Samsung's Galaxy Book series has never been one to compromise on quality, and that's abundantly clear with the Galaxy Book 6 Pro and Galaxy Book 6 Ultra that I've been using over the past few weeks. They're as close to the premium feel of a that you can get on the Windows side of the fence, and the Samsung Display-designed AMOLED displays are immaculate.

Add in a dash of Intel's Panther Lake CPUs for power and battery longevity, and a sprinkle of Nvidia dGPUs for the Ultra model, and you've got plenty of power for whatever tasks the day throws at you. The best laptops of the year are all similarly powered, and while I'm sure we haven't seen the best yet, the bar has been set very high.

About this review: Samsung sent XDA a Galaxy Book 6 Ultra and Galaxy Book 6 Pro for the purposes of this review. The company had no input into its content and did not see it before publication.

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  Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra

  Operating System

  Windows 11

  CPU

  Intel Core Ultra X7 / 7 Series 3

  GPU

  Intel Arc Graphics, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 or RTX 5070

  RAM

  16 or 32 GB LPDDR5x

  Storage

  512GB, 1TB, 2TB SSD

  Battery

  80.2 Wh

  The Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra is every bit worthy of that honorific, with powerful processors, Nvidia graphics, and a stunning OLED display, at a wallet-draining price.

  Pros & Cons

  • Beautiful AMOLED touch screen
  • Powerful internals
  • Great speaker quality

  • Unsatisfying, shallow keyboard
  • Expensive
  • Not a fan of how sharp the edges are when typing

  $2450 at Samsung
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  Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Pro

  Operating System

  Windows 11

  CPU

  Intel Core Ultra X7 / 7 / 5 (Panther Lake)

  GPU

  Intel Arc Graphics (Shared) Intel Graphics (Shared)

  RAM

  16 / 32 GB LPDDR5x

  Storage

  256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB SSD

  Battery

  14-inch: 67.18 Wh, 16-inch: 78.07 Wh

  The Galaxy Book 6 Pro is a stunning 16-inch laptop with an OLED screen to die for, and a surprisingly portable weight. It's also got fantastic battery life thanks to Intel's Panther Lake, great speakers, and a wonderful touchpad, although the keyboard could be more satisfying to press.

  Pros & Cons

  • Superby AMOLED display
  • Great sound quality from the speakers
  • Amazing battery life

  • Unsatisfying, shallow keyboard
  • Samsung bloatware

  $1600 at Samsung

Samsung Galaxy Book 6: Pricing, availability, and specs

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Book 6 series at CES, but we'll have to wait until Galaxy Unpacked on February 25 to preorder these new laptops. It looks like a handful of European countries are getting first dibs, with laptops shipping from March 11, and the rest of the world having to wait until April.

The 16-inch Galaxy Book 6 Pro starts at $1,600, the Galaxy Book 6 Ultra at $2,450, and the Galaxy Book 6 at $1,050. These are the base models of each tier, so expect the pricing to increase as you add more storage or a more powerful processor (or dGPU on the Ultra models).

• Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra

  CPU

  Intel Core Ultra X7 / 7 Series 3

  GPU

  Intel Arc Graphics, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 or RTX 5070

  Display type

  AMOLED, 500 nits SDR, Touch, 30-120Hz

  Display (Size, Resolution)

  16-inch 2880×1800

  RAM

  16 or 32 GB LPDDR5x

  Storage

  512GB, 1TB, 2TB SSD

  Battery

  80.2 Wh

  Charge speed

  140W (Nvidia), 100W (Intel)

  Ports

  2x Thunderbolt 4, 1x USB-A 5 Gbps, HDMI 2.1, SD card slot, audio jack

  Operating System

  Windows 11

  Webcam

  2 MP

  Wi-Fi connectivity

  Wi-Fi 7

  Bluetooth

  Bluetooth 5.4

  Dimensions

  356.9 x 248.0 x 15.4 mm

  Weight

  1.79 kg (Arc) 1.89 kg (RTX)

  Speakers

  Six speakers

  Colors

  Gray

• Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Pro

  CPU

  Intel Core Ultra X7 / 7 / 5 (Panther Lake)

  GPU

  Intel Arc Graphics (Shared) Intel Graphics (Shared)

  Display type

  Touch AMOLED, Anti-Reflective

  Display (Size, Resolution)

  14-inch or 16-inch, 2,880x1,800, 500 nits SDR, 1,000 nits HDR, 120Hz

  RAM

  16 / 32 GB LPDDR5x

  Storage

  256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB SSD

  Battery

  14-inch: 67.18 Wh, 16-inch: 78.07 Wh

  Charge speed

  65W

  Ports

  2x Thunderbolt 4, 1x USB-A 5 Gbps, 1x HDMI 2.1, audio jack

  Operating System

  Windows 11

  Webcam

  2 MP

  Wi-Fi connectivity

  Wi-Fi 7

  Bluetooth

  Bluetooth 5.4

  Dimensions

  14-inch: 314.2 x 220.6 x 11.6 mm 16-inch: 356.9 x 248.0 x 11.9 mm

  Weight

  14-inch: 1.24 kg 16-inch: 1.59 kg

  Speakers

  14-inch - Stereo, 16-inch - quad

  Colors

  Gray, Silver

The Galaxy Book 6 is sleek and refined

Samsung is aiming at the top tier crowd

Samsung hasn't deviated much from the sleek lines of last year's Book 5, but it didn't need to, as that was already one of the most stylish laptops around. For a 16-inch laptop, both the Pro and Ultra versions are lighter than you might think looking at them, but that doesn't mean they feel flimsy under sustained typing.

The biggest change this year is the larger touchpad, which is haptic and a joy to use, with accurate sensing and pleasing feedback on clicks. The keyboard is centered, with no numpad squeezing valuable space, allowing Samsung to put a quad-speaker system on the Pro and a six-speaker system on the Ultra, which are sonically superb whether you're using that screen for video conferences or catching up on your favorite shows.

The Ultra is a few hairs thicker, probably due to the inclusion of more heatpipes to keep the Nvidia dGPU cool, but it's not much of a change, and you do get a full-sized SD card reader to make up for the added heft.

Panther Lake performs perfectly

I'm not sure that you need the dGPU option here

Samsung sent over a Book 6 Pro with the flagship Core Ultra X7 358H, and a Book 6 Ultra with the midrange Core Ultra 7 356H paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 mobile discrete graphics chip. Out of the two, the Book 6 Pro is actually my favorite, running cool and quiet at all times, while the Panther Lake iGPU is plenty of power for document creation, photo editing, and some gaming.

If you need the extra graphics grunt of a dGPU, the Ultra is your best option, but I don't think most people will need it. Only having 8GB of VRAM limits what you can do with it anyway, and it runs hotter and louder than the Book 6 Pro. The Core Ultra X7 358H will be a better buy for most users. Other than that, the performance uplift over Arrow Lake or Lunar Lake is decent, while sipping power when away from the wall.

Okay, sipping power when it's only the Panther Lake CPU in play. Samsung hasn't opted for using Nvidia's Optimus MUX system on the Book 6 Ultra, so there's no switching between the dGPU and iGPU. That means a little higher benchmarks and in-game performance, but a huge hit to battery life.

While the PTL-equipped Book 6 Pro managed 20 hours in the Procyon video playback test (at 200 nits brightness), the Book 6 Ultra didn't quite reach 8 hours. With real-world usage, that number is lower, and I couldn't leave the 140W charging brick at home. The 100W brick for the Pro variant was only needed at night.

The AMOLED display never fails to impress

But what's this curve all about?

At this point, you should reasonably expect that any Samsung device with an OLED display will be impeccable. That's definitely the case here: a 2,880x1,800 resolution, 120Hz stunner with touch support on both models. Both measure 100% of sRGB and 100% of P3, and around 540 nits of SDR brightness, which is slightly higher than the 500 nits Samsung specifies.

What's more, they're within a couple of percentage points of luminance uniformity across the whole panel and have an average deltaE of 0.5 for color accuracy. These are actually one of the only displays that the Datacolor SpyderPro I use for testing gave an overall rating of 5.0, and it's been a joy to use for everything from movie watching with that immersive speaker system to document creation.

The curved corners are a Samsung staple, but they do get in the way of UI elements sometimes, and can be annoying. And the webcam feels like a tickbox being checked, with 1080p resolution that's soft-focus and bad at anything that doesn't resemble perfect lighting conditions. Considering how much noise Samsung makes about its selfie cameras on Galaxy smartphones, it's about time that level of detail was brought to the Galaxy Book range.

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Book 6?

You should buy the Samsung Galaxy Book 6 if:

• You want a stunning OLED screen
• You use your laptop to watch movies and need a great soundsystem
• You want something that looks a little different to the rest

You should NOT buy the Samsung Galaxy Book 6 if:

• You can't get past the curved corners on the display
• The keyboard feel matters to you
• You need a quality webcam

I've been a fan of Samsung's laptops for years, starting with a 12-inch model we owned in the early 2010's. The Galaxy Book 6 Pro is my favorite of the two models I've been swapping between, partly because Panther Lake is so good that I never once thought I needed the Nvidia dGPU in the Book 6 Ultra.

The only big question that hasn't been answered yet is pricing. While the European prices are high, those also include VAT. It's anyone's guess what the US pricing will be like after taxes and tariffs are factored in. Still, this is as close as you can get to a MacBook running Windows, and it's priced accordingly.

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  Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra

  8/10

  Operating System

  Windows 11

  CPU

  Intel Core Ultra X7 / 7 Series 3

  GPU

  Intel Arc Graphics, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 or RTX 5070

  RAM

  16 or 32 GB LPDDR5x

  The Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra is a powerful, sleek laptop with Nvidia graphics options.

  See at Samsung
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  Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Pro

  8.5/10

  Operating System

  Windows 11

  CPU

  Intel Core Ultra X7 / 7 / 5 (Panther Lake)

  GPU

  Intel Arc Graphics (Shared) Intel Graphics (Shared)

  RAM

  16 / 32 GB LPDDR5x

  The Galaxy Book 6 Pro is a slim, stylish laptop powered by Intel's Panther Lake.

  See at Samsung