Give Samsung credit: the Galaxy Book 2 boldly breaks from the first-generation Galaxy Book on both the inside and outside. The company’s new 2-in-1 not only ditches its flimsy folding keyboard in favor of a more traditional tablet kickstand, but also joins the small ranks of PCs that have adopted a battery-sipping Qualcomm Snapdragon microprocessor. Performance suffers drastically, however, even as battery life soars to an unprecedented 18 hours.
The Galaxy Book 2 boasts Samsung’s terrific AMOLED displays and rich sound, with LTE capability, a pen and a keyboard, all sold for a reasonable $999. In addition to the CPU switch, though, the second generation makes some compromises. The built-in 4GB of memory and 128GB of storage is a bit skimpy, for instance, and the OS—Windows 10 Home in S Mode—might turn some off. For basic work on the road, the Galaxy Book 2 offers some compelling arguments. But the experience is still too bumpy to recommend to everyone.
Physically, the Galaxy Book demonstrates that changing horses midstream sometimes necessitates a new harness and tack. The Galaxy Book 2 is a tad shorter, a bit wider, slightly thicker, and 0.08 pounds lighter than its predecessor. More importantly, it’s now built like a traditional tablet, with a kickstand that nearly fully reclines, like a Microsoft Surface Pro 6. Adios, folding keyboard.
