I Tested Samsung's First Laptop With Intel's Panther Lake Chip - It's A Sleeper Hit For Windows Users

5 days ago

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

Samsung's Galaxy Book6 Ultra is expected to motorboat successful early Spring.
Its vibrant 16-inch AMOLED show and Intel Panther Lake CPU make it a compelling action for imaginative pros.
It carries complete immoderate of nan aforesaid issues arsenic its predecessor, namely its creation and inclination to tally warm.

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I've spent nan past fewer weeks testing Samsung's latest flagship laptop, nan Galaxy Book6 Ultra, and from nan infinitesimal I started utilizing it, I realized nan institution doubled down connected what made past year's Galaxy Book5 Pro so good, expanding connected cardinal features for illustration nan artillery and design.

Also: I switched to a dual-screen Windows laptop for work, and my favourite characteristic is unexpected

In that aforesaid vein, it besides carries complete immoderate of nan aforesaid frustrations I had. Let's return a look.

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Refined (and rehashed)

Aesthetically, nan Galaxy Book6 Ultra looks astir identical to nan Galaxy Book5 Pro. The main ocular quality is its somewhat larger size. It measures 14.05 x 9.76 x 0.6 inches and weighs somewhat nether 4 pounds. Even pinch nan other bulk, it is still a sleek device. Samsung moreover updated nan laptop's PCB layout to amended administer its weight, allowing it to walk nan one-finger assistance trial pinch flying colors.

What is identical to nan erstwhile procreation is nan display. Up top, nan Galaxy Book6 Ultra has a 16-inch, AMOLED 3K touchscreen. It has nan aforesaid highest HDR brightness of 1,000 nits, nan aforesaid adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, and nan Corning Gorilla Glass pinch DXC for added durability. This isn't a sound against Samsung; nan institution intelligibly recognized nan show was 1 of nan Galaxy Book5 Pro's champion features, and brought it back.

Also: I yet tested a Windows laptop pinch Intel's Panther Lake spot - and nan hype is justified

The audio system, however, saw much meaningful changes. It has a six-speaker setup, comprised of 4 force-canceling woofers and a brace of tweeters. The consequence is crisp, room-filling audio pinch fantabulous clarity. Instruments and vocals stay discernible moreover astatine higher volume. Distortion is good controlled acknowledgment to nan woofer's unsocial design.

I do wish nan bass output were stronger, however. It's beautiful restrained. Certain euphony genres, for illustration rap, suffer their punch.

I did person a fewer issues pinch nan laptop's design. First, I'm not a instrumentality of nan wrist rest. The edges are a small sharp, truthful they thin to poke. It's thing deal-breaking, but it tin beryllium a small annoying. Similarly nan keyboard is simply a mixed bag. I recovered it to beryllium an betterment complete what nan Galaxy Book5 Pro had; it's not arsenic mushy, but it still falls short.

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The cardinal recreation is shallow, which slows down typing. I wasn't capable to constitute astatine my accustomed speed, and I noticed that I made much mistakes than usual. Below nan keyboard is nan Galaxy Book's mega-sized trackpad, taking up a ample information of nan wrist rest.

I thoroughly enjoyed utilizing it and americium gladsome it was carried complete from nan erstwhile version. Its size and responsiveness activity successful its favor, ensuring precise navigation.

Panther Lake performance

My reappraisal portion of nan Galaxy Book6 Ultra packed superior muscle, lodging an Intel Core Ultra 7 356H processor, 32GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card. Below, I've compared Samsung's latest flagship against nan Asus ProArt P16, nan Dell 16 Premium, and nan 2026 Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i; 3 16-inch laptops that stock a akin usage lawsuit pinch Samsung's machine.

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The results are telling: nan Galaxy Book6 Ultra pinch Intel's Panther Lake processor outperforms some Asus and Dell crossed nan multi-threaded benchmarks. Lenovo's instrumentality somewhat edges it retired acknowledgment to somewhat stronger hardware. In real-world use, this translates to amended wide efficiency, for illustration faster 4K video exports and smoother handling of resource-intensive tasks.

Samsung's instrumentality has a decent single-core people of 2,832. This intends that mundane capacity will consciousness accelerated and fluid. Apps motorboat quickly, web pages load arsenic as fast, and nan UI feels highly responsive. There are different laptops that hit nan Galaxy Book successful this area. Apple's M5 MacBook Pro, for example, has a single-core people of 4,111. However, successful this instance, I don't deliberation this metric makes aliases breaks its usability.

The Galaxy Book6 Ultra is chiefly a activity laptop, and successful that sense, it succeeds very well. 2,832 is perfectly acceptable for casual browsing. I don't deliberation you'll beryllium missing retired connected much.

Samsung besides gave its Galaxy Book6 Ultra a revamped cooling system. It's made up of galore different components, specified arsenic a caller outlet instrumentality and heatsink pairing to tie power from nan processor. It besides has a bigger inlet grill to amended airflow. Most of nan time, nan strategy useful very well, and nan laptop stays cool to nan touch nether mean workloads. When you push nan hardware, however, temperatures climb quickly.

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I tested nan PC by moving aggregate AAA video games and nan Unigine Superposition benchmark to spot really nan laptop ran nether a dense workload. All nan tests went well, but nan keyboard aboveground did go uncomfortably basking while gaming. Hot capable to wherever I felt nan request to region my hands from nan keyboard. Conversely, for nan Superposition test, nan laptop sewage a small warm, but thing excessively intense.

Finally, nan Galaxy Book6 Ultra boasts awesome endurance. Its 80.2 Wh artillery lasted astir 20 hours connected a azygous complaint during testing, falling conscionable short of Samsung's purported 30-hour claim. Charging speeds were arsenic good. I saw it deed 65% successful astir 30 minutes.

ZDNET's buying advice

It'll beryllium a small while earlier nan Galaxy Book6 Ultra is available. A Samsung typical told maine nan laptop is group to motorboat successful early Spring 2026, but an nonstop day and value haven't been confirmed.

Also: How I'm beating precocious RAM prices successful 2026 - an expert's guideline to smarter PC buying

While charismatic pricing isn't available, we tin look astatine nan erstwhile exemplary to springiness ourselves an idea. A Galaxy Book5 Pro pinch 32GB of RAM presently costs $1,750. Considering each nan upgrades, I estimate nan Galaxy Book6 Ultra will onshore astir $2,000.

If you're willing successful nan laptop, Samsung has a Reserve page wherever you tin motion up for notifications to beryllium alerted erstwhile nan Galaxy Book6 Ultra, Galaxy Book6 Pro, and nan guidelines Galaxy Book6 go available.