When you think about a high-performance laptop, your mind usually goes to a chunky gaming laptop that packs a ton of power, or you think of Apple, with their MacBook Pro. But where do you look when you want a laptop that is sleek and lightweight yet still delivers a premium experience? You can look to the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro, a laptop with impressive specs and a gorgeous look without the bulk, and within Samsung’s powerful ecosystem.
With all laptops, the specs can vary depending on how you customize it. For the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro that I tested, it came with a 16-core Intel Core Ultra X7 358H processor with integrated GPU and NPU capable of 50 TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second), which is excellent for a Copilot PC. The laptop also has 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB of NVMe storage.
The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro weighs in at 3.51lbs, very lightweight for a 16” laptop (It also comes in a 14” version that weighs 2.73 lbs). The keyboard comes with a fingerprint sensor for enhanced security, and the haptic touchpad is large and responsive, with smart gestures that let you scroll and zoom with two fingers. The Book6 Pro has palm rejection, allowing you to type without worrying about accidental inputs on the touchpad.
“The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro is a machine that doesn’t just look the part; it acts the part.”
The gray aluminum body of the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro, with a slight taper from back to front, gives the laptop a sleek look, but the surface is not fingerprint-resistant if that matters to you. I’d ideally love a laptop that looks brand new after every touch, but having to wipe it down from time to time isn’t the end of the world.
The I/O for the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro is fairly standard, with two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a USB-A 3.2 port, an HDMI 2.1 capable of 8K/60Hz and 5K/120Hz output and a 3.5mm hybrid jack for headphones and headsets. There’s always a want for more inputs on a laptop that is powerful enough to be your home PC, but what it offers is perfect for being on the go, and any number of available USB hubs can help you expand your connectivity at any point.
The display… Well, it’s a Samsung display, delivering the quality they are known for. The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro offers a 16” Dynamic AMOLED with a 2880×1800 resolution and fantastic anti-reflective properties. The display has a 120Hz refresh rate (that adjusts to 30Hz when you don’t need more) with 1000 nits of HDR brightness. The Galaxy Book6 Pro also offers an AI-powered Vision Booster that adapts to the lighting conditions around you. It’s also a touch screen, making it an even more adaptable and responsive device.
Using the touchscreen also enables some AI functionality, including AI Select (similar to Google’s Circle to Search). Simply trace the subject of your curiosity, and the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro’s Galaxy AI will give you more information. Galaxy AI also offers some standard AI tools, like text translation, unit conversion, and exploring external links even when they are not clickable, all designed to speed up your productivity without a steep learning curve.
The sound on the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro is outstanding, with a quad-speaker system that includes two woofers on the bottom for fantastic bass and tweeters on either side of the keyboard for crisp, direct sound. Listening to a few movies let me hear the sound design at work, with action moving from left to right in a way you normally only hear on headphones. It creates an amazing entertainment experience across the board.
But how does the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro actually perform? The benchmarks have a lot to say. Geekbench 6 scored the laptop at 2529 for single-core, matching the Intel Core i9-12900F, but below the M2 MacBook Air. The Galaxy Book6 Pro shows off a bit more in the multi-core with a score of 15760, placing it just under the M5 MacBook Pro. The laptop’s OpenCL score is 55417, a hair above the Nvidia RTX 3050 Laptop GPU.
“The display… Well, it’s a Samsung display, delivering the quality they are known for.”
While the CPU scores are quite respectable, the OpenCL score is fairly low compared to computers with dedicated GPUs, which I would tend to expect. The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro can handle some gaming, but nothing requiring a 6GB Graphics card, as the GPU has only 128MB. I was able to play Fortnite at 1080p at medium settings. With some tweaking, you could get away with a few settings set to high and maintain a smooth 90+fps framerate. I also tried A Plague Tale: Requiem, which could play reasonably.
Editing was a bit of a surprise considering the low bar the benchmarks set. I created a 30-minute project with multiple clips, titles, and transitions between clips, and it rendered at about 2x speed, which is better than I expected. The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro even handled playing through the transitions in preview without any choppiness. It wouldn’t be my go-to editing machine, but the Book6 Pro can do the job. The Galaxy Book6 Ultra would be the choice if you wanted unstoppable power, but the Pro is bang for your buck.
Ecosystems being such a big deal in tech makes Samsung more important than many other companies. The ability to seamlessly connect your Samsung phone to the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro, letting you make calls on your computer and move files back and forth as if it’s one device, wirelessly connect to a Samsung tablet as a second screen, or effortlessly connect to peripherals like the Samsung Galaxy Buds, just makes life easier for every user.
A price tag of $ 2,549.99 USD (based on the model I tested) is pricey, more than the recently released (and fully spec’d-out) ASUS Zenbook A16. It is also a significant price jump from the basic Galaxy Book6 model, but it’s a significant leap in performance, too. It may not be a top-tier gaming machine, and it may be more than the average user needs for day-to-day tasks, but it delivers on its promise. The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro is a machine that doesn’t just look the part; it acts the part.
- Featuring Intel AI Boost, Core Ultra 7 processor accelerates on-device AI tasks like live transcription, smart filters, and content creation
- The 14 inch 2880 x 1800 screen delivers an exceptional viewing experience, featuring vibrant colors, sharp resolution, and wide viewing angles
