Samsung Galaxy Book3 Series first impression: More than the hardware, its the ecosystem that impresses

Although the Galaxy S23 series, especially the Galaxy S23 Ultra, was at the centre of everyone’s attention at the launch, Samsung also launched their new Galaxy Book3 series, their ultra-portable thin and light notebooks. The series includes three thin and lights, the Galaxy Book3 Ultra, the Galaxy Book3 Pro 360, and the Galaxy Book3 Pro.

Specifications and hardware wide, they are everything that a thin and light note should be – a combination of stellar-looking design with the best hardware that is on the market right now.

The notebooks are powered by Intel’s 13th Gen H-series processors and come with Intel’s Evo badging. The Galaxy Book3 Ultra, for example, is available with either an Intel 13th Gen i9 or an i7 CP, up to 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM and either an RTX 4070 or an RTX 4050 Laptop GPU, depending on how you spec it out.

Similarly, the other laptops get the best Intel 13th Gen i7 or i5 CPU with Intel Xe Graphics and up to 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM. All four devices get the best of PCIe storage of up to 1TB and you get a quad-speaker setup, tuned by AKG, that supports Dolby. Basically, you get all the bells and whistles that you would hope a top-tier laptop to have in 2023.

What sets the Galaxy Book3 series apart, is the suite of customisations, and features that Samsung has built into the laptop. Samsung wants to create an ecosystem of its own and boy, are they working hard on it.

Firstly, there’s Samsung’s Multi Control feature. Basically, this lets you type and control all your Samsung personal devices, like a smartphone or a tablet using the trackpad and the keyboard on your Galaxy Book3. Basically, you can reply to your messages, emails, and IM messages that you have received on your phone, using your laptop. Not just that you can also “share” stuff such as text and images between your devices, by simply copying it on one device, and pasting it somewhere else, using a completely different device.

Then there is Samsung’s own way to implement something as basic as a mobile hotspot. With Samsung’s Phone Link, you turn on the hotspot of your mobile device and connect it to your Galaxy Book3, all in just one click – no other step is required to set the system up. The best feature of Samsung’s Phone Link, however, is that it lets you continue browsing the internet from the same web page, even when you move between devices. For example, suppose you are reading a Wikipedia entry on your phone about something really quirky as you make your way up your apartment towards your home. You then sit down to start working on your laptop. Now, instead of having to look that Wikipedia entry up again, you can simply continue on your laptop.

Finally, there’s expert RAW auto share, a feature that will prove to be a boon for content creators, especially photographers. Now, users will be able to transfer RAW files from their Galaxy devices to their Galaxy Book3. What’s more is that users can then directly proceed to edit the images on their favourite software, straight away, without having to wait.

There are a bunch of other features and neat little tricks as well, that just work seamlessly between Samsung’s different personal devices. For example, you can share and extend your screen with other Galaxy devices, wireless, which allows you to use your Galaxy Tab as an additional display.

Samsung has realised that what users want, is a seamless experience between multiple devices, and this is evident with what they have done with the Galaxy Book3 series. It will be interesting to see what other inter-device features they will be bringing next.