Intel Arc GPU squeezed into Samsung’s lightweight Galaxy Book2 Pro

Samsung announced this week that it will update its Galaxy Book line of thin and light laptops with highly anticipated Intel Arc graphics. Samsung will join Acer, whose Swift X laptop is one of the first to use the mobile Arc GPU.

We’re still waiting for Arc news, but this month Team Blue promised to release their GPUs in the first quarter of this year, Arc desktop graphics cards in the second quarter, and workstation GPUs in the third quarter.

So Samsung’s recently announced 15.6-inch Galaxy Book2 Pro is on track and should be one of the first Arc-based laptops when it launches on April 1st. It’s a thin and light laptop, not a gaming laptop, measuring just 0.52 inches thick and weighing 2.58 pounds. So don’t expect it to showcase the full potential of the Intel Alchemist architecture.

The 15.6-inch Galaxy Book2 Pro will also feature integrated Iris Xe graphics via a 12th Gen Intel Core i7 or i5 mobile processor. It will ship with 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of LPDDR5 memory and up to 1TB of SSD storage. In terms of ports, you have Thunderbolt 4, USB-C, USB-A, a headphone jack, a microSD card reader, and an additional SIM slot for 5G.

In addition, there will be a similar 13.3-inch Galaxy Book2 Pro, but without Arc or 5G support. Its speakers won’t be as powerful either (4W vs 5W). Samsung also announced the Book2 Pro 360 (13.3 and 15.6 inches) on April 1, which will rely on Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics via 12th generation i7 or i5 processors.

All laptops in this Book2 Pro series will use a 1080p webcam, up from 720p in the current generation. Higher resolution cameras also have an 87 degree field of view, up from 77 degrees. The cameras include popular software features such as Auto Framing (to keep you centered in the frame as you move) and Face Effect (to enhance images). Also for video calls, there are AI-based VoIP applications (such as Zoom, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger) to suppress unwanted noise on both ends of the call.

New software

The brand is making a gentle attempt to create an Apple-like ecosystem with branding on your laptop, smartphone, and headphones. Samsung also said at a press briefing that the Galaxy Tab S7 and S8 series of smartphones could be more easily used as a second screen for the company’s laptops. And you can use the new laptops’ keyboard and trackpad to navigate the Tab S8 series. In addition, the recently announced Samsung Account Single Sign-On feature is designed to make it easier to sign in to Samsung devices and apps, and to prepare Galaxy Buds for Bluetooth pairing.

Samsung is also bringing an app called Samsung Device Care to Galaxy Books for the first time. In its announcement, the manufacturer said that it allows you to test the “efficiency”of the laptop and offers “ways to optimize power consumption and memory to ensure consistent performance throughout the life of the device.”