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Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra (Quick Look) - Creativity at Your Fingertips

This laptop is boosted by AI, and features a new responsive, dynamic AMOLED 2X display that caps at 3K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate.

Audio transcription

"Hello everyone and welcome to another Gamereactor Quick Look.
I have been kind of bored by Samsung's designs over the past couple of years, but one thing that they did and did very well was that they introduced an Ultra variant to their Galaxy Tab lineup."

"If you remember, that's kind of like the biggest tablet in the world.
And just because it's big makes it kind of exciting all over again, because it means that the way that Samsung was actively marketing it was as these like second screen experiences or as like a big sketch notepad that you could almost put down on a table and it would be big enough in order to serve as that."

"Again, it didn't really reinvigorate the market or it didn't really offer any new distinct functionalities, but because of the inches being that big, it was a nicer way of going about thinking about what to use a tablet for.
Now they're going to try and do the same here for the Galaxy Book series."

"This is called the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Ultra and it is almost, and in some cases depending on what you get, as expensive as a MacBook 16-inch Pro.
That is insane because we already know that if you go to Apple's website right now and you buy a MacBook Pro 16-inch, that is ludicrously expensive."

"It's difficult to say whether it's too expensive, but it is like in the higher echelons of what you can consider from these kinds of workstation laptops.
So for a Samsung laptop to be close to that, that is significant, but you do get a lot for your money here."

"So for one, you get inside an Intel Core Ultra 9, the 185H version of that CPU.
You get an RTX 4070 in a chassis this thin, which is very nice, 32 gigs of RAM alongside a terabyte SSD.
Now that in and of itself actually isn't the best thing about it because I just did five seconds of Googling and found an Asus ROG Zephyrus G16, which is also a 16-inch gaming laptop, mind you, but they don't look as gaudy as they used to, where you can get the exact same specs and probably a better screen, at least for gaming, for just around half of what this costs."

"So why would you get this?
Well you would probably get it if you want all of the specifications that I just listed, but you want it in a chassis which is just 19 millimeters thick.
This weighs just 1.7 kilograms."

"And there are a number of different good cases for this too.
The quality of its screen for content creation and overall sort of consumption is stronger than the one you'd find on a Zephyrus.
You get a really smaller charger, like 140 watts, but a very MacBook-esque, meaning that you can just hang it off the wall plug instead of having this big battery brick, which obviously adds to the weight, which already is much more than the 1.7 kilogram that this will take up."

"So it's about combining raw horsepower with sort of the compact nature of the workstation laptop.
So again, very MacBook Pro 16-inch-esque.
Now inside here we find a lot of strong fundamentals."

"First and foremost, this is built like a tank.
Normally, in order to achieve the lower weights that Samsung Galaxy Books achieve, well, they skimp on the materials and the build quality, and sometimes it's a bit more plasticky than it perhaps needs to be."

"Not so here.
This is all, my guess is that it's kind of a magnesium alloy.
Maybe it's aluminum, but it feels very nice.
The keyboard is fantastic."

"Very tactile.
Some people might say that it's too membrane-y, too soft, but I like it.
There's even a numpad here and a fingerprint sensor, which is great.
This trackpad, seemingly for a lot of people, is too big."

"For me, trackpads can get too big.
It's so nice to be able to sit in different positions and have the full utilization of several finger keystroke gestures that I just really enjoy.
So it's nice to have that here."

"The screen is a 16 by 10 affair, so no more 16 by 9.
Thank you for that.
It's a 16-inch AMOLED touch-based display that runs through VRR between 48 and 120 hertz.
That's very nice."

"It also runs at a resolution that is slightly higher than you'd probably expect, so that's 2800 by 1800, which is getting close to MacBook Pro territory.
Also, in our little test that we were able to perform before we reset it and was ready to get it sent back, is that this basically crushed the DCI-P3 color gamut test that we had, clocking it at about 135%."

"That is like eons better than most that you would get in the Windows laptop sort of department, that particular part of the business.
So that's really impressive as well.
The only problem was that it's not the brightest of displays."

"It is perhaps, I think, 420, 450 nits, which obviously is bested by Apple.
But compared to just two years ago, Windows laptops are getting dangerously close to emulating the MacBook Pro experience.
And you know what the best thing is?
One battery test of YouTube playback, which is sort of the standard thing that we did, we got around like 11 hours worth of playback on it."

"That's insane from something that runs an Intel Core Ultra 9 CPU and an RTX 4070, and will probably freaking destroy that ROG Zephyrus that I just spoke about earlier.
My only major gripe, apart from the price, which you will have to figure out on your own whether or not that's too much or just right or whatever, is that I just don't think this looks particularly exciting."

"I know MacBook Pros aren't the most edgy designs that you would find on the market anyway, but it does have the rounded edges.
I think the sort of the tank-like density of the chassis.
It has posture and stance and personality."

"And this is what if I told someone to draw a laptop, everyone would draw this.
Because there's nothing inherently wrong with it.
I mean, this branding is not that big and it's not gaudy or anything like that.
There are no panel gaps to speak of, or it basically looks very classy, I would say."

"But it also just doesn't look like anything.
And I would have loved if Samsung would have run with a different color or try something, I don't know, try something else.
I'm not a designer, so I don't know what that would be."

"But I do know that if you're buying something which is incredibly expensive, you would want it to ooze quality and luxury when you take it out of the box.
And this just doesn't really do that.
I mean, if you look at it like this, it looks like a Windows laptop."

"It probably also looks like a Windows laptop, which doesn't cost as much as this does.
So I want Samsung to take more risks.
I think that'll be good.
And I think a very good point of reference is, I don't really use Microsoft Surface products anymore, but Microsoft Surface laptops look fantastic."

"It is very much in the same ballpark as this, but there's just, there's something about it.
There really is.
So maybe, and this is just, maybe put Alcantara on the deck like Microsoft used to do."

"That gave it some character.
But again, it's just, it's just one particular theory.
I just know what I'm looking at and I would want it to look more, have more pizzazz.
So for much more on the Galaxy Book 4 Ultra, stay tuned to Game Racktor, bye."

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