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I used a MacBook Air for 3 years, but the Galaxy Book6 Pro now has my loyalty

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Shimul Sood / Digital Trends

All my life, I’ve been an Apple user. iPhones, MacBooks, AirPods — if Apple made it, I had it. So yes, you can probably imagine the kind of loyalty I had for the ecosystem. Switching to anything else? Never even crossed my mind. But people change, and so did I.

I’ve been using the MacBook Air M2 for three years now, and honestly, it’s been great. But only recently did Samsung launch the Galaxy Book6 Pro, and something just magnetically pulled me towards it. You’ll know exactly why it caught my attention, and who knows, maybe it’ll catch yours too.

Well, Samsung… that face card never declines

I’ll be honest — I’ve never used a Samsung laptop before, so when the Galaxy Book6 Pro landed on my desk, I had no idea what to expect. The first thing I did was pick it up, and the moment I did, I was genuinely surprised. This laptop comes with a slim aluminum body, and the way it sat in my hands reminded me of my MacBook Air M2. For someone who’s been in the Apple ecosystem their whole life, that familiarity meant a lot more than I expected.

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What got me next was just how thin this thing actually is. Not in a “wow, impressive for a Windows laptop” way — just genuinely thin. And it doesn’t feel hollow or fragile because of it. The chassis is solid. I used this as my daily machine for two weeks straight, and the build never once made me feel like I’d compromised.

Some people will look at this design and call it boring. I’ve heard it. But here’s the thing — I don’t want my laptop to look like a gaming rig. I don’t want vents, angles, or LED strips. I want something I can carry into a meeting or a café without a second thought. The Galaxy Book6 Pro does exactly that. It’s the kind of design that doesn’t try too hard.

And when I looked at the ports, I actually laughed because, for three years, I hadn’t even realized how much I was putting up with. The MacBook Air has a way of making you think that two USB-C ports are just how life works. You buy the dongle, you carry the dongle, you forget the dongle at home, and suffer — it becomes a routine. The Book6 Pro, on the other hand, features an HDMI port, two USB-C ports, a USB-A port, and an audio jack — all just there for you to use. The first morning, I packed my bag and didn’t have to do the dongle check. That’s such a small thing, but three years of quiet frustration kind of melted away with it.

A symphony of clicks

As a writer, the keyboard is always the first thing I go to. Before I check the display, before I run a benchmark, I put my fingers on the keys — because if the typing experience is off, nothing else really matters. The MacBook’s Magic Keyboard has spoiled me over the years. That flat key layout, the spacing, the way your fingers just know where to land. So naturally, that was my benchmark walking into this.

The Galaxy Book6 Pro surprised me here. The keys have the same kind of considered spacing that makes long typing sessions feel effortless, and the backlit layout is clean and comfortable. I spent hours writing and researching on this thing, and not once did I catch myself hitting the wrong key or slowing down to correct a misfire. For the kind of work I do, that’s the whole thing.

But here’s where the Book6 Pro actually pulls ahead, and I didn’t see this coming. The keys are matte. That sounds like a tiny detail until you’ve spent three years with the MacBook Air’s glossy keys. I am someone who cleans their hands constantly before sitting down to type, and I still end up with oily fingerprints smeared across the keyboard by the end of a session. It bothers me more than it probably should. The Book6 Pro’s matte finish just doesn’t do that. I’ve been using it daily, and the keys still look the way they did out of the box. Honestly, this alone had me sold — which says a lot about how much that glossy keyboard was getting on my nerves all along.

The screen matches the charm

The Galaxy Book6 Pro has a 16-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2x display, and the first time I actually used it, I realized I had been missing out on something I didn’t even know I wanted. I’ve never had a touch display on a laptop before — the MacBook Air doesn’t have one, so this was completely new territory for me. But it took almost no time to get used to. When I’m reading long articles or going down a research rabbit hole, I just reach out and scroll with my finger, and it feels like using a tablet. There’s something really natural about it: the touchpad and the touch display blend together depending on what I’m doing in the moment.

And then something funny happened. I was back on my MacBook for a bit, doing some work, and without thinking, I reached out and touched the screen. Just sat there with my finger on a display that does absolutely nothing when you touch it. That’s when I knew the Book6 Pro had fully rewired my brain.

The 120Hz refresh rate is what sealed it for me, though. My MacBook Air runs at 60Hz, which I never had a problem with until I used this. The moment you switch between the two, the difference is jarring in the best way. Everything on the Book6 Pro just moves better — scrolling, switching between tabs, even just moving the cursor around. It feels like the display is actually keeping up with you. Going back to 60Hz after this feels like watching a film in slow motion, and I don’t think I’m ready to do that anymore.

It all circles back to how it performs

Battery life was honestly my biggest fear going into this. As a MacBook user, I’ve never had to think about it — even after three years of heavy use, the Air just keeps going. And I’d heard enough about Windows laptops being permanently glued to a charger to genuinely worry about it. Because that’s not the experience I want. Not during my everyday usage, not ever.

But the Galaxy Book6 Pro surprised me. I got through a day and a half on a single charge — writing articles, researching, watching YouTube vlogs, playing work music on loop in the background to stay focused. The laptop was either running all of that or sitting in sleep mode, never fully shut down. And not once did I find myself anxiously eyeing the battery icon. For someone coming from a MacBook, that kind of reliability was everything.

The performance was right there with it. I had over 22 tabs open in Chrome, random apps running in the background, constantly switching between the touchpad and the touch display as needed — and the Intel Core Ultra 7 258H just handled it. Nothing really made me feel like I was compromising. That’s exactly the experience I get on my MacBook, and getting the same thing here caught me off guard in the best way.

The only one thing I truly missed was macOS. Three years of using it will do that — it’s in my fingers at this point, and switching takes adjustment. But outside of that, everything just worked. And honestly, it still feels a little surreal to say this, but the Galaxy Book6 Pro has my loyalty now. I mean that, and I don’t say it lightly.

Shimul Sood
Shimul is a contributor at Digital Trends, with over five years of experience in the tech space.
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