Samsung offers various price points for pretty much every gadget it makes. Laptops, however, have often been one of the notable exceptions.
Sure, you can find a decently priced Chromebook now and again — Samsung launched a new Chromebook Plus model just this week — but typically Samsung goes premium.
We'd get a Galaxy Book, a Galaxy Book Pro, a Galaxy Book Ultra, and often 2-in-1 variants for the Galaxy Book and Galaxy Book Pro. Then we hit 2024 and Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon X Elite.
Thanks in part to Qualcomm's new 8-Core Snapdragon X Plus chipset at IFA, we're getting a new Galaxy Book 4 Edge, this time in a 15-inch configuration with an 8-core Snapdragon X Plus chipset and a much lower price tag.
It begs the question: Is this the moment where Samsung dives into budget laptops?
Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge (15-inch)
First, let's talk about Samsung's new (and rare) budget laptop.
We came across a Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge (15-inch) at a Samsung event last week in New York, which was primarily focusing on the Galaxy S24 FE smartphone and Galaxy Tab S 10 Plus and Tab S 10 Ultra tablets.
The Galaxy Book 4 Edge model we saw has a Snapdragon X Plus XIP-42-100 processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a matte 15.6-inch LED display.
It still has upgraded RAM and storage, but also has a different chassis than the other Galaxy Book models.
You can still see Samsung's premium, minimalist aesthetic in the Galaxy Book 4 Edge (15-inch) but the materials are a little bit less luxe than Samsung tends to go for.
The Galaxy Book 4 Edge (15-inch) starts at just $899.99, and you can pre-order it now.
What this means for Samsung and budget-friendly laptops
Qualcomm has confirmed that most manufacturers are pricing laptops in the $700-800 range for models featuring the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core chips, which isn't exactly budget, budget. And Samsung is pricing its Galaxy Book 4 Edge (15-inch) model at just under $900, still opting to go for a heightened price to match the Samsung label. But $899.99 is still a lower starting price than Samsung's main rival opts for: Apple's MacBook Air 13 M3 starts at $1,099.
Of course, Samsung didn't make much of an announcement about the 15.6-inch version of the Galaxy Book 4 Edge. The company has kind of stealth-launched the product.
And this is something of a banner year for Samsung laptops; we've had multiple iterations of the Intel Core Ultra 100 "Meteor Lake" Galaxy Book 4, three models of the Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Galaxy Book 4 Edge, the Intel Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360, and the Galaxy Chromebook Plus. That may be more Samsung laptops than we've ever seen.
While this doesn't mean Samsung is suddenly going to take after Lenovo and make 40-plus Laptop models per year, it is a deeper investment in laptops. And it seems Samsung is tepidly entering into the budget laptop arena with Galaxy Book 4 Edge (15) and Galaxy Chromebook Plus.
This means we've got more competition in that mid-range, budget-friendly tier — and more competition when it comes to laptops is almost never a bad thing.
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