Samsung Galaxy Book Flex Review: A Workstation For Creatives

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex: At First Glance

In the current laptop market where most laptops are either remakes or upgrades of their predecessors, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex is different. This laptop is a complete redesign – aside from its Royal Blue color.

Unlike its previous model’s design that looked like a MacBook Air clone, Samsung has converted this laptop’s design into something different. The redesign makes the laptop look more premium.

That’s not the only thing to love about this laptop. It is also a convertible laptop with an awesome QLED display.

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex: Design, Dimension, and Weight

The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex has an aluminum build with clean-cut lines. It would not be wrong to think that Samsung’s design team has put enough time into this laptop’s design.

As I mentioned in the last section, one undeniable fact about this laptop is its premium look and feel.

Moreover, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex doesn’t miss any chance at capturing your gaze with its reflective edges. To top it all, its shiny Samsung logo perfectly enhances its attention-seeking design.

Opening this laptop takes you to a different realm of beauty. The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex features a beautiful QLED display that promises to offer pleasurable visuals.

This laptop also features a well-spaced keyboard that is very comfortable for typing. Its keys have multi-stage backlighting – meaning that they can be regulated.

In addition, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex features a large touchpad. This touchpad is very smooth and responsive.

Furthermore, there’s this uniformity on each side of the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex when it is opened or closed. It feels as though this laptop’s lid and base share the same height.

In a way, this adds to the sleekness of the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex laptop.

Moving on to the weight and size – Samsung Galaxy Book Flex weighs 118.4 g and measures 304.8 x 201.9 x 13.9 mm. It is lighter and thinner than most of its competitors such as the Lenovo Yoga C940 and the HP Spectre x360.

For input and output ports, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex offers just 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 HDMI port, 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports, and a headphone jack.

On another note, this laptop has some cool features that are noteworthy. One of them is its Qi wireless charger built into the touchpad.

With the wireless charger feature, you can charge your phone wirelessly by placing it on this laptop’s touchpad. Another cool feature is its built-in S Pen that can be used wirelessly.

Aside from the weird fingerprint sensor positioning and its stain-retaining chassis, this laptop’s design is excellent. Therefore, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex scores a nine in this review for its futuristic and solid design.

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex: Processor (CPU) Performance

Samsung offers two configurations for this laptop’s processor. You can purchase the laptop with a quad-core Intel Core i5 10210U or a quad-core Intel Core i7 10510U processor.

The 10th gen i5 processor has a base frequency of 1.60 GHz and a maximum frequency of 4.20 GHz. Furthermore, the Core i7 processor has a base frequency of 1.80 GHz and a maximum frequency of 4.90 GHz.

This review focuses on the Core i7 processor. With this processor, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex is not a laptop to be overlooked in terms of performance.

The performance of the laptop on the processor benchmark test highlights its power. It scored 19,140 on a Geekbench 4 performance test, surpassing the premium laptop average of 17,080.

However, this laptop was outperformed by the Dell XPS 15 that scored 28,168, and the Spectre x360 that scored 17,118.

Overall, this laptop’s performance is as expected for a laptop with its processor type. Therefore, it scores an eight in this review for its good CPU performance.

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex: Memory (RAM) Performance

Samsung equipped Samsung Galaxy Book Flex with 8 GB DDR4 RAM. However, with its single memory slot, the RAM size can be upgraded to a maximum supported size of 12 GB.

For this review, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex was tested with 12 GB RAM. With this RAM capacity, the overall system performance of this laptop was smooth during RAM tests.

To be precise, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex ran smoothly with 20 Chrome browser tabs while I was sending messages on Slack. The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex didn’t stutter even when I started editing documents on Google Docs.

I also started streaming a 1080p YouTube video to push the laptop’s limit. To my surprise, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex kept running smoothly.

Hence, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex scores an eight in this review for its multitasking efficiency.

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex: Storage Options and Performance

Samsung ships this laptop with a 512 GB SSD. You also get a MicroSD multimedia card reader.

In general, this SSD offers exceptional performance, particularly in the benchmark test. On a CrystalDiskMark test, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex recorded a sequential read speed of 3551 MBps and a sequential write speed of 2994 MBps.

Moving further to the file transfer test, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex copied 4.97 GB of a multimedia file at a copy rate of 1,379 MBps. It completely smashed the 646 MBps average.

Moreover, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex outpaced its competitors such as the Dell XPS 15 that had a 508MBps copy rate. Also, the Spectre x360’s 425 MBps copy rate was no match for Samsung Galaxy Book Flex’s copy rate.

Therefore, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex scores a nine in this review for its speedy storage performance.

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex: Graphics Card Performance

The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex features an Intel Iris Plus Graphics card. This GPU has a base frequency of 300 MHz and a boost frequency of 1150 MHz.

The graphics card that ships with this laptop is a clear indication that it is not a gaming laptop. Though it can run few games, its GPU mainly assists with light photo or video editing.

Nonetheless, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex can handle light gaming at medium graphics settings. However, current and more demanding games will require a further reduction of the graphics settings.

On low settings, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex played Bioshock Infinite at 120 FPS and Rise of the Tomb Raider at 42 FPS. However, it offered a frame rate short of the minimum playability rate of 30 FPS in Shadow of the Tomb Raider – it played the game at 28 FPS.

Overall, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex offers an average gaming performance. Therefore, it scores a six in this graphics performance review.

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex: Battery Life and Performance

The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex comes with a 4-Cell Li-ion 3530 mAh battery. According to Samsung, this laptop offers 18 hours and 30 minutes battery life.

Even though it didn’t deliver this exact runtime in the battery life test that was carried out, its battery performance is excellent. The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex undeniably shines in this aspect.

The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex lasted 15 hours and 50 minutes in a battery test that involved continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi. It outlasted the 9 hours premium laptop average battery life.

Furthermore, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex also outlasted the XPS 15 and the Spectre x360 that lasted 8 hours 50 minutes and 7 hours 50 minutes respectively.

In conclusion, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex scores a nine in this review for its excellent battery life.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

With its premium design and all-metal build, Samsung Galaxy Book Flex is simply stunning. It also doesn’t back down in terms of performance.

In fact, this laptop offers a good performance thanks to its hardware specs and its remarkable battery life. Overall, I would mainly recommend this laptop to creatives artists, students, and professionals.

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