Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro review: A gorgeous laptop with all-day battery life

The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro is a 16-inch laptop with an Intel Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) CPU and a beautiful AMOLED display. I previously reviewed the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360, which is the 2-in-1 equivalent to this machine.

The non-360 Galaxy Book5 Pro model is a more “traditional” laptop — it ditches the 360-degree hinge and the S Pen. It’s not a 2-in-1, but it still has the same beautiful touch screen. It’s a tad lighter and cheaper, too.

Further reading: Best laptops 2025: Premium, budget, gaming, 2-in-1s, and more

Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro: Specs

The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro includes a power-efficient Intel Core Ultra Series 2 processor, also known as Lunar Lake. This hardware delivers snappy desktop performance with very low power usage.

As we’ve seen when benchmarking other laptops, Lunar Lake shines at battery life and delivers surprisingly good integrated graphics performance, but its eight-core design isn’t optimized for delivering high-end CPU performance in multithreaded workloads.

The review model Samsung loaned us has 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD, and it has a retail price of $1,649. Samsung also offers a configuration with 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD for $1,449 and one with 32 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD for $1,749.

• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 256V
• Memory: 16GB LPDDR5X
• Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc 140V
• NPU: Intel AI Boost (47 TOPS)
• Display: 16-inch 2880×1800 AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate
• Storage: 1TB PCIe 4 SSD
• Webcam: 1080p camera
• Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C), 1x USB Type-A (USB 3.2), 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x combo headphone jack, 1x microSD card reader
• Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
• Biometrics: Fingerprint reader for Windows Hello
• Battery capacity: 76.1 Watt-hours
• Dimensions: 13.99 x 9.86 x 0.49 inches
• Weight: 3.44 pounds
• MSRP: $1,649 as tested

Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro: Design and build quality

IDG / Chris Hoffman

The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro is the spitting image of the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360. It’s a big 16-inch wedge of gray metal with black keys and a black bezel around the display.

The design is minimal, but in a good way. There aren’t a lot of flourishes: Samsung lets the big, beautiful display make a design statement.

It’s also incredibly solid thanks to all that metal. At under three and a half pounds, you can easily pick it up from anywhere on the base and hold it. At 3.44 pounds, it feels surprisingly portable and light for a 16-inch laptop.

The hinge works well and you can easily open and close it with one hand. That hinge is the biggest difference from the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360. While that other machine has a 2-in-1 design with a 360-degree hinge, the hinge on this laptop only opens to about 135 degrees.

Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro: Keyboard and trackpad

IDG / Chris Hoffman

The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro packs a full-size keyboard complete with a traditional number pad at the right side of the keyboard. It has a white backlight you can turn on and off.

As on the Galaxy Book5 Pro 360, this chiclet keyboard feels nice enough to type on. It’s a good size! But the key travel feels a little shallow — I’m sure the laptop’s thinness contributes to this.

The build and screen of the laptop feel incredibly premium, but this keyboard doesn’t feel premium to me in the same way a ThinkPad keyboard does, for example.

This machine has the huge trackpad I’ve come to expect on Samsung Galaxy laptops. Moving the mouse cursor is smooth, and the click action feels good. While the trackpad’s large size was off-putting to me on the first Samsung Galaxy laptops I tested, I’m coming to appreciate it more.

Why wouldn’t you want the largest trackpad possible below the keyboard? The position of the trackpad is smart, and it doesn’t get in the way while typing. Palm rejection worked well, too.

Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro: Display and speakers

IDG / Chris Hoffman

The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro’s display is beautiful. It’s probably a reason why many people would choose this machine in particular. It’s a 3K (2880×1800 resolution) AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. It produces the vivid, beautiful colors I enjoy seeing on a good OLED display. It has a good amount of brightness, and the AMOLED technology likely contributes to this machine’s great battery life.

This is a touchscreen. So, while this isn’t a 2-in-1 machine, you do still have access to touch input. It also has an anti-reflective coating. As it’s been a frigid winter here in the northeast, I haven’t had a chance to test it outdoors, but the coating on the similar Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 worked well in direct sunlight, in my experience.

Samsung touts a quad-speaker setup on this machine: Two woofers and two tweeters. As I mentioned in my review of the 360, they’re solid speakers for a laptop. Loud and clear, but without the bass you’d get in dedicated speakers or a pair of headphones.

Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro: Webcam, microphone, biometrics

IDG / Chris Hoffman

The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro includes a 2 MP 1080p webcam. It’s fine, but it produces a clearer image quality outdoors in natural light than it does indoors. As I mentioned when reviewing the 360 model, this is far from the best webcam I’ve used on a laptop, but it’s fine for online meetings.

Also, as this is a Copilot+ PC with an NPU, you get access to Windows Studio Effects for the usual suite of AI-powered on-fly-the webcam effects, including fake eye contact and background removal. This is an “AI laptop,” after all.

Unfortunately, there’s no physical webcam privacy shutter switch here. I prefer having that feature on a laptop for privacy reasons.

The built-in microphone setup delivers great audio quality. Samsung boasts “studio-quality” dual microphones on this system. They’re impressively clear and are excellent for online meetings.

Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro: Connectivity

IDG / Chris Hoffman

Like its 2-in-1 sibling, the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro offers a reasonable selection of ports. On the left side, it has two Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C) ports plus an HDMI 2.1 port. This laptop charges with USB-C, however, so you’ll be plugging it into the charger with one of those ports.

On the right side, this machine has a single USB Type-A port (USB 3.2) along with a combo audio jack and a microSD card reader.

It’s a fine selection that will meet many people’s needs. Some people might want more USB Type-C ports or more USB Type-A ports. You can always add a dongle if you need more ports.

Thanks to Lunar Lake, this laptop also supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. The Wi-Fi worked well, and it’s always a bonus to have support for the latest standards — even if most people aren’t using Wi-Fi 7 routers yet.

Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro: Performance

The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro delivers great performance in day-to-day productivity tasks while delivering great battery life, thanks to its Intel Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) processor.

As always, we ran the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs.