It’s a fine time to need a desktop replacement laptop. You have a positive plethora of 16-inch models to choose from, many with dazzling OLED displays, and some with discrete GPUs instead of integrated graphics if you’re into visual apps or 1080p gaming. Samsung’s Galaxy Book4 Ultra (starts at $2,399.99; $2,999.99 as tested) is a sleek machine with the company’s top-quality AMOLED screen technology, up-to-date Intel and Nvidia silicon, and the biggest touchpad and power plug you’ve ever seen. It’s worth checking out, particularly if integration with a Samsung Galaxy phone interests you. But it’s expensive, joining models like the Gigabyte Aero 16 OLED and Dell XPS 16 in the high-priced spread.Configurations and Design: Look for Short-Lived Sales If you order a Galaxy Book4 Ultra from Samsung’s website, you’ll find possible savings via trade-in promotions but need to uncheck a box lest you be charged an extra $90 for a 2TB external solid-state drive. The $2,399.99 base model combines a 2,880-by-1,800-pixel touch screen, an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 graphics, 16GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD as well as Windows 11 Home.
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The flagship version seen here steps up to a Core Ultra 9 185H chip, a GeForce RTX 4070, and 32GB of RAM for $2,999.99. However, both models have seen temporary sales recently, with Samsung.com briefly taking $400 off the starter and $500 off our test unit, so it’s smart to visit periodically before pulling the trigger on a purchase.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
At list price, the Samsung isn’t the costliest machine in its class—that would be the XPS 16, $399 more as tested despite a Core Ultra 7 instead of 9. But our Galaxy is $700 above the comparably equipped Gigabyte Aero (with a previous-generation Core i9 CPU) and just more than twice the price of the Editors’ Choice award-winning MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo (with the Core Ultra 7 and integrated graphics). Each of those three rivals has a higher-resolution 4K screen.
Clad in graphite (Samsung calls it Moonstone Gray) aluminum, the Book4 Ultra is impressively slim at 0.65 by 14 by 9.9 inches and relatively trim at 4.1 pounds—heavier than the Acer Swift Edge 16, which qualifies as an ultraportable at 2.73 pounds, but half a pound less than the Gigabyte and a full pound lighter than the HP Envy 16. You’ll feel just a bit of flex if you grasp the screen corners or press the keyboard deck.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The bezels around the display are medium-thin. (The bottom bezel is thicker.) The webcam centered above it has neither IR face recognition nor a privacy shutter or on/off switch, but the provided Samsung Settings utility has an option to disable the camera and microphone. A fingerprint reader built into the power button saves you from typing passwords with Windows Hello. The Galaxy comes with a bulky USB-C power plug that blocks three outlets on a power strip but provides fast 140-watt charging. (Samsung says the charge should go from zero to 55% in half an hour.)
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports join an HDMI monitor port on the laptop’s left side. You’ll find a USB 3.2 Type-A port, a microSD card slot, and an audio jack on the right. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth are included to handle wireless connections.Using the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra: Always Look Your Best Samsung’s 1080p webcam is a sharp one, capturing bright and colorful images with minimal noise or static. It supports Windows’ Studio Effects auto-framing, eye-contact, and background-blur options.Speaking of bright and colorful, Samsung’s AMOLED screens are always a treat. The Book4 Ultra’s panel (with Corning Gorilla Glass touch overlay) shows rich and vivid hues with excellent contrast. Fine details are clear on the screen, with no pixelation around the edges of letters, and white backgrounds are clean instead of grayish or dingy. The display’s brightness is ample if not dazzling, and its viewing angles are broad.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The only possible complaint is that the panel stops at a 2,880-by-1,800-pixel resolution when many rivals can show off 3,840 by 2,400 pixels, or 4K, but colors pop loudly enough to help soften the blow. Gamers and streaming movie buffs will appreciate the dynamic choice of a 60Hz or 120Hz refresh rate, and photo and video editors will like Samsung Settings’ option of automatic, vivid, sRGB, Adobe RGB, or DCI-P3 color presets with temperature and HDR+ brightness controls.Side-mounted quad speakers (two 5-watt woofers and two 2W tweeters) produce a fairly loud and crisp sound—not harsh or tinny even at top volume. You’ll hear just a bit of bass, which is still more than most laptops manage, and it’s easy to make out overlapping tracks. Samsung Settings provides a Dolby Atmos faux-surround-sound toggle and Dolby Access software has game, music, movie, and voice presets and an equalizer.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The backlit keyboard has a numeric keypad (and Microsoft’s newly mandatory Copilot key), but it assumes you’ll make use of the touch screen rather than maneuver the cursor old-school style—the arrow keys are half-sized and pair with the Fn key for Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down. (However, the latter four are available on the numeric pad with Num Lock off.) The buttonless touchpad is gigantic—4.25 by 6 inches—but it glides and taps smoothly with a comfortable click.Samsung’s typing feel, alas, is less comfortable. It’s shallow and hollow with an audible, echoing thud at each stroke. I maintained a decent typing speed but made more errors than usual. An odd quirk is that the system forgets your Fn Lock preference—whether you need to press the Fn key along with top-row keys for options like brightness, volume, or launching Samsung Settings—if you restart Windows from the Start menu. However, the system remembers if you shut down and power up again.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
A slew of preinstalled software ties the Galaxy Book4 Ultra to other Samsung products, letting you cut and paste data between or use your phone or tablet as a second screen, use your phone’s camera for video calls, manage SmartThings connected home devices, or switch your Galaxy Buds between laptop and phone when a call comes in. The apps are of no use to owners of different devices (Bixby? Still? Seriously?), but a plus for the Samsung ecosystem.Testing the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra: Plenty of Power for Almost Every Task We had no trouble finding four other 16-inch OLED desktop replacements to put the Samsung’s benchmark results into context. The HP Envy 16 and Gigabyte Aero 16 OLED use Intel’s previous-generation Core i9, while the Dell XPS 16 has a current-model Core Ultra 7 processor. We gave the last slot to Acer’s ultralight Swift Edge 16, because we were curious to see how its AMD Ryzen CPU would stack up and because its price ($1,299.99 as tested) undercuts even the bargain MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo.
Productivity Tests We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive. Three other benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.5 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. We also use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better). Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe’s famous image editor to rate a PC’s performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It’s an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The Galaxy finished near the front of the pack, breezing through PCMark 10 and our CPU tests. (Though, its Core Ultra 9 didn’t outpace the older Intel Core i9 chips.) It also posted a sizzling, workstation-class score in Photoshop, however, we suspect serious image editors would prefer a 4K instead of a 3K screen. You could make up for this with a 4K monitor at home for when it’s time to work on photos or designs, but many 16-inch power laptops have 4K out of the box.Graphics Tests We test Windows PCs’ graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). To further stress GPUs, we also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests are rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions to exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.
The Galaxy Book again performed splendidly, while the lone laptop with humble integrated graphics, the Acer, was predictably humiliated. As was made apparent regardless of its middling scores, the Galaxy Book is well suited to demanding graphics programs and 1080 gaming as well as office productivity. Just don’t expect to be wowed by its raw power with it being focused on portability as well.Battery and Display Tests We test each laptop’s battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off. To gauge display performance, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen’s color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
The Book4 Ultra took a distant silver medal in our battery rundown, more than doubling the Gigabyte’s runtime and delivering more than enough stamina for a long day at work plus an evening of Netflix. Its screen’s brightness and color coverage were exemplary as well. This again would make it an ideal media editing machine if its display were a bit sharper in resolution.Verdict: A Deal or Price Cut Away From Greatness While MSI’s Prestige 16 AI Evo is a bodacious bargain if you can live without a discrete GPU, the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra gives us little to gripe about except its steep price. We suspect quite a few buyers will snub it for its less-than-4K screen resolution, but its screen quality is first-class otherwise. This Galaxy Book falls short of Editors’ Choice honors as a result, but it’s worth a spot on your list of desktop alternatives if you can nab a discount.
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra
Pros
Potent CPU and GPU combo
Gorgeous 3K AMOLED display
Svelte design
HDMI, USB-A, and USB-C ports
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Cons
Pricier than rivals with sharper screens
Enormous AC adapter
Keyboard includes numeric pad but skimps on cursor controls
Preinstalled apps favor Galaxy smartphone owners
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The Bottom Line
Samsung’s Galaxy Book4 Ultra is a powerful contender in the 16-inch laptop arena, but it’s costly and displays in 1800p instead of the 4K resolution found in cheaper alternatives.
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