Samsung Raises New Galaxy Book 6 Pro Prices As Panther Lake Arrives

Samsung has just released a pricing guide for its upcoming Galaxy Book 6 series and it shows Panther Lake-powered models hitting shelves with a price premium that's nearly 20% higher than its Lunar Lake predecessors. Can we thank the RAM-pocalypse for this?

The sticker shock comes directly from Samsung’s official countdown page (for South Korea) that lists the Galaxy Book 6 Pro starting at 3,510,000 Won (approximately $2,381). For comparison, the similar-spec'd  Lunar Lake-based Galaxy Book 5 Pro debuted at 2,808,000 Won ($1,904), which represents a nearly $477 jump.

This premium isn't limited to the Pro variant; the top-tier Galaxy Book 6 Ultra, equipped with NVIDIA’s latest GeForce RTX 5070 mobile graphics, is expected to climb as high as 4,930,000 Won ($3,350), firmly cementing the lineup in the ultra-luxury category.

Indeed one can argue that Intel's Panther Lake Core Ultra Series 3 chips promise a marked leap in performance, boasting up to 16 cores and 180 platform TOPS for AI, but the processor alone isn't the sole culprit for the price hike. Rather, it's almost definitely down to rising manufacturing costs. Panther Lake is the first consumer product built on Intel’s fresh 18A process node, which carries a significant R&D premium. However, a global shortage of LPDDR5X memory and NAND flash storage is likely the primary driver. Ironically (and sadly), despite being one of the world's largest memory manufacturers, Samsung has decided to pass inflated prices directly to the consumer to maintain profit margins.

Unlike Lunar Lake, which sports memory baked directly onto the processor package, Panther Lake returns to external memory modules. While this allows for higher capacities (up to 96GB in some configurations), it also leaves the final price of the laptop at the mercy of the volatile DRAM market.

Galaxy Book laptops have traditionally been premium-priced to begin with, but can a nearly $500 hike be justification for early adopters? Early benchmarks suggest the new Xe3 integrated graphics are up to 77% faster than Arc iGPU, potentially rivaling discrete entry-level gaming GPUs. Yet, for the average professional, the Galaxy Book 6 Pro may be a turning point where the cost of staying on the bleeding edge finally starts to bite.

The Samsung Galaxy Book 6 series (standard, Pro, and Ultra) are expected to launch later this month in specific markets, and sometime in spring in the U.S. market.