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Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra: Two-minute review
The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is the very latest premium laptop from the South Korean tech giant. While Samsung is better known for its TVs, smartphones, and home appliances, in recent years it’s been steadily releasing some of the best laptops we’ve ever tested through its Galaxy Book lineup, and the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra was launched at CES 2026 alongside the Book6 Pro and more affordable Galaxy Book6.
As a Galaxy product, this is naturally a high-end flagship device, and with a price tag of £2,999 (around $4,000 / AU$6,000) for the base model, this isn’t going to be a laptop for everyone.
However, if you can afford it, you should be pretty happy with what you get for your money. The latest hardware from Intel and Nvidia means this is a brilliant performer for basically any task you require, and Samsung has made sure this is a solidly-built laptop with excellent build quality – and comes with one of the best screens you can get.
But that high price and abundance of power mean a lot of people simply won’t need the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra, and a more affordable laptop (such as the standard Galaxy Book6) will be a much better choice.
Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra: Price & Availability
- Starts at $2,449.99 / £2,999 (around AU$6,000)
- Launch seems to have been delayed
As with Samsung’s other Galaxy products, the Galaxy Book6 series of laptops are premium devices with designs, specs, and price tags to match. The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra, as the name suggests, is the highest-end model, and starts at $2,449.99 / £2,999 (around AU$6,000) for the model that comes with an Nvidia RTX 5060 GPU and 1TB of storage.
That’s expensive for a laptop. Very expensive. It makes the Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (M5) from last year seem like a bargain at $1,599 / £1,599 / AU$2,499, and while you can argue that the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a much more powerful laptop, mainly thanks to its high-end CPU, discrete GPU and more RAM, if you’re making a product that’s a more expensive rival to an Apple device, you’ll need to justify the extra cash.
Arguably, comparing the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra to the more powerful 16-inch MacBook Pro with either M4 Pro or M4 Max chips (which, despite being last-generation, are more powerful than the M5) is more fair. The MacBook Pro 16-inch with M4 Pro and 24GB of unified memory is $2,499 / £2,499 / AU$3,999, while the model with an M4 Max chip and 36GB of unified memory is $3,499 / £3,499 / AU$5,699.
Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra review: Specs
| Row 0 – Cell 0 |
Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra Base Config |
Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra Review Config |
Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra High end Config |
|
Price |
$2,449.99 / £2,999 (around AU$6,000) |
TBA |
TBA |
|
CPU |
Intel Core Ultra 7 series 3 |
Intel Core Ultra 7 series 3 |
Intel Core Ultra 9 series 3 |
|
GPU |
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 |
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 |
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 |
|
RAM |
32GB LPDDR5X |
32GB LPDDR5X |
64GB LPDDR5X |
|
Storage |
1TB PCI Express NVMe 4.0 (M.2) |
1TB PCI Express NVMe 4.0 (M.2) |
1TB PCI Express NVMe 4.0 (M.2) |
|
Display |
16-inch Touch AMOLED, Anti-Reflective, WQXGA+ (2880×1800), 1000nits |
16-inch Touch AMOLED, Anti-Reflective, WQXGA+ (2880×1800), 1000nits |
16-inch Touch AMOLED, Anti-Reflective, WQXGA+ (2880×1800), 1000nits |
|
Ports and Connectivity |
Thunderbolt 4 (2), USB Type-A, HDMI 2.1 port (Supports 8K@60, 5K@120), |
Thunderbolt 4 (2), USB Type-A, HDMI 2.1 port (Supports 8K@60, 5K@120), |
Thunderbolt 4 (2), USB Type-A, HDMI 2.1 port (Supports 8K@60, 5K@120), |
|
Battery |
80.20Wh |
80.20Wh |
80.20Wh |
|
Dimensions |
14.05 x 9.76 x 0.6 inches / 356.9 x 248 x 15.4mm |
14.05 x 9.76 x 0.6 inches / 356.9 x 248 x 15.4mm |
14.05 x 9.76 x 0.6 inches / 356.9 x 248 x 15.4mm |
|
Weight |
4.2lbs / 1.89kg |
4.2lbs / 1.89kg |
4.2lbs / 1.89kg |
Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra review: Design
- Very smart looking
- Excellent display
- Manages to be slim
As with previous Galaxy Book laptops, the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a great-looking product, with a sleek, understated design in silver that is reminiscent of Apple’s Intel-based MacBook Pros (before they underwent noticeable redesigns with the switch to Apple’s own M-series processors). This won’t be the last time I’ll mention the Book6 Ultra’s similarities to a MacBook.
Unlike the Galaxy Book6 Pro and Galaxy Book6, which come in both 14-inch and 16-inch sizes, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra comes in a single 16-inch size. While this might mean that if portability is your biggest concern when buying a new laptop, you might not want a large-screen device like the Book6 Ultra, Samsung has done a good job of keeping this laptop feeling thin and relatively light.
It measures 14.05 x 9.76 x 0.6 inches (356.9 x 248 x 15.4mm) and weighs up to 4.2lbs (1.89kg). This means it’s slightly thinner than the 14-inch MacBook Pro (M5), despite its larger screen and discrete GPU, although because this is a 16-inch laptop, the overall footprint is larger than the M5 MacBook Pro.
Despite the thin design, there’s a decent selection of ports, including two Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports, a standard USB Type-A port, HDMI 2.1, and an SD card reader. Thankfully, Samsung’s decision to drop the headphone jacks from its smartphones hasn’t made it to its laptop division, as the Galaxy Book6 Ultra comes with a port for plugging in headsets and microphones.
Fans of USB-C formats (come on, there must be some) will note that the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra’s two ports are Thunderbolt 4, rather than the newer (and faster) Thunderbolt 5. While this means the Book6 Ultra isn’t quite packed with the very latest components, it’s worth noting that its main competitor, the MacBook Pro 14-inch (M5, 2025), also comes with Thunderbolt 4 ports.
The keyboard, which again invites comparisons with the MacBook Pro, is decent, and while the keys themselves are rather shallow, they still feel responsive and comfortable to use. As with Apple’s laptops, there’s a dedicated button on the top-right of the keyboard that’s used to scan your fingerprint. This allows you to securely log into Windows 11 with just a touch, and it also means you can use features such as the controversial Recall tool that require advanced biometric security.
The main appeal, design-wise, of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra, however, is its screen. Samsung is known for using excellent screens for its devices, especially TVs and smartphones, and the Galaxy Book6 Ultra continues that tradition.
The 16-inch touchscreen comes with a sharp WQXGA+ (2880 x 1800) resolution, and AMOLED screen technology that results in an incredibly vibrant and detailed image quality. That, combined with a variable refresh rate of up to 120Hz, makes Windows 11, its apps, and pretty much any media you play on the Galaxy Book6 Ultra look absolutely fantastic.
The display is surrounded by a thin, modern bezel, which means Samsung can maximize the screen size without bulking up the rest of the laptop, and there’s no controversial ‘notch’ that modern MacBooks have around the webcam.
Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra review: Performance
- Excellent Windows 11 performance
- Can even play games
- Gets very hot
Coming with Intel’s latest, and very impressive, Panther Lake processors, and able to be configured with up to an Nvidia RTX 5070 graphics card, the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra offers an exemplary Windows 11 experience, with the operating system and apps all running smoothly.
Whilst testing the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra, I had no problem at all running various apps, and with plenty of RAM, multitasking between apps is smooth and responsive.
The model I reviewed comes with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 laptop GPU, something that’s often found in the best gaming laptops. The inclusion of this high-end GPU doesn’t mean the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a gaming laptop, however, as it can be used for graphically-intensive workloads, such as ultra-high-definition video editing, 3D animation, and advanced AI tasks. So, this model of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a great choice for creative professionals, especially thanks to its gorgeous OLED screen.
The Galaxy Book6 Ultra certainly had no issues while I was editing a 4K movie in Adobe Premiere, with clips loading quickly, and scrubbing through the video’s timeline was instant. This was also while I had numerous apps and websites open at once, and Windows 11 felt incredibly fast and smooth.
Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra: Benchmarks
Here’s how the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
3DMark: Fire Strike: 26,767; Time Spy: 12,309; Steel Nomad: 2,758; Port Royal: 7,687
Geekbench 6.5: Multicore: 16,655; Single-core: 2,852
PCMark 10: 6,827
Crossmark: Overall: 1,880; Productivity: 1,669; Creativity: 2,275; Responsiveness: 1,514
Cyberpunk 2077: (1080p, High, DLSS Quality): 111.86fps
Assassin’s Creed Shadows: 1080p, Medium: 54fps; 1080p, Ultra High: 32fps, 1080p, Medium, DLSS Quality: 65; 1080p, Ultra High, DLSS Quality: 39fps
Total War: Warhammer III: 1080p, High: 101.3fps
Battery Life (TechRadar video test): 13 hours, 39 minutes
Battery Life (Battery Informant): 15 hours, 11 minutes
Also, while the RTX 5070-toting Galaxy Book6 Ultra is not a gaming laptop, it can still play games, though you’ll want to enable DLSS upscaling where possible. At 1080p with DLSS on and graphics set to ‘High’, I got Cyberpunk 2077 running at a very impressive 111.86fps. Meanwhile, Assassin’s Creed Shadows at ‘Medium’ settings with DLSS switched on hit 65fps.
Sure, these aren’t the most mind-blowing numbers, and there will be plenty of PC gamers who turn their noses up at the need to use DLSS, but the fact that such a thin and light laptop can play these games at all, let alone at those kind of frame rates, is really impressive, and again thanks to the OLED screen, they look incredible.
The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra also remains impressively quiet. Even when performing intensive tasks, fan noise was kept to a minimum. The lack of distracting whirring is nice, but it does mean that at some points, primarily just above the keyboard, the laptop can get very hot to the touch. Using it for prolonged periods of heavy workloads (including gaming) could lead to the performance getting throttled to stop the Galaxy Book6 Ultra from overheating, though it didn’t happen during my tests. Packing such powerful components into such a slim chassis does mean that this is a risk, however.
One of the key features of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is how it can work with other Samsung devices, much like how MacBooks can work with iPhones, iPads, and other Apple devices.
I connected the Galaxy Book6 Ultra to my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, and with a bit of tweaking, I was able to easily share documents between the laptop and the smartphone. ‘Multicontrol’ is a particularly impressive feature, whereby dragging the mouse cursor to the edge of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra’s screen, the cursor will jump to the smartphone, and you can use the Galaxy Book6 Ultra’s trackpad and keyboard to interact with the phone.
I used this to type out some long messages that would have been a pain to write using the phone’s touchscreen. You can also use Samsung’s tablets as a second display for the Galaxy Book6 Ultra, a nice touch if you have invested in Samsung’s ecosystem.
If the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is going to be your first and only Samsung device, then sadly you won’t be able to make use of most of these features, though Windows 11’s Phone Link feature remains a great way to access your phone via your laptop, and it’ll work on the Galaxy Book6 Ultra without the phone needing to be a Samsung model.
You’re missing out on some really useful features, though, many of which make life easier – and Samsung has made it the furthest out of any of its rivals when it comes to providing an Apple-like experience with its ecosystem.
This is all the more impressive as Apple has complete control over its ecosystem: it builds both the hardware (including many components) in its Macs, iPhones, and tablets, as well as the software those devices run on. That means making everything interact with each other is a lot easier (relatively speaking, I mean. I’m certainly not downplaying the hard work and effort that’s still required).
Meanwhile, Samsung’s laptops and smartphones are mainly made of components made by other companies, such as Intel, and the software they run (Windows 11 for laptops, Android for smartphones and tablets) is also made by other companies (Microsoft and Google, respectively).
So, making its various products all work together is an impressive feat, and for the most part works well. It does mean that you need to use Samsung’s own apps for a lot of things, and you need to sign into your Samsung account (on top of your Microsoft account, Google account), so if you’re not a fan of extra apps (sometimes uncharitably called ‘bloatware’) on your laptop or smartphone, then you’ll be frustrated with Samsung’s penchant of preinstalling its own apps.
Also, it’s not quite as slick as Apple’s implementation, and there are a few performance niggles. While using Multcontrol to use the trackpad and keyboard of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra on my Galaxy S24 Ultra smartphone was helpful, it prevented the onscreen keyboard on the phone from appearing when I moved control back over to the laptop. Not the end of the world, but a bit annoying if you forget and then wonder why you can’t type out a message. It’s easy to fix by reenabling the touch keyboard, but it’s an example of how Apple’s ecosystem works so much better.
As well as the excellent OLED screen, which offers beautifully dark blacks, high contrast, and vibrant colors, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra comes with six Dolby Atmos speakers with four force-cancelling woofers and two tweeters, which allows the laptop to handle both deep bases and high details. It can reach loud volumes without the audio distorting, and there are no annoying vibrations thanks to the speaker design.
As a Copilot+ PC, it’s also been designed with on-device AI in mind, but even though both Microsoft and Samsung seem fully committed to AI, I’ve yet to find a compelling case for it in a laptop. Sure, it’s nice to have and means this laptop is certainly future-proof, but it’s the least exciting part of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra.
Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra review: Battery Life
- Over 15 hours
- Gaming drains it in 2 hours
Despite what many companies, including Microsoft, insist, AI is not the most interesting or exciting feature of this new generation of Copilot+ PC laptops (ugh, I hate that name) – but rather, it’s the battery life.
The processors powering these laptops are getting ever more efficient, which means they can offer excellent performance as well as longer times between charging, and the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is an excellent example of this, managing over 15 hours in our benchmark tests. That’s not the longest we’ve seen, and the MacBook Pro comfortably beats it by about five hours in the same test. It’s still very good for a laptop that offers this kind of performance.
I was able to use it for multiple workdays without needing to plug it in, and when I did, the battery charged quickly. I used the included power adaptor, but any USB-C charger should do the trick – and it’s worth noting that in the UK and EU, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra does not come with a power adaptor, similar to the MacBook. This is supposed to help reduce e-waste, and while that’s an admirable goal, it does add to the expense if you’ve not got a spare charger already.
Should I buy the Acer Aspire 16 AI?
|
Attributes |
Notes |
Rating |
|---|---|---|
|
Value |
This is a stylish and very powerful laptop that predictably comes at a very high price that will likely put off a lot of people. |
2.5 / 5 |
|
Design |
The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is one of the nicest-looking laptops on the market right now, and its AMOLED screen is a particular highlight. |
4.5 / 5 |
|
Performance |
Windows 11 is incredibly fast, and even the most intensive workloads are handled with ease. It can also play games. |
4.5 / 5 |
|
Battery Life |
Scoring over 15 hours in our tests, this is very impressive for a laptop that offers this level of performance. |
4.5 / 5 |
|
Total |
The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is one of the best laptops you can buy right now thanks to its awesome performance and stunning design. It’s especially great if paired with a Samsung phone, though the high price means it won’t be for everyone. |
4.5 / 5 |
Buy the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra if…
Don’t buy it if…
How I tested the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra
- Tested for several weeks
- Used for various tasks
- Connected it to my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra smartphone
I tested the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra over the course of several weeks, using it for work and writing the bulk of this review on it. I also played a few games on it to see how the dedicated GPU copes.
I also edited a 4K video using Adobe Premiere Pro and streamed several movies and listened to music. I’ve been reviewing laptops for nearly 20 years, and I’ve used my extensive experience to rate this device.
- First reviewed: February 2026
- Read more about how we test
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matthew.hanson@futurenet.com (Matt Hanson)
