Stefan Mileschin

Samsung has introduced its new Galaxy Book Ion lineup of laptops that bring together an ultralight weight, an innovative display with quantum dot-enhanced backlighting, and Intel’s 10th Generation Core (Comet Lake) platform. The latest notebooks are the company’s first Project Athena-class PCs, designed to meet the standards of Intel's premium PC program.

To minimize weight, Samsung’s Galaxy Book Ion notebooks come in chassis made of magnesium and are engineered for maximum portability. The machines come in a 13.3-inch and 15.6-inch form-factor, with weights starting at 0.97 kilograms and 1.19 kilograms respectively. Besides portability, the key feature of the Galaxy Book Ion laptops is their QLED Full-HD display that features up to 600 nits brightness, a high contrast ratio, and promises to support a wide color gamut. Another unique feature of the notebooks is Samsung's Wireless PowerShare, which allows the laptop to charge Qi-compatible smartphones and headsets. The Galaxy Book Ion is equipped with a 69.7 Wh battery, so while charging any client devices will deplete the laptop's battery sooner, it has a fairly significant reservoir to start with.

Inside Samsung’s Galaxy Book Ion laptops is Intel’s 10th Generation Core (Comet Lake) processor paired with up to 16 GB of DDR4 memory, as well as an SSD with capacities up to 1TB. The 15.6-inch model sports an additional SO-DIMM slot, can house one more solid-state drive, and optionally includes NVIDIA’s GeForce MX 250 discrete GPU with 2 GB of VRAM for those who need a higher performance graphics.

As we are talking about high-end Project Athena-verified notebooks, the Galaxy Book Ion has plenty of wired and wireless connectivity, including Wi-Fi 6, a Thunderbolt 3 port, two USB 3.0 Type-A port, an HDMI output, a microSD/UFS card reader, and a 3.5-mm audio jack for headsets. Of course, Samsung also equipped its laptop with a fingerprint reader, a 720p webcam, a microphone array, and stereo speakers co-designed with AKG and enhanced with an amplifier.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15046...alaxy-book-ion