Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 inch 8 GB Intel core i5-1035G4 processor laptop

The color-rich, super-bright, QLED display is another appealing feature of the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 inch 8 GB Intel core i5-1035G4 processor laptop that one can enjoy in tablet or laptop mode. The dark blue hue of this stunning $1,399 convertible will turn heads while maintaining a classy, refined aesthetic. And that nearly 16 hours of battery life and lightning-fast SSD are nothing to sneeze at either. 

However, Samsung’s decision to implement a half-sized Shift key to squeeze in an adjacent fingerprint scanner is befuddling. Why not just place the fingerprint scanner on the lower-right quadrant of the keyboard deck? Perhaps there’s a method to Samsung’s madness, but for now, I remain baffled. 

Seeking a 2-in-1 with a more traditional keyboard? Opt for the $1,799 15-inch HP Spectre x360 — the Shift key and fingerprint scanner are in all the right places. Need more power? Give the Dell XPS 15 a gander. But at $2,599 you’re going to pay a pretty penny. However, if a shortened Shift key doesn’t ruffle your feathers, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 is an excellent ultraportable workstation that delivers a beautiful melange of entertainment and power to satisfy your tasks as an on-the-go professional while giving you a splash of fun along the way. 

Pros & Cons – Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 inch 8 GB Intel core i5-1035G4 processor laptop

Pros

• Exceptionally bright QLED display
• Thin, light, and stylish
• Large touchpad
• Built-in S Pen doubles as a remote control
• Long battery life
• Good computing performance
• Built-in Qi wireless charging pad

Cons

• Uncomfortable keyboard
• Buggy pen-gesture function
• Low screen resolution.
• Glossy display.
• The keyboard is a bit shallow.

Full Specification – Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 inch 8 GB Intel core i5-1035g4 processor laptop

• Basic Info
• ManufacturerSamsung
• Product TypePowerful, Portable, Premium 2-in-1 Convertible Laptop
• Model No.Galaxy Book Flex 13 (2020)
• Operating Systemwindows 10 Home 64-bit
• Processor & Chipset10th Generation Intel Core i5-1035G4 Processor, (1.60GHz, up to 4.20GHz with Turbo Boost, 4 Cores, 6MB Cache)
• RAM Memory8GB LPDDR4x
• Solid State Drive (SSD)512GB NVMe SSD
• KeyboardIsland-type keyboard with Numeric key (Backlit keyboard)
• ClickpadPointing Device TypeTouchPad
• Physical Dimension302.6 x 202.9 x 12.9 mm (W x D x H)
• Weight1.15 kg
• Color OptionsRoyal Blue
• Security featuresFingerPrint Reader
• Memory card readerYes
• Manufacturer Warrenty1 Year
• Body MaterialMetal body
• DisplayScreen Size13.3 inches
• Resolution1920 x 1080 Pixels
• Screen TypeQLED FHD Multi-touch Backlit Display, Built-in S Pen
• TouchscreenYes
• Backlight TechnologyYes
• Multi-touch ScreenYes
• GraphicsIntel Iris Plus
• Network & CommunicationWireless LANWi-Fi 6 (Gig+), 802.11 ax (2×2),
• Wireless PowerShare
• Bluetooth5.0
• Ethernet TechnologyYes
• Battery & PowerType & Capacity69.7Wh Lithium-ion battery
• Battery TimingUpto 20 hrs
• Power Supply Wattage65W AC adapter
• Interfaces/PortsUSB2 x Thunderbolt 3, 1 x USB-C, UFS & MicroSD Reader, 1 x Headphone out/Mic-in ComboHDMIYesVGA720p HD / Dual Array MicAudioInternal Dual Array Digital Mic, AKG Stereo Speakers (Max 5 W x 2)SoundExtras

Who is this for – Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 inch 8 GB Intel core i5-1035g4 processor laptop

Buy it if…

You need long battery life
The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex has the longest battery life we’ve ever experienced in a Windows laptop. This laptop will easily last you all day, so if you hate carrying a charger with you, this laptop could be perfect.

You watch a lot of movies and shows
If you’re looking for a device primarily for content consumption, this is a pretty solid choice. The display is one of the best we’ve seen in a laptop, and while the sound quality isn’t quite there, that’s something that can be fixed by some headphones.

You’re all about the aesthetic
The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex is a seriously attractive piece of kit. If you just want something you can show off in a coffee shop once society opens back up, this might be the device for you.

Don’t buy it if…

You’re on a budget
At $1,399 (about £1,120, AU$2,180), the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex isn’t the most expensive device on the market, but you can find a laptop with the same components for less – though you would be losing out on display quality. 

You type a lot
This really comes down to that shortened Right Shift key. This is one of the most aggravating keyboards we’ve ever typed on, and ruined our experience. If you’re picking something up for school or work, beware. 

You want something that feels rigid
The hinges on the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex are far too loose for us to feel safe moving around at all when we’re using this device. 

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 price and configuration 

I’m enamored with the Galaxy Book Flex. It’s a pretty machine with a nice display, powerful guts and useful S Pen. But I wish there were more configurations (for each size) to make the base price lower. Sure, $1,349 for a Core i7 processor and 8GB of RAM isn’t the priciest, considering the new MacBook Air tops out at $1,199 for a Core i5 and the similarly specced XPS 13 2-in-1 costs a lot more at $1,700. But with the competition offering options starting at $999, that’s tough to swallow. 

The only Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 configuration available today costs $1,399 and comes with a 15.6-inch, 1080p QLED display, an Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU, 12GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and an NVIDIA GeForce MX250 GPU. 

Review – Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 inch 8 GB Intel core i5-1035G4 processor laptop

Build and color

The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 — an aluminum, royal-blue beauty —  is the refined, hip and enigmatic fellow you’d meet at a business mixer. Its clean-cut, rectangular chassis says, “I’m all about the Benjamins and business,” but its rich-blue hue emanates an aura of mysterious fun. 

When closed, this 2-in-1 bombshell flaunts reflective, silver edges. The familiar Samsung logo, placed on the center-left of the lid, catches your eye with lustrous, shiny letters.

Lift the lid and you’ll find a slim-bezel paradise. The top bezel manages to squeeze in a small 720p webcam while the bottom bezel sports a barely-there Samsung logo.

The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 sports more of that royal-blue goodness on its keyboard. A large dark-blue trackpad, taking almost half the deck space, sits comfortably beneath the space bar.

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 design 

Though it’s impressively thin, the Flex feels solid and dense. It’s still pretty light though at just 1.15kg (2.53 pounds). In comparison, the new MacBook Air and the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 are both heavier at 2.8 and 2.9 pounds, respectively. 

The Flex’s 13.3-inch screen is surrounded by minimal bezels on the top, left and right sides, with a fatter chin at the bottom. That thicker bottom bezel is still common in laptops, though Dell managed to do away with it in this year’s XPS 13 — maybe the rest of the industry will catch up soon. Samsung still managed to squeeze a webcam above the Flex’s screen, although it sadly doesn’t support Windows Hello logins. 

Sporting a dimension of 14 x 9 x 0.6 inches and weight of 3.5 pounds, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 is lighter and thinner than its competitors: the 15-inch Lenovo Yoga C940 (4.4 pounds, 14 x 9 x 0.7 inches), the 15-inch HP Spectre x360 (4.5 pounds, 14.2 x 9.8 x 0.8 inches) and the Dell XPS 15 (4.5 pounds, 14.1 x 9.3 x 0.5~0.7 inches)

Brightness

It’s bright (428 nits) and has high contrast (1,080:1), but QLED really makes a difference in color gamut and accuracy. It hits 92 percent of Adobe RGB, which is a color space most laptop screens struggle with. That colorful, accurate screen is important for photographers, perhaps making this one of the best photography laptops you can get at this price. There’s a even an “Outdoor Mode” that cranks up the brightness to 600 nits, which can be useful if you’re working outside. That’s Samsung flexing its muscle.

Display 

The Galaxy Book Flex 15’s 15.6-inch screen and eye-catching colors provided pleasurable visuals. As it turns out, this gorgeous touch display is the first laptop in the world to be outfitted with QLED technology, which means it’s jazzed up with a fancy quantum-dot filter to improve color, light management and energy efficiency.

Testing the screen on our colorimeter, the display on the snazzy 2-in-1 covers 158% of the sRGB color gamut, which knocked both the Lenovo Yoga C940 (105%) and the HP Spectre x360 (157%) out the ring, making the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 the color-coverage champion. The royal-blue convertible also beat the category average (125%).

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 keyboard and touchpad 

The Galaxy Book Flex 15 is a testament that Samsung’s willing to take risks, but not all gambles in innovation lead to success — and this 2-in-1’s keyboard is the perfect example. For this convertible, Samsung decided to slice the right Shift key in half and add an adjacent fingerprint scanner.

My typical average is 87 words per minute on the 10FastFingers.com writing test, but on the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15’s keyboard, my wpm average plummeted to 74. If I spent more time with the laptop, I’m sure my wpm would return to its normal mid-80s range.

The large Windows Precision touchpad (4.7 x 3.1 inches) worked like a charm and responded well to Windows 10 gestures, such as pinch-to-zoom and two-finger scrolling. A striking feature about the touchpad is its Wireless PowerShare capability, which means you can use it to charge any of your Qi-compatible smartphones, Galaxy Buds Plus (or third-party earbuds) or wearables. Sweet!

Ports 

This 2-in-1 stunner has a modern stock of ports. On the left side, you’ll find a headphone jack, a microSD card slot and a standard USB Type-C port.  On the right side, you’ll discover a stylus dock and two Thunderbolt 3 ports, which means users can experience the joys of outputting video to 4K monitors, high-speed transfer rates and juicing up one’s favorite devices with power — including another laptop.

Audio

The Samsung Galaxy Book 15’s long speaker-grill strip is located on the back of the laptop between the 360-degree hinges. 

While listening to Doja Cat’s “Say So” on Spotify, I cranked the speakers up to max volume, but I was disappointed; the audio wasn’t as loud as I would have liked it to be. It could not fill the room. But the sound quality is superb with perfectly balanced audio — the finely tuned mishmash of Doja Cat’s vocals, bass and disco beats integrated well together for music that sounded like sweet honey to my ears.

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 stylus

The built-in S Pen is the star of the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15’s spectacular show. To retrieve the S Pen from its dock, you can simply push its rectangular head to pop it out of place.

The S Pen is your magic wand with the Galaxy Book Flex 15. As soon as you pull it out from its garage, a far-right menu pops up with options to jot down notes, draw, engage with Live Message — a fun app that converts your flashy stylus scribbling into GIFs — and so much more.

The S Pen isn’t the most comfortable, ergonomic pen, but Samsung did an excellent job at creating a pen that can be conveniently stowed away to minimize stylus misplacement. After drawing and note-taking, you can stick the pen back into its garage with a satisfying click.

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 inch 8 GB Intel core i5-1035g4 processor laptop performance review

The Flex may look like a dainty machine, but it actually packs a powerful 10th-generation Intel Core i7 processor. My review unit came with 16GB of RAM, which is double the 8GB configuration you can buy in the US. (The 15-inch model has the same CPU but 12GB of RAM.) Bear in mind that this means my experience, at least when it comes to performance and speed, isn’t going to be representative of what you can expect. 

With these guts, the Flex deftly dealt with my daily workflow of Slack, dozens of Chrome tabs, spreadsheets and the inescapable Zoom calls that permeate our lives now. The laptop also kept up with my new at-home needs, like executing my podcast-recording setup and uploading large files for review videos. I also played several rounds of League of Legends after rediscovering it, and the Flex never let me down.

That is, until I decided to turn on Samsung’s Silent mode. This is meant to keep the laptop’s fans quiet if you’re bothered by them. It’s pretty easy to activate: Just slide a switch in the Samsung Settings app. You don’t have to go into Boot mode to access it. I never found the Flex too loud, but I guess those trying to get work done in bed next to a light sleeper or just really hate white noise might.

Battery life and wireless PowerShare

Thanks to the Flex’s QLED screen and 69.7Whr battery, Samsung promises up to 20 hours of runtime. In reality though, that number is a lot lower. Our video-looping battery test drained the Flex in about 13 and a half hours, which is better than the MacBook Air but falls short of the XPS 13 2-in-1’s 14-and-a-half hour mark. In real-world experience though, I saw power levels plunge below 20 percent after five hours of heavy use. To be fair, that involved energy-sapping processes like video playback and more-frenzied League games. 

One of the new features of the Flex is its trackpad’s built-in wireless charger that can deliver power to Qi-compatible devices. It’s the same Wireless PowerShare feature that debuted on the Galaxy S10. You can’t use the trackpad while you’re charging something, which makes sense, since something is literally obstructing the usable area. I’m not sure how helpful this feature is, since wireless charging is typically too slow to be meaningful. I placed the Galaxy S20 Ultra on the trackpad (after the requisite first step of turning on the feature in Settings) and watched as its battery level climbed painfully slowly from 79 percent to 85 percent in 20 minutes. 

Graphics

Yes, the Flex 15 has a discrete graphics card, an Nvidia GeForce MX250 GPU with 2GB of VRAM, to be exact. That doesn’t mean the laptop is a gaming machine. Far from it. While the GPU can run some games, the chip’s true purpose is to assist with light photo or video editing or maybe a spreadsheet or two. 

During the Dirt 3 benchmark, the laptop reached 52 frames per second, which is above our 30-fps playability threshold, but below the 61-fps premium laptop average. The Yoga and its GeForce GTX 1650 GPU was the undisputed winner at 167 fps. The Spectre (GeForce MX150) managed 118 fps while the XPS 15 (GeForce 1650) reached 80 fps. 

Webcam

The top bezel of the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 features a tiny 720p webcam. Color is this camera’s strong suit — it picked up on my lilac walls and brown complexion quite well. However, image crispness, detail and definition is where the camera falls short. There is some visual noise, too, but it isn’t too distracting. 

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 heat

After we streamed a 15-minute HD video, the underside of the laptop reached 96 degrees Fahrenheit, which is slightly above our 95-degree comfort threshold. Meanwhile, the center of the keyboard and touchpad stayed cool and didn’t surpass 87 and 83 degrees, respectively. The underside of the convertible — by the power switch — reached a max temperature of 103 degrees. Figuratively and literally, the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 is hot AF.

Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 software

The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 also includes an app called Samsung DeX that prompts users to connect their compatible Samsung device to the computer via USB for easy file transfers.

The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 operates on Windows 10 Pro and has some useful pre-installed software such as including the Voice Note with Pen app, which allows you to pause your recorded audio and jot down important notes. This is a great tool for students who record lectures or worker bees who enjoy recording office meetings. There’s also Studio Plus for simple video editing and several drawing apps, including Sketchbook and Little Artist.

The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 comes with a one-year limited warranty. See how Samsung fared on our Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Brands special reports 

However, there is a fair amount of bloatware, including a Booking.com Samsung Edition partner app, Solitaire, Netflix, Spotify and more.

Are there any alternatives?

There are countless laptop options, but the Flex’s closest competitors are the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 and HP Spectre x360 13. The Galaxy Book Flex wins in battery life and display, though I prefer the keyboard and bezel size of the other options. The Spectre x360 is also a battery life champ, plus it’s the cheapest of the three. I prefer the design and look of the XPS 13 2-in-1, though the Galaxy Book Flex’s colorful QLED screen is great for photographers. I do wish there was a 4K option, as well as a cheaper Core i5 model.

If you’re willing to ditch the 2-in-1 element, the Dell XPS 13 remains the best laptop you can buy, as it can be configured with a touchscreen.

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