Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 review

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 is a great Windows ultrabook with a sleek design, gorgeous OLED screen and fantastic battery life. Its performance is on par with the competition too, with only little things such as a shallow keyboard and slow charging speeds letting it down.

Introduction

The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 is the South Korean brand’s new top-of-the-line ultrabook, providing a beefy, big-screen experience with a lot to like.

It’s powered by one of Intel’s new Lunar Lake laptop chips, as well as coming with a large 16-inch 3K AMOLED screen, sleek aluminium chassis and a capacious 78Wh battery. On paper, it makes it quite a compelling choice against recent releases including the Asus Zenbook S 16 (2024) and Microsoft Surface Laptop 7.

With that spec sheet in mind, the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360’s £1899/$1699.99 price tag doesn’t seem wholly unreasonable for a Windows laptop that looks to bring the fight to the MacBook Pro and some of our favourite laptops. I’ve been testing the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 to see if it really is one of the best ultrabooks we’ve tested.

Design and Keyboard

• MacBook Pro-inspired looks
• Solid port selection
• Shorter-travel keyboard, although a massive trackpad

The larger screen and the aluminium frame immediately provide a comparison between the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 and a 16-inch MacBook Pro. It certainly seems as if Samsung has taken a few cues from Apple with the display’s rounded corners and the cool grey colour of the laptop’s aluminium chassis.

The 1.69kg mass is quite hefty, although it is worth remembering how large this laptop is. For a laptop with a 16-inch screen, the weight of the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 isn’t entirely unreasonable. With a 15mm thickness too, it also demonstrates how portable this laptop is, in spite of its larger size.

The Galaxy Book5 Pro 360’s slender status means the port selection isn’t as strong as a modern MacBook Pro of equivalent size, although it is still competent. On the left side, there is a full-size HDMI port and a pair of Thunderbolt 4-capable USB-C ports, while the right-hand side is graced with a microSD card reader, USB-A and a headphone jack.

The fact this laptop is only 15mm thick has led to the sacrifice of a mightily short keyboard travel. It’s much the same story on modern MacBook Pros, although their keyboard feels as if it has a lot more in the way of key travel than the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360. You barely have to breathe on the keys before they actuate, and it takes some getting used to. I can still get up to a reasonable speed, although it isn’t without its mistakes.

Apart from the shorter travel, the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360’s keyboard is perfectly fine. It comes with a larger keyboard tray, complete with arrow keys, a smaller nav cluster and number pad to boot. There is some handy backlighting underneath the keys which is controllable via the F9 key, and does a solid job of illuminating the keys.

In taking another bit of inspiration from modern MacBooks, the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 trackpad is hilariously large. I haven’t had this much in the way of real estate for my fingers since my actual 16-inch 2021 MacBook Pro I use every day, and it dwarfs virtually every other laptop I’ve used.

Display and Sound

• Large, gorgeous AMOLED screen
• Deep blacks and brilliant colours
• Speakers offer solid depth and definition

The Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 features a big 16-inch 3K AMOLED panel that features the modern 16:10 aspect ratio that makes it ideal for modern workloads, alongside both a 120Hz refresh rate for smoother motion and the trademark features we’ve come to expect from this panel type such as deep blacks, incredible colour accuracy and virtually infinite contrast that make it a marvellous panel for work.

This was reflected in taking out my colorimeter, with it measuring the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 to cover 100% of the sRGB and DCI-P3 colour gamuts, as well as 96% of the Adobe RGB space, proving its wonderful suitability for both productivity and more colour-sensitive workloads.

In addition, the 0.01 measured black level proves how deep and inky they are, while the 14990:1 contrast ratio gives this panel a lot in the way of dynamic range. Its 6900K colour temperature is also pretty much bang on.

Where the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360’s display falls down somewhat is with a peak SDR brightness of just 367.8 nits. That’s perfectly fine, hitting our 300-nit target for use both indoors and out, although other ultrabook panels have gotten higher for even more pop.

This large 16-inch screen is also touch-capable, as the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 is a convertible laptop. Its 2800×1800 resolution offers detailed images, and its tracking of either a stylus or my finger was excellent, even if my terrible doctors-style handwriting leaves a bit to be desired.

Samsung has bundled a quad-speaker setup into the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360, with a pair of 5W woofers and 3.3W tweeters. They’re not as strong as the speakers on my 2021 MacBook Pro in terms of their bass, although offer decent depth and roundness to their sound. Support for Dolby Atmos is also present for spatial audio right out of the box if you want it.

Performance

• Brand new Intel Lunar Lake chip inside
• Solid results for productivity and gaming at lower settings
• SSD capacity is generous, although slower than the competition

It’s inside the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 where things get especially interesting. It comes with one of Intel’s new Lunar Lake 200V chips inside – to be specific, it’s the 8 core/8 thread Intel Core Ultra 7 256V with the core count split down the middle between Intel’s P & E cores.

Intel has made a lot of these chips’ combined oomph and efficiency against their Meteor Lake predecessors, and the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 offers a solid blend of both in our testing.

Its scores in Geekbench 6.1 are on par with the likes of the Huawei Matebook 14 (2024), which has a previous-gen 16 core/22 thread (split to 6P and 8 E Cores) Intel Core Ultra 7 155H inside, while Samsung’s option monsters ahead in PC Mark 10 with a score that’s comfortably above the previous generation.

It’s swings and roundabouts with the new Core Ultra 7 256V though, as its multi-core Cinebench R23 result is behind by some margin against the Matebook 14 (2024), although that is arguably down to the lower core and thread count of this newer chip.

In addition, the scores on offer with this Lunar Lake chip are also behind the Strix Point Ryzen AI HX 370 chip inside Asus’ Zenbook S 16 (2024). However, single-core performance has improved, as is demonstrated by the 400 or so point increase in the Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360’s results.

With these new Lunar Lake chips, Intel also made a fair bit out of their ability to game, so it makes sense to run them through a couple of important titles. Of course, this comes with the caveat of the fact that laptops such as the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 aren’t designed for gaming as their main workload, even if this model comes with a much beefier iGPU in the Intel Arc 140V 8GB.

At 1080p in the likes of Returnal and Rainbow Six Extraction at max settings, results of 27fps and 45fps are surprisingly playable, while Cyberpunk 2077 with no RT or XeSS posted a similar 28.12fps average. Turning graphics settings down will yield better results of course, so you are likely to get more frames if you don’t mind sacrificing some quality.

However, that’s about as far as the power of the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 goes. Going up to QHD at max settings in Returnal and Rainbow Six Extraction pushed results down to 20fps and 26fps respectively, while a 12.74fps result in Cyberpunk 2077 displays the limitations of the Arc 140V.

At the laptop’s native 3K resolution, Cyberpunk with its RT Ultra setting managed a 15.86fps average, which isn’t great, while turning on XeSS Supersampling pushed the average up to 18.03fps on the ‘Auto’ setting. It is possible to play ray-traced Cyberpunk on the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360, just not at its native resolution.

The Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 features 16GB of DDR5 RAM, which is enough for some more intensive workloads, while its 1TB capacity SSD is quite generous in this regard. However, its read and write speeds of 3761.69MB/s and 2623.93MB/s respectively leave a bit to be desired against the competition, meaning file transfer and access won’t be as snappy as with other laptops.

Software

• Windows’ typical AI functions are here
• Some handy extras, including webcam effects
• Lots of integration with Samsung Galaxy phones

The Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 is a Copilot+ PC, as other recent Windows ultrabooks have been, which means it comes with Microsoft’s Copilot AI functionality thanks to its dedicated key on the bottom row of the keyboard that acts as a wake button for Microsoft’s AI assistant. It brings up a window where you can ask the AI all manner of things, such as to write some text, or you can ask it a range of information.

You also get the benefit of generative AI in Windows system apps such as Photos, where you can add filters or an interesting background. The Photos app on a Copilot+ PC also has an Image Creator function, where you can give the system a prompt and it’ll generate an image for you with reasonable accuracy.

Microsoft Paint also has similar smarts, where AI can help you add detail to images using the CoCreator tab where it can turn your image into everything from pixel art to an oil painting.

The Galaxy Book5 Pro 360’s solid webcam also benefits from Windows Studio webcam effects to keep you in frame, as well as to offer convenient features such as background blur, which works a treat for conference calls. There are also useful extras including a way of adding live captions to videos directly within Windows, which is handy.

Microsoft’s Recall feature is still missing however. This would have taken screenshots every few seconds of use so you could look back and remember things you’ve looked at, even if you didn’t manually bookmark them in a browser or take a manual screenshot using the Snipping Tool. It will be available, although only for Windows Insiders.

Samsung’s laptop also naturally comes with some of the brand’s own software, including Galaxy Book Experience, which is a central hub of sorts for accessing features such as SmartThings control for any smart home devices, or Live Wallpaper for keeping your desktop fresh with a new wallpaper every two weeks. There is also Samsung Studio inside the Galaxy Book experience app, which gives you access to a decent video editor.

Naturally, you can also hook up a Galaxy handset to reap even more benefits with the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360’s software, including handy features such as Transcript Assist, which can convert recorded meetings into written summaries, and Chat Assist which can provide quick replies to conversations to keep things easy. These only work when your phone is connected with Microsoft Phone Link, which turns the laptop’s panel into a large phone screen.

As an x86-based system, this laptop also doesn’t have anything in the way of compatibility issues with any games or VPN apps for instance that have befallen Snapdragon X Elite-powered alternatives with this higher price tag. That’s a small, but important, win for the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360.

Battery Life

• Lasted for 17 hours 45 minutes in the battery test
• Capable of lasting for two working days

The Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 serves up some great endurance too, lasting for an excellent 17 hours and 45 minutes in the PC Mark Modern Office battery test with the brightness dialled down to the requisite 150 nits of brightness. This compares well against the competition, falling behind only the Snapdragon X Elite-powered Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 in terms of overall longevity, while being ahead of key rivals from Dell, Asus and Lenovo.

That’s largely down to the fact Samsung has packed in a large 76Wh cell into a laptop that utilises one of Intel’s more efficient Lunar Lake chips, and it means you’ll be able to get two working days out of the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 before even thinking about charging it back up again.

The Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 comes bundled with a white 65W power brick and USB-C cable that looks identical to the ones available for their Galaxy handsets, and in spite of its beefy wattage, takes a while to recharge Samsung’s ultrabook. Going from zero to 50 percent took 66 minutes, while a full charge took 140 minutes. Against the competition, that’s quite a disappointing set of results.

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