Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge review: beauty before brawn

Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chips have quickly turned Windows on Arm into a viable platform. We’ve tested over half a dozen laptops with the new processors, and even the least powerful chip matches Intel and last-gen AMD on CPU performance and beats them on battery life. But I’ve been eager to get my hands on a laptop with Qualcomm’s fastest Snapdragon processor to see if it can do even more. I got to see the high-end model in action back in April on a demo machine, and it seemed like it would be the chip to help usher in a new era of faster, more power-efficient Windows PCs and take on Apple’s MacBook Air M3 in a way that Intel or AMD hadn’t been able to accomplish.

That chip — the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100 — is only available in one Copilot Plus PC: Samsung’s Galaxy Book4 Edge. It’s Samsung’s thinnest and lightest 16-inch laptop, designed for everyday web browsing, a mix of business- and creative-focused work, and running Windows Copilot Plus AI apps like Live Captions and Cocreator. The Edge has similar features to the Intel-based Galaxy Book4 Ultra, like an AMOLED display and a fingerprint reader, but it also offers faster ports and faster Wi-Fi. 

The X1E-84-100 chip is supposed to be up to 20 percent faster than the next model down. Samsung had a chance to make the laptop that could show the platform’s full potential. Instead, it underpowered the hell out of that chip to have the thinnest chassis possible. There’s still a good laptop in the Book4, but you don’t need to buy the best chip to get it — and you’d actually be better off saving the cash.

Heavy, barely portable 16-inch laptops have nearly become a thing of the past, making larger screens an increasingly appealing choice. The Book4 Edge pushes the limits of a 16-inch machine even further. It’s one of a few 16-inch laptops that’s under half an inch thick and under 3.5 pounds, making it one of the most portable large laptops available. It doesn’t strain my back when I carry it in my shoulder bag, and it feels like I can be nimbler with it since its weight is distributed across a larger area compared to some lighter and smaller Copilot Plus PCs I tested. It’s easier to hold, so I’m not afraid of dropping it.

The Edge’s build quality is solid. Its metal chassis is totally rigid, the lid doesn’t flex when you open or close the laptop, and the hinge keeps a firm grip on the lid regardless of how you tilt it. Aesthetically, the machine’s gray keys blend in nicely with its silver body. Samsung says the body color is actually a sapphire blue, but I don’t see any blue in it.

The keyboard is responsive but not attention-grabbing. I like that the keys are not too shallow and that they don’t make a lot of noise, especially for a heavy-fingered typist like myself. But they feel sluggish. The actual press feels slower and softer than I anticipated. I don’t outright dislike them, but after typing on the Asus Zenbook S 16 — a competing 16-inch laptop that’s nearly the same size and weight — I don’t want to go back to Samsung’s.

The Book4 Edge would be great for work, school, or any environment where all you need is a fast, reliable machine to handle the basics. The laptop opens programs a smidge faster than a lot of competing AMD or Intel-based machines, and it can handle a bunch of browser tabs or streaming movies just as well. But since Samsung prioritized design over performance, it passed over a chance to show off what Qualcomm’s fastest Snapdragon chip is capable of at its best. 

The base Book4 Edge model comes with a Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 processor, but the higher-end model I reviewed has the X1E-84-100 chip, which is supposed to be up to 20 percent faster. It’s also supposed to be capable of boosting the max clock speed of two of its cores from 3.8GHz to 4.2GHz.

I monitored the X1E-84-100’s clock speeds during testing. Even in our most punishing multicore benchmarks, none of its 12 cores hit 4.2GHz. Samsung wouldn’t tell me exactly how much power it’s giving the CPU in the Book4 Edge, but it’s clearly not enough. I also track power consumption during benchmarks. The Book4 Edge never drew more than 35W from the wall in my testing; every other laptop I’ve tested with a Qualcomm chip drew closer to 50W. 

Like many processors, the Snapdragon X Elite chips can work within a pretty wide power range: give it more power, and it’ll go faster. It will also produce more heat. The thinner the laptop, the less room there is for the cooling system to dissipate that heat, and the less power you can give the processor as a result. By giving the chip less power, Samsung keeps the temperature under control and the chassis thin. Fortunately, the Book4 Edge not hitting its max clock speed does not have any effect on how it feels to use every day. It’s still around the same speed as the other Snapdragon X Elite laptops we’ve tested.

But it was a letdown when I compared its benchmark scores to laptops with lower-tier Snapdragon chips, like the Dell XPS 13 and Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, and saw lower numbers; the Book4 Edge was 13 to 16 percent slower in multicore performance than those laptops, respectively. The Edge is currently the only laptop with Qualcomm’s fastest processor, and I wanted to see it fly!

The upside to the laptop not running full tilt is that it’s fairly power efficient: I typically got around 14 hours of battery life on a charge. I was able to use it for nearly two full work days while loading up Microsoft Edge with dozens of tabs, streaming music, writing, and taking the occasional video call. I had the laptop’s power mode set to the most efficient setting, but there wasn’t a change in Book4 Edge’s responsiveness. (I didn’t see a notable difference in power draw between efficiency mode and performance mode.)

The thing that impressed me the most about this laptop’s battery life was that it lasted that long on a relatively small 61.8Wh battery, showing how power-efficient Qualcomm made its Snapdragon processors. Just how efficient? Consider the almost identical 16-inch Galaxy Book4 Ultra, which has an Intel Core Ultra chip and a 76Wh battery. The Book4 Edge outlasts it by about 20 minutes, even with a battery that’s 18 percent smaller. Yeah, the chip is that efficient.

Its 2880 x 1800 (3K) AMOLED display also helps save power. It has around half the pixel count of a 4K display, so the laptop doesn’t need to work as hard to power it. But there are still plenty of pixels to keep images looking clean and sharp while generating an expanse of accurate, vibrant colors. It’s a happy middle ground that doesn’t sacrifice image quality for battery life — a big reason why displays with similar resolutions are starting to crop up more often in productivity and gaming laptops alike.

The Book4 Edge is a good, thin, and lightweight laptop for someone like a student who needs a big-screen machine that can handle multiple open apps with ease. It has excellent battery life, a nice screen, and good looks. I just can’t see why Samsung put the most powerful Snapdragon X Elite chip into a laptop and then didn’t take advantage of it. There’s no reason to get the $1,750 model I tested; the $1,450 base model is a much better value for 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 chip.

The Snapdragon processor makes the Book4 Edge one of the thinnest, lightest 16-inch Windows laptops you can get, with great battery life and performance. But power users who need a Windows laptop for creative work or gaming are still much better off with an AMD or Intel machine. Those machines will have better app compatibility and better graphics performance, even if, yes, you will have to trade at least a few hours of battery life. Asus’ Zenbook S 16, for instance, starts at $1,699. It has faster performance, comes with more RAM, and costs a little less than the Book4 Edge, but it’s about a third of a pound heavier and gets around 11 hours of battery instead of 14.

Samsung’s Galaxy Book4 Edge is a good laptop for everything that it does offer. But I still haven’t seen what Qualcomm’s most powerful Snapdragon X Elite chip is capable of.

Photography by Joanna Nelius / The Verge