Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro and Book 2 360 Hands On

Last year's Galaxy Book Pro and Galaxy Book 360 were great laptops and offered a great laptop experience in a sleek slim premium design package. This year, not much has changed in terms of the design, but we see some new internals to bring it up to date.

Both the 360 and the clamshell versions come in either 13.3 or 15.6-inch sizes and are almost identical. The Galaxy Book 2 Pro is available in Silver or Graphite are both understated with a subtle Samsung Branding on the lid. It's super thin and lightweight at just 1.11kg without the external graphics for the 15.6 and just 0.87kg for the 13.3-inch model. The Galaxy Book 2 pro is super portable and easy to throw in a backpack something I loved about its predecessor. For ports, they both have 1 Thunderbolt 4, 1 USB Type c, 1 USB 3.2, 3.5 mm audio/mic port, microSD slot and the larger variant with a full HDMI and an optional nano SIM port.

Opening the lid, the Galaxy Book 2 Pro is well balanced so you can open it with just one finger without lifting the bottom half, but the lid does have some wobble which you'll notice if you're an aggressive or passionate typist. The keyboard is backlit with the larger variant with the numeric keyboard and they feel great to type on, the Galaxy Book series have an Island type keyboard so each key stands out and are easy to use. The power button has an integrated fingerprint scanner to log in and you have a 1080p FHD webcam with a dual array mic. if they support windows hello, I'm not sure but I'll find out when I have a full review, but it now comes with auto-framing and a wider 87-degree FoV up from 77 Bi-directional noise cancelling on the mic.

The display is one of the best out there as Samsung is great when it comes to smartphone and laptop displays in general. Both variants have a FHD 16:9 AMOLED display and whilst it's sharp and vibrant, it's not the best in bright light situations, like sitting by the pool on a sunny day catching up on emails, you might struggle a little.

On to the internals: For processing, both are on the Intel Evo Platform enabling the ability to have a thin laptop without compromising on power whilst staying cool under pressure. It's running on Windows 11, powered by the latest 12th Gen Intel Core Processors, with the option to spec it to either i5 or i7, with Intel Xe graphics. If the predecessor is to go by, the i7 with Intel Xe graphics will let you run Adobe Premier with no issues. The 15.6-inch version can also be spec'd with Intel Arc Graphics. For memory options, you can pick between the 8, 16 or 32GB LPDDR5 options and I'd suggest going all out for video editing or more intensive tasks for storage, you can have up to 1TB NVMe SSD and of course, you also have a micro SD card expansion slot.

For connectivity, there's WiFi 6E which is great and for battery, Samsung says this will give you put to 21 hours of battery life with the 68Wh battery in the 15.6-inch model and 63Wh in the smaller version, but can be charged up quickly using a 65w USB C faster charger. The smaller variant has a 4W Stereo AKG speaker with Smart AMP and Dolby Atmos while the larger variant is packed with a slightly more powerful 5W stereo speaker, also AKG.

I also had some hands-on with the 360 model and as the name suggests, allows you to be more flexible, you can have it in tent mode, tablet mode or laptop mode, making it a 2-in-1 laptop device. It's identical to the clamshell version in terms of specs but with a touch screen and S Pen support so you can sketch away or sign documents on the go it can attach to the lid via magnet and it sticks very well to keep it safe and no Intel Arc available on the larger variant and slight differences in weight but in reality, you won't feel the heft. One thing to also note is that only the 15.6inch has a 5G offering.

It's a Galaxy device, so you also get some software features Galaxy has to offer like SmartThings, Quick share which can now be used to send larger files, new OneBook UI 4.0 experience to bring it closer to what you're used to on your Galaxy smartphones, you can use your Galaxy Book2 series’ keyboard and trackpad while navigating on your Galaxy Tab S8 screen for seamless interactions across devices and even use the tab as an external display and I spotted Amazon Alexa integration too.

In case you were wondering, you do have a new base model Galaxy Book 2 variant too with a small battery, smaller RAM at just 8GB LPDDR4 or LPDDR5 depending on the size you go for, lower camera resolution and it's just designed to be a great value for money.