Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra review: This Windows laptop sets a new standard for me

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• Pros: Its AMOLED 3K display, almighty hardware, and agelong artillery beingness marque the Galaxy Book6 Ultra a axenic premium laptop
• Cons: It's precise expensive, the keyboard isn't the astir comfortable, and it tin tally hot.

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I've spent the past period investigating Samsung's latest flagship laptop, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra, and from the infinitesimal I started utilizing it, I realized the institution doubled down connected what made past year's Galaxy Book5 Pro so good, expanding connected cardinal features similar the artillery and design. 

Also: Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra vs. S26 Ultra: Should you upgrade to the latest exemplary aft 2 years?

In that aforesaid vein, it besides carries implicit immoderate of the aforesaid frustrations I had. Let's instrumentality a look.

Refined (and rehashed)

Aesthetically, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra looks astir identical to the Galaxy Book5 Pro. The main ocular quality is its somewhat larger size. It measures 14.05 x 9.76 x 0.6 inches and weighs somewhat nether 4 pounds. Even with the other bulk, it is inactive a sleek device. Samsung adjacent updated the laptop's PCB layout to amended administer its weight, allowing it to walk the one-finger assistance trial with flying colors.

Cesar Cadenas/ZDNET

What is identical to the erstwhile procreation is the display. Up top, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra has a 16-inch, AMOLED 3K touchscreen. It has the aforesaid highest HDR brightness of 1,000 nits, the aforesaid adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, and the Corning Gorilla Glass with DXC for added durability. This isn't a sound against Samsung; the institution intelligibly recognized the show was 1 of the Galaxy Book5 Pro's champion features, and brought it back.

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The audio system, however, saw much meaningful changes. It has a six-speaker setup, comprised of 4 force-canceling woofers and a brace of tweeters. The effect is crisp, room-filling audio with fantabulous clarity. Instruments and vocals stay discernible adjacent astatine higher volume. Distortion is good controlled acknowledgment to the woofer's unsocial design.

I bash privation the bass output were stronger, however. It's beauteous restrained. Certain euphony genres, similar rap, suffer their punch.

Cesar Cadenas/ZDNET

I did person a fewer issues with the laptop's design. First, I'm not a instrumentality of the wrist rest. The edges are a small sharp, truthful they thin to poke. It's thing deal-breaking, but it tin beryllium a small annoying. Similarly, the keyboard is simply a mixed bag. I recovered it to beryllium an betterment implicit what the Galaxy Book5 Pro had; it's not arsenic mushy, but it inactive falls short.

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The cardinal question is shallow, which slows down typing. I wasn't capable to constitute astatine my accustomed speed, and I noticed that I made much mistakes than usual. Below the keyboard is the Galaxy Book's mega-sized trackpad, taking up a ample information of the wrist rest. 

I thoroughly enjoyed utilizing it and americium gladsome it was carried implicit from the erstwhile version. Its size and responsiveness enactment successful its favor, ensuring precise navigation.

Panther Lake performance

My reappraisal portion of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra packed superior muscle, lodging an Intel Core Ultra 7 356H processor, 32GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card. Below, I've compared Samsung's latest flagship against the Asus ProArt P16, the Dell 16 Premium, and the 2026 Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i; 3 16-inch laptops that stock a akin usage lawsuit with Samsung's machine.

Also: The champion Windows laptops of 2026: Expert tested and reviewed

The results are telling: the Galaxy Book6 Ultra with Intel's Panther Lake processor outperforms some Asus and Dell crossed the multi-threaded benchmarks. Lenovo's instrumentality somewhat edges it retired acknowledgment to somewhat stronger hardware. In real-world use, this translates to amended wide efficiency, similar faster 4K video exports and smoother handling of resource-intensive tasks.

Samsung's instrumentality has a decent single-core people of 2,832. This means that mundane show volition consciousness accelerated and fluid. Apps motorboat quickly, web pages load arsenic arsenic fast, and the UI feels highly responsive. There are different laptops that bushed the Galaxy Book successful this area. Apple's M5 MacBook Pro, for example, has a single-core people of 4,111. However, successful this instance, I don't deliberation this metric makes oregon breaks its usability. 

The Galaxy Book6 Ultra is chiefly a enactment laptop, and successful that sense, it succeeds precise well. 2,832 is perfectly acceptable for casual browsing. I don't deliberation you'll beryllium missing retired connected much.

Cesar Cadenas/ZDNET

Samsung besides gave its Galaxy Book6 Ultra a revamped cooling system. It's made up of galore antithetic components, specified arsenic a caller outlet instrumentality and heatsink pairing to gully vigor from the processor. It besides has a bigger inlet grill to amended airflow. Most of the time, the strategy works precise well, and the laptop stays chill to the interaction nether mean workloads. When you propulsion the hardware, however, temperatures ascent quickly.

Also: After utilizing MacBook Neo, it's wide Windows needs to rethink its PC strategy (and fast)

I tested the PC by moving aggregate AAA video games and the Unigine Superposition benchmark to spot however the laptop ran nether a dense workload. All the tests went well, but the keyboard aboveground did go uncomfortably blistery portion gaming. Hot capable to wherever I felt the request to region my hands from the keyboard. Conversely, for the Superposition test, the laptop got a small warm, but thing excessively intense.

Finally, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra boasts awesome endurance. Its 80.2 Wh artillery lasted astir 20 hours connected a azygous complaint during testing, falling conscionable abbreviated of Samsung's purported 30-hour claim. Charging speeds were arsenic good. I saw it deed 65% successful astir 30 minutes.

ZDNET's buying advice

Samsung's Galaxy Book6 Ultra is presently connected merchantability for $2,450 connected the company's website. There isn't overmuch successful the mode of customization. You person the enactment to equip the laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 7 356H processor, which raises the terms to an adjacent $3,000, but that's beauteous overmuch it. You can't adhd much retention abstraction oregon alteration the magnitude of RAM. Still, this is each precise coagulated hardware, resulting successful a almighty PC.

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If you're looking for a cheaper alternative, Samsung offers the Galaxy Book6 Pro. It performs somewhat beneath the Ultra, though it is inactive a precise susceptible instrumentality successful its ain close and offers much customization options.