I have long been a fan of Samsung’s Galaxy Book series of laptops. With these, the company has always tried to do things a little differently from other PC manufacturers and has smartly leveraged its own display technologies to make its laptops more competitive and unique. The Galaxy Book6 Pro is a major departure from the previous generations’ designs and leverages Intel’s new Panther Lake Core Ultra 3 series chips across the entire range, from the base-model Book6 up to the high-end Book6 Ultra.
I was very impressed with what I saw from the Samsung team at CES 2026 in January and was pleased to get my hands on an early engineering sample review unit. For this article, I tested the Book6 Pro, which sits right in the middle of the lineup — but my review device was specced with the fastest Core Ultra X7 358H and the 12 Xe integrated Arc B930 GPU, the fastest integrated graphics from Intel. This is a bit of a hybrid review of both the processor and the laptop.
Intel sent me the 32GB model of the Galaxy Book6 with a 16-inch display, which comes with the lesser Core Ultra 7 356H at BestBuy; the model as tested is only available direct from Samsung. It is configurable with 16GB or 32GB thanks to Panther Lake not having on-chip memory like Lunar Lake did. For a system like this, I think having the extra memory is worth the premium, because you will chew through 16GB easily, especially if you plan to run any heavy workloads. Default storage is 1TB, and that’s the only option that Samsung has on its site right now.
Best Buy carries only the 16GB spec with the same storage capacity. All models ship with Samsung OLED displays, whether at 14 or 16 inches. The 16-inch model I am reviewing features a dynamic refresh 120Hz display with a resolution of 3K. This is all powered by an ample 78 Wh battery on the 16-inch model and a decent 68 Wh battery on the 14-inch model. This is a major improvement from the last time I reviewed a 16-inch Samsung Galaxy Book (the Book4 Edge) with an OLED display; the battery on that model was only 61 Wh, which is less than the current 14-inch model. Samsung states that battery life has increased from 25 hours in the Book5 Pro to 30 hours in the Book6 Pro. In addition to improving on performance, battery capacity, and thermals, the Book6 Pro 16-inch also comes in at just 3.5 pounds, only a hair heavier than the 3.4 pounds of the Book5 Pro, but also with a greater battery capacity and improved cooling and performance. The laptop is powered by a 65W charger, which enables very quick charging and is about the size of a standard 65W Samsung phone charger. Having a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra that charges at 60W is nice because I can use the same charger for both devices and charge them both at max speeds.
On the Book6 Ultra, Samsung also did away with the microSD card slot and went for a full-size card slot. This is one more way that the Ultra targets creators, along with the higher-end Core 3 Ultra X9 series and optional discrete NVIDIA graphics. The Book6 Pro does away with any memory card slots, which is a bit of a letdown, but the microSD card slot of previous generations was also not that useful. The I/O remains pretty much the same, with two Thunderbolt 4 connectors, a USB-A 3.2, full-size HDMI, and a headphone jack. I would’ve liked to see Thunderbolt 5 find its way in, but it’s absence is likely because Panther Lake has only integrated Thunderbolt 4 so far, and going to TB5 would likely add significant cost. For comparison, the base-model M5 MacBook Pro also features only Thunderbolt 4 ports, which get upgraded to Thunderbolt 5 in the M5 Pro and M5 Max models, so this seems like a fair choice for now.
The webcam is still 1080P, and without Windows Hello, which might be my biggest disappointment with this system. Biometric authentication via Windows Hello does occur via the fingerprint sensor on the power button at the top right of the keyboard deck. And while Samsung and Apple users might be familiar with fingerprint sensing only for biometrics, I do think that presence detection and facial login with facial recognition are some of the best UX features on Windows 11 today. Not to mention that Windows Hello webcams can enable better battery life by dimming the display when you look away and turning off the display and locking the laptop when you walk away.
Rounding out the specs, Wi-Fi 7 is still standard, although that could change in the next generation, with Wi-Fi 8 potentially coming in 2027. The sound system continues to be a quad-speaker Dolby Atmos system.
One thing I immediately noticed when setting up this laptop is that when Samsung did away with the microSD card slot on the right side of the laptop, it didn’t bother to place a USB-C port on that side. That means that if you need to charge the laptop, you better hope the cable will reach the left side of the notebook. Longtime readers will recognize this theme: I remain a strong believer in dual-sided USB ports, which is simply a better experience because there will always be charging cables or peripherals you want to connect on a specific side of the machine. I also recognize that it usually comes at an additional cost to enable USB-C ports on both sides.
The lack of Windows Hello with facial recognition was jarring for me, mostly because I’ve become so accustomed to it on competing machines from Lenovo, HP, and Dell. As touched on above, besides enabling superior facial recognition, Windows Hello has presence detection features that enable better battery life and security. The 16-inch model I’m reviewing also has a comically huge touchpad, and I’ve enjoyed using it. The whole machine feels like a more refined version of what I reviewed in the Book4 Edge. Even the 3K OLED touchscreen feels just a bit more responsive than it did before. Samsung has also leaned into the touchscreen functionality of its OLED displays by enabling more touch experiences in its software.
Speaking of software, Samsung had dozens of programs installed on this machine, which seems overboard to me. I think that most of these apps should be opt-in based on prompts you see during setup. Features like Nearby Device seem a bit redundant, even if they potentially make it easier to use some of the sharing features within the Samsung ecosystem.
While I didn’t really get an enhanced experience from using a Samsung PC alongside my Samsung TV, it did feel like the laptop, my Galaxy S26 Ultra phone, and my Buds4 Pro earbuds were better together thanks to easier file sharing, camera sharing, or QuickShare, which easily moves files between devices. I also liked being able to use a single pair of earbuds with both my phone and PC, which is something Apple users are accustomed to. One of the great features of this laptop that I was previously unaware of was Wi-Fi password sharing between devices. I connected to a Wi-Fi network on the laptop, and then the sharing functionality quietly connected my phone to the same Wi-FI network without me doing anything. This was one of those happy surprises, but in an ideal world, user experiences would always be that seamless and enjoyable. After I stopped using this laptop, I also realized how much I missed the ability to easily copy text between both devices with a shared clipboard. It might be the simplest and most missed feature.
On the downside, I expected a better-quality webcam on this laptop. This is especially unfortunate because Intel has upgraded the ISP inside the Panther Lake processor family to enable better webcam experiences, and I expect we’ll see that pay off with other OEMs. Samsung is also well-regarded for the camera quality on its phones and is probably the only PC manufacturer in the world that also makes its own camera sensors.
Conversely, the display on this laptop is gorgeous. That said, I can’t wait for Samsung to bring its generative photo editor currently on the Galaxy S phones to these laptops. It’s truly an industry-leading feature, and something that in my experience astounds users unfamiliar with Samsung’s Galaxy AI ecosystem.
In terms of power and battery life, the Book6 Pro can easily run all day on one charge. It also has multi-week standby power, which I think is important for people who don’t use their laptops every day. I’m mostly using Chrome, which is very power- and memory-hungry, along with Word and Spotify, yet I still don’t worry about needing to carry a charger for this laptop, even if I’m in meetings all day.
To test performance, I ran Geekbench 6 on this machine and found the CPU numbers to be great. Single-core performance was around the same as AMD’s Ryzen AI Max 395+ (a.k.a. Strix Halo) found in the HP ZBook Ultra and Z2 Mini G1a, but it underperformed against the Intel 275HX in the Area 51 18-inch laptop and my many AMD desktop processors. Multi-core performance was pretty similar to the AMZ Ryzen AI Max 395+ but fell a bit short compared to single-core performance, which isn’t bad considering the thermal and power difference (55W versus 25W TDP). And single-core performance did outshine many earlier thin-and-light laptops, including Intel’s last-generation Lunar Lake and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite. It doesn’t quite catch Apple’s M5 or faster chips. I think the fastest-spec CPU from the Panther Lake line, the X9, might be better suited if you want to see the most competitive from that Intel family. The experience with this machine still feels quite good, even if it isn’t the fastest in the bunch.
On multi-core performance, this processor does exceptionally well against the last generation, sometimes outperforming it by 50%, for instance compared to the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon with Lunar Lake. I also ran some Cinebench 2026 multi-core tests and found the real performance of the Intel Core X7 358H in the Book6 Pro to be much lower than AMD’s Strix Halo — about half the performance, which was confirmed by the Blender benchmark as well. The important thing to remember is that the chip in the Book6 Pro is also a much lower TDP at 25W, which makes it inherently better for longer battery life tasks.
Graphics performance is a strong suit of this SoC with its Arc B390 GPU. I was able to very comfortably play Counter-Strike and Battlefield 6 on it without feeling like I needed a discrete graphics card. And while this machine isn’t really being sold as a gaming laptop, it is nice to know that I can periodically game on it if I want to. Heck, I even got Cyberpunk running on this thing with ray tracing set to low and XeSS enabled — yielding a very consistent 30 FPS, which is not something I would’ve expected from integrated graphics on a thin-and-light notebook like this. Only Apple has been able to deliver a similar experience with its M4 and M5 MacBooks, specifically on Cyberpunk.
Thermally, this machine has performed very well on all benchmarks. As long as this laptop is on a normal surface with good airflow, it does a great job of cooling even under heavy workloads. I did notice a bit of throttling while running on battery power when testing Geekbench 6; the hit was about 15% on single-core performance, even though the machine was using the performance preset. With that in mind, I think there’s still some room for improvement in battery performance to compete better with Apple and Qualcomm.
Samsung and Intel have been very close partners in the PC business for many generations of the Galaxy Book series. I would say that even though this laptop does evoke some of Apple’s design cues, it also has its own uniqueness thanks to some of the software integrations with the phone and earbuds. And while I absolutely love the high-resolution touch OLED display at 120 Hz, I do wish it had Windows Hello.
Priced at $2,649 on Samsung’s website, I think that this laptop does a good job of representing Samsung and Intel’s latest joint PC efforts, though there’s still plenty of room for improvement as well. Intel’s Pather Lake family has convinced many OEMs to pivot back to Intel, and I think the company has responded well by enabling many designs across every OEM it serves. This also helps to validate that the new Intel 18A process node is a great one that helps Intel be competitive — and helps OEMs deliver great Windows experiences.
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