Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge Review

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is one of the first laptops certified as “Copilot+ Ready” to hit the market. Essentially, this just means the laptop is ready for on-device AI workloads, and is strapped with a fancy new Snapdragon X Elite processor to help it get there. And while there are AI PCs on the way with AMD ‘Strix Point’ and later Intel ‘Lunar Lake’ processors, the Snapdragon X Elite chips were the first to be ready for the new Copilot+ program. But, as with any Windows PC running on ARM, there are some serious growing pains.

Beyond the chip that powers the thing, the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is a beautiful laptop. It’s razor thin, has an absolutely stunning AMOLED display, and a full-sized keyboard. This really could have gone down as one of the best laptops on the market, but the urge to be one of the first Copilot+ PCs holds it back from greatness.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge – Design and Features

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is an extremely thin laptop. Measuring just 0.48 inches thick, this is easily the thinnest 16-inch laptop I’ve ever used. However, even as thin as it is, it still has a wealth of ports, including a USB-A, microSD and a headphone jack. The Galaxy Book 4 Edge is also very light, weighing just 3.4lb, making it easy to carry on any commute.

The aluminum chassis is also robust for how thin it is. I didn’t experience any flex on the screen, and even when pressing down extra hard on the keyboard, it doesn’t crack, creak or give at all. It’s honestly incredible how durable this laptop feels with how thin it is.

However, a 16-inch laptop being so thin and so light is going to have some compromises. For the Galaxy Book 4 Edge, it has to be the speakers. The tinny and quiet speakers are mounted on the bottom of the laptop – always a bad sign – and produce sound with absolutely no low-end. That means if you want to listen to music or watch a movie on the admittedly gorgeous display, you’re going to get sound that’s reminiscent of a cheap smartphone from 2015.

Luckily, the AMOLED display makes up for this a bit. The model Samsung sent over for review has a 16-inch 120Hz AMOLED display at 2,880 x 1600. The display is rated at 500 nits of brightness, and can hit 120% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, making for a bright and vibrant picture. It really is a shame that the speakers are so bad, because this display is awesome for watching movies or playing games – you’ll just want to wear headphones if you do it.

The keyboard is also incredible. Samsung uses the extra real estate of a 16-inch display to include a full-sized keyboard, complete with a numpad. That’s hard to find these days, especially since so many laptop manufacturers favor a slimmer aesthetic over these niche keys. But if you’re doing a lot of spreadsheet work, they’re a godsend, and make working a lot easier.

On the top right corner of the keyboard, you’ll find the power button and fingerprint reader. Logging into Windows with my fingerprint is extremely quick and accurate, and I haven’t really had to rely on entering my PIN in the two weeks I’ve spent with the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge. I would have liked the fingerprint reader to be a bit bigger, but that would likely have cut into the numpad a bit.

Replacing the right Ctrl button is the new Copilot+ key, which is a thing now on AI PCs. Pushing this button brings up the Copilot chat window. Love it or hate it, this is now a mainstay. However, with how close it is to the period key, I constantly found myself hitting it by accident, bringing up the robot when I was just trying to do some work. Having a key that brings up a whole application that you can accidentally hit when typing is such a pain, but that’s on Microsoft, not Samsung.

The touchpad is generally as good as Windows touchpads can get, but it is extremely large. That’s ordinarily a good thing, but the palm rejection isn’t the greatest. More than a few times when writing on the Galaxy Book Edge, I’ve accidentally clicked out of a window, or highlighted a word, due to my palm accidentally grazing the pad. When I’m not actively writing, though, it’s smooth and accurate, and gestures work like a charm. I just wish it would leave me alone when I’m just trying to get some work done.

Because the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is using what is essentially a mobile chip, the laptop has a fanless cooler design. But despite this, the Book 4 Edge doesn’t get too hot when I’m working on it, making it a comfortable little work laptop. Plus, it’s quiet, and you don’t have to put up with fan noise when you’re trying to concentrate.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge – Performance

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is equipped with the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100, one of the new NPU-equipped CPUs at the center of the new Copilot+ “AI PC” craze. This processor is pretty fast for an ultra-portable chip, but it’s built on ARM (Advanced RISC Machine), which introduces some problems in Windows 11.

Most Windows 11 apps have been built with x86 and x64 processors in mind. In the past, that meant most Windows apps just wouldn’t run on an ARM chip. Compatibility is a lot better now, thanks to Windows Prism, a translation layer that essentially emulates an x86 processor when you’re using an ARM chip. It works surprisingly well, but performance takes a sizable hit, especially when you’re trying to do things like play PC games.

The issues with emulation are reflected in the benchmarks. The Snapdragon X Elite has a pretty capable GPU for its class, but it still only manages 2,126 points in 3DMark Time Spy. The Asus ROG Ally X scores 3,346 points. Given the Ally X is also using integrated graphics, and a much older chipset, that’s an extreme margin.

That’s not to mention that games like Forza Horizon 5 won’t even run on the Samsung Galaxy 4 Edge, despite coming with the Xbox app preinstalled. Even the games that will run don’t provide a great experience, with the laptop getting an average of only 34 fps in HItman 3.

To be fair, though, the Galaxy Book 4 Edge isn’t really a gaming laptop anyways, and is primarily built for office work and light AI. It does manage a respectable score of 6,799 points in the new Procyon Office benchmark, which is quite high for a laptop of this class. I’ve been using this laptop as my main work device for a couple of weeks, and I can say that it holds up when doing office work. Even when I have 50 tabs open, the Galaxy Book 4 Edge keeps up with me, thanks to the 16GB of RAM on the device.

I also noticed no difference in performance when working on battery power. Most Windows laptops will get a sizable performance boost when they’re plugged in, but the Galaxy Book 4 Edge is an office workhorse regardless of where your charger is.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge – Battery Life

Despite its issues, the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge has phenomenal battery life, and can last multiple days without charging if you’re not pushing it super hard. In my time with this laptop, the only time I had a situation where I went to turn it on and was faced with a “charge me now” screen was when I turned it on after running a battery test on it.

To be clear, the benchmark we usually use to test battery life – the PCMark10 battery life test – would not run on this ARM-based laptop. However, I ran the Procyon Office battery test, and the laptop clocked an impressive 14 hours and 13 minutes of battery life. That is almost two full work days back-to-back before dying out.

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is absolutely a laptop you can take with you to the office and not worry too much if you forget to pack a charger. Hell, it’ll even survive a transcontinental flight before the battery saver warning pops up. Combined with the gorgeous screen and luxurious chassis, this is an incredible laptop to travel with.

Purchasing Guide

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is available now, starting at 1,349 for the 14-inch model and $1,449 for the 16-inch one reviewed here.

Is an AI PC Worth It?

For all the fanfare these new-fangled AI PCs have received, it’s still not super clear why they’re necessary. The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is by all means a good laptop, but the AI features the laptop is sold on are little more than a gimmick. And not a very good one.

As mentioned earlier, you can hit the little Copilot key and bring up the Copilot AI, but you can do that on any Windows computer by just hitting Win+C. You’d think that the laptop specially designed for this would make this a smoother affair, but it’s just as fluid anywhere else – it’s not even run locally on the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge.

There’s a heaping of other little AI features, too. For instance, in paint, you can generate images from a text prompt, or even turn a little doodle into a more complete (I guess?) image. That’s neat and all, and good for a few minutes of entertainment, but it’s not something I’m going to use a week, month, or year from now.

Laptops sporting NPUs aren’t exactly new, either. Apple’s Macbooks have featured an NPU since 2020’s M1 chip, which helped with AI workloads to be sure, but the bigger win has been battery life and productivity performance. And that’s true for the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge, too. No matter how many little AI toys Samsung packs in the box, none of them compare to the battery life the laptop offers when doing the same boring work you do on your existing laptop.

There’s little reason, then, to upgrade to an AI PC just for the virtue of having an AI PC. The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is just another Ultrabook. And because of the app compatibility woes that the ARM chip brings, it’s not even great at being an Ultrabook – and we’ve had those for years now.

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