Plenty to like about Samsung’s lightweight new Galaxy Book S

The Samsung Galaxy Book S is a Windows 10 notebook with a twist: it has an eight-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx processor.

Samsung’s new lightweight Galaxy Book S notebook.

The Samsung Galaxy Book S is a Windows 10 notebook with a twist. It has an eight-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx processor, which means it runs very differently to other notebooks, which overwhelmingly use Intel and AMD processors.

Many leading smartphones have Qualcomm processors, which means that this notebook has some characteristics that we usually see in phones, such as a SIM card slot and a microSD card for augmenting internal storage.

The Book S supports up to 1 Terabyte of additional storage. It’s what Microsoft calls an “always connected Windows laptop”.

It also means this laptop has great battery life. I ran our regular battery test, continuously playing 1080p video at 50pc brightness, and the battery lasted more than 16 hours.

There’s lots that make the Book S a tempting buy. It’s extremely light at 961g, stylish, the battery life, and while the Qualcomm processor isn’t so powerful, it’s adequate for basic business applications. At $1699, its affordable.

The Book S has an attractive anodised aluminium frame with a roomy keyboard. Keys are large and I rarely mis-hit them as I typed. However the key travel is shallow and there’s no key backlighting, at least not without a software update.

The Book S has a bright 1080p 13.3-inch TFT display with a 16:9 aspect ratio. It’s widescreen and suited to lapping up movies and shows. The stereo speakers at bottom left and right support Dolby Atmos and deliver strong, clear sound. However, some might prefer a laptop with a squarer screen (3:2 aspect ratio), such as a Microsoft Surface Book for ­office work.

The Book S has 8GB of RAM memory and 256GB of built-in solid state storage. It has two USB-C ports for charging and transferring data but they are not Thunderbolt 3 capable. You don’t need to carry a bricklike charger. You get a small 25w one with a USB-C lead in the box.

Samsung Galaxy Book S notebook

This notebook has Windows Hello fingerprint recognition which works like lightning. I touch the power key and I’m in. The Notebook also has a front facing 720p camera, but it doesn’t support face login.

Samsung makes it easy to transfer data between a late model Galaxy handset and the Book S. The Note 10 phones support Samsung’s DeX system. Your phone emulates a laptop when you link it to a DeX compatible screen.

The laptop emulation appears as a home screen window when you link the phone to a Book S. It means you can easily drag and drop photos from a Note 10 window to Notebook S window.

The downside of the Qualcomm processor is that it doesn’t support all Windows programs. Adobe Creative Cloud is among the apps and programs not supported. Adobe says it is working hard to bring Creative Cloud, ­including flagship apps like ­Photoshop, to Windows on ARM as soon as possible.

You can only run 32-bit (X32) applications and programs converted to work with ARM architecture. The Windows 10 Home on this notebook does not support emulation of 64-bit apps, and some Windows drivers will not work. You need to check that the Book S will run the applications you need. The Windows Store tells you the installation capability of apps available there.

I could install Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, Nitro PDF, Adobe Photoshop express, VideoPad Video editor, GIMP graphics editor, Dragon Dictation and VLC Media Player, so I could adapt to the Book S.

For everyday business use it should be fine. Speed wise, the chipset is adequate for business use but it’s no speed machine.

The question is do you buy this or settle for, say, a basic MacBook Air for the same price or the very capable but heavier Surface Book.

The Samsung Galaxy Book S is available now in Earthy Gold and Mercury Grey.