Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Review: The affordable option in the Galaxy Book lineup gets a lot of things right

With the Galaxy Book 2 360, Samsung delivered a convertible with enough power to muscle through daily office work and leisure, and in our review, we said that the 2-in-1 had performance and power in a neat little package.

The Galaxy Book 2, on the other hand, is a more traditional laptop, one that does not bend or twist but aims to offer enough power to be a steady work machine. Does it succeed?

Design

The Galaxy Book 2 shares a lot of design similarities with the Galaxy Book 2 360, which means the laptop has a striking industrial design. The kind that immediately grabs your attention if you put it side by side with similarly shaped laptops.

Since it doesn't need to fold, the hinge on the Galaxy Book 2 is larger, and looks sturdier. It tapers off into the back of the laptop with a smooth curve, creating an illusion that makes it seem like it is all one piece. The drawback to this is that there is a sizeable gap between the hinge and the back, at the joint.

This was excusable in the Galaxy Book 2 360 because that is a convertible, here it is a problem because it will let dirt in. On the flip side, the I/O options are a lot better here than the  Galaxy Book 2 360. You get a HDMI port, Thunderbolt 4 port, USB Type-C, USB 3.2, microSD reader and a headphone out/mic in port.

Like the Galaxy Book 2 360, there are stereo speakers here that sound excellent and get quite loud, if you can find the right surface to put them on.

You see, like the Galaxy Book 2 360, these are bottom firing speakers, which means half the time, these Dolby Atmos certified speakers are mushed between a hard surface or your lap, which makes everything muffled and not great.

If you can find a good surface that doesn't bury the sound completely into oblivion, these sound really good but I guess most people would just use this with external Bluetooth speakers or headphones.

For a full-sized laptop, with a full keyboard, the Galaxy Book 2 is surprisingly sleek and feels very light in the hands, making it a cinch to carry around. The build quality is also excellent, and feels premium to the touch.

The smooth edges along the sides, make sure they don't dig into your hands during use, and overall, it's just a nice design to hold and interact with.

Keyboard and Trackpad

One thing I complained about in the Galaxy Book 2 360 review, is that area around the keyboard and trackpad seemed like it had too much give, i.e., it seemed like a good little push could damage the internals.

That give still hasn't gone away completely, the surface area still bends with a firm push, but the effect seems to have lessened between the 360 and this model. The keyboard, especially, feels a lot more sturdier.

The backlit keys are still great to type on but retain the same mushiness and lack of feedback I found on the Galaxy Book 2 360. The typing experience itself is great, I honestly felt like I typed a bit faster here than the Galaxy Book 2 360 but that is subjective.

This is also a full-size keyboard with the numeric pad included, something I personally prefer over the ten keyless options. The power button to the top right doubles as a fingerprint reader.

The trackpad is nice and large, with a generous surface area that allows people with Yeti-hands like myself to not feel like they contorting their wrists to fire off a Windows gesture.

Overall, its a nice responsive input suite with a few caveats.

Display

I have to admit that I was bit spoiled by the great AMOLED display on the Galaxy Book 2 360, enough to notice a stark difference when switching over to the 15.6-inch FHD LED display. To be fair, you will only notice this if you are comparing and taken on its own, the 60Hz panel is still excellent when compared to the competition.

The image quality is excellent, if a little less crisper than the AMOLED panel. Also noticeable is the difference in blacks the two panels can produce, you will immediately notice the black levels to be not as deep as the Galaxy Book 2 360, and the colors don't tend to pop as much. Also there is no HDR here, so it doesn't get as bright either.

If it sounds like I am being unfair and nitpicking, that is true. Taken on its own, the LCD display here is still efficient and provides a great experience, it just pales in comparison to the rest of the screens in the line-up.

Software

Windows 11 greets you on boot and is thankfully kept as close to stock as possible, with some Samsung embellishments here and there. Like the Galaxy Book 2 360, you have options to limit the charge to 85% to conserve the life of the battery, or when you leave it plugged in to the socket during work.

There are also options for easy Bluetooth pairing, and some presets for color modes, sound modes and the like. You can also opt to go silent by throttling the processor and sacrificing performance. Samsung has also kept its own software suites to a minimum and they can all be uninstalled, if you desire.

Performance

Our review unit came with a 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1235U processor paired with 16GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 512GB of M.2 PCIe 3.0 SSD storage. The performance is quite good, its obviously not as zappy as the Core i7 powered Galaxy Book 2 360 but this is plenty of speed and power for a day at the office.

It also serves as great machine for leisure and catching up on your favorite shows, and if you keep your expectations in check, a moderate gaming machine. Our unit had Intel's Xe graphics but there are variants available with Intel's Arc graphics, though I am not sure how much that will improve things, considering Intel is only launching the entry level Arc GPUs for now.

One good thing is that the machine did not heat up nearly as much as the Core i7 powered Galaxy Book 2 360, which meant the thermals were kept in check much better here with a bigger chassis to work with. This is a great work machine.

As for battery life, the Core i5 is a lot more efficient that the Core i7, and on average, I managed to eek out quite a lot more hours here than the Galaxy Book 2 360.

Conclusion

At a starting price of Rs. 65,990, the Galaxy Book 2 sounds like an absolute steal, if you can live with 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. I don't know who this starting variant is aimed at, but I would definitely not recommend anyone get a machine with 8GB of RAM in 2022. Realistically, you should opt for the variant with 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM which would cost you Rs. 73,990.

In this price range between 60k and 70k, it is difficult to truly recommend something without any compromises. You have laptops from Realme that give you 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for under 70k but then compromise on the processor. On the flip side, you have machines with a great processor but paltry RAM and storage.

Seeing as how this price belt is built on compromises and trade-off's, Samsung's Galaxy Book 2 actually looks really strong. It's a no-frills laptop that knows what it is, and presents itself better aesthetically than almost everything else in the price bracket. It's hard to fault Samsung for that.