2022 Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 13.3 and 15.6

[Forged]

@DoobiesOobies If you want a tablet that is purpose built for drawing, the galaxy book is not it. However, it certainly can be used for drawing. The laptop is definitely powerful enough. The pen is very accurate. I returned mine and am debating between the hp zbook (used) or a MSP (new or used, but with a warranty).

@xxxxx I wish I still had the laptop here to better answer your question, but as I recall, the pen accuracy was very good. It did not stand out to me as an issue. My wife also tried it out and does not remember having an issue with the pen accuracy. If it wasn’t for the button issue I had, I would have kept the laptop.

[DoobiesOobies]

@Forged

If you want a tablet that is purpose built for drawing, the galaxy book is not it. However, it certainly can be used for drawing. The laptop is definitely powerful enough. The pen is very accurate. I returned mine and am debating between the hp zbook (used) or a MSP (new or used, but with a warranty).

Looks like I’m keeping hold of my zbook for another few years then. On a side note - I now understand @thatcomicsguy holding onto his old Toshiba Tecra for so many years.

[thatcomicsguy]

When you get something that does the job without hangups, is basically perfect for your needs and you don’t feel a nagging, “I just wish that I had a machine which solved ___”…, well, upgrading your tablet slips down the hierarchy of Stuff I Really Want To Do.

Lately I’ve been building and mucking around with YouTube studios.

If you guys thought tablet computing rang the hypnotic Tech Geek bell in your head, you should try outfitting yourself with a bunch of cameras and mics and all the crap in between.

I’m only now climbing out of that cave of wonders to taste sunlight!

My next ‘new’ tablet will be blue and probably 6 or 7 years old when my current portable drawing board finally needs replacing. If that ever happens. Sammy is still going strong. (Knock on wood!)

[wytn]

I guess it was for the older model but i saw in a video someone mentioning to better grab the laptop from the frontside rather than the back when it’s closed just to be safe in case…
(The back area where the fan/exhaust is, which seems/seemed perhaps a little more flexible… I don’t know exactly how it relates to a possible display weakness… But why not!)

[wytn]

I have my fingerprint magnet since the 23, i’m waiting a bit before writing my more complete impressions… waiting especially that i’ve used it more in the ‘most intensive’ tasks.

On the point of the S-Pen/Wacom EMR… I had forgotten how excellent it is. Seriously… Or did it get even better?
(Haven’t drawn a lot in digital over the last two years… i prefered to stick to paper for a while. Although recently I’ve been feeling like, maybe, going to grab my Wacom 16 from the cupboard where it’s stored…)

Hm, i don’t know if it’ll answer @xxxxx’s question but i grabbed the S-Pen from my GB10.6 (by mistake initially) and i looked for it but i couldn’t see/notice any offset when using it. ALTHOUGH, the tip of this S-Pen feels super super ‘rubbery-ish’… it ‘sticks’ a bit too much… It drags with an odd feel on the screen. Odd enough that i’d be afraid of using to much in fear of damaging the screen or something. (Probably something related to the screen coating and a difference in tips… I haven’t looked into it yet.)

I should perhaps check again on the GB10 but i don’t believe it is as much ‘sticky’/‘rubbery’ on the GB10.

Now the S-Pen included with the GBook2 360 also hm ‘slide/glide’ faster with less friction that i’m used to in general from S-Pen/Wacom EMR i think…

But maybe my more recent use of the Apple Pencil 1 messes with me right now. Of course it’s not the very slippery glass feel of the Apple Pencil/iPad either but – so far – it seems like a nice middle ground.
I haven’t actually/really drawn with it yet besides testing tho. Installed Clip Studio, Concept & Sketchbook Pro & imported my brushes…

Mostly the only thing so far that leaves me rather perplexed is the thermals of this laptop. It’s really puzzling overall. I’ve installed HWMonitor rather quickly to try to see what was going on…

I’m guessing the i7 isn’t a right fit for this very thin laptop in its 13" version. I don’t think the i5 in 13" 360 was available here but it would probably make more sense. Especially if this laptop/cpu generate such heat that it ends up throttling and halving the performances?

Out of Samsung’s four energy modes (Fanless, quiet, optimized & performances) i’ve mostly stuck to Quiet or Fanless mode. The fan noise/sound itself isn’t very bothering so far, i don’t find it especially loud (on the contrary) – i’m easily be bothered by fan noise in general. i don’t find it too much distracting, i sometimes don’t even notice, it’s a quite low & low-level sound… But even in Quiet mode it tends to run quite often doing not much more than a bit of Firefox for instance. So basically the CPU is below 5% and almost idling. (22/23°c room temperature.) i think i’m only confirming what was already said.

This tends to worry me a bit in a general way. Not reassuring for the future of this laptop?

Although the CPU seems powerful enough that even in quiet or fanless mode i could imagine using it without really suffering much from throttling / performance issue…

But yeah, it seems the i7 version doesn’t really make sense in this case…

It’s annoying to encounter such a stupid but common issue whereas it feels like a really nice laptop in most other aspects.

Anyway, so far the only task that was a bit intensive that i ran was a little Lightroom importing 24mp RAWs & converting them, some quick post-processing & a few exports, not for very long.
It got hot. Hot enough that i was afraid the laptop would not manage to cool itself down afterwards. (Hm, the vents on the bottom case… probably help better when converted in tablet mode than when using it as a laptop? Or it was designed with the

I’ll have to see how it turns out doing more stuff/more intensive tasks…

And well, about the rest i agree on what was said before overall. Same about the speakers, the keyboard is fine… very fine actually, i was surprised such low-travel keys on a laptop this thin can have such a good feel.

The trackpad’s click is rather odd/strange to me somehow… i’m starting to get used to it but i find it requires more ‘force’ than what i’m used to, to activate/click. Feels like there’s too much ‘travel’ to make it ‘click’. Very odd to me. On the other hand it’s the first time i find the ‘tap to click’ feature actually reliable and actually good to use. I never use it generally and disable it. The rest about the trackpad, gestures, fine or very fine, no problem there.

I uninstalled many of Samsung’s preinstalled apps including the launchers/file/time trackers that comes with more services running in the background…

i’d be curious to see how running it without Samsung’s own battery/performance manager & only Windows power modes turn out. I don’t suppose anyone tested this? They could really tweak their drivers at least, is my first guest. But it’s probably not going to be enough.

[wytn]

Somehow thought i had a 30 days return window to decide and took my time to start testing it but no. It’s only 14 days.

Had been meaning to find more about the heat/thermal/fan issue of the 13…

“What’s everyone’s temperature like? I have the 13” version and it seems to be running hot. At idle it floats around 70-85c. This is on a flat surface on a table. My power setting is set at optimized.
If I elevate the laptop a bit, it will drop down to 55-60c."
“Even opening chrome you can see the temperature spike.
My cpu/gpu utilization barely goes over 15%. Usually just hovers lower than that because its being throttled by the heat.”
– Reddit - Dive into anything

https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyBook/search/?q=book2%20pro%20360&restrict_sr=1&sr_nsfw=
And misc.

Annoying.

(Note: mine at idle or very low CPU-usage is rather around 40-something. Generally. Even in fanless mode. Except i guess when the laptop already started heating as afterwards it can’t really cool itself down? Errr.)

The downside to sending this one back is that i’ll have to start over the process of looking for another laptop and i’m kinda tired of reading reviews on Notebookcheck And never finding what i’ve been looking for. But perhaps i had been looking for something that doesn’t exist. (Ok i know i took a gamble with this one… hm)

[Tams]

The GB first gen had very glossy displays, so the included tips and ones that worked best were the hard ones (very hard). Though the quite soft one LAMY uses for glossy displays worked well too.

Your experience sounds like what my GB with a matte screen protector is like (without the visual effect). The hard stylus tips drag a lot. I think some have scratched the screen protector and several of the tips have broken. The LAMY one got destroyed.

Older more plasticky tips work well.

[xxxxx]

@wytn thanks for the heads up on the GB10.6 S-Pen. I ended up buying an S-Pen pro, it’s thicker and a lot longer than the default pen, and its barrel button is also easier to press (slightly protruding), although it doesn’t come close to a real wacom stylus in terms of handling, but at least I’m now able to actually draw normally.
the heat issue seems better now,… at times it can get very hot for no apparent reason but it’s been better for the last week (still, using photoshop it gets hot, csp is slightly better)

On the point of the S-Pen/Wacom EMR… I had forgotten how excellent it is. Seriously… Or did it get even better?

yes I really enjoyed drawing on this device, the response time is very good, it feels great.

[wytn]

Out of curiosity, do you use an older version of Photoshop (CC 2015 for instance) or a recent one?

I wonder, what are your primary uses of this device? Is it mainly for drawing/digital painting or similar?

Do you notice that it perhaps runs with better thermal management, less heat/less fan noise, when used in tablet mode when drawing? (i trusted the S-PEN tech and haven’t used it much in this configuration… but i wondered when doodling once…)

I’ve been really conflicted about this laptop but the fact it gets burning hot very easily and hearing the fan noise so much of the time at idle put me off the other day (the fan noise ended up being bothering yes)… although I was about to initiate the return i found myself hesitating again and i still have some more time to test it/use it…

Something i tested the other day is using ThrottleStop to disable TurboBoost. In ordinary/common use i didn’t notice any slowdown and everything seemed as reactive as normal. And it would get only moderately hot, not burning hot (as i wouldn’t rest my hand on the back when it’s like this). It also cooled down quickly once a more intensive task ended.

I’ll try to use it a bit more again & longer in different tasks keeping TurboBoost disabled, see how it runs…

[xxxxx]

oops, I realize now parts of my previous msg were deleted by accident…TLDR : PS runs hot

Out of curiosity, do you use an older version of Photoshop (CC 2015 for instance) or a recent one?

• I use PS CC2019 using windows ink, not wintab. average CPU temps are between 64-74°, it goes higher at times, PS is not my daily-driver though, I’ve switched to CSP years ago.
• using Clip Studio 1.5 I’m usually between 58-65°.
• when browsing, with a Chromium 96 browser temps are fluctuating a lot (49° to 70°, I’d say 54° on average).
  I live in central europe, not warm. using CoreTemp to monitor CPU temperature.

I wonder, what are your primary uses of this device? Is it mainly for drawing/digital painting or similar?

I work in animation. my main uses for the SGB2P360 : 30% sketching and painting, 30% note-taking (both whandwriting and typing), 20% browsing, 20% coding (vscode).

Do you notice that it perhaps runs with better thermal management, less heat/less fan noise, when used in tablet mode when drawing?

I haven’t noticed big differences between tablet and laptop mode regarding noise/thermals.

Something i tested the other day is using ThrottleStop to disable TurboBoost. In ordinary/common use i didn’t notice any slowdown and everything seemed as reactive as normal. And it would get only moderately hot, not burning hot

same thing here. the first week/days, it seemed the heat peaks were more extreme, it seemed to have settled down, now I’d say it’s usually warm / hot but not super hot… I’ve also disabled turboboost and I put my max cpu at 99% instead of 100%. I’m ok to trade raw performance for comfort. the unit still feels snappy enough for me (but I need to test 3D apps and video editing).

The drawing and notetaking experience is better than any tablet pc I’ve tried or owned in the past (that includes hp zbook and wacom mobilestation which have never worked great for me, including the occasional lag and feeling of not completely controlling the stroke at all times, plus terrible battery life… ).
Daily use is fine, I don’t experience slowdowns or weird behavior, seems pretty stable, the fan is basically always on in quiet mode, but not loud so it’s ok-ish… I’ve decided to use silent mode after midnight and keep the quiet mode during the day.

let’s say I’m warming up to this device, I was initially disappointed, I’m starting to enjoy it more.

[xxxxx]

made a small video to show jitter, pressure control and latency (at the end, this is a very fast stroke shot at 960 fps. in real-life situation, the stylus feels very responsive, the latency is very low in ps and is barely noticeable even with fast strokes)

Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 13.3 - S-Pen test

[violajack]

Both sizes are currently $500 off at Best Buy until May 2nd.

[JoeS]

Lisa’s review of the 15.6" model has been up for a month, looks like we somehow missed that!

Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 Review

[majaNATION]

sorry for the delay. didn’t hear back for awhile. Honestly I was thinking of getting rid of it because it’s bulky. It’s a great machine but it’s not portable. the fan is also always on and fairly loud. but it does have a great graphics card 32gb ram and 2tb ssd.

[JoeS]

Review of the 15" model from Windows Central:

Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 (2022) review: Minor improvements go a long way...

[Pixelpedant]

Interesting review, however they also list a 1Tb/32GB Ram option which has not materialized anywhere. If someone knows if and where the specced out version is available, please let me know!

[SteveB]

I picked up the 15" Galalxy Book 2 Pro 360 as a Black Friday discount at Best Buy. 1100$ for the 1 TB SSD and 16 GB model- 500$ off. That’s a stellar deal, IMO, and I get 6 weeks to try it out because of the Xmas return policy.

All in all, I’m quite happy with it. I passed on the GB Flex 2 model in 2020 and the GB Pro model last year. Both seemed plagued with issues, and I’m glad I skipped them. This model feels like an upgrade in almost every respect! I wanted something that solved issues of the previous GB Pro model that seemed like it was going backwards (too dim of screen, build quality issues), and improved on issues with my older GB Flex model (mushy keyboard, better sound quality, probs with touch on some edges). It does all of that very well, and also gives me nice bonuses I didn’t even know I wanted, like a bigger palm rest and a build that feels MUCH thinner. I’m most surprised and impressed by how much I like the keyboard though.

-Thinner- It’s about a 1/16" of an inch smaller (like, maybe the thickness of a quarter?), with trimmed own edges. It feels much thinner though, for what it’s worth

-Typing- Yet the typing experience is clearly much improved. The travel may actually be less, but the keys aren’t so mushy. It’s nice. They have a good little bounce at the bottom with enough actuation force to not get acccidental presses. I’m picky about keyboards, and this is a pleasant surprise. I haven’t tested if I’m faster or more accurate, but I feel like it. And it feels good to type on it.

-Trackpad- I much prefer this bigger trackpad. Silky smooth and very responsive. A definite improvement.

-Palm rest- However, even better is this palm rest. Since the keyboard has been scootched up to provide room for the enlarged trackpad, the palm rest is substantially bigger. I didn’t realize how much this affects my wrist, but it does. I don’t have big hands, but still, I’m now able to scroll and type with my hand having support when I want it too. Nice!

-Speakers- These are WAY better, but it’s essential that you turn on the Dolby Access setting that is preinstalled. Makes all the difference in the world. I find the speakers quite loud and clear. Best I’ve personally had on a laptop.

-Screen- These are all nice screens on the GB series. This model, at 400 nits brightness max, seems bright enough to me. Super bright? No. But bright enough. Do I wish it was 16:10? Sure, why not? But half the reason would be to have an even BIGGER palm rest. LOL! I don’t mind the 1080p. Looks good enough for my eyes. Screen is sharp and bright and vivid.

-Touch- I had some issues with my last GB Flex with touch in the corners. I couldn’t always get it to register. Not sure if it came that way or if it got damaged with time, but this screen seems very responsive and accurate. Might have something to do with Win 11 as well, but I’m not sure. Whatever the case, it works like I expect it to.

-Pen- as good as ever. Has the same quirks as ever. A major reason I buy the device. I wish it had the siloed pen still, but I actually carry a full sized one with a side-button with me all the time anyways, because of my ReMarkable tablet. So, for me personally, it’s not an issue.

-SD card- nice to have, and I’m glad it no longer has the tiny case that required a pin to open it. Nice, simple improvement. And a bit of a throw back. I have a 500 GB microSD in it.

-Noise and Fan- I know the 13" had some issues with this, but the 15" runs cool and quiet for me. Easy peasy. So did the GB Flex I owned.

-Wifi- I wanted a model that had wifi6 for when I upgrade my router, and this does. My old model didn’t, so that’s a clear and simple hardware upgrade.

-Build Quality- seems very nice. No real creaking or big flex. I know the last model had issues with cracked screens and the trackpad clicking from pressure underneath when you would pick it up. So far, not at all with this one.

Webcam- I know it’s 1080p, but it still sucks. LOL. Very clearly subpar and weirdly below grade compared to everything else that I like so much about this device. I guess its “OK”? I’d buy the next model, and have d*mn near everything I could want in a laptop, if they would just give me a webcam as good as what comes in a phone or on the Surface models. As it is, I have to make due with what I’ve got, or use my Logitech when at home.

edit- Fingerprint Reader and Power Button- This was a small gripe of mine for my GB Flex that is solved here. I never cared for the location of the fingerprint reader (which was 1/2 of the right Shift key). It was hard to locate in the dark and shrunk down the size of the Shift key. Now it’s in the upper right corner and doubles as the power button- easy to find and very dependable. The power button used to be on the side, and I would sometimes bump it, which would accidentally turn the machine off. That was annoying. I’m glad it’s not there anymore as well.

edit- Numberpad- The old number pad never had the Number Lock on, and I hated that. This one, for whatever reason, automatically has it on when I boot it up. This is good, because I now use the keypad much more, because it’s reliably a keypad. I wonder if that’s Win11 or the GB 2 Pro?

I think I’ll be keeping it, but I get time to test everything out. That’s so nice, and far more humane. Plus, since it’s been out for something like 9 months already, the drivers seem to be in order. I kept my old Thinkpad 14 around for when I wanted to type a lot, but this new model may do enough of all the things I want that I’ll retire it all the way, and just use the GB Flex as my backup.

I’ll report back after a month, when I’ll have done some design work on it, some video editing, etc. That should put the ribbon on it, if they work out.