There’s been a lot of hype around ARM laptops in the past year because it basically gives
you a less expensive laptop that’s thinner, lighter, less expensive and packing more battery
life than a traditional laptop.
And that’s exactly what you get with Samsung’s Galaxy Book S, which we believe is the best
ARM laptop available right now.
It’s packing a 7nm mobile ARM chip which is not only powerful, but super efficient,
so it doesn’t require loud fans to keep it cool, which is one of my personal favorite
benefits of this laptop.
You also get incredibly good battery life, rated up to 25 hours, running Windows 10 and
featuring a keyboard and trackpad, just like a laptop.
Now if you’ve seen our review of the Galaxy Book S, you’ll know that there are definitely
some issues with it, mainly software support and optimizations.
So after using this for a couple of days, we got to thinking, what if it makes more
sense to simply skip out on this ARM laptop and just go for Apple’s iPad Pro instead.
Now it’s obviously a tablet that doesn’t run desktop software, but it’s become more
and more like an actual laptop in the past year, thanks to tons of software improvements
and new apps.
If you want to learn about that, be sure to check out our iPad Pro in 2020 review after
this video.
So to make our iPad Pro comparable to the Galaxy Book S, we had to make sure it’s
a 256GB model with LTE connectivity, since that’s what you get with the Samsung.
We also had to get a keyboard case, and the Brydge Pro case for $100-150 on Amazon is
the best out there. However, it doesn’t pack a trackpad, which is exclusive to the
upcoming Brydge Pro Plus which is shipping next month.
That brings the price of the iPad Pro to around $1150 to $1200, a couple hundred more than
the Book S, and that’s with the 11” iPad Pro model, not the larger 12.9” which is
more expensive and a better fit as a laptop replacement.
Another downside of the iPad is that you don’t get true cursor support like you do with the
ARM laptop.
Now there are rumors that Apple is working on a smart keyboard with a built-in trackpad
which shows that there’s a chance Apple will be adding cursor support, but there’s
no guarantees.
Getting into the comparison, the Book S is quite a bit thinner and lighter compared to
the iPad Pro with it’s keyboard case, but the iPad has a much smaller footprint thanks
to the 11” size.
Samsung did an excellent job with their hinge, being easy to open but sturdy as well. The
hinge on the brydge keyboard isn’t as easy to open, but it seems even more sturdy, and
it has the added benefit of laying flat on a table.
Looking at them side by side, the display on the Samsung is obviously much larger, but
since it’s using a 16:9 aspect ratio, you only get a bit more vertical space than the
iPad, which is surprising, and you can obviously remove the keyboard if you want to use it
like a tablet, for even more vertical screen real estate and for things like drawing.
Since the keyboard case has to match the 11” size of the iPad, the keys are a bit scrunched
together so it’s not as comfortable to type on compared to the Galaxy, which has a full-size
keyboard with keys that feel better than on the Brydge keyboard.
They feel nice and tactile, just what you’d expect from a laptop.
And of course, the trackpad on the Book S is the star of the show, with true cursor
support with Windows 10. It’s definitely not as good as a MacBook trackpad, but it’s
actually decent compared to other Windows laptops.
Comparing the displays, the iPad Pro’s display is quite a bit brighter, and it’s very color
accurate with DCI-P3 wide color gamut.
The major downside of the Galaxy Book S is that the screen is very reflective alongside
the lower brightness, so it’s definitely harder to see the display when you’re in
a bright room or outside.
The Samsung's display is a touchscreen, but it doesn’t work nearly as well as the iPad
Pro, which features 120hz ProMotion technology, so it’s super smooth and fluid, and this
also means that the Apple Pencil gets incredibly low amounts of latency, so the drawing and
note-taking experience is excellent.
A huge benefit is that the speakers are really nice and loud, sounding quite a bit louder
than on the iPad Pro. However, the quality itself was a bit dull and muted especially
in the highs compared to the iPad Pro.
The front-facing camera is also quite a bit better on the iPad, here’s a comparison
so you can see it for yourself.
In terms of the ports, the iPad Pro features just one USB-C port, which can be used to
hook up to external storage drives and hubs that give you extra ports.
The Galaxy Book S actually comes with two of them, which makes a huge difference! It
also comes with a headphone jack, which is missing on the iPad Pro. So you’re definitely
getting better ports on the Samsung.
While both of these devices have a matching 256GB of storage, you can get up to 1TB on
the iPad Pro if you’re willing to pay a couple hundred bucks more. However, the Samsung
comes with a microSD card slot, allowing you to get an extra 1TB of storage at a much lower
price.
File management was definitely better on the Samsung compared to Apple’s Files app which
just doesn’t have as much functionality, but it’s been much improved with iPadOS.
Even though the battery on the Galaxy Book S is only around 40% larger than the battery
on the iPad Pro, it’s rated for 25 hours of battery life compared to around 10 on the
iPad Pro.
Now in the real-world, we definitely didn’t see that much battery life, we experienced
around 16 to 20 depending on what you’re doing, which is definitely better than the
6-8 hours we saw on this iPad Pro.
One thing we did notice is that the standby battery life was worse on the Samsung, draining
more battery life while not in use compared to the iPad Pro.
Now before we talk about software differences, I want to get into the performance.
When looking at standard benchmarks like Geekbench 5’s CPU test, the iPad Pro is getting around
2x more multi-core performance, which is surprising because it’s around a year and a half old.
We usually run the graphics test in Geekbench, but it doesn’t work on ARM laptops, so we
had to skip that test.
We instead found a graphics browser test called MotionMark version 1.1, and here, the Galaxy
Books S scored 102 points compared to 694 on the iPad Pro, which is a pretty massive
difference.
We also tested the Speedometer 2.0 browser benchmark, which shows us general browser
performance for basically anything on the web.
In this test, the Galaxy scored 59.3 points compared to 137 on the iPad Pro, so you’re
definitely getting a much better web-browsing experience on the iPad.
We actually ran this test on three different browsers on the Book S, Firefox, the new Edge
and Google Chrome, and the new Edge scored the best with that 59.3 score we achieved
since it’s the most optimized for ARM chips.
Now putting benchmarks aside, we decided to compare the real-world performance between
the two.
We first played Asphalt 9, and on the iPad Pro, it runs incredibly well. Perfectly smooth
at 60 frames per second. The Galaxy Book S, on the other hand, was horribly choppy. The
FPS was so low that it was basically unplayable.
We also downloaded Photoshop on both of these devices, and even with 8GB of RAM on the Book
S compared to 4 on the iPad Pro, the experience was much more smooth on the iPad.
For example, the spot healing brush was much more responsive and quicker on the iPad than
on the Book S.
Now while the Samsung does get Windows 10, it doesn’t support 64bit apps, which are
basically most of them, including the most powerful apps, so you’re very limited in
terms of the apps you can use.
Another downside is that since it runs Windows 10 and not Android, you don’t get access
to any mobile apps either.
On the iPad Pro, you obviously don’t get any desktop apps but you get access to a massive
library of iOS apps, which are all very optimized. A lot of them have also been updated to use
more and more of the iPad Pro’s power, so they all work very well.
This means that gaming is going to be many times better than on the Book S.
But of course, you don’t get a cursor and real full-size desktop apps, like the QuickBooks
Online app for business owners.
On the other hand, the iPad does have it’s own highly optimized app for that.
So it comes down to the final question, is it worth buying an ARM laptop right now when
you can just buy an iPad Pro?
Honestly, I still think it’s a bit too early for ARM, since a lot of desktop apps haven’t
been updated for 32bit or optimized for ARM chips. You just don’t get the same software
support compared to how many apps you can get on the iPad.
And since iPadOS was such an excellent update, the iPad Pro actually functions well as a
laptop replacement, so we would honestly choose that instead of the Galaxy Book S.
Now we are excited for Apple to switch their MacBooks to ARM, because first of all, those
MacBooks will have access to all of the great iOS apps alongside desktop apps, something
that you just can’t get on the Galaxy Book S.
And Apple’s been working very hard to make it easier for developers to turn their 64bit
apps into 32bit apps, so they transition to ARM will be quite a bit quicker in terms of
software.
But for now, the iPad Pro is an excellent choice, but at a slightly higher price since
you’ll have to buy a keyboard case as well.
Whichever one you choose, we’ll have links down in the description below.
If you enjoyed this video, check out those two videos right over there and click the
circle above to subscribe. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in the next one!