Samsung brings the new Intel Core Ultra chips to the Galaxy Book 4 series

Hot on the heels of Intel’s Core Ultra announcement yesterday, Samsung has now given us a look at its first devices powered by them – the Samsung Galaxy Book4 series.

These won’t be our first time checking out Intel’s latest mobile chips but we weren’t fully sold on the Core Ultra 7 in the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, so the pressure is on Samsung to make them shine.

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There are three devices in the series, spearheaded by the top-end Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra. This 16in machine is the largest and heaviest of the troupe, measuring 355 x 250 x 16.5mm when folded, and weighing a healthy 1.86kg.

You’ve got a few choices for configurations, with SSD storage options of 1 or 2TB (plus an extra slot internally for expansion), 16GB or 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM and either Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 or 4070 GPUs for graphics. And then of course you can pick your poison between the Intel Core Ultra 7 and Ultra 9 processors. Both of these come from Intel’s latest “Meteor Lake” range, which are built on Intel’s 7nm manufacturing process and introduce a new “tile-based” architecture.

Alongside the CPU and GPU, this new structure also has a dedicated module (or “tile”) for the neural processing unit (NPU), which will apparently bring with it a whole host of productivity focused AI features. Details were fairly light on what exactly these would be, but a couple of examples were provided, outlining how the NPU will work with the Nvidia GPU to boost creative endeavours – producing simple RTX-optimised Stable Diffusion images within seconds, for instance.

Whichever configuration you opt for, the rest of the Galaxy Book4 Ultra is the same as it was last year: around the edges you’ll find a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB-A port, a 3.5mm jack, a microSD slot and an HDMI 2.1 port, which is capable of outputting 8K at 60fps or up to 5K at 120fps. There’s also a USB-C port for the 140W adapter, which Samsung says can charge the battery to 55% in 30 minutes. On the wireless connectivity front, the laptop supports Wi-Fi 6E as well as Bluetooth 5.3.

Flip the lid open and you’re met with a 16in 16:10 AMOLED display with a resolution of 2,880 x 1,800. A big change this year is that this is now a touchscreen, something that has previously been exclusive to the 360 Galaxy Books. Samsung claims a peak brightness of 400 nits, and VRR is included too, with a range of 48-120Hz. Below that is a full backlit keyboard, including a numeric keypad. There’s also a quad-speaker setup comprising two 5W woofers and a pair of 2W tweeters, which supports Dolby Atmos output.

As you’d expect, the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Pro and 4 Pro 360 sit fairly close to the 4 Ultra, so let’s just quickly run down the main differences. The first obvious difference is the size. The Galaxy Book 4 Pro comes in 14in and 16in sizes, both of which are also touchscreens for the first time. The former measures 312 x 224 x 11.6mm folded and weighs a breezy 1.26kg, while the latter measures 355 x 250 x 12.5mm folded and weighs 1.56kg. The Galaxy Book4 Pro 360, meanwhile, is a 16in machine that measures 355 x 252 x 12.8mm folded and is just a little heavier at 1.66kg.

Inside, both machines run on the Intel Core Ultra 7 chipset, paired with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and either 512 or 1TB of SSD storage. The Galaxy Book4 Pro gets the same expansion slot as the Ultra, while the 360 is internal storage only. At least the latter gets a bundled S-Pen stylus to compensate. Finally, the Pro and 360 both use integrated Intel Arc graphics that share the onboard memory.

All three machines will be available in “Moonstone Grey”, while the Galaxy Book 4 Pro and 4 Pro 360 also get a “Platinum Silver” alternative. Lips are still sealed on the matter of UK pricing and availability, but we do at least know that the series will land in Korea as of January 2024, with select other markets to follow. We’ll hopefully be getting our hands on review samples sooner rather than later, though, so be sure to check back for our full thoughts on the Samsung Galaxy Book4, hopefully early in 2024.