Here, were also seeing capabilit

2021/05/21

Here, were also seeing capabilities Samsung hasnt shown before. Im not sure that auto framing is something that users will always turn on. As youll see, that 12th-gen Core chip makes a significant difference! There's little to no flex in the chassis, it feels good to the touch, and it looks sharp. Its 12th Generation Intel processor puts this 2-in-1 in the mix with other premium machines, including some content creation systems, though it's not quite as fast given its slim chassis. Still no QHD option. Windows Hello devices, both depth cameras and fingerprint readers, tend to decline in effectiveness over time, so a limited review period isnt always an effective metric. A number of Samsung-specific software utilities add premium advantages to this laptop. The company is shipping the Core i7 with 8GB or 16GB of memory). The speakers add to the experience, with some of the best laptop sound around. When flipped around into tablet mode, it doesnt feel cumbersome to hold and operate, and this is true of the 15.6-inch model Ive tested for this review, so I would expect the smaller 13.3-inch version to offer even more comfort in this regard. This is a competitive field, with plenty of thin and light laptops to choose from. Samsung continues to offer vibrant, extremely light laptops. The Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 is extremely capable as a media consumption machine, powered by Intels very latest 12th Gen P-series processorsbuilt for strong performance in thin and light devices. While the 2022 model's design is very similar to the original Book Pro 360's, the internals have received a speed boost. For Samsungs new model, they represent one of the best aspects and one of the worst. Through my years here, I've tested and reviewed many, many dozens of laptops and desktops, and I am always happy to recommend a PC for your needs and budget. Its a real annoyance and, as such, if you arent someone who simply taps to navigate (rather thanphysically clicking) you should absolutely test it in-person before picking up the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360. The build quality feels high-end, too, not flimsy despite the Samsung's light weight. The glossy display, though, does reflect quite a bit of ambient light. But, for those who favor content consumption or creation, theres a Samsung S Pen right in the box youll certainly find a lot to like. The display of third-party trademarks and trade names on this site does not necessarily indicate any affiliation or the endorsement of PCMag. The trackpad wasnt entirely responsive, however, occasionally failing to register a click or a tap. Samsung offers no possible processor upgrades, so your only option is bumping the RAM and storage (a single, unified upgrade selection) as in our test unit. We test Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).

A chief example is Samsung Security, which offers several privacy-oriented features including Privacy Folder, Secret Screen, Block Recording, and Security Cam. PCMag, PCMag.com and PC Magazine are among the federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission. The result is around 15 hours of battery lifeimpressive when compared to flagship rivals from Dell, HP, Razer and the likebut just a small one- to two-hour rise from the previous model. In other words, theres not too much there in the low endbut. Yes, the touchscreen is also there to alleviate some of this pain, but Samsung is well behind the competition here, with the excellent trackpads of the Dell XPS 13 (6/10, WIRED Recommends) and MacBook Air (9/10, WIRED Recommends) sitting in a different league.

Good keyboard and speakers. The Samsung supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth, and its front-facing webcam offers superior 1080p resolution instead of the usual 720p. WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. Three further benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. The questions these tests ask of the laptop: will performance degrade over the days and hours in which you use it? The Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 certainly improves upon that laptops performance, but I tend to grade laptops on usability, performance, battery life, and the display. You'll find a bit more power in some similarly sized and priced alternatives and even higher-quality design in a few systems such as the Dell XPS 15 OLED, but there are few real flaws here if you like a big 2-in-1. The latter, which is the subject of this review, is the 360-degree convertible. (, 12th Gen Intel CPU delivers good pep in such a thin laptop, Useful security and software extras, including support for a tablet as a second screen, P-series processor limits performance potential compared to other 15-inch machines, Read Great Stories Offline on Your Favorite, PC Magazine Digital Edition (Opens in a new window), How to Free Up Space on Your iPhone or iPad, How to Save Money on Your Cell Phone Bill, How to Convert YouTube Videos to MP3 Files, How to Record the Screen on Your Windows PC or Mac, Read Our Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310) Review, Read Our Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i 14 (2021) Review, Read Our Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook Review, Read Our Lenovo ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook Review, Read Our Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 (2021) Review, Read Our Dell Latitude 7320 2-in-1 Review, Read Our Panasonic Toughbook 33 (2021) Review, Read Our Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio Review, Read Our Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 (15-Inch) Review, What to Do When Your Computer Screen Won't Show a Picture, Configurations and Testing: Galaxy Book Meets 'Alder Lake', Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 (15-Inch) Specs. Samsung Second Screen allows you to use a tablet as a second display for your Galaxy Book, a pretty neat feature that can mimic a desktop setup on the go. Samsung has fully embraced the USB-C form factor. This AMOLED screen is stunning. He has formerly written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite. Youll want to take extra, extra care with this Samsung laptop to ensure it remains pristine. This doesn't affect our editorial independence. Im one of the consumer PC experts at PCMag, with a particular love for PC gaming. Thin-and-light PCs do tend to suffer from thermal throttling, however, and the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 is no exception. Sometimes you simply need to lean out of frame while sneezing, for example, but its a good effort. (Note: The original configurations for the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 have a Core 5 and Core i7. Put simply, the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 should offer both power and flexibility at least on paper. Security includes specific enhancements like the ability to obscure your screen with Secret Screen or to see who has tried to log in with your PC. When we played back a 4K streamed video at 120Hz, the laptop didnt drop a single frame in 10,000, indicating that even ultra-high-definition media should stream without issue. Storage performance is now somewhat faster in this new generation. Samsungs flagship laptop is one of the first with this new chip, and the results are pretty much as expected. The main draw is a new 12th Generation Intel processor, boosting the 2-in-1's performance without changing its ultra-slim design and brilliant AMOLED display. As laptop makers like Huawei do, Samsung uses the power button in the upper right-hand corner as a Windows Hello replacement, with a fingerprint reader embedded into the surface. The $1,249.99 Galaxy Book2 Pro is the manufacturers most powerful laptop option, but it includes the same Core i7-1260P processor as the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360. They arent quite MacBook level, but they are up there with the excellent Dell XPS speakers. The latter three stand out to some extent, but the keyboard is somewhat lackluster.

We loved the thin and light build of the first, and this system is just as travel-friendly. The Book2 Pro 360 now applies auto framing, which tries to center your face in the frame. If you don't have a 3D-heavy workload or hobby and don't have any desire to play big-budget games, today's integrated graphics are fine. Ad Choices. With Dolby Atmos turned on, the volume soars to a point where I had to dial it down. colore Though, burgundy and graphite options do half-heartedly attempt to jazz things up a bit. Samsung bundles a number of apps with the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 such as Adobe Creative Cloud Express, Amazons Alexa, Clip Studio Paint, Disney+, Dolby Access, Google Duo, and many more. Over the last few years, performance differences between single processor generations haven't been great, but Intel's 12th Gen "Alder Lake" chips have impressed us. To be fair, though, Samsungs 15.6-inch display is significantly larger and it emphasizes inking with the included S Pen. Memory options include 8, 16, and 32GB. Without Dolby Atmos, the Book2s dual speakers deliver adequate volume and a decent audio range. When electric current is applied, the red, green, and blue subpixels become their own source of light. A smaller 13.3-inch model and a non-convertible (clamshell) version are also available, but we've tested the hybrid flagship here. We dont have the other two models for a direct comparison, however. The camera doesnt always follow your face accurately from side to side, either. On average, the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 hangs with the rest of the pack, doing better in some benchmarks than in others. We recently reviewed the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 5G, a very nice prior-generation model with a 5G WWAN option. Samsung appears to be the only source of the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 right now. Learn more. There isnt much of a need to alter the default settings unless you want to eke out a bit more performance. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. The convertible form factor allows greater flexibility on the road, and the brilliant AMOLED display will make long work sessions a pleasure. AMOLED screens achieve this by lighting pixels via a self-emitting organic layer instead of a separate backlight. We've changed our benchmark tests since we reviewed the first Galaxy Book Pro 360, so we can't compare the older and newer models directly. Theyre shallower than Id prefer, a bit rubbery, though pleasantly springy. The Book2 Pro 360s trackpad is mammoth, almost certainly wider than your smartphone when placed in landscape mode, 5.25 inches wide and 3.5 inches high. This helps support our journalism. Typing on the Book2 keyboard isnt particularly uncomfortable, however.

But at 15.6 inches, folding the keyboard all the way behind the screen makes for one nice, roomy tablet. The Book2 Pro 360s webcam is decent, assuming that you cut it some slack. It's perfectly proficient for general use and office productivity. It isn't quite perfect, but the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 checks all the major boxes. You can use it in tent or clamshell modes, but this isnt where a stylus performs best. Still, it clears the bar for a laptop wed recommend to our readers and wins our Editors Choice award. Theres not a lot of key travel in the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 only 1mm, where 1.25mm or even 1.5mm is more common. Well put that assumption to the test later on in this review. The quality of the device is, unfortunately, betrayed by one key qualm and a smaller nitpick. We ran two separate tests. It measures 0.46 by 13.9 by 8.9 inches (HWD), a beacon of portability among 15-inch laptops and nearly identical to the original. We tested the same games Forza Horizon 4 and Troy: A Total War Saga on the Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 as we did on the 11th-gen Galaxy Book Pro 360. You can load up more than 30 tabs in Google Chrome with nary a flinch, and the same goes for multi-tasking, with the ability to have several apps open at a time. During my testing, the machine picked up some small marks below the display. We measured the display pushing out 374 nits of luminance, which should be perfectly fine for a well-lit room. The Samsung's battery life is a big plus, offering just over 18 hours of unplugged runtime. Still, as our recent tests showed, even integrated GPUs can deliver low-end gaming-class performance. The difference between these two convertibles is that the Book2 360 has a 13.3-inch screen and a slightly slower processor. Unlike the keys, the travel is underwhelming and far from satisfying. Instead, it's the quality feel of the device, alongside its thinness, at 11.9 mm, and manageable weight, 3.11 pounds (1.4 kg), thats worth appreciating. https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/samsung-galaxy-book2-pro-360-15-inch, Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. In my gloomy office, primarily lit by a display, the image the webcam captured was really quite good with excellent color balance and lighting. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters. The others are the more traditional 5Gbps USB-C ports. The former is a traditional clamshell and usually offers a bit more performance. As with most Samsung laptops, a selling point continues to be the AMOLED display, which replaces a traditional LED backlight with pixels that can be lit individually. Equally as important as performance, when it comes to getting tasks done on a laptop, are the keyboard and trackpad. The webcam can implement its own background blurring, performed by the companys algorithms. Some alternatives like the Dell XPS top the Samsung's build quality and others edge its performance, but if you're looking for a versatile, productivity-focused desktop replacement, the Book2 Pro 360 delivers. It covered 100 percent of the sRGB color gamut, 94 percent of AdobeRGB, and 100 percent of the S3 color gamut at default settings. The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. Creators, consumers, and productivity workers alike should enjoy the display. You should also pick your color option wisely. The Book2 Pro 360 is among the first laptops to use Intels 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs, which offer substantial performance improvements over 11th-gen hardware. That gets you a Core i7-1260P processor, 8GB of memory, and a 512GB solid-state drive. The aluminum chassis construction feels sturdy, though theres some give in the keyboard tray if you depress it hard enough. Battery life above 14 hours should be absolutely sufficient for a day of work or even a weekend away, watching movies in the afternoon and evening. The Asus Vivobook Pro and the Dell XPS 15 include an entry-level discrete GPU in the form of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, which is a clear step above the other laptops' Intel and AMD integrated graphics. As mentioned, the 15.6-inch Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 starts at $1,349.99. One of the ports on the left-hand side is a full Thunderbolt 4 port, designated by a faint black-on-charcoal thunderbolt logo. PCMag Digital Group. The all-day battery life continues to be outstanding as well and thats saying something for such a thin PC. On one occasion, my vertical inked line jumped and joined another, as the screenshot below indicates. Some aspects of the previous model felt slightly out-of-date but, now, the distance feels more glaringparticularly with the 16:9 aspect ratio, as more brands adopt a taller display. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time. The laptop ships with a 65W USB-C charger that can supply power into any one of the USB-C ports. For whatever reason, Samsung doesnt turn on the Dolby Atmos enhancement by default and that makes a substantial difference. These marks arent all that noticeable, but, having only been transferred to and from a bag for just over a week, its disappointing to see them crop up so easily. Performance is silky smooth, and a pleasant keyboard is great to have as well. However, the displays are a real selling point battery life, too. We added the unreviewed Huawei Matebook X Pro, which isnt being sold in the United States. This is an occupational hazard with slim laptops, but you can find others with superior keyboards for more pleasant typing. The Galaxy Book2 Pro is far easier to find in a variety of configurations. You won't mistake it for a professional workstation or content creation laptop, but it fits nicely into the tier below as a snappy desktop replacement. As a 2-in-1 convertible (denoted by the 360 in its name), the Samsung's screen can flip and fold into multiple orientations. To see how fast these components work together, we put the Samsung through our usual suite of benchmark tests, comparing its results to those of some competitors whose basic specs appear below. Up against tough competition from Lenovo and HP, its falling behind. The Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 is a very good laptop, but falls a bit short of being a great one. Copyright 2022 IDG Communications, Inc. Fingerprint reader needed re-authentication. The manufacturer already supplies a live background app for its desktop background and Id expect some convergence between that and the camera app eventually. As with the recent Galaxy Book Pro 360 5G, transforming the laptop into tablet mode by flipping the AMOLED screen backwards really makes for a superior video viewing experience. 2022 Cond Nast. Speaking of the keyboard, we're disappointed to say that the typing experience hasn't improved since the first model. The resolution is 1,920 by 1,080 pixels (known as full HD or 1080p), and the image quality is very good. It also offers a 360-degree convertible chassis as well as a relatively comparable price point. The Core i7-1260P has 12 cores (four performance P-Cores and eight efficiency E-Cores) for a total of 16 threads. The laptop also seemed to have some issues being folded back. This machine still nails plenty, especially if you want a laptop that feels comfortable as a tablet as well as for watching television and movies. Samsung hasnt sought to reinvent itself again, though, with iterative updates making up much of what is new with this latest model. Intel's Iris Xe integrated graphics are the only choice, likely due to the system's slim design and thermal constraints, so if you want a game-worthy dedicated GPU you'll have to look elsewhere. Our test unit had the graphite color option, but the Book2 Pro 360 also comes in silver and burgundy. And, combined with the 360-hinge, it makes this a great device for watching movies and TV as well as viewing your own photos and videos. Photo editing is well within this laptops remit, too, and even some light video editing. As such, you dont get a very productivity-friendly display, afforded by a taller screen that squeezes on more text. Wed recommend Samsungs latest 360-degree convertible laptop, as it demonstrates outstanding performance, battery life, and an appealing display. Large bottom bezel. You'll also find a headphone jack and a microSD card slot, but no USB Type-A or HDMI ports. Youll find general controls in Settings, including the ability to change performance modes. This ultralight convertible is ready for anything. Cinebench R15 is an older test, pushing all of the cores and threads in the laptops CPU to their maximum. In order, these let you create a hidden folder on the solid-state drive, make it more difficult for snoopers to read your display over your shoulder, block unwanted webcam or microphone recordings, and provide login camera security. Battery life, similarly, isnt revolutionary here either, but its a nice boostif still falling short of feeling like Intel has produced a true Apple M1 rival. The trackpad is only clickable across the bottom half, though gestures worked as youd expect across the breadth of the device. We test laptops' battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. The high-spec Intel Core i7-1260p and 16 GB RAM combination expectedly chews through productivity tasks with ease. The thinness of the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 is a key reason why it works so well as a 2-in-1 machine. The Thunderbolt port can use a powerful Thunderbolt dock while the more generic USB-C ports can only take advantage of a USB-C hub or dongle. Its currently a little cheaper with greater connectivity. Its still the early days for Intels 12th-gen Core laptops, though the gains over the 11th-gen hardware can be significant. That leads the pack by a wide margin, and really fulfills the laptop's billing as a smartphone-like mobile experience. This is hardly novel in 2022, a decade after Lenovo's first IdeaPad Yoga, so it doesn't need much explanation.