Expert's Rating
Pros
- Very thin and light for a 16-inch laptop
- Long battery life
- Beautiful OLED display
- Highest-end Snapdragon X Elite hardware available
Cons
- No facial recognition login
- eUFS storage is soldered to the motherboard
- Limited to 16GB of RAM
- Expensive compared to other Snapdragon-powered laptops
- The top-end Snapdragon X Elite hardware isn’t much faster
Our Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge is an excellent Snapdragon X Elite-powered PC with a beautiful display, long battery life, and great build quality. But you’re paying extra for high-end Snapdragon X Elite hardware on the 16-inch model, and it doesn’t deliver the big performance bump you might expect.
The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge is part of the first wave of Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X Elite hardware. The 16-inch model we reviewed is special, as it’s the only laptop that includes the highest-end Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100 chip. This model boasts faster CPU performance than the others, but it’s also the only Snapdragon X Elite variation with an upgraded GPU.
Samsung delivered a great laptop here: It’s surprisingly thin and light, with long battery life and a beautiful OLED display. But lots of Snapdragon X Elite laptops are delivering that and this machine is on the expensive side compared to your other options. Part of what you’re paying for is that exclusive top-end Snapdragon X Elite hardware. And I’ll be honest. While the difference is somewhat noticeable, you’ll be just fine picking any Snapdragon X Elite laptop you might prefer. The high-end hardware here doesn’t make a massive difference.
Like other Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X Elite hardware, the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge is an Arm-based laptop. As discussed in our reviews of the Surface Laptop, Surface Pro, and Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, application compatibility is good but not perfect. While most applications run just fine, some applications may not run at all or may run with bad performance. The situation is quickly improving, but it’s still early days. Also, as far as AI, those exclusive Copilot+ PC AI features aren’t very interesting.
Looking for more options? Check out PCWorld’s roundup of the best laptops available today.
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge: Specs
IDG / Chris Hoffman
IDG / Chris Hoffman
<div class="scrim" style="background-color: #fff" aria-hidden="true"></div>
</div></figure><p class="imageCredit">IDG / Chris Hoffman</p></div>The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge is part of the first wave of Copilot+ PCs that arrive with Arm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips. All Snapdragon X Elite chips include a neural processing unit (NPU) capable of 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS) as well as a Qualcomm Adreno GPU.
Our review unit was a 16-inch model and it included Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100 hardware. On paper, that’s the highest-end Snapdragon X Elite hardware available with the fastest speeds and a higher-performance GPU. Samsung is offering an exclusive here: The Galaxy Book4 Edge is the only laptop that offers this top-end hardware, at least at launch.
There are four Snapdragon X packages at launch, from lowest-end to highest-end:
- The Snapdragon X Plus X1P-64-100 avoids the “Elite” name and only has 10 cores.
- The Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 includes 12 cores.
- The Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 has 12 cores as well, but it gains a “Dual Core Boost” feature that can go up to 4.0 GHz for extra power when the CPU needs it.
- The Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100 in this machine has 12 cores, but its Dual Core boost goes up to 4.2 GHz. It also offers faster multi-threaded CPU performance and a high-performance Qualcomm Adreno GPU.
Qualcomm
<div class="lightbox-image-container foundry-lightbox"><div class="extendedBlock-wrapper block-coreImage undefined"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large enlarged-image"><img decoding="async" data-wp-bind--src="selectors.core.image.enlargedImgSrc" data-wp-style--object-fit="selectors.core.image.lightboxObjectFit" src="" alt="Snapdragon comparison table" class="wp-image-2393560" width="1200" height="545" loading="lazy" /></figure><p class="imageCredit">Qualcomm</p></div> </div></figure><p class="imageCredit">Qualcomm</p></div>While the 16-inch version of the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge has the highest-end Snapdragon X Elite hardware, it’s not just about those on-paper specs. Other things matter, too. For example, if a laptop can’t deliver enough cooling to sustain high performance, it may throttle the hardware and not deliver the higher speeds you might expect.
Unfortunately, Samsung only offers this laptop with 16GB of RAM. You can’t get this machine with 32GB of RAM, which is an option for some other laptops. The fastest Snapdragon X Elite hardware can’t be paired with 32GB of RAM, and that feels like a big missed opportunity.
There’s one other surprise in the specs: Samsung has chosen to use eUFS storage instead of the PCIe Gen4 SSD hardware other manufacturers are shipping their Copilot+ laptops with. This type of storage is more frequently used on smartphones and other mobile devices. The storage is soldered to the laptop’s motherboard, so you won’t be able to replace or upgrade it.
In theory, this interface has slower throughput than an NVMe SSD. On the other hand, it may use less power and boost the laptop’s battery life. In practice, the SSD hardware on the other Snapdragon X Elite PCs doesn’t seem to be hitting the limits of the interface, anyway. The eUFS storage performed just fine in day-to-day use, and I never noticed a perceptible difference in storage performance compared to the other Snapdragon X Elite laptops I’ve been using.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the high-end Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100 hardware is only an option for the 16-inch version. The less-expensive 14-inch version doesn’t include it as an option, and it has some other tweaks: No microSD reader, a slightly smaller battery, and nearly a pound less weight.
- CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100
- Memory: 16GB RAM
- Graphics/GPU: Qualcomm Adreno
- Display: 16-inch 2880×1800 AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and touchscreen
- Storage: 1TB eUFS storage (soldered to motherboard)
- Webcam: 1080p webcam
- Connectivity: 2x USB Type-C (USB4), 1x USB Type-A (USB 3.2), 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x combo headphone jack, 1x microSD reader
- Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3
- Biometrics: Fingerprint reader
- Battery capacity: 61.8 Watt-hours
- Dimensions: 13.99 x 9.86 x 0.48 inches
- Weight: 3.42 pounds
- MSRP: $1,749 as tested ($1,349 starting price for the 14-inch version)
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge: Design and build quality
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