Can the Galaxy Book from Samsung Take On Microsoft Surface Pro 4?

Surface Pro 4 and Samsung Galaxy Book

During the Mobile World Congress 2017 held last month, Samsung revealed its Galaxy Book, a Windows 10 2-in-1 hybrid tablet that could rival Surface Pro 4 tablets from Microsoft.

The hybrid tablet market is a competitive space, with OEMs like Lenovo (Miix 510) and Acer (Aspire Switch Alpha 12) already holding significant market share. IDC expects Windows-based tablets to grow market share significantly between now and 2020, while Android and iOS are expected to lose ground to Windows products.

Surface Pro 4

With PCs continuing their half-decade-long sales decline, tablets – especially hybrid versions – are expected to gradually permeate into the consumer and commercial (enterprise) segments in a big way.

The Galaxy Book from Samsung looks like it has the necessary elements to compete with Surface Pro 4 from a tech specs perspective, so let’s take a look at how it compares with the current Surface tablet variants from Microsoft.

The top-end Galaxy Book is a 12-inch tablet with RAM of 8GB and internal storage of 256GB. External memory via an SD card will stretch that by another 256GB. It also comes with Intel’s Kaby Lake seventh generation processors, an AMOLED display with resolution of 216ppi (2160×1440), HD video playback, LTE capability and 2xUSB-C ports.

Included in the accessories are an S Pen and a Pogo keyboard case, and that makes a pretty good selling point. The keyboard is nice and roomy so it actually feels like typing on a regular 13-inch notebook. If you have a Galaxy smartphone, you can unlock the Galaxy Book using the fingerprint authentication on the phone. The tablet also supports quick charging.

From a form factor perspective, the super-slim 7.4mm looks even sleeker than Surface Pro 4, which is more than 10mm thicker at 8.45mm. And, at 1.6 pounds (without the keyboard case), it’s even lighter than the base model Surface Pro 4 with the M3 processor, which weighs nearly 1.7 pounds.

In terms of ‘under the hood’ design the Galaxy Book is, of course, a Windows 10 tablet, which means it has features comparable with Surface Pro 4, though we don’t yet know what version it will have out of the box. The Surface Pro 4 has an edge here because it comes with Windows 10 Pro, which you can upgrade to Windows 10 Creators Update when it drops at the end of March. But you should be able to upgrade the Galaxy Book as well so essentially there’s not much of a difference here.

The Galaxy Book also comes in a smaller 10-inch variant that’s quite similar to the Surface Pro 4 base model: 4GB RAM, 128GB internal storage (add 256GB via SD card) and a 2.6GHz dual-core 7th generation Intel Core M3 processor.

See the comparison chart below:

The Surface Pro 4 has been around for a while, so we know what the performances of the different variants are like. The Galaxy Book is brand new and hasn’t shipped yet so we don’t have any performance benchmarks with which to compare it to any other hybrid tablet in the market. But knowing Samsung, they’ll want to have the product compete with the very best Windows 10 tablet in the market, which is obviously the Surface Pro 4 as of now.

Expect more on the Samsung Galaxy Book as we get additional information.

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