Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra Review – Impressive multimedia…

A better MacBook Pro? | Samsung’s new Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a powerful 16-inch multimedia laptop with an amazing OLED screen, Panther Lake processor and GeForce RTX 5070. There are also many similarities with the Apple MacBook Pro 16, but is it enough to beat…

Samsung's new Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a very good multimedia laptop with a gorgeous OLED screen, sufficient performance with the Panther Lake processor as well as Nvidia Blackwell GPU and an excellent speaker system. The new chassis design is very similar to Apple's MacBook Pro though and we would not be surprised if many users confused the two systems. This also means Samsung ditched the numeric keypad, which can be an issue for some users.

The performance of the components is very good for a multimedia laptop and the cooling unit works well. The fans will be quite audible if you really stress the laptop in High Performance mode, but it is still quieter than many rivals. We were particularly impressed by the new OLED touchscreen with its amazing picture quality and accurate color profiles, but PWM flickering with the high amplitude is a problem.  The OLED screen with the variable refresh rate between 30-120 Hz is also very efficient and results in excellent battery runtimes that clearly beat all Windows alternatives, despite the smallest battery capacity.

However, if you want more performance, even better screens (tandem OLED panels) and superior keyboards, you should have a look at the Asus ProArt P16 or Lenovo's Yoga Pro 9i 16. Apple's MacBook Pro is obviously a rival as well and also offers a brighter screen, more ports and quieter fans. The performance of the M4 Pro or M4 Max is also better and the upcoming M5 Pro/M5 Max models should increase the gap even further.

Samsung refreshes its most powerful laptop, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra. The 16-inch multimedia device now features new Intel Panther Lake chips, optional Nvidia Blackwell GPUs as well as a new OLED touchscreen inside a revised chassis. We review the model with the Core Ultra 7 356H, GeForce RTX 5070, 32 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD storage.  Samsung ditched the previous design with the wedge-shaped base unit (which is still being used for the other Galaxy Book6 models) and the new Galaxy Book6 Ultra looks and feels much more like a MacBook Pro 16.

We are pretty sure that many users would have a hard time differentiating between the two models if you remove the logos. The overall quality of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra with the aluminum chassis is excellent, both in terms of stability as well as build quality. Fingerprints are an issue though and the surfaces are not easy to clean. We are not happy with the hinges (maximum opening angle ~135 degrees), because the screen wobbles quite a bit.

The lower bezel is also very thick. You can remove the bottom panel and access bot SSD slots, the battery as well as the fans, but the memory and the Wi-Fi module cannot be replaced. The port situation is limited with two USB-C ports and one USB-A port. One of the USB-C ports is also occupied by the power adapter, so the number of usable ports is limited. The SD-card reader is pretty slow at around 80-90 MB/s and does not support the SD-Express.

You get a modern Wi-Fi 7 module with Bluetooth 5.4 and the transfer rates are good. The 1080p cam takes average pictures and also supports facial recognition, but there is no shutter. Samsung also tried to copy the keyboard of the MacBook Pro and got rid of the numpad from the previous model. The key travel is quite shallow and the typing experience between Samsung and Apple is actually very similar and good overall, but there are more comfortable keyboards out there like on the Asus ProArt P16 or the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16.

The haptic touchpad works very well and you can also use the capacitive touchscreen for inputs. Samsung uses a new OLED touchscreen (2880 x 1800 pixels) for the Galaxy Book6 Ultra and the subjective image quality is excellent with deep blacks, rich colors, smooth movements thanks to 120 Hz (adaptive between 30-120 Hz) and bright contents are not affected by the touch layer, either. Response times are quick, but we can measure PWM flickering at 240 Hz for every brightness level with a pretty big amplitude, so sensitive users should try the panel first.

The brightness was improved as well and we now measure around 500 nits for SDR and up to 1182 nits for HDR contents (645 nits for a completely white image). This is an improvement, but not quite up there with tandem OLED screens or the Mini-LED screen of the MacBook. Samsung includes multiple color profiles including P3 as well as sRGB. Our analysis with the professional CalMAN software shows that the color accuracy is very good and our own calibration did not improve the image quality further.

The Galaxy Book6 Ultra is therefore very well-suited for picture editing. The display backlight flickers at 240 Hz (worst case, e.g., utilizing PWM) Flickering detected at a brightness setting of 100 % and below. There should be no flickering or PWM above this brightness setting. The frequency of 240 Hz is relatively low, so sensitive users will likely notice flickering and experience eyestrain at the stated brightness setting and below.

In comparison: 53 % of all tested devices do not use PWM to dim the display. If PWM was detected, an average of 7996 (minimum: 5 – maximum: 343500) Hz was measured. Samsung includes multiple power profiles and they are synced with the Windows settings. We performed our benchmarks in the High Performance mode. Our review unit is equipped with the Core Ultra 7 356H (Panther Lake), which offers 16 cores and a maximum clock of 4.7 GHz.

It is almost identical to the Core Ultra X7 (up to 4.8 GHz), but does not include the fast Arc B390 GPU. The CPU performance with the power limit of 65 Watts is good and stable. All the Windows devices are pretty close here, only the MacBook Pro with the M4 Pro is clearly superior both in multi-core as and especially single-core scenarios and the upcoming M5 Pro model will most likely increase the gap even further.

The subjective performance impression is excellent and the benchmark scores are very high. We did not encounter any stability issues during our review period. The review unit did not show any problems with real-time audio applications during our standardized latency test (web browsing, 4K YouTube playback, CPU load). Our review unit is equipped with a 1 TB drive from Samsung (PM9C1b, 846 GB free) with decent and stable transfer rates.

There is also a secondary M.2-2280 slot if you want to add more storage, but both slots are limited to PCIe 4.0. The GeForce RTX 5070 can consume up to 90 Watts and offers good performance figures for a multimedia laptop. The gaming performance is also good and stable, but the limited amount of VRAM (8 GB) can be a limitation in demanding games. Please see our dedicated article for more information.  Samsung uses a vapor chamber cooling unit with two fans and the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a very quiet device in everyday scenarios, even in the High Performance power profile.

When you start to stress the components, the fans will get audible and we measured a maximum fan noise of 48.5 dB(A). The other power profiles are quieter (33-40 dB(A)), but you will also sacrifice some performance. Our test unit had no issues with other electronic noises. The aluminum surfaces are very cool during everyday situations, but some spots get pretty warm under load. We measure almost 50 °C at the upper center section of the bottom panel, so you should avoid skin contact.

Otherwise, there are no limitations and the keyboard only warms up to ~40 °C, so typing is not affected. During the stress test, the CPU will level off at just 20 Watts, while the GPU maintains 80 Watts. The six-speaker audio system offers impressive sound performance and does not have to hide behind the competition. To be fair though, all the comparison devices offer great sound quality and it will be tough to hear the difference.

(+) | speakers can play relatively loud (85.6 dB)Bass 100 – 315 Hz(±) | reduced bass – on average 5.9% lower than median(±) | linearity of bass is average (7.9% delta to prev. frequency)Mids 400 – 2000 Hz(+) | balanced mids – only 3.7% away from median(+) | mids are linear (4.3% delta to prev. frequency)Highs 2 – 16 kHz(+) | balanced highs – only 2.2% away from median(+) | highs are linear (3.4% delta to prev.

frequency)Overall 100 – 16.000 Hz(+) | overall sound is linear (7.3% difference to median)Compared to same class» 5% of all tested devices in this class were better, 1% similar, 94% worse» The best had a delta of 5%, average was 17%, worst was 45%Compared to all devices tested» 1% of all tested devices were better, 0% similar, 99% worse» The best had a delta of 4%, average was 24%, worst was 134% (+) | speakers can play relatively loud (84.6 dB)Bass 100 – 315 Hz(±) | reduced bass – on average 5.1% lower than median(+) | bass is linear (5.6% delta to prev.

frequency)Mids 400 – 2000 Hz(+) | balanced mids – only 1.4% away from median(+) | mids are linear (2.4% delta to prev. frequency)Highs 2 – 16 kHz(+) | balanced highs – only 1.6% away from median(+) | highs are linear (3% delta to prev. frequency)Overall 100 – 16.000 Hz(+) | overall sound is linear (4.8% difference to median)Compared to same class» 0% of all tested devices in this class were better, 0% similar, 99% worse» The best had a delta of 5%, average was 17%, worst was 45%Compared to all devices tested» 0% of all tested devices were better, 0% similar, 100% worse» The best had a delta of 4%, average was 24%, worst was 134% (±) | speaker loudness is average but good (81.4 dB)Bass 100 – 315 Hz(±) | reduced bass – on average 5.5% lower than median(±) | linearity of bass is average (7.5% delta to prev.

frequency)Mids 400 – 2000 Hz(+) | balanced mids – only 1.7% away from median(+) | mids are linear (3.1% delta to prev. frequency)Highs 2 – 16 kHz(±) | reduced highs – on average 6.2% lower than median(+) | highs are linear (3.9% delta to prev. frequency)Overall 100 – 16.000 Hz(+) | overall sound is linear (9.7% difference to median)Compared to same class» 12% of all tested devices in this class were better, 1% similar, 87% worse» The best had a delta of 5%, average was 17%, worst was 45%Compared to all devices tested» 4% of all tested devices were better, 1% similar, 95% worse» The best had a delta of 4%, average was 24%, worst was 134% (±) | speaker loudness is average but good (80.8 dB)Bass 100 – 315 Hz(+) | good bass – only 3.3% away from median(±) | linearity of bass is average (7.7% delta to prev.

frequency)Mids 400 – 2000 Hz(+) | balanced mids – only 2.9% away from median(+) | mids are linear (1.9% delta to prev. frequency)Highs 2 – 16 kHz(+) | balanced highs – only 4.1% away from median(+) | highs are linear (5.5% delta to prev. frequency)Overall 100 – 16.000 Hz(+) | overall sound is linear (8.3% difference to median)Compared to same class» 8% of all tested devices in this class were better, 2% similar, 90% worse» The best had a delta of 5%, average was 17%, worst was 45%Compared to all devices tested» 2% of all tested devices were better, 1% similar, 98% worse» The best had a delta of 4%, average was 24%, worst was 134% (+) | speakers can play relatively loud (84.2 dB)Bass 100 – 315 Hz(±) | reduced bass – on average 6.1% lower than median(+) | bass is linear (4.2% delta to prev.

frequency)Mids 400 – 2000 Hz(+) | balanced mids – only 1.4% away from median(+) | mids are linear (3.6% delta to prev. frequency)Highs 2 – 16 kHz(+) | balanced highs – only 1.5% away from median(+) | highs are linear (2.2% delta to prev. frequency)Overall 100 – 16.000 Hz(+) | overall sound is linear (5.1% difference to median)Compared to same class» 1% of all tested devices in this class were better, 0% similar, 99% worse» The best had a delta of 5%, average was 17%, worst was 45%Compared to all devices tested» 0% of all tested devices were better, 0% similar, 100% worse» The best had a delta of 4%, average was 24%, worst was 134% (+) | speakers can play relatively loud (85.6 dB)Bass 100 – 315 Hz(±) | reduced bass – on average 9.3% lower than median(±) | linearity of bass is average (11.9% delta to prev.

frequency)Mids 400 – 2000 Hz(+) | balanced mids – only 2.5% away from median(+) | mids are linear (4% delta to prev. frequency)Highs 2 – 16 kHz(+) | balanced highs – only 3.4% away from median(±) | linearity of highs is average (7.5% delta to prev. frequency)Overall 100 – 16.000 Hz(+) | overall sound is linear (8.7% difference to median)Compared to same class» 9% of all tested devices in this class were better, 2% similar, 88% worse» The best had a delta of 5%, average was 17%, worst was 45%Compared to all devices tested» 2% of all tested devices were better, 1% similar, 97% worse» The best had a delta of 4%, average was 24%, worst was 134% The Galaxy Book6 Ultra is surprisingly efficient while idling with a maximum consumption of just 7.1 Watts at full SDR brightness.

During the stress test, we measure around 140-144 Watts for the first 40 seconds, but the consumption then levels off at around 124 Watts and the battery is not drained, so the 140W power adapter is sufficient. Even though the Galaxy Book6 Ultra has the smallest battery capacity in our comparison group at just 80.2 Wh, it manages impressive battery runtimes even getting close to the MacBook Pro. At 150 nits, our Wi-Fi test runs for almost 17 hours and therefore much longer compared to any other Windows rival.

At full brightness, we still record almost 8.5 hours, which even beats the MacBook Pro (which is a bit brighter) by around one hour. The selection of devices to be reviewed is made by our editorial team. The test sample was provided to the author as a loan by the manufacturer or retailer for the purpose of this review. The lender had no influence on this review, nor did the manufacturer receive a copy of this review before publication.

There was no obligation to publish this review. As an independent media company, Notebookcheck is not subjected to the authority of manufacturers, retailers or publishers. Every year, Notebookcheck independently reviews hundreds of laptops and smartphones using standardized procedures to ensure that all results are comparable. We have continuously developed our test methods for around 20 years and set industry standards in the process.

In our test labs, high-quality measuring equipment is utilized by experienced technicians and editors. These tests involve a multi-stage validation process. Our complex rating system is based on hundreds of well-founded measurements and benchmarks, which maintains objectivity. Further information on our test methods can be found here.

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