Samsung’s Flagship Laptop Is A Macbook Pro Clone Gone Horribly Wrong

II cognize I’m not nan only personification who wants a MacBook Pro for Windows: a sleek, ultra powerful, ace portable instrumentality pinch an fantabulous surface and high-quality build. Samsung’s Galaxy Book6 Ultra surely tries. It’s sewage a beautiful surface and a bully design, and it’s arsenic solidly built arsenic laptops come.

It besides looks, well, almost precisely for illustration a MacBook Pro, to nan constituent wherever I occasionally usage nan incorrect keyboard shortcuts retired of habit. Other Windows laptops person astatine times incorporated immoderate MacBook creation influences, but nan Galaxy houses so galore of them that it’s evident what Samsung was going for.

Imitating things group want is understandable. But Samsung besides repeats immoderate of Apple’s erstwhile failings, for illustration including a unspeakable keyboard and a amazingly bad webcam. And it’s charging high-end MacBook Pro money for a instrumentality that doesn’t execute for illustration one.

“Good artists copy, awesome artists steal.” But what if they botch nan robbery?

The Galaxy Book6 Ultra starts astatine $2,900 pinch a 16-core Core Ultra X7 358H spot and integrated Intel Arc B390 graphics. Our reappraisal configuration has a akin Intel Core Ultra 7 356H spot paired pinch an Nvidia RTX 5070 Laptop GPU. It besides has 32GB of soldered RAM and a 2TB SSD. It costs $3,200 earlier RAMageddon drove prices up. Now, it’s a whopping $3,800 pinch a 1TB SSD. At that price, it’s conscionable $100 awkward of a 16-inch MacBook Pro pinch M5 Max pinch 36GB of representation and a 2TB SSD. (Let’s support that fig successful nan backmost of our minds.)

As expected from a high-end Samsung device, nan show is gorgeous. The 16-inch, 2880 x 1800 OLED touchscreen is agleam and sharp, rendering vibrant colors and cleanable contrast. And nan 120Hz adaptive refresh complaint makes mobility bully and smooth.

Like a MacBook Pro, nan Galaxy Book6 Ultra has Thunderbolt and HDMI 2.1 ports and an SD paper slot. While nan MacBooks person 3 Thunderbolt 5 ports, nan Samsung has 2 Thunderbolt 4 and an old-fashioned USB-A. Regardless of USB preference, it’s a bully larboard action that’s fresh for demanding users and contented creators. It’d beryllium bully if it were Thunderbolt 5, fixed nan price, but Panther Lake doesn’t person autochthonal support for Thunderbolt 5.

When it comes to performance, nan Book6 is fast. It’s speedy capable to grip engaged multitasking and tackle hefty edits successful Lightroom Classic. It slowed down a touch erstwhile I made chunky edits utilizing taxable and inheritance discovery masks, past copied and pasted them crossed batches of images, but I expect that successful astir laptops different than high-end Macs pinch Pro and Max chips.

Thanks to nan discrete graphics, I could moreover play games for illustration Battlefield 6 and Marathon reasonably good (two games you can’t tally astatine each connected macOS). In BF6, I typically sewage a coagulated 70+ fps by keeping settings modest: mean presets astatine 2880 x 1800 solution pinch DLSS group to Performance. Marathon mustered a passable 50+ fps utilizing Nvidia’s optimized settings. The fans don’t moreover get ace loud, but, successful exchange, nan underside of nan Galaxy Book’s chassis sewage very hot adjacent nan back.

The Intel Panther Lake CPU and Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU combo makes nan Book6 a spot of a sleeper gaming laptop. It’s miles up of either MacBook for that. But for $3,800 you tin get overmuch amended capacity from nan more straightforwardly gamer-looking laptops retired there. Or you tin stay somewhat stealthy pinch a Razer Blade aliases Asus ROG Zephyrus, and get akin gaming capacity for a batch little money.

Unfortunately, gaming capacity isn’t capable for a laptop that costs almost $4,000. In benchmarks nan Galaxy Book6 Ultra is person to nan $1,700 MacBook Pro pinch nan guidelines M5 chip. Benchmarks aren’t everything, but Samsung is charging so overmuch money for a laptop that gets outpaced by 1 that’s half nan price. Where nan Book6’s discrete GPU gives it an advantage successful immoderate graphics-heavy tests, nan overmuch cheaper M5 MacBook Pro isn’t acold behind. It moreover handily thumps Samsung’s instrumentality successful our 4K video export test.

This isn’t really Samsung’s fault. Windows laptop makers can’t compete pinch high-end Macs successful earthy speed. Intel and AMD don’t person any laptop CPUs that get adjacent to Apple’s single-core performance, which is why a 10-core M5’s multicore capacity tin hit a 16-core Panther Lake chip.

In related news, artillery capacity is uneven. I’ve had days of ray usage (many Chrome tabs, immoderate stints of euphony listening, and a spot of photograph editing) wherever it lasted complete 10 hours, and past likewise ray days wherever I only sewage seven. Other Panther Lake laptops I’ve tested person amended artillery life, but nan Nvidia GPU uses much powerfulness than integrated graphics. Even though nan laptop is expected to move to integrated graphics extracurricular of demanding tasks, laptops pinch some thin to person worse artillery life moreover extracurricular of games.

I emotion discrete graphics for gaming, but Macs person an inherent advantage successful artillery life consistency because they sidestep that powerfulness creation wholly pinch integrated graphics going up to a wildly precocious number of GPU cores. The overmuch cheaper 14-inch MacBook Pro is successful “Eh, who cares if you forgot nan charger astatine home” territory — often lasting maine 12 hours aliases more. (Speaking of chargers, Samsung’s chunky 140W powerfulness adapter moreover looks for illustration Apple’s. But its prongs don’t fold down, and nan included cablegram is simply a small short astatine 70 inches / 1.8 meters. Who decided little cablegram is better?)

As for nan speakers, they’re good. But they deficiency a small extent and bass compared to nan balanced six-speaker setups connected nan MacBook Pros aliases moreover nan 15-inch MacBook Air.

But nan astir egregious misstep is nan Galaxy Book6 Ultra’s keyboard. The keys are very flat, pinch minimal separation from nan deck. Samsung claims there’s 1mm of cardinal travel, matching nan existent MacBook keyboards, but it someway feels shallower and overmuch worse. Typing connected this keyboard gives maine flashbacks to the aged Apple butterfly keyboards, and that’s not an acquisition we should beryllium revisiting. Frankly, I don’t cognize really Samsung achieved this (derogatory). I make much typos and mistakes connected this keyboard than usual, and I dislike it truthful overmuch I sometimes spot a mechanical keyboard complete it. I’m judge you could get utilized to it, but that’s not bully capable connected a laptop this expensive.

I wish that was nan only problem, but nan haptic trackpad tin besides beryllium frustrating. I usually emotion haptic pads since you tin registry a click anywhere, and nan Galaxy Book offers a generously sized area for clicking — overmuch for illustration nan Force Touch trackpads connected a MacBook. But this one’s conscionable okay. It’s usually fine, but I sometimes knowledgeable delayed clicks and repeated inputs erstwhile clicking and dragging things aliases highlighting cells successful a spreadsheet.

And past there’s nan webcam. I person nary thought what processing Samsung is doing, but nan 1080p camera someway makes you look simultaneously grainy and smoothed out. My champion conjecture is it’s a noisy image sensor and Samsung has immoderate sound simplification aliases tegument smoothing going connected — aliases both. It’s a bad motion erstwhile nan first point my colleagues inquire maine successful a video telephone is what laptop I’m using.

Samsung wants its flagship laptop to beryllium a MacBook Pro for Windows truthful badly. It has a bully chassis and screen, and bully capacity for a Windows laptop this thin, but it whiffs connected excessively galore of nan fundamentals. It’s priced for illustration an M5 Max MacBook Pro, has nan capacity of a MacBook little than half its price, and lacks nan fantabulous artillery life of either. Just get nan genuine article.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge