Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge review: This Copilot+ PC brings the heat

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is truly at the bleeding edge of performance for Windows on Arm laptops, challenging some of the best laptops overall, even powerhouses like the MacBook Pro M4.

That's in addition to one of Samsung's consistently excellent touchscreen AMOLED displays, a thin-and-light chassis for a 16-inch laptop, and Galaxy AI features that complement the Microsoft Copilot+ suite. The positives for the Book 4 Edge are building up fast.

But all that speed comes at a cost, and no, I'm not talking about the $1,749 retail price of the configuration we reviewed.

The Book 4 Edge's battery life falls short of our expectations, and when you push that impressive performance, the chassis heats up to an uncomfortable degree.

However, all is not lost for the Galaxy Book 4 Edge if you like the rest of what it offers. Read on for a complete picture of my time with Samsung's speedster.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge: Specs and benchmarks

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge: Price and configurations

I reviewed the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge, which has a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1-84-100 processor, Qualcomm Adreno integrated GPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 16-inch, 2880 x 1800 AMOLED touchscreen display. This is the top-end configuration for the 16-inch model. The full listed price is $1,749 directly from Samsung, but there’s an instant $300 savings, so you’ll pay only $1,449.

If you want to save money and still want the 16-inch display like my review model, you can upgrade to the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1-80-100 CPU and 512GB SSD, which costs $1,449 ($1,149 with the same instant savings). That’s the mid-tier Snapdragon X Elite processor, so that the performance will fall slightly. However, based on our experience with this chip in other laptops, you should benefit from less heat concerns and longer battery life.

The Book 4 Edge also has a 15.6-inch FHD LED Display (1920 x 1080), the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. At $899 ($799 with an instant discount), it’s considerably cheaper, but the display and CPU are significantly downgraded. If you need to stay below $1,000, this configuration is worth considering, but the display and CPU upgrade make the base 16-inch configuration the best value.

If the Galaxy Book 4 Edge doesn’t fit your budget or needs, you can check our best 16-inch laptops or best AI PCs for some of our favorite alternatives.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge: Design

Samsung calls the color of the Galaxy Book 4 Edge “Sapphire Blue,” but I would be shocked if 100 out of 100 people surveyed on the street wouldn’t say it was silver. Regardless, it’s still a welcome break from the tired dark grey. The design of the Book 4 Edge otherwise sticks closely to that same Samsung look. Galaxy laptops have worn it like a comfortable sweater for several years, but it still looks good. The laptop flares slightly at the back to allow for the ports but tapers toward the front, which also makes it easier to pick up off a table.

Inside, there are minimal bezels on the top and sides, while the bottom bezel remains thicker than you might expect in 2025. I suspect that other components within the laptop chassis may be driving the size decision, but if the whole laptop could be reduced slightly along with that bezel, it would be a welcome change for the next generation.

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge falls on the lighter end of the scale for 16-inch laptops, at 3.38 pounds, and is pleasingly portable at 14 x 9.85 x 0.48 inches. That’s comparable to its rivals, with the exception of the HP Spectre x360, but that is a 2-in-1:

• HP Spectre x360 16 (2024): 4.3 pounds, 12.3 x 8.8 x 0.44 inches
• MacBook Air 15-inch M3: 3.3 pounds, 13.4 x 9.35 x 0.45 inches
• Asus Zenbook S16 UM5606: 3.3 pounds, 13.92 x 9.57 x 0.51 inches

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge: Ports

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The Galaxy Book 4 Edge has all the typical ports most users need, but I have one complaint about their specific arrangement.

• 2 x Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 Type-C
• 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
• 1 x HDMI 2.1
• 1 x headphone mic/jack
• 1 x microSD card slot

Credit to Samsung for not dropping the USB Type-A or HDMI 2.1 port in a laptop this thin and light. However, I would like a Thunderbolt 4 port on both sides of the laptop so that I can charge from either side. It’s not that Samsung doesn’t provide a long enough charging cable; I’d just prefer not to stretch the cable around the laptop depending on where I’m working, as it puts unnecessary stress on the cable.

The Galaxy Book 4 Edge isn’t short on ports, but if you need more, our best USB Type-C hubs or best laptop docking stations guides can help.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge: Battery life

The Galaxy Book 4 Edge’s battery life is an anomaly among the first wave of ARM-based Windows laptops that arrived in the summer of 2024, and that’s not a good thing.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptops were among the first to completely shift the standard for good battery life in a Windows laptop. At the time of publication, the longest-lasting laptop on our laptops with the best battery life page is the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6. Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1-78-100 chip, it delivered over 21 hours of battery life in our testing.

On the same Laptop Mag battery test, which involves surfing a set group of websites with video and static images while the display is set at 150 nits of brightness, the Galaxy Book 4 Edge lasted an average of 9 hours and 56 minutes. The ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 isn’t as powerful as the Book 4 Edge, but it delivers over twice the battery life and only about a 9% drop in performance. I recently covered five powerful laptops that deliver over 15 hours of battery life to highlight that you simply don’t need to trade performance for battery life in 2025.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge: Display

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge features a 16-inch, WQXGA+ (2880 x 1800) touchscreen AMOLED display. A Samsung AMOLED display has yet to disappoint me. Watching the latest Marvel series on the Book 4 Edge was a pleasure.

I watched the first two episodes of Daredevil: Born Again on Disney+ for my real-world testing, and the thematically and visually dark show played to the OLED panel’s strengths. A close up of Charlie Cox as Daredevil with his face half in darkness and half bathed in red light retains fantastic detail. It illustrates the incredible color and contrast capabilities of this display.

Reproduction of the dark doesn’t mean this display can’t get bright. In our testing, it registered a solid 387 nits, so I could work in any environment with the Book 4 Edge. It passed my typical torture test of working next to an east-facing floor-to-ceiling window in the morning at my local coffee shop with flying colors.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge: Keyboard and touchpad

Samsung makes full use of the 16-inch chassis on the Galaxy Book 4 Edge, giving you an absolutely massive touchpad paired with a full-size keyboard and number pad.

While the key travel is fairly shallow, I found the keys bouncy and quick to type on. Turning to 10fastfingers.com to test my typing performance, I hit 92 words per minute with 99% accuracy. I slightly outperformed my average of 88 words per minute with 99% accuracy. That short key travel is not ideal if you spend all day typing. Our best laptops for writers include alternatives with up to 1.5mm key travel.

The touchpad measures 4.2 x 5.9 inches, which may be larger than it needs to be. However, touch rejection works effectively as I didn’t get any stray cursor movement while typing, and it makes Windows 11 gestures a breeze by allowing my fingers to glide smoothly over its surface. While I’m happy to use a touchpad on the go, I still like to pair one of the best wireless mice with my laptop when I can, but that comes down to personal preference.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge: Audio

The quad-speakers on the Galaxy Book 4 Edge create a solid soundscape, but aren’t as loud as I hoped. They filled my small 10’ x 7’ office, but at 100%, the audio does perceptibly distort, so you need to scale back slightly. Listening to my typical playlist of Creative Writing Scores, “S.T.A.Y.” from the Interstellar soundtrack sounded crisp and clear at about 85% volume, but pushing beyond that diminished the quality while still not completely enveloping the room in sound.

While the built-in speakers are perfectly fine for casual use, if you’re regularly trying to enjoy audio content through your Galaxy Book 4 Edge, I’d recommend picking up a pair of the best wireless headphones or best computer speakers for a superior listening experience.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge: Performance and heat

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is one of the few laptops to offer the top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1-84-100 chip, which makes for blistering fast performance, but it may have you blistering too.

For years, Windows-on-ARM laptops were hampered by the weak performance of available ARM-based chips. That was finally put to rest with the arrival of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite in June of 2024.

The productivity performance of even the lowest X Elite chip is outstanding. While it isn’t a fitting comparison for other reasons, the Book 4 Edge’s top-of-the-line X Elite chip also beat the 14-inch MacBook Pro M3 Pro (and the newer 14-inch MacBook Pro M4) in the Geekbench overall performance test.

My laptop usage is a malstrom of multitasking with dozens of Chrome tabs across at least a few windows alongside Asana for task management, Slack for communication, and typically Photoshop. While it isn’t going to claim a spot among our best laptops for Photoshop or best video editing laptops, it dealt with my casual Photoshop usage without slowdowns.

Now, we get to the downside of all this performance muscle. One of the highlights of most Snapdragon X Elite laptops is their power efficiency, which typically rivals or surpasses Apple Silicon, representing the gold standard for that metric since 2020.

However, for fans of Greek mythology, Qualcomm may have flown too close to the sun, like Icarus. Its most powerful chip is a little too hot to handle.

The hottest temperature our lab testers recorded following a 15-minute video test was 112 degrees Fahrenheit behind the vent on the bottom right-center portion of the laptop. That’s well beyond our 95-degree comfort threshold. However, we see gaming laptops pass our much more rigorous gaming heat test with results lower than that.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge: Gaming and graphics

Do not buy this laptop with gaming or graphics work in mind. This is one clear weakness for the first generation Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips. You can look at our best gaming laptops or cheap gaming laptops for stronger options, including a few that are at or below the Galaxy Book 4 Edge price.

Our only gaming test that would run on the Galaxy Book 4 Edge is the Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Gathering Storm benchmark, and it delivered only 24 frames per second (30 fps is the minimum for playability). Civ 6 wasn’t even intensive when it debuted in February 2019, so unless your gaming sticks to much older titles, this isn’t the laptop for you.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge: AI features

The Galaxy Book 4 Edge gets a full scoop of AI with the full Copilot+ PC suite of AI features and then sprinkles Galaxy AI features on top of the AI sundae.

If you've been shopping for a laptop online, you've undoubtedly seen ads for Copilot+ PCs AI features or AI features in general, but if you are currently on an older laptop, they may not be part of your routine just yet.

Samsung has a few features that are exclusive to its laptops, including Circle to Search, AI Select, Photo Remaster, and Chat Assist. The first two make searching the web on your laptop easier by allowing you to circle or highlight an image or text onscreen to search for information regarding that content. Photo Remaster tries to unblur hastily snapped photos, while Chat Assist gives you spelling and grammar help in Messages.

The Book 4 Edge also supports all of Microsoft's Copilot+ PC features. This includes Recall, which essentially records the activity on your laptop to help you find anything you've seen or done in the future.

If you need help creating an image, Microsoft's Cocreator will do it with a text prompt, allowing you to refine it as you go. Live Captions can translate audio from over 40 languages into English. Finally, Windows Studio Effects augments your laptop's webcam with extras like portrait lighting, automatic framing, and improved voice isolation.

One oft-ignored key to some AI features is that they offload tasks from your CPU. For example, using Windows Studio Effects won't impact your laptop's performance, which is a win for everyone.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge: Webcam

The Galaxy Book 4 Edge features a 2MP webcam, and it is no threat to the best webcams, which you will want to buy if you regularly do video calls. Turning the camera on in my well-lit office, the image was grainy and even had a slight blur or haze.

The colors are accurate, but the camera simply can’t produce a sharp, satisfying image. That's not a problem if you're using it occasionally for personal calls, but if you ever have more important video calling needs, you’ll want an external webcam.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge: Software and warranty

The Galaxy Book 4 Edge comes with Windows 11 Home or Pro, which includes the typical array of Windows software, but Samsung really adds to the tally.

There are an additional 19 Samsung apps when you first boot up the laptop. To be clear, some of these apps, like Samsung Notes, are quite good, so I’m not calling these bloatware by any means, and you can uninstall most of them if you prefer to keep your laptop storage tidy.

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge ships with a typical one-year limited warranty, but it can be extended with Samsung Care+ or Samsung Care+: Extended Warranty, starting at $99.

Bottom line

The Galaxy Book 4 Edge may be the fastest thin-and-light Windows laptop we've ever tested, which is an incredible feat. However, this is not enough to overcome the poor battery life and thermal performance.

It simply doesn't have enough of a performance edge on the best AI PCs to justify its significantly lower battery life, and truly, you do not want to touch the bottom of this laptop when it's going all out.

Again, there's more to like here than just the performance. The display is outstanding, the keyboard is fast, and if you're in the Samsung ecosystem, it melds seamlessly with your phone or tablet.

But if you do opt for the Book 4 Edge, I strongly recommend the base model. It will unquestionably deliver longer battery life in exchange for a negligible dropoff in performance.

If you're unsure if it's the right choice for you, then consider checking our best laptops page for our current top recommendations across numerous categories.