Samsung Galaxy Book S practice

BERLIN: ALWAYS CONNECTED PCS Although they are the Chrome Windows equivalent of Chromebooks, they have not really taken over the world of laptops. Poor performance and some software incompatibilities with the running of Windows 10 applications on ARM-based instruction sets rather than the traditional x86 architecture have prevented these machines from finding the spotlight.

However, Samsung's Galaxy Book S is looking to change that and, at the IFA 2019 in Berlin, we had hands-on time with the machine, though after arguments with Samsung's staff.

Design

The Galaxy Book S is a beautiful ultraportable machine. It is thin at 11.8 mm thickness and minimal too; very consistent with the Galaxy brand. And in a coppery pink livery, it stands out from the crowd of laptops without being ostentatious.

From a visual point of view, everything is fine, and the Galaxy Book S also looks like a well made machine. At our first impression, the keyboard is the ideal solution.

While the trackpad was glass and offered a smooth and precise mouse experience, the keyboard was weak and the keys looked cheap and a little flickering.

Typing on it seemed a little vague and as if you were tapping on a cheap Chromebook rather than a slightly more expensive device that has the particularity of being aimed at those looking for a higher quality laptop.

But the thinness has a price, and this price is a lack of ports. The Galaxy Book S has only two USB-C ports, although both are Thunderbolt 3, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a microSD card slot … and that's it. This is not really a machine for people who have a lot of legacy USB – A accessories, but it 's not the end of the world because there are plenty of good dongles.

Nevertheless, the lack of port-based features and extras means that we could easily hold the Galaxy Book S between two fingers; This thing is not heavy, which is handy for lugging a machine with a 13-inch screen.

Display

Speaking of which, the Galaxy Book S comes with a 13.3-inch touch screen, displaying a rather mundane FHD resolution. It's good for a screen of this size, but do not expect it to serve the most accurate images and graphics.

Under the spotlight of Samsung's showcase, it was difficult to get an adequate imprecision of the screen.

The colors and contrasts seemed good, if not captivating, the brightness seemed decent when bent; However, when we reduce the brightness, the panel becomes very dark.

Samsung is very good at creating excellent screens for phones, but we feel that by using an LCD instead of OLED screens, we lose the ball slightly. It's not that the display is bad, but it does not impress us.

Performance, storage and battery life

This is the first machine to integrate Snapdragon 8cx from Qualcomm, a chipset specifically designed to run Windows 10 on Always Connected PCs, rather than replicate the usual behavior of chip maker smartphones.

The chip itself includes an Octa-core 64-bit Kryo 496 processor with a 2.84GHz clock speed on cores designed for full power and at 1.8 GHz on cores designed to be more energy efficient in cores. less demanding tasks.

This processor is mixed with the Adreno 680 from Qualcomm, a pretty respectable GPU that's found in high-end smartphones.

Since we had been warned not to take the Galaxy Book S by a security officer without very good understanding of English, we certainly had no opportunity to put the bullet to the test. .

But we had the impression that Windows 10 was running smoothly. Things did not seem fast like lightning, but in this case, the rest of the material could be processed as much as the SoC.

Things look promising for Snapdragon 8cx, as evidenced by some early tests showing visual difficulties with eighth-generation Intel Core i processors. But that 's the beginning, and Ice Lake' s 10 – nanometer Intel processors are debuting in thin and light laptops. Therefore, Qualcomm may not have left the venerable chip maker etched into the performance stakes of laptop chips.

But the graphics performance that Snapdragon 8cx could offer, given its smartphone heritage, could make sure that a machine that does not look like a powerhouse capable of pushing pixels can actually have some benefits.

The memory is entered at 8 GB, which is perfect for a Windows 10 machine, if it is not really something exciting.

The storage capacity of this model was 256 GB of SSD space, but the Galaxy Book S will offer a 512 GB SSD, which can be extended up to 1 TB using a microSD card.

Samsung thinks that the Galaxy Book S will last about 23 hours in video playback, but we did not expect to see this type of endurance in other computer tasks. We could not test this stuff at the booth, but we put a good bet on the Galaxy Book S during a busy day of work, followed by a few hours of Netflix once back home.

First impressions

The Galaxy Book S is a very attractive and well designed machine, much like a lot of Samsung hardware. And it's a good gadget to present the Snapdragon 8cx at the heart of an always connected PC.

But we have reservations when it comes to the keyboard, which is disappointing for a laptop that should start at $ 999, or £ 810, because there are devices like the Surface Pro 6 that can be used to roughly this amount. offers an interesting hybrid experience, but use an appropriate x86 processor to keep pace with Windows 10.

Nevertheless, Samsung has created a good gadget here, if not something we expected from our first impression.

We would need more time and time to give the Galaxy Book S a good analysis before making a thorough copper judgment. However, despite our reservations, the Galaxy Book S shows that it is possible that Always Connects PC has a very attractive aesthetic and promises laptops that do not require an Intel or AMD processor to deliver Windows 10 products.