Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source, and from the moment I started using it, I realized the company doubled down on what made last year’s Galaxy Book5 Pro so good, expanding on key features like the battery and design.
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In that same vein, it also carries over some of the same frustrations I had. Let’s take a look.
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Refined (and rehashed)
Aesthetically, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra looks nearly identical to the Galaxy Book5 Pro. The main visual difference is its slightly larger size. It measures 14.05 x 9.76 x 0.6 inches and weighs slightly under four pounds. Even with the extra bulk, it is still a sleek device. Samsung even updated the laptop’s PCB layout to better distribute its weight, allowing it to pass the one-finger lift test with flying colors.
I did have a few issues with the laptop’s design. First, I’m not a fan of the wrist rest. The edges are a little sharp, so they tend to poke. It’s nothing deal-breaking, but it can be a little annoying. Similarly the keyboard is a mixed bag. I found it to be an improvement over what the Galaxy Book5 Pro had; it’s not as mushy, but it still falls short.
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The key travel is shallow, which slows down typing. I wasn’t able to write at my usual speed, and I noticed that I made more mistakes than usual. Below the keyboard is the Galaxy Book’s mega-sized trackpad, taking up a large portion of the wrist rest.
I thoroughly enjoyed using it and am glad it was carried over from the previous version. Its size and responsiveness work in its favor, ensuring precise navigation.
Panther Lake performance
My review unit of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra packed serious muscle, housing 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 the Asus ProArt P16, the Dell 16 Premium, and the 2026 Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i; three 16-inch laptops that share a similar use case with Samsung’s machine.
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The results are telling: the Galaxy Book6 Ultra with Intel’s Panther Lake processor outperforms both Asus and Dell across the multi-threaded benchmarks. Lenovo’s machine slightly edges it out thanks to slightly stronger hardware. In real-world use, this translates to better overall efficiency, like faster 4K video exports and smoother handling of resource-intensive tasks.
Samsung’s device has a decent single-core score of 2,832. This means that everyday performance will feel fast and fluid. Apps launch quickly, web pages load equally as fast, and the UI feels highly responsive. There are other laptops that beat the Galaxy Book in this area. Apple’s M5 MacBook Pro, for example, has a single-core score of 4,111. However, in this instance, I don’t think this metric makes or breaks its usability.
The Galaxy Book6 Ultra is primarily a work laptop, and in that sense, it succeeds very well. 2,832 is perfectly acceptable for casual browsing. I don’t think you’ll be missing out on much.
Source : ZDNet