When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note 10 in August, the company also announced the Galaxy Book S — a “mobile-PC,” a new take on a laptop that runs Windows 10, has stellar battery life and is designed for someone who is constantly on the go.
Samsung originally promised the Galaxy Book S would launch in September, but the ship date passed without a clear picture of exactly when the Galaxy Book S would be available to purchase.
Now we know that Samsung expects to launch the Galaxy Book S in the US later in the first quarter of 2020 — if we had to guess, sometime in March. That’s the same timeframe when Samsung typically announces the latest Galaxy S phone models, so the timing makes sense.
The $999 Galaxy Book S will ship with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx processor that’s similar to what’s used in nearly every Android-powered smartphone available right now, only with optimizations for a computer instead of a phone.
The 42-watt-hour battery is big enough to power through up to 25 hours of video playback, according to Samsung. Of course, real-world use will be less, as is nearly always the case. Inside the Galaxy Book S will be 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage, with a micro SD card slot that accepts cards up to 1TB in size.
You’ll be able to connect to an LTE network on a carrier of your choice directly on the Galaxy Book S, along with Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity.
All the components power a 13.3-inch multi-touch display, in a build that weighs 2.12 pounds (0.96 kilograms) and is a little less than half an inch (11.8 mm) thick.
The Galaxy Book S looks like a winner on paper, but we’ll have to hold our final judgment until we have a chance to test it out. As we saw with Microsoft’s Surface Pro X, which uses a similar ARM processor, app compatibility is going to be an issue.
Samsung did say that it expects to release an Intel-powered Galaxy Book S later this year, giving the Surface Laptop 3 some competition.
While we don’t have an exact release date for the Galaxy Book S yet, it’s reassuring to know that Samsung took some extra time to work out any issues.
You can read more about the Galaxy Book S on Samsung’s website, and we’ll update once preorders start.
Bookmark us and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for all the announcements out of CES 2020.
Note: The price above reflects the retailer’s listed price at the time of publication.