Samsung Galaxy Book 15.6" Book4 Silver 2024

The integrated GPU is one of the worst we test, landing in the 13th percentile, so forget gaming or any graphics work. The CPU is just average for the price, and the 300-nit screen is a letdown. The port selection is great and it's very light, but at $1032, you're paying too much for too little performance.

The Core 7 150U is a 10-core chip from Intel's latest lineup, but it's a low-power U-series part designed for efficiency, not raw speed. In our benchmarks, it lands right in the middle of the pack. You can expect snappy performance for web browsing, Office apps, and video streaming. It won't break a sweat with a dozen Chrome tabs and Spotify running. But don't expect it to chew through video edits or large datasets quickly. The 16GB of LPDDR4X RAM is soldered on, so what you buy is what you get forever. That's a decent amount for now, but it's worth noting the RAM speed and type are a generation behind the latest LPDDR5X found in some competitors. The integrated GPU is the real story here. It's fine for driving the display, but it's one of the weakest graphics solutions we test. You can forget about modern AAA games. Even older titles will need to be run at low settings and reduced resolutions. This is strictly a machine for work and light media consumption. The 512GB SSD provides reasonable read and write speeds for booting up and loading apps, but it's not a top-tier performer, ranking in the 61st percentile for storage."

The Galaxy Book4 is swimming with sharks at this price. The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 and Lenovo Legion 5i are in a completely different universe for performance, with dedicated GPUs that make the Book4's integrated graphics look like a calculator. They are gaming and creator machines first. The HP OMEN Transcend 14 is another powerful alternative that will run circles around the Samsung in any demanding task. If you need raw power, look there. The MSI Prestige is a more direct competitor, aimed at productivity, but it typically offers a sharper, brighter screen and a more premium build. The Apple MacBook Pro M4 Pro is the elephant in the room. It costs more, but its performance per watt and screen quality are so far ahead that it makes the Book4 feel like a toy. The Samsung's only real advantage against these rivals is its port selection and lighter weight, but that's a thin win when you're giving up so much speed and screen quality.

At $1032, the value proposition is tough to swallow. You're paying over a grand for a laptop with a middling CPU, a very weak GPU, and a dim screen. The port selection and light weight are its saving graces, but you can find laptops with much stronger performance and better displays for the same money. The included SD card feels like a gimmick to inflate the storage number on the spec sheet. It's not a performance drive. For this price, we'd expect a brighter screen, a more powerful processor, or at least a proper second SSD slot. This feels like a $700 laptop with a $300 Samsung tax.

The Samsung Galaxy Book4 lands in a weird spot. It's packing a 10-core Intel Core 7 150U and 16GB of RAM, which sounds capable on paper, but the CPU score sits at the 47th percentile in our database. That's solidly average, not the powerhouse the 'Core 7' branding might suggest. The integrated Intel Graphics are the real bottleneck here, landing in the 13th percentile. This thing is not built for gaming or any serious GPU work, scoring a brutal 11.3 out of 100 in our gaming tests. For everyday office tasks and student life, it's more comfortable, scoring in the low 50s. The 15.6-inch 1080p display is anti-glare, which is nice, but 300 nits of brightness is just okay. You'll want to avoid direct sunlight. The port selection is a genuine bright spot, hitting the 81st percentile, so you probably won't need a dongle. At 1.57kg, it's easy to carry, but the 'compact' score of 54.4 means it's not breaking any records for its size class. The storage situation is a bit of a head-scratcher. You get a 512GB SSD, which is fine, but the advertised total includes a 256GB SD card. That's not the same as a second internal drive, and it's a slower, less reliable way to expand storage. It feels like a spec-sheet trick. The fingerprint reader and backlit keyboard are welcome additions for a machine at this price point, currently around $1032. But that price puts it in a tough fight against some seriously impressive competitors."

Anyone who cares about screen quality or any form of gaming should look elsewhere immediately. The 300-nit, 1080p display is dim and sits in the 42nd percentile, making it a poor choice for photo editing or even watching movies in a bright room. The GPU is one of the weakest available, scoring in the 13th percentile. If you plan to keep this laptop for more than a couple of years, the soldered, non-upgradeable RAM and middling CPU performance will likely leave you frustrated as apps get more demanding. Power users and future-proofers need not apply.

The Samsung Galaxy Book4 is a well-built, lightweight laptop with great ports, but its performance is completely outclassed by the competition at this price. The weak integrated graphics and dim display are dealbreakers for over a thousand bucks. Unless you absolutely need a super-light 15-inch Windows laptop with every port under the sun and don't care about screen quality or any kind of graphical horsepower, we can't recommend it. There are simply too many better options that will feel faster and last longer. This is a classic case of a decent machine with a bad price tag.