Last week, an Intel-powered variant of Samsung"s Galaxy Book S was spotted on the company"s Canadian website, revealing most of the laptop"s specs. However, this version of the laptop hadn"t been officially unveiled, so a release date was still up in the air. That changes today, as Samsung has announced the availability of the Intel-based Galaxy Book S, alongside the return of Samsung laptops to the UK market. In 2014, the company had given up on its PC efforts in Europe.
The announcement of the Intel version of the Galaxy Book S mostly confirms what we already knew - the laptop will features Intel"s Lakefield chipsets, which are being referred to as Intel Core processors with Intel Hybrid Technology, specifically the Core i5-L16G7. Lakefield chips are aimed at thin and light devices, and the now-delayed Surface Neo was also going to be powered by them.
The rest of the specs are also what we had seen before - a 13.3-inch Full HD display with touch support, 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, and up to 512GB of eUFS storage. There"s also support for Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 for connectivity. The global announcement of the Intel-based Galaxy Book S mentions support for LTE, but that doesn"t seem to be available in the UK, and neither does the model with 256GB of storage. It would seem certain configurations will be region-exclusive.
Alongside the new Galaxy Book S, Samsung is also bringing the Galaxy Book Flex and Galaxy Book Ion to the UK, which launched in the U.S. earlier this month. The Galaxy Book Ion will cost £1,249.00 for the 13.3-inch model and £1,299 for the 15.6-inch variant, while the Galaxy Book Flex will set you back £1,349. Both will be available in early June, and the Samsung online store shows a shipping date of June 12. The Intel-based Galaxy Book S will cost you £999 and it"s planned for late June, though the store shows the same shipping date of June 12. Samsung hasn"t announced availability in other major regions.