Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro review: When it comes to Windows laptops – and especially thin and light laptops – designed to get everyday work done while being lightweight, portable and powerful, there are few choices . Most don’t have particularly good battery life, and some aren’t powerful enough to handle the daily strenuous tasks users throw at them.
With the Galaxy Book 3 Pro, Samsung tried to do just that—and in a way, it’s accomplished most of it. The laptop is very premium, super lightweight, comes with powerful internals, and battery life is not an Achilles heel. That’s our full review of the Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro.
Our unit is powered by a 13th-generation Intel Core i7-1360P clocked at 2.20GHz and comes with 16GB of RAM. With a sticker price of Rs 1,55,990 it is certainly expensive but promises a premium Windows experience that only a few others can match. Read on to find out whether the latest Galaxy Book 3 Pro is worth your money.
Display: AMOLED Goodness, All Day, Everyday!
Before going into the Galaxy Book 3 Pro’s review period, I was testing the ASUS ROG M16, which has a 16-inch Mini LED panel, but once I moved to the Galaxy Book 3 Pro, I could immediately see That’s how good Samsung’s 14 is. -inch panel—with its deep blacks, accurate color reproduction, all while being super sharp with 3K (2880 x 1800) resolution. Like the last few generations of the MacBook Pro, the Galaxy Book 3 Pro offers a 120Hz refresh rate, and boy, is it smooth.
Browsing the web, watching YouTube and OTT is a pleasure on the 14-inch AMOLED panel. And, with OLED panels infamous for burn-in, I tested the panel for signs of burn-in and even held an inactive image overnight for about 12 hours over several days, but I Happy to say that the display has so far shown no signs of burn-in. Plus, you won’t have any problem working on the laptop in broad sunlight—let’s say while sitting in a cafe—since it’s so bright.
The display also supports 120% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, so editing photos or reviewing files on Photoshop is going to be a great experience.
Talking about Photoshop, let’s talk about performance.
Performance: Don’t expect much, but it’s surprisingly capable
As mentioned earlier, our unit has a 13th-generation Intel Core i7-1360P processor, but you can also pick up a cheaper Core i5 model, which won’t be quite as powerful. On paper, being a P series processor, you would think that the Galaxy Book 3 Pro wouldn’t be able to do much, but that’s not true. And, while it’s no performance winner – being able to run the latest AAA titles or handle multiple layers of 4K LOG footage in Adobe Premiere Pro, the Galaxy Book 3 Pro does not work well with apps like Photoshop, Lightroom and basic editing on DaVinci holds its place in Solution 18. I tested all of the above apps, and thanks to 16GB of DDR5 memory, the laptop handles everything well and barely skips a beat after an hour or so. I noticed it got uncomfortably hot after a while—when it was in high-performance mode—but being a metal chassis, that’s to be expected, and cools down. After an hour of intensive work, you can expect it to slow down—bringing performance down.
Also, just for the fun of it, I installed Xbox GamePass and installed Death’s Door on it. whyIf you reduce the resolution to 1080p, you can get a fully playable experience. So, you can expect it to power through most indie games that don’t require much horsepower.
But, if I were you, I wouldn’t buy the Galaxy Book 3 Pro for its performance, I’d buy it for the balance it offers between portability, power, and good aesthetics.
Design and keyboard: Great build, better keyboard
Let me start with the build quality first, and here, it is safe to say that it rivals the very best, including the MacBook. With an all-metal chassis, a large glass trackpad, a well-designed hinge, and being lightweight, the Galaxy Book 3 Pro feels very premium.
In all fairness, design and looks are factors anyone should consider buying this laptop. Not only does it look minimal, and have just the right amount of professional for a business setting, but the laptop is also comfortable enough to travel with – it weighs only 1.17KG (14-inch variant). Yes, it’s heavily reminiscent of the MacBook, but that’s okay, and I’m glad Samsung went down that path.
Now, as far as the keyboard goes, I’m equally impressed. It’s not only satisfying to type on, but as I type this review on the same keyboard, I can see it’s barely worn out. Trust me, I type a lot, and my MacBook Air M1 started to wear out within a month of use—with a glossy sheen replacing the matte texture of the keys. But with the Galaxy Book 3 Pro, I have yet to see it. It’s been over a month since it was used, and it still looks as good as new.
I am also typing on it quite comfortably, but I have a little problem with it. The edges of the chassis can hurt your wrists after long periods of typing while typing, but it’s not the keyboard itself, it’s the sharp edges of the chassis underneath. I wish Samsung would curve it a bit in future releases.
For I/O, the Galaxy Book 3 Pro comes with a modest selection of ports – a full-sized HDMI, a microSD card slot, a USB 3.2 Type-A port, and a few USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4. Would have preferred an SD card port instead of a microSD port, but I’ll take it.
Battery Life and Charging: OK, Not Great
Compared to most ultrathin Windows laptops, the Galaxy Book 3 is a vast improvement, but a far cry from Samsung’s claimed numbers. The 63Wh battery will last about 3-4.5 hours at 50% brightness—when doing light tasks like browsing the web or typing Word documents.
But if you’re planning on doing heavy work like editing a RAW file in Adobe Photoshop, expect it to last up to three hours. Let me be clear that battery life may vary for you depending on how you use your machine, but for me, it was an average score if used daily.
Samsung has provided a 65W charger in the box, and it can charge the laptop from zero to full in less than two hours. The brick itself is small and should easily fit in most backpacks.
minor annoyance
I don’t know if it’s just me or the MacBook’s fingerprint reader screwed me, but the fingerprint reader on the Galaxy Book 3 Pro isn’t as accurate as some of the other readers I’ve seen. It fails to recognize my finger quite often – despite re-registering it several times.
Another complaint I have with the Galaxy Book 3 Pro is its speakers. They’re not quite as loud as the MacBook Air M2, and can sound hollow at max volume. Now that summer is in full swing, I can hardly hear Sheldon fiddling around with his science fiction while watching The Big Bang Theory on the laptop — but once I turn off the ceiling fan and turn on the AC, I can hear him could listen again. This cannot be expected from a laptop with such a price.
As mentioned earlier, the laptop gets hot, and the heat reaches the part where the trackpad is, and along with that it becomes uncomfortable and your palms sweat if you are not in an air-conditioned setting. goes.
But, apart from these, I don’t find much else to complain about the Galaxy Book 3 Pro, apart from perhaps its price. But what can I say, it’s meant to be sold as a premium product—it’s part of the Samsung ecosystem, and that’s where it delivers the most.
Ecosystem: Real Value
Like Apple, brands like Samsung are working hard to create a complete ecosystem of products that work with each other—all complementing each other. Here, the Galaxy Book 3 Pro excels. I’ve been using the laptop alongside the Galaxy S23 and Galaxy Watch 5 Pro—essentially the entire ecosystem, and frankly the experience has been nothing short of phenomenal. Just like AirDrop, it’s easy to transfer files, you can use your Galaxy mobile device as a secondary extended screen, you can drag and drop files between them, you can take calls—it just works Is.
In all fairness, the experience is turning out to be pretty close, if not better in some things, than what Apple provides with its devices, and it’s fantastic to watch. I hope Samsung continues to iterate on the feature set and make it even better over time, because honestly that’s what it’s worth most.
Verdict: A solid premium Windows laptop that unfortunately costs too much
With a class-leading 3K AMOLED panel, excellent build quality, keyboard and multimedia experience as good as a laptop can get- for the price, it’s hard to recommend the Galaxy Book 3 Pro, unless you have a Windows laptop. The use case for the Galaxy Book 3 Pro isn’t well defined, and for Rs 1,55,990, the laptop puts itself on par with both the high-end MacBook Pro and the equally great entry-level MacBook Air M1 with Apple silicon. finds in the middle. and M2. Not to forget, if you are a power user, there are alternatives like the ASUS ROG gaming laptop.
So, unless you want to completely switch to the Samsung ecosystem, skip it.