Pros:
• Gorgeous display
• Decent performance
• Included comfortable keyboard cover and S Pen stylus
Cons:
• No kickstand makes it difficult to use on lap
• SATA III rather than PCIe NVMe SSD
• No windows hello support
Technical specifications:
According to Samsung, the 2017 galaxy book has two versions, a 10 inch and a 12 inch version with various ram and storage configuration. The one featured in this article equipped with an Intel Core i5-7200U processor (seventh-generation, Kaby Lake, 2.50GHz turbo boost to 3.10GHz ), 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. This on current retails on Samsung website at £1,099.00. This price includes the keyboard cover and S pen. For comparison, Surface pro with the same configuration costs £979.00 but the essential type cover will cost your £149.99. If you want the surface pen, that’s another £99.99. Add everything together, the total cost comes at £1,228.98. There is another version of the galaxy book with the same CPU but doubles the RAM and storage that retails at £1,269.00. You can also add LTE to the higher end model for an extra £170.
Detailed specifications
Display
|
12-inch (146.5mm) Super AMOLED with HDR
support
10 point multi-touch with S-pen (Wacom) support |
Display Resolution
|
2160 x 1440 FHD +
Aspect Ratio: 3:2 |
Software
|
Windows 10 home
|
Processor
|
Seventh Gen Intel Core i5-7200U
|
Storage
|
128GB, 256GB, Solid State Drive (SSD),SATA 3
|
Memory
|
4GB, 8GB RAM
1866Mhz LPDDR3 |
Graphics
|
Intel HD graphics 620
|
Rear Camera
|
13.0MP autofocus camera
|
Front Camera
|
5.0MP camera, doesn’t support Windows Hello
face-authentication
|
Speakers
|
Stereo speakers on both sides
|
Ports
|
2x USB-C 3.0
Headset jack Keyboard Connect microSDXC card reader support up to 256GB |
Sensors
|
Ambient light sensor
Accelerometer Hall sensor |
Network
|
Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 2.4G + 5GHz compatible
Bluetooth Wireless 4.1 technology |
Security
|
TPM chip for enterprise security
|
Battery Life
|
Up to 11 hours of use
|
Pen
|
S Pen
|
Weight
|
754g without key board
|
Dimensions
|
292 mm x 200 mm x 7.4 mm, tablet only
|
Design:
The Samsung Galaxy book is a beautiful piece of kit, the overall build quality and ports layout are near perfect.
The chassis is made of aluminium and is solidly built with no flex or creaks. It is razor thin and the rounded edges make it very comfortable to hold. The power and volume control keys are on the upper left of the tablet and also crafted out of aluminium which gives satisfying feedback when clicked. On the upper right you can find the CPU vent so no hot air blown to your hand. On the right-hand side there are a stereo speaker and two USB-C 3.0 ports. Each USB-C can serve as charging port that supports quick charge but neither is thunderbolt compatible so no heavy gaming using external graphic card. It would have been nice if Samsung has included a USB-C to USB-A adapter as most peripherals are still USB-A. But these are dirt cheap so no harm done. On the left-hand side sits the other stereo speaker and micro SD card slot, which needs a pin open.
There is a 5.0MP front facing camera that doesn’t support Windows Hello. The rear facing camera is a 13.0MP shooter with autofocus but I really think the law shouldn’t allow people to take pictures with a 12inch tablet. Both cameras support 4x digital zoom.
There is no built-in kickstand so you will need to use the included keyboard stand which has 3 positions. The backlighting keyboard cover is covered with grey plastic. It’s not leather but comfortable to touch and looks good and elegant. Key travel and response are good. Typing is fairly comfortable so long time typing shouldn’t be of any issue. The function keys all carry double function such as display brightness, volume and keyboard backlight keys etc. The functions can be switched using the fn lock key or use as combo with fn key. Backlighting is three stages and works well in low-light situations.
The trackpad is pretty good as well. It's a Precision Touchpad, supporting the full range of built-in Windows touch gestures.
The magnets that hold the keyboard to the galaxy book is very strong. And you have pull really hard to remove the keyboard.
Display
If I was asked to give one reason to pick this over any other tablet/laptop on the planet, it has to be the gorgeous Super AMOLED display. The display without a doubt the star of the show here. It measures at 12 inch and has a resolution of 2160 x 1440 with the ideal 3:2 aspect ratio. It is ten-point multi-touch with glossy edge-to-edge glass.
The super AMOLED screen on the galaxy book is simply the most stunning screen I have seen on a tablet and this is clear from the moment you press the power button. The colours are vivid with immaculate black and white contrast is immaculate, and everything just looks great. This screen is also support 10bit HDR which makes consuming media like movies movie a dream.
Pen inking
The S Pen is produced by Wacom with 4,096 levels of pressure. It feels very light in hand and doesn’t require charging. There is no place to store the pen so you have to be careful not losing it. The pen only has one button which provides a mouse-like interface. Another usefully feather is Air Command with functions like Smart Select that lets you capture areas of your screen and share them out, or create and animated GIF of an area of your screen with up to 15 seconds of recorded content. Naturally, all Microsoft functions such as Windows Ink, Sketch Pad, Screen Sketch, Sticky Notes etc. are all present and works well.
The S Pen on the Galaxy book is very fluid and smooth.
Audio
The dual stereo speakers are at both sides of the display. The placement means they are side firing, with good fidelity and stereo separation.
Cameras
The front-facing camera is a 5MP module. It is quite bright and looks good in video – definitely sufficient for those skype calls. The rear 8MP autofocus camera is also good for a tablet camera and you can use it to snap a photo in a pinch and not cringe at the quality.
Benchmarks
I don’t really believe in benchmarks as the differences between various machines with same Intel internals are trivial and can’t really be felt in real life. In addition, modern CPUs are very capable of most of the daily tasks that we throw to them. However, with that said, I do want to show the Crystal Disk Mark Scores as I believe SSD speed is the performance bottleneck of a lot of modern PCs and can really determine the user experience. The SSD in the galaxy book is good, but not good enough. It has the SATA III interface so in that sense it’s not bad but I think Samsung really should have included a PCIe NVMe SSD unit here especially when they make SSDs found in most high end machines. In short, a SATA III SSD in a £1000 plus machine is simply not acceptable.
CrystalDiskMark (higher is better)
Device
|
Read
|
Write
|
Surface Pro 2017
|
1,284 MB/s
|
963 MB/s
|
Dell XPS 13 (9360)
|
1,287 MB/s
|
794 MB/s
|
HP Spectre x360 15
|
1,128 MB/s
|
862 MB/s
|
Galaxy book
|
523 MB/s
|
337 MB/s
|
Battery
The fan did come on more than I would like and was audible, though barely above a whisper with no whine or high-pitch noises. In a room with ambient noise, you shouldn’t find the fan annoying.
For battery life, Samsung claims 11 hours and I have achieved 6.5 hours using a closed-loop video test with 50% brightness and 50% volume with Wi-Fi on. Nothing ground breaking here but for such a thin machine, it’s still respectable.
