ARM based laptops have been available for
a few years now, but they haven’t been very
good. Samsung is trying to change that with
its new Galaxy Book S and in this video, I’ll
tell you both the good and the bad, along
with what having a Snapdragon ARM chip instead
of an Intel or AMD CPU means in the real world,
along with a couple surprises that you have
to know about if you’re considering it.
The laptop feels almost weightless in the
hand. The difference is definitely noticeable
compared to even the MacBook Air. It's mostly
plastic and though it doesn’t feel cheap,
and the chassis is surprisingly rigid, it
also doesn’t feel premium.
We have 2 USB-C ports on the side, there's
no speed rating but I’m guessing USB 3.1
gen 1 as the fastest I could get transfers
is 250MB/s. I was also able to connect to
my 4K display at full resolution and it accepted
the charge through USB-C which is great.
The base model comes with 256GB of SSD and
also 8GB of RAM which I’m glad Samsung didn’t
cheap out on. We also have a built in Micro
SD card slot that is designed for storage
not quickly transferring files which is great
since you can cheaply expand your laptop.
In that same slot we have a SIM card for LTE
we access anywhere you go but more on that
in just a bit.
After using many 16:10 and 3:2 laptops going
back to 16x9 is noticeable but if you’ve
only used these wider displays it will be
fine. Bezels are slim though and the 1080P
display looks better than many other brands
i've used because it gets fairly bright with
good contrast and viewing angles. 1080P doesn’t
look bad on a 13” display and it sips power
compared to a 3 or 4K display.
It's also a touchscreen with good responsiveness
but I think because of the touchscreen layer
reflectivity is increased which is the biggest
issue with this and many other windows laptops.
If you’re going to use it outside you’ll
have to deal with glare.
Above the display we have a 720P webcam that
has fairly good quality but makes video looks
darker than in real life. On the plus side
the audio quality is very good for a laptop
mic.
The Speaker are ported to the side so they
don’t get blocked if it's on your lap. They
sound a bit thin but are surprisingly loud,
about 3 decimals louder than the MacBook air
take a listen for yourself..
While it doesn’t sound great it actually
beats out some windows laptops that are two
to three times the size.
The Keyboard has nice large backlit chiclet
keys but they have low travel and they feel
slightly mushy. In my hands on comparison
I said that I might choose the MacBook Airs
buttery keyboard over this one but after spending
many hours typing, including this full review
and getting used to it have to say that I
changed my mind, but that’s still not saying
that much.
The Trackpad is also decent. It’s plastic
but fairly easy to click. It doesn’t match
up to the Surface Laptop 3’s but is about
average in windows laptops. I do wish It was
slightly larger but it makes sense because
of how small this machine is.
I’m glad Samsung included a fingerprint
scanner built into the power button, but I
did notice having to retry my finger more
often than other laptops but overall it works
and I’m glad its there.
Now it's time to talk about the biggest news
here, the performance of the mobile Snapdragon
ARM processor. Samsung is using the SQ1 which
as far as I know is the fastest ARM chip designed
for windows us. Its an 8 core and raw performance
smokes Apple's latest MacBook air, but that’s
a benchmark and things change in the real
world.
Launching and navigating Windows 10 was fairly
smooth overall, but I did get a few hang ups
that required hard reboots. Along with this
I had issues connecting external SSD’s.
One would connect but not show up and another
would hang on me when transferring files.
I’m guessing this is just a software bug.
There's one more big issue which i think is
software related but I’ll mention that when
its relevant in just a bit.
All stock apps worked as normal which is great,
but many third party apps won’t work. In
fact, I couldn’t test out the SSD speed
of this machine or the display color accuracy
because the apps I use and the alternatives
I found are not supported. If you want to
do things like Photo, video editing, or other
intensive productivity tasks don’t buy this
laptop.
That's because most windows apps are designed
for X86 CPUs from intel or AMD, they won’t
work with or work well with cell phone processors
like the ARM chip in this laptop, atleast
for now.
Sure there may be some apps that are written
or adapted to support ARM or older versions
that could run emulated like the old version
of Photoshop that we tested with The Surface
Pro X but the performance is terrible. An
iPad with the new Photoshop app will be a
much much better experience.
The microsoft store will actually tell you
to upgrade your device when you select an
app that isn’t supported which is laughable
when you just dropped $1000 a laptop in 2020.
The most frustrating thing is I couldn’t
find a filter that only showed my ARM supported
apps which is crazy considering how hard microsoft
is working on support.
This laptop works best with very popular simpler
productivity apps like the office suite, and
web based tasks so thankfully the people Samsung
is targeting aren’t the same ones that need
hardcore power.
Support for ARM is also slowly rolling out,
including new web browsers that offer snappier
performance. The default Edge browser performance
isn’t terrible, definitely better than when
I tested the surface Pro X but you do notice
lag when maximizing windows, scrubbing through
video, and at times even when typing.
This is something you won’t notice with
the $600 PixelBook Go or a Windows laptops.
I ended up downloading Firefox that has native
ARM support and the performance was much snappier,
so I would absolutely recommend downloading
it or another ARM browser right away.
Even though some mobile ported games work
like Asphalt 9 the performance is terrible.
The graphics are technically capable but I
didn’t see more than 50% usage when playing
likely because of poor optimization. If you
want to play games, know that most simply
won’t work.
So if we have so many limitations with ARM
then what's the point? Here are the three
main ones: They are… battery life, LTE,
and heat.
Because of the 7nm efficient design there’s
no fan at all, so its completely silent. The
only time I felt any heat whatsoever was after
watching 60fps 4K HDR video which it actually
played back perfectly smoothly thanks to dedicated
graphics decoding and looked surprisingly
good. Even then, it wasn’t that hot, just
slightly warm in one central spot.
The biggest reason has gotta be battery life.
This thing is rated for a massive 25 hours
of video playback. Now I’m sure that's at
a low screen brightness but from my experience
with it for normal use you can reasonably
expect 16 to 20 hours of mixed use. That is
absolutely crazy, being about twice that what
the competition offers in real-world use.
Now even though battery life is great I did
have a related issue, battery drain when not
using it. My MacBook can be off for a week
and it loses barely any battery where the
Galaxy book S went from 85% to 25% in less
than two days of sleeping. That reminds me
more of smartphones than laptops. I’m not
sure if this is a result of the always on
aways ready design that Microsoft is pushing
or something else.
The last reason to go ARM is the support for
a SIM card so you can have data anywhere,
most laptops don’t offer this and it can
be very convenient if you travel. It has a
good gigabit modem but I wasn’t able to
test it as it supports only Sprint and Verizon
and I have T-Mobile, but speeds should be
similar to higher end Samsung Phone.
I can definitely see the Galaxy Book S in
a business persons bag or briefcase, taking
up almost no room, adding little weight, and
doing a great job for email and web use. Having
the freedom of not having to find wi-fi access
has got to be great and not only because many
hotspots are so slow, but also because of
security reasons.
Price wise it's also very reasonable, coming
it at lower than a MacBook Air, Dell XPS or
Surface Laptop 3, and in some cases offering
more ram and storage, plus the ability to
increase it with micro SD. You can buy a good
512GB Micro SD card with fairly reasonable
read and write speeds for only $95. I’ll
drop a link for you guys below.
That's something you can’t do with a MacBook
air and with most many windows if they offer
a slot the card sticks way out which isn’t
practical for daily attached storage.
Now taking an honest wide overall look at
the machine, in most areas like the display,
keyboard, speakers, trackpad, webcam, and
general performance the Galaxy Book S is just
“good enough” but not really good in anything
but battery life.
Because of that I think if you don’t need
the standout features like battery life and
LTE, I would personally recommend one of two
ultrabook laptops that I linked down in the
video description below, I think most will
be happier with them.
And to answer the question in the title, No
I don’t think ARM is ready for the masses.
Sure its gotten a lot better in the last year
but app selection is still limited and apps
are just starting to be more optimized for
ARM so unless most of your work is web based
I would wait another year before giving an
ARM laptop a chance.
Let me know what you think in the comments
section and click above to subscribe, if you
want to see my comparison to the MacBook air
click right over there, this has been Max
with Max Tech and I’ll see you in the next
video.
