Review: Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge Copilot+ PC

The march of Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs continues with Samsung’s entry into the category. While the Galaxy Book4 Edge has the same limitations as all the other Copilot+ PC devices we’ve seen to date (like lackluster graphics performance and app compatibility issues), it distinguishes itself with some features—particularly its impressive performance—immediately making it a more compelling option than its peers.

Let’s start with screen size: The 16-inch touchscreen is the biggest I’ve seen on a Copilot+ PC to date, and the extra real estate helps in more ways than one. The 2,880 x 1,800-pixel display looks great, but more importantly, the larger screen lets Samsung spread out on the keyboard below. Here you’ll find a numeric keypad that is just shy of full-size, a considerable improvement over the squished keypad offered by the competing Asus Vivobook S 15. Below that, the touchpad is nothing short of massive—over 7 inches in size diagonally—to the point where it feels too big and easy to accidentally hit with a palm while typing.

Photograph: Christopher Null

The laptop is silver in color but otherwise understated all around, featuring curved corners and a slim chassis that measures just 16 millimeters thick. At 3.2 pounds, it's one of the lightest I’ve seen in the 16-inch design, and it’s actually lighter than many 15- and 15.6-inch devices. Even the charging adapter is tiny, about the size of a 10-watt iPad charger and weighing just 4.3 ounces.

Despite the unit’s relatively compact size, Samsung has outfitted the Book4 Edge with the most powerful specs of any Copilot+ PC I’ve tested to date, with a Snapdragon X Elite X1E84100 CPU (the fastest and most full-featured chip in the Elite lineup) backing up 16 GB of RAM and a 1-terabyte solid-state drive. Port selection is good too, with two USB-C ports supporting USB4 (one is needed for charging), one USB-A port, a full-size HDMI jack, and a microSD card slot. As a barely documented bonus feature, a fingerprint reader is built into the (unmarked) power button, though you can also use the webcam and Windows Hello for even quicker logins.

Photograph: Christopher Null

The added power makes a difference: On general, CPU-driven tasks, the laptop turned in the best benchmark scores of any Copilot+ PC I’ve tested to date, topping the Asus by a scant 1 percent on Geekbench 6, but pulling away more impressively versus laptops with lower-end Snapdragon chips (and Intel- and AMD-based laptops) by up to 20 percent. Graphics-based tests saw muddier, more mixed results, but the laptop held its own with other Copilot+ PCs while expectedly falling well behind the scores that more traditional Intel machines have turned in recently.

In the real world, the power is noticeable. Microsoft’s real-time Live Captions system has become my go-to stress test for Copilot+ PCs, as many struggle to keep up while translating fast-paced dialog. The Book4 Edge did the best job I’ve seen to date at this complex task, even handling thickly accented speech without missing much.

Battery life is also excellent, with a run time of almost 14 and a half hours on a full-screen YouTube playback test at full brightness (compared to 15 hours, 12 minutes on the Microsoft Surface Pro, and 13 hours, 12 minutes on the Asus Vivobook S 15). The screen is no slouch, either, pumping out vivid color and exceptional brightness while minimizing glare. The audio is solid if not exactly booming, aided by a fan that is barely audible even under load. I had to put my ear up to the laptop to hear the slightest whirr.

Photograph: Christopher Null

What’s not to like? The typing experience is marred by keys with travel that’s just a bit too short, and I found the tiny arrow keys exceptionally hard to use. The keyboard backlighting doesn’t help much to make the keys visible unless the room is quite dark. And I’ve previously discussed the touchpad, which is so wildly, overly large it merits mentioning here again. Ultimately these issues are all relatively minor.

At $1,500, the Book4 Edge is $200 more expensive than the smaller Asus Vivobook, but on a price-performance basis, it closes in on that machine’s high water mark. If you want to take advantage of Microsoft’s new AI features (and I won’t judge you if you don’t), it’s becoming clear that getting every bit of performance you can out of your hardware is important. In that vein, Samsung takes the performance crown while keeping the price reasonably in check. While it’s not quite the best bang for your buck in the Copilot+ PC world right now, it does provide the biggest bang.