As a Windows tablet with built-in gigabit LTE and 20-hour battery life, the Samsung Galaxy Book2 has a lot of potential for tablet shoppers looking for a more capable alternative to the Apple iPad. Theoretically, the $999.99 Galaxy Book2 combines the best of the large-screen Apple iPad Pro (long battery life, instant startup, vivid touch screen, pen support) with the power of Windows 10 (the ability to use a mouse and run desktop software). Add in a gigabit LTE modem, and it becomes even more intriguing. The big downside for people who need to do more than watch videos or compose emails is that the Book2's Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 processor delivers a computing experience marred at times by sluggishness and incompatible apps.
Keyboard and Pen Included
Pick up the Galaxy Book2 for the first time, and you notice that it has more in common with the Microsoft Surface Pro than it does with the Apple iPad Pro. That's because the Galaxy Book2 features a built-in kickstand for propping up the tablet on your desk, and it also comes with a keyboard cover in the box. Attach the keyboard cover—complete with miniature touchpad—to the tablet using the magnetized POGO-style connector, and you get a credible substitute for a laptop.
Microsoft pioneered this setup with the Surface Pro, and other companies such as Dell, HP, and Lenovo later refined it in devices like the Lenovo IdeaPad Miix 520 . In the Galaxy Book2's case, the entire package feels more like a thick coffee-table book than a laptop. The 12-inch screen is slightly smaller than the iPad Pro's 12.9 inches and the Surface Pro's 12.3 inches, but it's a negligible difference when you're holding it. Case in point: Without the keyboard cover, the Galaxy Book2 weighs 1.75 pounds and measures 0.3 by 11.32 by 7.89 pounds (HWD), while the Surface Pro 6 measures 0.33 by 11.5 by 7.9 inches (HWD) and weighs 1.7 pounds. You'd be hard-pressed to give either the edge.
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The keys feel very solid and travel a satisfying distance when you press them, but the keyboard cover itself is quite bendy, which results in a significant amount of flex if you type forcefully. I do appreciate the textured back of the keyboard cover, but by far the best thing I can say about it is that it is included at no extra charge, unlike the Surface Type Cover, which must be purchased separately from the Surface Pro.
The display is an AMOLED panel, and its 2,160-by-1,440-pixel resolution lies in between 4K and full HD. It's not quite as high-res as the 2,736-by-1,824-pixel Surface Pro 6 screen, but the AMOLED technology lends a vivacity to the colors that the Surface Pro can't match. I, personally, would rather have the higher resolution than the AMOLED technology, but it's certainly a close call.
The Galaxy Book2's S Pen stylus (which is also included in the $1,000 base price, unlike the optional $99 Surface Pen) is pleasing to use, with excellent pressure sensitivity and palm rejection. I appreciate that Samsung includes a spare pen tip, as well as a tool for swapping out the tips, which will dull over time like a pencil tip does.
The major downside of the S Pen is that it has a weak magnet. It sticks to the tablet's left edge, but it takes some effort to get it to stay, and each time I picked up the tablet, the pen fell off. Samsung claims that the magnet is supposed to serve as a place to rest the pen when you need to briefly switch between drawing and tapping or typing, and the magnets are not intended to store the pen while in transit. For that, you can use the included plastic sheath, which matches the gray color of the pen.
I'm not a fan of the drab gray look, but at least it's consistent, with the S Pen, the keyboard cover, and the rear of the tablet all sporting nearly the same shade of gray. The bezel, or border around the screen, is jet-black and rather wide, especially compared with the vanishingly thin bezels that now grace the latest ultraportable laptops, such as the Dell XPS 13 ($784.78 at Dell) .
More Connectivity Than an iPad
If you're in the market for a Windows tablet, chances are you're looking for more connectivity options than an iPad or an Amazon Fire tablet can provide. The Galaxy Book2 has you partially covered, with two USB Type-C ports, a headphone jack, and an SD card slot built into the SIM-card tray. To insert an SD card, you have to pop out the tray using the included SIM tool. It's unfortunate that there's no USB Type-A port, which you can find on the IdeaPad Miix 520.
Mixed in with the ports are two speakers, one each on the left and right edges. They offer startlingly rich sound for a tablet. AKG, an audio firm that sells decent headphones like the N60 NC ($198.00 at Amazon) , tuned the 2-watt speakers, and the result appears to be a noticeable perk rather than a gimmick. I noticed rich, full audio while listening to music tracks, although the highs and lows were somewhat muffled. On the whole, the audio quality matches what you'd expect from an ultraportable laptop rather than from a tablet or a smartphone.
The 8-megapixel main camera offers very good image quality as far as laptop or tablet webcams go, with almost no graininess present in still images taken indoors in low light. Still, photo quality is far below the camera on a high-end smartphone like Samsung's own Galaxy S9 ($720.00 Get 50% Off w/ Eligible Trade-In at T-Mobile) . There's also a front-facing 5-megapixel camera for Skype sessions.
The Galaxy Book2's 4GB of memory and 128GB of storage are rather stingy for a $1,000 machine. On the plus side, you almost certainly won't be doing heavy multitasking or other memory-intensive activities, or installing massive game files on this tablet.
The Galaxy Book2 will be available online at from AT&T, Microsoft, and Samsung starting Nov. 2, and will be available in stores at AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon later in the month.
Superior Battery Life, Lackluster Performance
The Galaxy Book2's real potential as a game-changing Windows tablet lies in Samsung's battery-life and computing-performance claims. Evaluating the performance of the Snapdragon 850-powered Book2 isn't like testing ordinary Intel- or AMD-powered laptops or desktops, because the CPU uses an entirely different instruction set. That means some of PCMag's benchmark apps aren't compatible, and despite efforts from Microsoft to get app makers on board, some of your favorite apps might not be, either.
The good news is that the Windows-on-Snapdragon situation appears to have improved immensely since the first machines appeared earlier this year. Plagued by a slower processor (the Snapdragon 835) and an earlier version of Windows 10, the Asus NovaGo was so sluggish that it was virtually unusable when I first tested it.
But that's not the case at all with the Galaxy Book2. Thanks to both hardware and software improvements, the week I've spent using it since it was announced in mid-October have been entirely stutter-free. That applies not only to Microsoft apps like the Edge web browser and the Sticky Notes app, but also third-party apps like the Opera browser, Samsung's note-taking app, and the pre-installed Verizon app that lets you manage your data connection.
My use has been limited mostly to watching YouTube videos, navigating through websites, and doodling with the pen. If you attempt to do anything more resource-intensive (say, manipulating an image in Adobe Photoshop), PCMag's benchmark tests show that you'll want to schedule a coffee break. It took nearly 16 minutes for the Galaxy Book2 to apply a series of 11 filters to a JPEG, an absurdly long time for a $1,000 Windows machine. Most of the latest ultraportables and convertible laptops in this price range, such as the Microsoft Surface Pro 6, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Tablet, and even the previous-generation Galaxy Book, can complete this test in less than 4 minutes.
The same is true of rendering a short HD video using the Handbrake app. This task took the Galaxy Book2 more than 5 minutes, compared with the sub-1-minute times of the ThinkPad X1 Tablet and the Surface Pro 6. It's important to note that both of these tests run using an emulation layer built into Windows, since the Handbrake and Photoshop CS6 apps are designed to use the x86 software instruction set designed for Intel and AMD processors. This emulation layer is likely responsible for much of the Book2's performance deficiency.
A secondary problem for the Photoshop test was a lack of graphics acceleration. Adobe designed its Creative Suite apps to take advantage of a computer's GPU and CPU, but the CS6 version of Photoshop doesn't support graphics acceleration on Qualcomm's Adreno GPU, and it displays a warning to this effect when you open the app.
Just when you thought things couldn't get twistier, note that the Galaxy Book2 ships with Windows 10 S Mode enabled by default, and you'll need to upgrade to the full version of Windows 10 Home to install apps that aren't available in the Microsoft Store. (I ran PCMag's benchmark apps using Windows 10 Home, since Windows 10 S Mode limits you to running only Store-sourced apps.)
Finally, the Galaxy Book2 is not a capable gaming machine, and you'll struggle to run anything other than browser-based games or the ones that come pre-installed with Windows, like Candy Crush. That's also true of the ThinkPad X1 Tablet and the Surface Pro, but the Book2 scored an exceptionally low 12 frames per second (fps) on our medium-quality Heaven and Valley gaming simulations, compared with scores of around 20fps for most of its competition. Just like with video rendering, software emulation is again responsible for much of the gaming-performance slowdown.
In short, compatibility is thorny on this machine, and it might dissuade you from running anything other than basic apps such as Mail or a web browser. If you're feeling more adventurous, check out our guide for more on the emulation process and how to tell if your favorite apps will run well on a Snapdragon-powered PC.
The silver lining to the Galaxy Book2's potentially headache-inducing software problems is excellent battery life. The Snapdragon 850 is a power-sipping CPU that needs no fan and generates little heat. It might not be very good at rendering video, but it's great at playing it back. To wit: The Galaxy Book2 lasted for 21 hours and 29 minutes on our battery rundown test, which involves playing a local HD video file at 50 percent screen brightness with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi disabled.
Thanks to a sleep mode that uses virtually no power, I noted that it's also possible to leave the Galaxy Book2 unplugged overnight without losing more than a single percentage point of battery life. Even better, I achieved this result with the tablet set to never disconnect its LTE connection.
Equipped with a Snapdragon X20 LTE modem, the Galaxy Book2 can take advantage of seriously fast mobile data speeds. I measured 37MBps download speeds and 4MBps upload speeds on the Verizon network using Ookla's Speedtest.net in PC Labs, a location that normally exhibits poor signal strength on the networks of all carriers. (Note: PCMag's publisher, Ziff Davis, also owns Ookla.) Not only does this mean quick downloads and web browsing, but it also raises the prospect of never having to connect to airport or coffee-shop Wi-Fi ever again.
You'll be able to use the Galaxy Book2 on three major US carriers: AT&T and Sprint, in addition to Verizon. Samsung has confirmed that there's no T-Mobile version. Whichever carrier you choose, you'll have to buy a data plan and get a SIM card. That's a major downside compared to the cellular-capable versions of the iPad, which don't require a physical SIM and let you sign up for and cancel data plans right from the device without talking to a carrier.
Battery Life Isn't Everything
The Samsung Galaxy Book2 is a well-designed Windows tablet, and at $999, it's even a good deal when you consider that you won't have to shell out extra for the all-but-necessary keyboard cover and nice-to-have digital stylus as you would with the Microsoft Surface Pro. The downside is that it offers woefully slow and frustrating computing performance if you try to do anything more demanding than browsing websites, watching videos, or checking your email.
If that's all you need to do, and you can live with a slightly smaller screen, at just $549 with a keyboard cover, the Microsoft Surface Go is a much more appropriate choice. If you're willing to spend more and don't need quite the extended battery life, a similarly equipped Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Tablet will offer a far better computing experience than the Galaxy Book2.
With a power-sipping Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 processor, the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Windows tablet offers excellent battery life and LTE connectivity, but it suffers from lackluster computing performance.
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