The added power makes a difference: On general, CPU-driven tasks, the laptop turned in the best benchmark scores of any Copilot+ PC I’ve tested to date, topping the Asus by a scant 1 percent on Geekbench 6, but pulling away more impressively versus laptops with lower-end Snapdragon chips (and Intel- and AMD-based laptops) by up to 20 percent. Graphics-based tests saw muddier, more mixed results, but the laptop held its own with other Copilot+ PCs while expectedly falling well behind the scores that more traditional Intel machines have turned in recently.
In the real world, the power is noticeable. Microsoft’s real-time Live Captions system has become my go-to stress test for Copilot+ PCs, as many struggle to keep up while translating fast-paced dialog. The Book4 Edge did the best job I’ve seen to date at this complex task, even handling thickly accented speech without missing much.
Battery life is also excellent, with a run time of almost 14 and a half hours on a full-screen YouTube playback test at full brightness (compared to 15 hours, 12 minutes on the Microsoft Surface Pro, and 13 hours, 12 minutes on the Asus Vivobook S 15). The screen is no slouch, either, pumping out vivid color and exceptional brightness while minimizing glare. The audio is solid if not exactly booming, aided by a fan that is barely audible even under load. I had to put my ear up to the laptop to hear the slightest whirr.
Photograph: Christopher Null
What’s not to like? The typing experience is marred by keys with travel that’s just a bit too short, and I found the tiny arrow keys exceptionally hard to use. The keyboard backlighting doesn’t help much to make the keys visible unless the room is quite dark. And I’ve previously discussed the touchpad, which is so wildly, overly large it merits mentioning here again. Ultimately these issues are all relatively minor.
At $1,500, the Book4 Edge is $200 more expensive than the smaller Asus Vivobook, but on a price-performance basis, it closes in on that machine’s high water mark. If you want to take advantage of Microsoft’s new AI features (and I won’t judge you if you don’t), it’s becoming clear that getting every bit of performance you can out of your hardware is important. In that vein, Samsung takes the performance crown while keeping the price reasonably in check. While it’s not quite the best bang for your buck in the Copilot+ PC world right now, it does provide the biggest bang.
+ There are no comments
Add yours