We’re all the time comfortable to see a sublime ultraportable laptop computer for underneath $1,000, particularly if it has handy HDMI and USB Sort-A ports in addition to USB-C/Thunderbolt ports, in contrast to the class-leading Dell XPS 13. The 13.3-inch Samsung Galaxy E-book Professional ($974.99 as examined) not solely checks these bins however boasts a spiffy AMOLED display screen like these of Samsung’s smartphones, all in a feather-light 1.96-pound bundle. So why does not this assessment bear our Editors’ Selection award insignia? As a result of the Galaxy E-book Professional base mannequin can also be the maxed-out mannequin, with 8GB of reminiscence and a 256GB solid-state drive when multitaskers search for double these quantities, particularly on this worth vary. It is a smooth, tempting alternative for on a regular basis Microsoft Workplace and on-line work, however energy customers will need one thing extra configurable.
Two Sizes, Two Home windows
The Galaxy E-book Professional clamshell mannequin (distinguished from the common Galaxy E-book by its AMOLED versus IPS display screen know-how) is obtainable in 13.3-inch and 15.6-inch show sizes, each with the acquainted full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) decision and 16:9 facet ratio as an alternative of the taller 16:10 or 3:2 ratios which have develop into fashionable of late. Samsung does not provide a higher-resolution panel, nor a touch-screen choice. Our Home windows 10 Professional take a look at unit (mannequin NP930XDB-KH1US) is listed amongst Samsung’s enterprise merchandise for $1,099.99 on sale for $974.99; an in any other case similar shopper mannequin has Home windows 11 Residence for $999.99.
Clad in an aluminum-magnesium alloy the corporate calls Mystic Silver (with a white keyboard deck), the Intel Evo-compliant laptop computer combines its 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD with a quad-core, 2.4GHz Core i5-1135G7 processor. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth are customary, as is a fingerprint reader built-in with the ability button (which you will not use a lot, since opening the lid turns the system on).
13-inch ultraportables are all roughly the identical footprint-size, although the Samsung is likely one of the trimmest and lightest at 0.44 by 12 by 7.9 inches and 1.96 kilos. The Dell XPS 13 OLED is 0.58 by 11.6 by 7.8 inches and the two.2-pound HP Pavilion Aero is 0.67 by 11.7 by 8.2 inches. The Galaxy E-book Professional’s gentle weight is mirrored in its appreciable flex in case you grasp the display screen corners or press the keyboard deck. Its display screen bezels are skinny however the webcam at prime middle has no privateness shutter.
Laptops do not come any thinner than the Samsung, not less than not with actual ports. An HDMI video output joins two USB Sort-C ports, one with Thunderbolt 4 functionality, on the left aspect. One USB 3.2 Sort-A port, a microSD card slot, and a headphone jack are on the fitting. The compact AC adapter has a USB-C connector.
Not the Brightest, However the Greatest-Trying
The 1080p AMOLED show offers inky blacks and washday-white backgrounds, with phenomenal distinction. (Samsung charges its distinction ratio at 1,000,000:1.) The latter helps the show appear extra-bright, although in actuality it did not excel in our {hardware} brightness measurement (see the take a look at outcomes beneath). Colours are wealthy, vivid, and properly saturated, and wonderful particulars are clear. Reflections come into play at excessive viewing angles.
Backside-mounted audio system produce considerably tender, muffled sound; bass is scanty (drumbeats sound like static), and it is laborious to listen to overlapping tracks. Audio will get louder and harsher in case you activate the Dolby Entry software program, which provides music, film, recreation, voice, and customized modes and an equalizer.
The backlit keyboard has a shallow however snappy typing really feel; it groups the Fn key with the cursor arrows in lieu of devoted Residence, Finish, Web page Up, and Web page Down keys. The arrows and top-row keys together with Escape and Delete are small. Urgent Fn+F11 cycles by means of optimized, silent, and excessive efficiency cooling-fan modes. (We used the high-performance mode for our benchmarks, aside from optimized for the battery take a look at.) The buttonless touchpad glides and faucets easily however clicks stiffly.
Samsung preloads the Galaxy E-book Professional with practically 20 house-brand apps starting from safety instruments (making use of an opaque impact to thwart display screen snoops or emailing you a photograph of anybody who tries to log in while you’re away from the machine) to display screen coloration modes (native, sRGB, Adobe RGB, or DCI-P3), plus instruments for exchanging information together with your Galaxy telephone. Essentially the most weird is Magnificence Filter, which works with the webcam to whiten pores and skin or redden lips, apply basis or blush, or provide you with a “cute nostril” (narrowing your nostrils) or “slim chin” (making you look much less jowly). With out the software program’s assist, the 720p digicam captures considerably blotchy, soft-focus pictures with a good quantity of noise or static.
Testing the Galaxy E-book Professional: Trim Ultraportables Put to the Check
For our benchmark spherical, I pitted the Galaxy E-book Professional towards the aforementioned HP Pavilion Aero and the Asus ZenBook 13, each of which boast an eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 5800U processor. The remaining two slots went to Lenovo ultraportables with the identical Core i5-1135G7 CPU because the Samsung: the ThinkBook 13s Gen 2, and the ThinkPad X13 Gen 2. You may see the contenders’ primary specs within the desk beneath.
Productiveness Exams
The primary benchmark of UL’s PCMark 10 simulates quite a lot of real-world productiveness and content-creation workflows to measure total efficiency for office-centric duties akin to phrase processing, spreadsheeting, internet looking, and videoconferencing. We additionally run PCMark 10’s Full System Drive take a look at to evaluate the load time and throughput of a laptop computer’s storage. (See extra about how we test laptops.)
Three benchmarks deal with the CPU, utilizing all out there cores and threads, to price a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 makes use of that firm’s Cinema 4D engine to render a posh scene, whereas Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Professional simulates fashionable apps starting from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine studying. Lastly, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to transform a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p decision (decrease occasions are higher).
Our remaining productiveness take a look at is workstation maker Puget Programs’ PugetBench for Photoshop, which makes use of the Inventive Cloud model 22 of Adobe’s well-known picture editor to price a PC’s efficiency for content material creation and multimedia functions. It is an automatic extension that executes quite a lot of basic and GPU-accelerated Photoshop duties starting from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving a picture to making use of masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The Samsung underwhelmed in our CPU assessments, which have been predictably dominated by the eight-core Ryzen 7 chips within the Asus and HP, however simply cleared the 4,000 factors that point out competent workplace productiveness in PCMark 10. It isn’t the quickest by a protracted shot, however its attractive display screen makes it a favourite for Photoshop work, until you crave higher-than-1080p decision.
Graphics Exams
We take a look at Home windows PCs’ graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark suite: Evening Raid (extra modest, appropriate for laptops with built-in graphics) and Time Spy (extra demanding, appropriate for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
We additionally run two assessments from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses each low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like picture rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Automobile Chase assessments, rendered offscreen to accommodate completely different show resolutions, train graphics and compute shaders utilizing the OpenGL programming interface and {hardware} tessellation respectively. The extra frames per second (fps), the higher.
Intel’s eleventh Era Iris Xe built-in graphics are perkier than their predecessors and their AMD rivals, however fall far wanting even a lower-end discrete GPU. None of those ultraportables is in the identical ZIP code as a real gaming laptop computer in terms of taking part in fast-paced titles, although they’re appropriate for informal video games and streaming video and audio. (For extra on that matter, see our deep dive on laptop integrated graphics in 2021.)
Battery and Show Exams
We take a look at laptops’ battery life by taking part in a regionally saved 720p video file (the open-source Blender film Tears of MetalTears of Steel) with show brightness at 50% and audio quantity at 100%. We make sure that the battery is absolutely charged earlier than the take a look at, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
We additionally use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Home windows software program to measure a laptop computer display screen’s coloration saturation—what proportion of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 coloration gamuts or palettes the show can present—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per sq. meter).
The Galaxy E-book Professional’s show could present solely 323 nits at peak brightness in SpyderX testing as an alternative of the 400-plus we often search for, however its AMOLED know-how makes it seem a lot brighter, and its coloration constancy is off the charts. Laptop computer screens—not less than full HD versus 4K screens—do not come any higher. The Samsung additionally tied with the ThinkPad for probably the most excellent battery life, capable of get you thru not one however two full days of labor or faculty.
Verdict: Nice and Feathery, However Not Future-Proof
In fact it is a Home windows laptop computer, however as odd because it sounds, we discovered ourselves pondering of the super-light Samsung Galaxy E-book Professional as if it have been a extremely nice Chromebook—too brief on horsepower, reminiscence, and storage for demanding content material creation or video modifying jobs, however a pleasure to make use of for on a regular basis phrase processing, spreadsheeting, shows, e mail, and looking.
It does not earn our highest suggestion as a result of there are too many nice ultraportables that may be configured with 16GB of RAM or 1TB SSDs, but it surely fills a pleasant area of interest at an inexpensive worth.