Samsung’s flagship pc is a MacBook Educated clone long gone horribly defective

II know I’m now no longer the very best most likely one who desires a MacBook Educated for Residence windows: a graceful, ultra extremely effective, enormous transportable machine with an comely show and excessive-quality originate. Samsung’s Galaxy Book6 Extremely absolutely tries. It’s got a stupendous show and a pleasant build, and it’s as solidly constructed as laptops reach.It also looks to be like, successfully, almost exactly esteem a MacBook Educated, to the level the build I as soon as rapidly state the defective keyboard shortcuts out of dependancy. Other Residence windows laptops delight in at cases integrated some MacBook build influences, but the Galaxy homes so a form of them that it’s glaring what Samsung modified into going for.Imitating issues folks desire is understandable. But Samsung also repeats just a few of Apple’s outdated failings, esteem including a disagreeable keyboard and a surprisingly inappropriate webcam. And it’s charging excessive-pause MacBook Educated money for a instrument that doesn’t originate esteem one.“Impartial artists reproduction, giant artists rob.” But what in the occasion that they botch the theft?$3800The GoodVery good (and intensely acquainted) originate and designBright and incompatibility-y OLED displayGood Intel Panther Lake / Nvidia RTX performanceThe BadBad keyboard with short key travelPoor webcam qualitySo costly for such glaring faultsThe Galaxy Book6 Extremely starts at $2,900 with a 16-core Core Extremely X7 358H chip and constructed-in Intel Arc B390 graphics. Our overview configuration has a the same Intel Core Extremely 7 356H chip paired with an Nvidia RTX 5070 Notebook computer GPU. It also has 32GB of soldered RAM and a 2TB SSD. It label $3,200 sooner than RAMageddon drove prices up. Now, it’s a whopping $3,800 with a 1TB SSD. At that label, it’s suitable $100 unnerved of a 16-hobble MacBook Educated with M5 Max with 36GB of memory and a 2TB SSD. (Let’s withhold that resolve at the back of our minds.)Side document cardScreen: AWebcam: DKeyboard: DTrackpad: CPort different: BSpeakers: BNumber of gruesome stickers to rob away: 4 (one underneath)As expected from a excessive-pause Samsung instrument, the repeat is sparkling. The 16-hobble, 2880 x 1800 OLED touchscreen is lustrous and sharp, rendering brilliant colours and ideal incompatibility. And the 120Hz adaptive refresh payment makes breeze good and gentle.Take care of a MacBook Educated, the Galaxy Book6 Extremely has Thunderbolt and HDMI 2.1 ports and an SD card slot. Whereas the MacBooks delight in three Thunderbolt 5 ports, the Samsung has two Thunderbolt 4 and an outmoded-customary USB-A. No topic USB desire, it’s an true port different that’s match for tense customers and whine creators. It’d be good if it had been Thunderbolt 5, given the label, but Panther Lake doesn’t delight in native enhance for Thunderbolt 5.In phrases of performance, the Book6 is mercurial. It’s mercurial sufficient to manage with busy multitasking and handle hefty edits in Lightroom Traditional. It slowed down a marginally as soon as I made tubby edits using discipline and background detection masks, then copied and pasted all of them over batches of pictures, but I request that in most laptops varied than excessive-pause Macs with Educated and Max chips.On the factual are the USB-A port, 3.5mm audio jack, and SD card slot.On the left is an HDMI port, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a energy / battery indicator.On the keyboard deck is a disagreeable keyboard and an k trackpad.Thanks to the discrete graphics, I would perhaps well even play games esteem Battlefield 6 and Marathon reasonably successfully (two games you’re going to be ready to’t escape at all on macOS). In BF6, I normally got a stable 70+ fps by conserving settings modest: medium presets at 2880 x 1800 determination with DLSS put to Efficiency. Marathon mustered a passable 50+ fps using Nvidia’s optimized settings. The fans don’t even accumulate enormous loud, but, in commerce, the underside of the Galaxy Guide’s chassis got very warm shut to the back.The Intel Panther Lake CPU and Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU combo makes the Book6 a shrimp of a sleeper gaming pc. It’s miles sooner than either MacBook for that. But for $3,800 you’re going to be ready to build up seriously better performance from the more straightforwardly gamer-taking a gaze laptops available. Otherwise you’re going to be ready to dwell seriously stealthy with a Razer Blade or Asus ROG Zephyrus, and accumulate the same gaming performance for so a lot much less money.Unfortunately, gaming performance isn’t sufficient for a pc that charges almost $4,000. In benchmarks the Galaxy Book6 Extremely is closer to the $1,700 MacBook Educated with the defective M5 chip. Benchmarks aren’t every thing, but Samsung is charging so great money for a pc that will get outpaced by one which’s half the label. The build the Book6’s discrete GPU affords it an income in some graphics-heavy checks, the more label effective M5 MacBook Educated isn’t some distance at the back of. It even handily beats Samsung’s machine in our 4K video export test.1/10Just on fable of it copies just a few of its build doesn’t suggest it isn’t graceful and good taking a gaze.This isn’t truly Samsung’s fault. Residence windows pc makers can’t compete with excessive-pause Macs in raw velocity. Intel and AMD don’t delight in any pc CPUs that accumulate shut to Apple’s single-core performance, which is why a 10-core M5’s multicore performance can beat a 16-core Panther Lake chip.In linked files, battery performance is uneven. I’ve had days of sunshine utilization (many Chrome tabs, some stints of tune listening, and a shrimp of photo editing) the build it lasted over 10 hours, after which equally light days the build I best most likely got seven. Other Panther Lake laptops I’ve tested delight in better battery life, but the Nvidia GPU makes state of more energy than constructed-in graphics. Despite the indisputable reality that the pc is speculated to swap to constructed-in graphics open air of tense tasks, laptops with both tend to thrill in worse battery life even open air of games.I love discrete graphics for gaming, but Macs delight in an inherent income in battery life consistency on fable of they sidestep that energy dance fully with constructed-in graphics going up to a wildly excessive different of GPU cores. The more label effective 14-hobble MacBook Educated is in “Eh, who cares must you forgot the charger at dwelling” territory — ceaselessly lasting me 12 hours or more. (Speaking of chargers, Samsung’s tubby 140W energy adapter even looks to be like esteem Apple’s. But its prongs don’t fold down, and the integrated cable is a shrimp of short at 70 inches / 1.8 meters. Who determined much less cable is more fit?)As for the speakers, they’re exact. But they lack a shrimp of depth and bass when put next with the identical six-speaker setups on the MacBook Consultants and even the 15-hobble MacBook Air.1/12Here’s the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Extremely aspect by aspect with a 16-hobble MacBook Educated.But primarily the most egregious misstep is the Galaxy Book6 Extremely’s keyboard. The keys are very flat, with minimal separation from the deck. Samsung claims there’s 1mm of key shuffle, matching the present MacBook keyboards, but it by some means feels shallower and much worse. Typing on this keyboard affords me flashbacks to the outmoded Apple butterfly keyboards, and that’s now no longer an experience we are able to also mute be revisiting. Frankly, I don’t know the draw Samsung accomplished this (derogatory). I procedure more typos and mistakes on this keyboard than customary, and I detest it so great I usually build a mechanical keyboard over it. I’m scramble you would possibly well accumulate outmoded to it, but that’s now no longer exact sufficient on a pc this pricey.I desire that modified into the very best most likely deliver, but the haptic trackpad can also also be frustrating. I ceaselessly love haptic pads on fable of you’re going to be ready to register a click any place, and the Galaxy Guide affords a generously sized space for clicking — great esteem the Power Contact trackpads on a MacBook. But this one’s suitable k. It’s ceaselessly magnificent, but I usually experienced delayed clicks and repeated inputs when clicking and dragging issues or highlighting cells in a spreadsheet.Me, wondering what is up with this webcam image quality.After which there’s the webcam. I even haven’t any thought what processing Samsung is doing, but the 1080p digicam by some means makes you locate simultaneously grainy and smoothed out. My best most likely bet is it’s a loud image sensor and Samsung has some noise bargain or pores and skin smoothing going on — or both. It’s a inappropriate signal when the principle thing my colleagues request me in a video name is what pc I’m using.Samsung desires its flagship pc to be a MacBook Educated for Residence windows so badly. It has a pleasant chassis and show, and exact performance for a Residence windows pc this thin, but it whiffs on too a form of the basics. It’s priced esteem an M5 Max MacBook Educated, has the performance of a MacBook now no longer up to half its label, and lacks the comely battery life of either. Aesthetic accumulate the true article.Samsung Galaxy Book6 Extremely specs (as reviewed)Point to: 16-hobble (2880 x 1800) 120Hz OLED touchscreenCPU: Intel Core Extremely 7 356HGPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Notebook computer GPURAM: 32GB LPDDR5X (soldered)Storage: 2TB NVMe SSD with second storage slotWebcam: 1080pConnectivity: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4Ports: 2x Thunderbolt 4 USB-C (DisplayPort / Energy Provide), 1x USB-A 3.2, HDMI 2.1, paunchy-dimension SDXC card slot, 3.5mm combo audio jackWeight: 4.17 pounds / 1.89kgDimensions: 14.05 x 9.76 x 0.61 inches / 356.9 x 248 x 15.4mmBattery: 80.2WhPrice: $3,799.99Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The VergeBenchmarks comparability tableSamsung Galaxy Book6 Extremely / Intel Core Extremely 7 356H (Panther Lake) / 32GB / 2TBMacBook Educated 14 / Apple M5 / 16GB / 1TBAsus Zenbook Duo / Intel Core Extremely X9 388H (Panther Lake) / 32GB / 1TBRazer Blade 16 (2025) / AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 / RTX 5090 / 32GB / 2TBAsus Zenbook A16 / Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Indecent X2E94100 / 48GB / 1TBMacBook Educated 16 / Apple M5 Max / 128GB / 4TBCPU cores161016121818GPUNvidia RTX 5070 Notebook computer GPU (4,608 CUDA cores)Apple M5 (10 cores)Arc B390 (12 cores)Nvidia RTX 5090 Notebook computer GPU (10,496 CUDA cores)Adreno X2-90Apple M5 Max (40 cores)Geekbench 6 CPU Single280242083009296836434330Geekbench 6 CPU Multi164711794817268159222204429143Geekbench 6 GPU (OpenCL)117306490595683921301641101145613Cinebench 2026 Single499736528Not tested628734Cinebench 2026 Multi436944863993Not tested63278952PugetBench for Photoshop805712354877386791093115716PugetBench for Premiere Educated (2.0.0+)819897112254920Not testedNot tested154829Blender lecture room test (seconds, decrease is more fit)4044611819815Blender cosmos test (seconds, decrease is more fit)223Not tested20412167035Premiere 4K Export (decrease is more fit)4 minutes, 25 seconds2 minutes, 47 seconds3 minutes, 3 seconds1 minute, 56 seconds6 minutes, 38 seconds1 minute, 10 secondsSustained SSD reads (MB/s)7049.867049.456762.156726.257092.9113638.91Sustained SSD writes (MB/s)5819.387317.65679.414931.415694.9417814.19Price as tested$3,799.ninety 9$1,949$2,299.ninety 9$4,499.ninety 9$1,699.ninety 9$6,149Follow issues and authors from this story to witness more esteem this for your personalised homepage feed and to catch electronic mail updates.Antonio G. Di Benedetto