SAMSUNG announced Sunday a new fleet of premium Galaxy laptops led by the Galaxy Book2 Pro and Galaxy Book2 Pro 360. The leading Android phone maker has a mixed track record in the notebook market but the Galaxy Book Pro 360 impressed users last year and these two additions bring several nice upgrades to the table, including Intel’s long-awaited discrete Arc graphics. Both the Book2 Pro and the Book2 Pro 360 will be available in 13.3-inch and 15.6-inch versions. Whichever you choose, it will come with a 1080p AMOLED display with a max brightness of 500 nits (a 33 percent increase from the previous model). If you’ve kept tabs on the laptop space in recent years, these specs are a bit old school. While everyone moves to 13.4, 14, and 16 inches with 16:10 and 3:2 aspect ratios, Samsung is keeping things traditional with a standard 16:9, 1080p display. Samsung sticks with a simple, understated design with these systems, which are available in silver and graphite. The convertible model has a Burgundy option. At 12 x 7.68 x 0.44 inches and 862 grams, the Book2 Pro is an extremely lightweight laptop (the MacBook Air weighs 1,270 grams). The 15-inch Book2 Pro, at 0.48 inches thick and 1,170 grams, is also among the most portable devices in its class. Both systems will be powered by Intel Core i5-1240P or Core i7-1260P processors with Iris Xe Graphics and can be equipped with 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM and up to a 1TB NVMe SSD. These are portable systems, not big gaming rigs so Samsung has opted for Intel’s mid-tier P-series chips, which are designed to offer high performance for mobile devices. The Book2 Pro’s Intel Arc graphics will be among the first batch to use the chipmaker’s highly anticipated discrete GPU. Unfortunately, Samsung didn’t set any performance expectations. Samsung is touting the security of these devices, which are the first consumer devices to meet Microsoft’s secure-core requirements, meaning the two companies collaborated to ensure certain security benchmarks were met. Samsung vaguely states it has “integrated hardware, firmware, and software” to protect these systems. The Galaxy Book2 Pro and Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 will go on pre-order March 18 before hitting stores April 1. The convertible Book 2 Pro 360 will cost US$1,249 while the Book2 Pro goes for US$1,049. Another base model, a 13.3-inch Book2 360, will cost US$899 when it’s available April 1.(SD-Agencies) | 