2-in-1 laptop with fast speeds, an impressive display, and enough battery life to get through a full workday, and a price that matches its features. It.

Even if you’re someone who is heavily invested in Samsung’s ecosystem, the abundance of Samsung apps and services on the Book 3 can make it difficult to navigate. That said, die-hard Samsung fans will appreciate the accessibility and tight integration with Samsung’s overall platform.

Alternatives to consider

Smaller, cheaper version of the Book 3 Pro 360.

Microsoft’s Surface Pro line was the original 2-in-1, and it lives on for good reason. It sets a high bar.

If you’re not sold on a Windows laptop, the 16-inch MacBook Pro is one of those best laptop available now.