Intel Evo Certified: Samsung Galaxy Books

MicroCenterOfficial

Samsung's range of Galaxy Book Pro laptops can give any top-of-the-line laptop a run for their money. Featuring a high build quality, impressive performance, and exceptional battery life fully certified by Intel’s Evo platform. That Evo certification makes a promise that the laptops are fast, responsive, and offer the kind of per-charge battery life that makes them incredibly versatile, no matter how far you stray from a power socket.

The Intel Evo Certification

There are six key points in Intel’s Evo certification program that any laptop has to meet or exceed before they can wear that Evo badge with pride. The first, is they have to be built around Intel’s 11th generation Core CPUs, fitted with 12th-generation Xe graphics, offering a potent combination of general compute performance, and powerful 3D rendering capabilities. That gives any laptop equipped with such hardware the power for multi-tab web browsing, basic 3D gaming, office tasks, and even some lightweight video editing on more powerful machines.

All Intel Evo laptops must also support at least Wi-Fi 6 gigabit wireless networking, guaranteeing an exceedingly fast network transfer speed, and the ability to take full advantage of new gigabit internet connections where available. They also have to come fitted with the latest USB-C and Thunderbolt 4 connections, ensuring a 40 Gbps throughput for any connected devices. They also make it simple to charge, output to an external display, and transfer data, all through a single port, simultaneously.

Using a combination of high-performance components and clever optimizations of Windows’ sleep mode, any Intel Evo laptop must be able to wake from sleep in under a second, making them ready for whatever you want to do at a moment’s notice. That goes hand-in-hand with a demand for stellar multitasking performance across popular software like Microsoft Office, various web browsers, Zoom and other VOIP software, and photo editing applications like Adobe’s Photoshop.

Finally, every Intel Evo certified laptop must offer at least 10 hours of battery life with general use and exceptionally fast charge times so that from just a few minutes of being plugged in, the battery can be fast charged enough for a couple of hours of use.

Those are all quite stringent demands, but they’re specifications that all of Samsung’s Galaxy Book Pro models meet and exceed, making them an exciting range of premium Windows laptops that are well worth considering next time you upgrade.

Galaxy Book Pro 13.3-inch

If you want a super-powered laptop that’s incredibly thin and light and hits all of those Intel Evo certifications and then some, the 13.3-inch Galaxy Book Pro is an awesome laptop for the job. The Galaxy Book Pro comes fitted with a four-core Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor and support for up to eight simultaneous threads. It’s paired with 8GB of high-speed LPDDR4x memory and half a terabyte of NVMe solid state storage, guaranteeing an incredibly responsive and snappy machine, no matter how many applications and web browser tabs you have open.

The combination of excellent memory and a super-fast SSD also helps this laptop hit the Intel Evo certification for fast wake times. If you put this laptop into sleep mode, one tap of the keyboard or the touchpad will see it up and ready to work or play again in under a second.

Once it is ready to go, it’ll also remain fast and responsive. The CPU with onboard GPU combination is more than enough for everyday Office and web browsing tasks, and it even has the kind of power that will let you do some basic photo and video editing without any major slowdowns. The Xe graphics are even good enough for some simple gaming – it’s more than enough power for most esports games like League of Legends, Overwatch, or CS:GO – just don’t expect to play modern AAA games without lowering settings.

The two configurations of the Galaxy Book Pro 13 that Micro Center offers both give you the option of the Windows 10 or Windows 11 operating system, letting you make the choice between compatibility with the older OS, or living on the bleeding edge with Microsoft’s latest operating system. Both machines have the same hardware, but where the Windows 10 version meets the Intel Evo certification demand for Wi-Fi 6 support, the Windows 11 version goes one step further and has support for the even faster Windows 6E, Gigabit+ standard.

If you have a Wi-Fi 6e router, you’ll be able to take advantage of even greater network and internet connection speeds, letting you download and stream content faster than ever before. It also has better support for a greater number of devices on the network, so if you have a busy home or office network with lots of different devices connected and active at any one time, the Windows 11 version may be a good choice.

In either case, though, you’ll get a gorgeous AMOLED screen Bluetooth 5.1 support, and an absolutely stellar battery. These laptops blow past the 10-hour requirement of Intel Evo certification and can get pretty close to 20 hours on a single charge – more than enough for a couple of full workdays and some downtime in the evening.

Samsung Galaxy Book 15

Want the same Samsung Galaxy Book quality but don’t quite need such a powerful processor? Want to save a little money and get a bigger screen as part of the bargain? Then the Samsung Galaxy Book 15 might be a better bet for you.

It comes in the same Windows 10 or Windows 11 configurations as its 13.3-inch counterparts, with the newer operating system giving support for the faster Wi-Fi 6e connectivity option. In both cases, however, the laptops easily measure up to Intel’s stringent Evo certification, offering gigabit wireless speeds, excellent battery life, and responsive performance.

All the power in this 15-inch model comes from the 11th-generation Intel Core i5-1135G7, which combines a very capable four-core/eight-thread processor, with Intel’s 12th-generation Xe graphics. Together they enable heavy web browsing and research, light photo and video editing, and even entry-level gaming. In esports games you can expect to hit very respectable frame rates, letting you stay competitive with even those running much more powerful systems.

This laptop also meets Intel’s Evo certification demands for responsive performance in everyday applications like Adobe Photoshop, Chrome, and other web browsers, and Microsoft’s Office suite of applications. The CPU works well together with the 500GB of fast NVMe SSD storage and 8GB of RAM, to make sure that the Galaxy Book wakes from sleep incredibly quickly, making sure that no matter how long you let it sit, it'll be ready when you are.

The battery life remains extensive on this Ultrabook too, meaning that in standby it can last for days at a time, and even well into double-digit hours when in use. Intel Evo certification demands that it have at least 10 hours of battery life and charge quick enough to give a few hours of use from just a few minutes of charging, but the Samsung Galaxy Book 15 goes well in excess of that. At full charge, with the screen brightness set around 50%, you can expect to get close to 20 hours of general use out of this laptop for each charge. That’ll get you through 2-3 work or school days without even needing to look at a charger.

Along with fast wireless connection options, all Samsung Galaxy Book Pros also support the latest wired connection standards, including USB-C and Thunderbolt 4. That meets Intel’s Evo certification and means that whether you want to plug in an external hard drive, external display, a high-speed Ethernet adapter, or some other kind of accessory, you’ll be able to take full advantage of the 40 Gbps bandwidth afforded by Thunderbolt 4, USB power delivery, and the DisplayPort alternate mode for video transmission.

Additionally, the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro also comes with an HDMI output for more traditional display connectivity, and a MicroSD card slot.

All in all, like its 13.3-inch counterpart, the 15-inch Galaxy Book Pro is a stellar laptop that ticks almost every box for a great all-around machine for work and play. It isn’t going to compete with gaming laptops on graphics performance, but on battery life, portability, weight, general performance, and looks, its head and shoulders above most of the competition.