Samsung Notebook 9 Pro review: solid build quality with a sharp display but it has a MacBook Pro-like shallow keyboard and fingerprint scanner is inconsistent
Samsung's latest laptop fixes many of the issues of older models, but does it with zero flair — What do you do if you're …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Notebook 9 Pro is the third data point in Samsung's multi-year attempt to make a credible premium Windows laptop. The Galaxy TabPro S in 2016 had the right shape but too little RAM and weak battery life, and last year's Notebook 9 Pen fixed performance and price but shipped a drab design with limited ports.
What changed this time is the design language: Samsung has traded the Pen's comfortable keyboard for a shallow one explicitly compared to the MacBook Pro — just as The Verge's own MacBook Pro 13-inch review flags keyboard reliability as Apple's unresolved weakness.
First-order effects
- Buyers shopping this segment get a Samsung machine that finally matches the MacBook Pro on display and build quality, but the fingerprint scanner inconsistency removes one of the practical advantages a Windows laptop has over a Mac.
- Samsung abandons the comfortable keyboard that reviewers praised on the Notebook 9 Pen, so returning customers lose the trait that differentiated the previous model.
Second-order effects
- Copying the MacBook Pro's shallow keyboard hands Apple's most-criticized hardware choice to its closest imitator, letting Apple's keyboard problems define both products rather than creating an opening for Samsung.
- Samsung's next iteration, the Galaxy Book Flex, leans into QLED displays and an onboard S Pen instead of keyboard feel — suggesting the company read this review as confirmation that screens and stylus, not keys, are where it can win.
Third-order effects
- If premium Windows laptops keep converging on Apple's thin-chassis template, competition in this tier shifts from industrial design to displays, input extras like styluses, and configuration flexibility — the exact axes the Book Flex later plays on.
- Keyboard reliability becomes a shared industry exposure: when the market leader's shallow-keyboard design is copied across vendors, a single input-design failure mode propagates through the whole premium tier.
The trend: Premium laptop makers are converging on Apple's thin-chassis design language, shifting competition toward displays and stylus integration as keyboards stop being a differentiator.