Geekom Geek Book M16 business laptop review | Tech Radar

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The Geekom Geek Book M16 brings a big, bright 16-inch screen and a capable Intel Core Ultra 9 silicon to a laptop that wants to be judged by the costs of the big brands. Build quality feels solid, and the display is a genuine highlight, but the review unit highlights why a 100 Whr battery will never be a retail option.

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Geekom's Geek Book M16 is a business laptop designed for - as the company states, "enterprise pro, a developer, or an AI enthusiast." You can add general content creators (but not creative professionals) into that mix.

I mostly agree with that, although it's not the AI machine it could've been due to the limitations of the Core Ultra 9 chip it's using.

It's an interesting budget machine in the space. A nicely built, machined chassis that handles general computing tasks well.

Given the $899 price point, there is only one USB4 port, the webcam is only 2MP, and the keyboard and touchpad aren’t the best quality.

That said, the underlying platform is solid, even if you can’t expand the memory, and with a USB 4.0 port, it can be attached to a Dock if you need more ports or more than two displays.

Geekom includes a basic USB-C Dock in the box, so those who need a wired LAN port won’t need a full Dock or adapter.

This isn’t the best business laptop I’ve tested, but it's far from the worst, and demonstrates that you can get relatively recent platforms in these form factors if you are prepared to compromise on some aspects.

Where can you get it? Direct from Geekom or online retailers

The Geekom Geek Book M16 can be bought directly from Geekom or via online retailers like Amazon.com and Best Buy. Prices start at $899.

Tech Radar Pro readers can save an extra 8% when purchasing direct from Geekom or on Amazon when using the code TRGBM168.

The laptop pairs the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

Intel Core Ultra 9 Processor 185H (16 Cores, 22 Threads, 5.1 GHz)

1x USB4, 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) , 2 × USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), 1x HDMI 2.0, Audio Combo Jack

Geekom has machined the Geek Book M16 from a single piece of magnesium alloy, and that heritage shows in the finish.

The Titanium Gray coating feels warm rather than cold to the touch, and there is no flex anywhere across the lid or the keyboard deck. While not the highest quality finish, it doesn’t feel cheap either.

It's not the lightest, at 3.8 lbs (1.73 kg), but it remains a relatively portable device - if not Mac Book Air light.

Port selection is generous for something this slim, with two USB-C connections, two USB-A, a full-size HDMI, and a headphone jack.

The frustration is that none of them is labelled with a speed. One USB-C runs at USB4 and the other only at USB 3.2, and there is no visual way to tell which is which, short of plugging something in and checking. For a laptop aimed at people who might use a fast external drive or a high-bandwidth dock, that is a genuine oversight from Geekom, and worth calling out plainly rather than glossing over.

The keyboard includes a full number pad, which is a genuine convenience on a 16-inch chassis and something plenty of rivals leave out. Typing feel is a little on the spongy side rather than crisp, so anyone coming from a firmer keyboard may need a short adjustment period.

The keyboard is workable, but I’m less convinced by the trackpad. It does the job for general navigation and gestures, but it does not feel as refined as the rest of the machine, and precision clicking is not its strong suit.

Those buying a 16-inch laptop clearly want a good display, and the IPS panel on this machine offers 2.5K resolution, a 16:10 aspect ratio, and a 120 Hz refresh rate. That extra vertical space suits spreadsheets, documents and code far better than a standard 16:9 screen, and scrolling feels smooth thanks to the higher refresh rate.

Geekom quotes 100 per cent s RGB coverage, which is close enough for everyday creative work without needing a color-calibrated reference screen.

Since many business machines get small upgrades during their working life, I like to take the backs off laptops to see what is possible on that front.

Removing the underside requires removing nine screws with a T5 screwdriver, but once they’re out, it's relatively easy to detach. Inside, the battery can be replaced, and there is an unoccupied M.2 2230 slot.

While the 2230 drive is an easy upgrade, the primary slot is 2280, so I’d probably recommend cloning the supplied drive to a larger one using that slot first.

Also, these days, all memory comes pre-soldered, so the RAM in this system is the maximum it will ever have, even if the processors used on it can address 96GB.

Overall, this is one of those designs that is somewhat bland and lacks any sort of signature feature, but for many customers, that’s exactly what they want.

The Intel Core Ultra 9 185H is the flagship chip from Intel's first Core Ultra family, known internally as Meteor Lake. It packs sixteen cores across three types: six performance cores, eight efficiency cores and two low-power efficiency cores, giving it real flexibility between raw speed and battery-sensitive multitasking.

Turbo clocks reach 5.1 GHz, and in daily use, that translates into a chip that handles heavy browser sessions, office work, and moderate creative tasks without complaint. Cinebench multicore scores sit comfortably above a thousand points, proof that the hybrid layout genuinely pays off rather than existing purely as a marketing slide.

Graphics duties fall to an integrated Arc GPU built from eight Xe cores, clocked up to 2.35GHz. This was the point where Meteor Lake felt like a proper step forward. Games at modest settings run smoothly, video timelines scrub without stutter, and general graphical work feels far removed from the older Iris chips it replaced. It will never trouble a discrete GPU, but for a laptop chip doing double duty as a workstation and a light gaming machine, it earns its keep.

Then there is the NPU, which Intel calls AI Boost on this silicon. On its own, the dedicated neural engine delivers around 11 TOPS. Add contributions from the CPU and GPU, and Intel quotes a platform total of 35 TOPS. That was a genuinely new capability when Meteor Lake launched, letting local AI tasks like background blur, transcription and some generative features run without leaning on the cloud.

The trouble is that time moves fast in Silicon. Microsoft set the bar for its Copilot Plus program at 40 TOPS from the NPU alone, and the 185H simply does not reach it.

Intel's 200 series chips, split between Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake depending on the segment, push NPU performance well past 40 TOPS on the Lunar Lake side. The newer 300 series, built on Panther Lake, goes further still, pairing a stronger NPU with a genuine jump in graphics performance too.

So is the 185H still worth having? Yes, with a clear head about what it is.

It remains a strong general-purpose chip for everyday work, and its Arc graphics still beat plenty of rivals from its own generation. What it is not is a true Copilot Plus chip, and anyone chasing the latest on device AI features should look at the newer series instead. Judged simply as a capable, well-rounded laptop processor for typical work, there is still very little to complain about here. It has aged into a dependable middle child rather than a has-been, useful for exactly the sort of laptop you might have in front of you now.

Where this design isn’t well-served is that the Core Ultra 9 supports 28 PCI lanes (PCI 5.0 and 4.0), and the ports provided use hardly any of them. Given how much unused PCIe bandwidth was available, why is only one USB-C port USB4 spec? This chipset does support Thunderbolt, and if this were a Mini PC at this price point, I’d be expecting that, but only one USB4 port is poor considering the small army of unused PCIe lanes.

When I look at the number of mini PCs and laptops using this Meteor Lake silicon, I’m inclined to conclude that Intel made far too many of these wafers and now has unused bins clogging the channel they use to move 200- and 300-series chips.

If that’s an accurate analysis, then we’re likely to see more machines like the M16, where Intel attempts to off-load them before they’re four generations back.

In testing, this machine lasted 23 hours and 21 minutes, and if that is adjusted pro rata to the 77 Whr battery size, a projected running time of approximately 1079 minutes, or roughly 17 hours, 59 minutes.

That’s a decent amount of time, and should cover even a long working day for those who live to work.

The other benchmarks presented here, I’m less concerned, might be different from a retail Geek Book, since the platform is unlikely to be different to what I tested.

My comparison machine, the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI, is a smaller display option, but it uses a newer 200 series processor, the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V.

As is evident, the improvements Intel made between Meteor Lake and Luna Lake weren’t subtle, and the Core i 7 on the Acer performs better pretty much across the board. It’s dramatically better on single-core exercise, even if in some situations the GPU utilisation is slightly better on the older chip.

And, for those wondering about 300 series silicon, like the Intel Core Ultra 7 355 on the Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Enterprise Edition, I recently covered, it performs even better.

There is no ‘golden age’ of mobile processors to discover, and the newest ones are genuinely better in almost every respect.

What isn’t covered in these benchmarks is AI, and that’s lucky for the Geek Book, because it would get slapped by any 200 or 300 series processor, even a Core Ultra 5 variant.

Overall, if you are looking for a workmanlike system with decent battery life and adequate performance for office tasks, the Geek Book M16 ticks enough boxes. But it’s not a machine for power users or creative professionals, unsurprisingly.

For those interested in the screen, I gave it a full analysis using the Datacolor Spyder X2 Ultra, and it was better than I’d anticipated for a side-lit IPS screen.

The gamut representation was 98% s RGB and 78% Adobe RGB and P3, which is fine. The brightness is capped at just over 300 nits, and the contrast is at about 1060:1.

The weaknesses of this panel are a mediocre tone response and poor white point accuracy.

But the usual challenges of luminance and colour uniformity aren’t a big issue here.

Overall, the screen is better than I’ve seen on some big-name brands, even if it can’t compete with the AMLOED displays that some products rock.

For a solid business laptop that handles day-to-day tasks well, there's not much to dislike about the overall performance and specs here. Geekom specifically pitches this for professionals, developers, AI enthusiasts, and general content creators - and I'd largely agree with that. If you're not a power user, it ticks the right boxes.

Where I’d be careful with this hardware is deploying it to a student, because it's difficult to assess how much abuse it can take, and it's not easy to fit in a smaller backpack.

The only thing I’d like to see from this brand is more attention to detail, especially in respect of labelling ports. This would have been less of an issue if both USB-C ports had been USB4, and there are few valid excuses I’d take for why they aren't.

Those points aside, and with a trackpad that might have been better, there are many positive aspects of this design that, only a few years ago, might have been described as a flagship model.

It isn’t cheap, but with rising memory and storage costs, hardware at this price might look like more of a bargain in a couple of years. And, compared with 200 and 300 series machines, it's on the budget-friendly side of the line.

But with prices on the rise, a machine with this silicon, screen, memory and storage for less than $1500 isn't a bad deal, and it can only get better in the coming months.

Unexciting design slightly hampered by a cheap touchpad

You need a 16-inch display The IPS panel on the M16 is pretty good, even if it isn't OLED technology. It's not a screen you want to work in sunlight with, but indoors, it's workable.

You're on a budget The chip in this laptop comes from the first Ultra generation and has all its strengths and weaknesses. It combines excellent efficiency with slightly lacklustre single-core performance and first-generation AI technology.

You like to upgrade The 16GB LPDDR5 memory is soldered onto the mainboard and cannot be upgraded. Users looking for long-term flexibility or future-proofing may find this limiting, especially if workloads grow more demanding over time.

You want the highest levels of performance Compared to the latest AMD Ryzen AI machines or the Intel 200/300 series, the processor and graphics in this system aren’t the quickest available. If compute power is paramount, and battery life is less important, then consider a system that uses the AMD Ryzen AI 395 Max+.

Mark is an expert on 3D printers, drones and phones. He also covers storage, including SSDs, NAS drives and portable hard drives. He started writing in 1986 and has contributed to Micro Mart, PC Format, 3D World, among others.

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Key Takeaways

News, deals, reviews, guides and more on the newest computing gadgets
Start exploring exclusive deals, expert advice and more
Unlock and manage exclusive Techradar member rewards
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission
The Geekom Geek Book M16 brings a big, bright 16-inch screen and a capable Intel Core Ultra 9 silicon to a laptop that wants to be judged by the costs of the big brands