♪ It was all a meme ♪ ♪ I used to diss Intel through the screen ♪
♪ Until it started looking really bad for blue team ♪ - Because it is.
Yeah, things aren't looking super great for Intel right now. On desktop, they're getting hammered by AMD.
And in thin and light laptops, there's ARM to contend with. Apple will be ditching Intel
for their own ARM-powered machines in a couple of years. And even Microsoft has been flirting with ARM
in the form of Qualcomm-powered devices, like the Surface Pro X and Galaxy Book S.
But that's why this machine is so exciting for Intel.
It's the Galaxy Book S. The Intel version,
not the Qualcomm version. That's right, this is the first notebook on the market,
powered by an Intel Core processor with Intel Hybrid Technology processor.
(sighs) see, this is what I'm talking about. Intel just called it Lakefield. Just called it Lakefield.
Anyways, Lakefield is targeting ARM head-on
and it has five Cores, which is weird, but also might be awesome.
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As I mentioned, there are two Galaxy Book Ss. The first one was powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx,
which is essentially a Snapdragon 855 modified for desktop use,
and was announced at Samsung's 2019 Unpacked event,
one year ago. Like other Windows laptops with ARM-based Qualcomm processors,
the Galaxy Book S sported some killer features like a super thin and light body,
built-in LTE connectivity, and ridiculously long battery life.
23 hours of video playback? Why would you even...
can we settle down please? But it was delayed into 2020,
long enough for Microsoft to release their own ARM-powered Surface Pro X
featuring the Snapdragon SQ1, which is basically an even further modified 8cx.
I reviewed that device last year and the story there was similar to the one being told by reviewers
of the first Galaxy Book S. It's very pretty,
and can stay awake a long time, but being an ARM-powered laptop,
it has a fatal flaw. It's an ARM-powered laptop.
See, ARM architecture isn't better than x86 architecture
across the board. There are trade offs. ARM uses a much smaller instruction set,
which leads to greater power efficiency, but doesn't lead to the type of unlimited power
that you can get with fully loaded Intel or AMD processors.
And then there's the fact that our most popular desktop operating systems,
Windows and macOS, are built for x86 processors.
So a lot of 64-bit programs just can't run on ARM chips.
Now companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe are trying to fix this with compatibility layers
that allow x86 apps to run on ARM. But the experience varies from pretty dang good,
as seen in Microsoft's Edge browser, to pretty dang sucky,
as seen by anyone who tries to use Photoshop on ARM,
or run Cinebench. As new and cool as it is,
ARM just hasn't got enough sick gains to do bicep curls with the big boys.
And that is where Intel may smell (sniffs)
opportunity. Because this,
the second Galaxy Book S, uses the exact same design as the first one.
It's got a 13.3 inch touch display, a super thin 11 millimeter body
that only weighs about two pounds. There's two USB-C ports,
one on each side, plus a headphone jack, which the Surface Pro X lacked.
Thank you, Samsung. The trackpad is as large as it can be
and is generally smooth and responsive. And the keyboard is,
that's not very good. It's got a mushy bottom, very little travel,
and I think we got an international version of it because it's got some weird keys on there.
Like what, what is this, what how do I, what do,
what do I do with that? But the difference with this version of the Galaxy Book S,
is that instead of an ARM-powered Qualcomm processor, it's running an Intel Core processor with Intel Hybrid it's
it's running a Lakefield processor. A Core i5-L16G7.
And it's the first one of its kind. Here's why that's important.
Lakefield is Intel's answer to ARM.
Part of the reason ARM processors are so power efficient is because they use what ARM calls
a big.LITTLE design, in which low power cores handle less demanding tasks
with more heavy operations being handled by high power cores.
Lakefield adopts this same strategy, pairing one powerful Sunny Cove Core,
with four smaller Tremont Cores. So,
can this odd number of cores, even the odds against ARM?
Well, while this design does give the Intel-powered
Galaxy Book S very impressive battery life, Samsung says it gets 17 hours of video playback,
it doesn't stretch the notebook's 42-watt hour battery, as much as the Qualcomm version with 25 hours.
But neither of those reflect real world use anyways. And we ended up getting around 11 or 12 hours
with this thing. Which is still really impressive, if not as impressive as the sick merch you can get
from lttstore.com (laughs) The other major plus
for this version of the Galaxy Book S is, as I alluded to before,
it's ability to run x86 apps natively. I actually got a Cinebench result for this thing.
And, yeah, it's pretty lackluster, getting crushed by the HP Envy X360
that has similar battery life. But it's a result.
Whereas our Surface Pro X wouldn't even launch the app.
Photoshop! I used the Galaxy Book S to edit a thumbnail in Photoshop.
And while some of the more demanding functions like Content-Aware Fill chugged a bit,
it was mostly fine. Just fine.
And in terms of general use, I didn't really notice anything too concerning
while I was using this thing as my work laptop. It's paltry eight gigs of RAM wasn't quite enough
to keep the content in all my browser tabs and messaging apps fully all the time
and general system navigation was definitely slower than my regular work laptop
with its Core i7. But unlike a Windows on ARM machine,
I wasn't holding my breath every time I launched an app. At the very least,
I knew it would probably run. So, sign me up for the Intel-powered Galaxy Book S.
Lemme just go and add it to my cart and ah!
950 bucks? No! Yeah, if you wanna try one of these machines out
for yourself, know that you will be stepping very clearly into the
early adopter role. The Galaxy Book S very much belongs to that category of devices
that companies design, not so much to appeal to the average Joe or Karen,
but to the average Bezos or Beyonce. There's some other downsides here too.
The Lakefield version doesn't come with LTE, although it can connect to slower forms of broadband.
And the five-Core L16G7 has less raw horsepower
than the eight-Core higher clock Snapdragon 8cx.
But if you've got some money to spend on a ridiculous, thin and light notebook
that will run Photoshop, the Galaxy Book S is here for you.
Now, it just remains to be seen whether it will pave the way for more
better Lakefield devices in the future, because Intel's future
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- Thanks for watching this video, guys. Hey, if you wanna watch something else,
we did a review of a much more powerful laptop.
The ASUS StudioBook One. It's kind of a completely different category.
If this is like, this is like your small and fast Ninja,
that one's like you're heavy tank. Probably.
I actually don't know. I don't know what laptop that is.
But go check it out.