Samsung’s Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 Has Too Many Bugs for a $1,700 Laptop

My favorite Snapdragon-based Copilot+ PC right now is Samsung’s Galaxy Book4 Edge, so I was naturally excited to see what Samsung would do with another AI-centric machine now that Intel-based CPUs are getting juiced up with extra AI features. While the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 does not yet feature Copilot+ PC software, it will arrive in an imminent Windows update, as the device includes a Microsoft-approved Intel Core Ultra 7 (Series 2) CPU.
With the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360, Samsung takes a dramatically different approach toward mobile computing than it did with the Book4 Edge. No one can accuse the Book4 Edge of being stripped down in any way, but it’s nothing compared to the Book5 Pro 360. The “360” is the most important part of that descriptor: This 2-in-1 laptop features a hinge that lets the screen rotate back so that it’s flush against the bottom of the chassis, enabling tablet mode. And what a tablet it makes. With a vast 16-inch touchscreen, it’s immensely spacious, but the Book5 tips the scales at 3.7 pounds, making for a bit of a beast if you’re trying to use it on the go.
While it makes for a dazzler of a tablet, in laptop mode, the Book5 looks even better. The screen feels gargantuan, plenty bright and detailed with its 2,880 x 1,800 pixels of resolution. The aluminum design is clean, curvy, and understated—very MacBook-like if you can get past all the stickers on the palm rest—and surprisingly thin. At a mere 15 millimeters thick, it’s the thinnest 16-inch laptop I’ve tested to date and one of the thinnest laptops of any size I’ve ever encountered.
Samsung has had to do fancy footwork to slim this laptop to that size. The most noticeable is the hit that keyboard travel has taken. The Book5’s keys barely seem to move, and it makes for a rough touch-typing experience, compounded by the dramatic left shift required due to the inclusion of a numeric keypad. Everything feels a little jammed together (especially the teensy arrow keys), and the enormous touchpad leaves almost nowhere for your hand to sit to the left of it. I don’t often complain that a laptop is difficult to physically use, but I never really acclimated to the Book5’s input experience.
Connectivity is fair: two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 (one used for charging), a USB-A port, full-size HDMI output, and a microSD card slot. Samsung also includes its S-Pen stylus, but there’s no convenient place to magnetically dock it when not in use. (It can stick to a certain magnetic spot on the lid, but this isn’t a convenient solution for long-term storage.)
But hey, much of the above can be forgiven if the laptop’s a blazing performer, right? Powered by a Core Ultra 7 258V CPU, a healthy 32 GB of RAM, and a 1-terabyte SSD, there doesn’t seem to be anything holding this laptop back. (Note: The system is commercially sold with only 16 GB of RAM; the price reflects a 16-GB model.) Performance, however, was not meaningfully different than what I saw on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition a few weeks ago, despite having twice the memory and a slightly more capable CPU.
The short of it is you get great graphics performance and solid AI results that trounce most Snapdragon systems, but there’s lackluster performance on business applications and general apps like web browsing. On the PCMark 10 benchmark, the system was particularly disappointing, turning in scores equivalent to those I saw on first-generation Core Ultra-based laptops released six months ago.
On the plus side, things do at least feel reasonably peppy in regular use, and onboard AI features didn’t disappoint. Live Captions (in the same language only for now, until the Copilot+ PC rollout hits) were snappy and accurate, and Paint’s Image Creator mode offered up AI art quickly on command. But best of all, Samsung has finally come through by releasing a laptop that really, honest-to-God offers “all-day battery life.” Its benchmark of 18 hours, 43 minutes on a full-screen YouTube playback test is a high-water mark for Intel PCs, and enough to even best every Snapdragon laptop I’ve tested except for one—the Asus ProArt PZ13.
Despite some high points, I found myself frequently frustrated with the user experience when working with this laptop. I’ve already mentioned the aggravating keyboard, but compounding that problem is the fact that the system is just plain buggy.
I lost count of how many times the laptop would fail to do something completely pedestrian, like loading the Samsung account login screen, closing a window, or even loading Copilot by tapping the Copilot key on the keyboard. My review unit even locked up during login once and refused to run a System Restore repeatedly until I ran the “Fix problems using Windows Update” recovery wizard. Oddly, the system ran fine during stress-test benchmarks but it struggled the most when it should have been smooth sailing.
Samsung also makes a lot of hay about the new AI features available on the system, including “Transcript Assist” for converting recorded meetings into written summaries and “Chat Assist,” which can “enhance conversations through suggested replies.” You’ll have to read the fine print to realize these are all features on Samsung Galaxy phones, and that you can only use them via your phone and Microsoft Phone Link—essentially turning the Book5 into nothing but an oversized phone display.
The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 has a pretty face and jaw-dropping battery life, but it’s nearly impossible to recommend in its current state due to general instability and an unfriendly keyboard, especially at $1,700. Firmware and software updates may help to resolve the former, but there’s not much to be done about the input situation other than to price out an external keyboard.