Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review: Small improvements for a big price

Last year’s Z Fold 5 wasn’t a home run for Samsung, but it still stands as our top pick for the best foldable phone on the market. With competition for this accolade fiercer than ever, does the Galaxy Z Fold 6 do enough to supplant its predecessor and take the top spot?

As incremental progress is a given with all of the top smartphone brands these days, It’s no great spoiler to reveal that the Fold 6 is a better phone than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5. The question is, can the Fold 6 exceed beyond that and give us something genuinely fresh?

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review: What you need to know

In contrast to its little brother, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, the Fold 6 supplies a sharp, angular new design. It’s still a full-sized phone that unfurls into a mini-tablet, but it’s slimmer, lighter and more purposeful than the Fold 5, with a fractionally shorter and wider shape and a superior level of dust resistance.

Samsung has upgraded the internals with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, though it’s largely left the Fold 5’s triple camera system alone: the 50MP main camera and 10MP 3x telephoto are identical but the ultrawide is a new (though still pretty similar) 12MP sensor.

You still get a 4,400mAh battery, which continues to punch well above its weight, and the charging provision remains an underwhelming 25W wired and 15W wireless. Samsung is making a lot of noise about AI with this year’s model, but the truth is you can get exactly the same software features on the older Fold 5.

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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review: Price and competition

Samsung starts off on the back foot with a £50 price bump to the Galaxy Z Fold 6 – an unwelcome trend, as the Fold 5 was already £100 more than the Fold 4. The 256GB model is now £1,799, with prices moving up to £1,899 for 512GB and £2,099 for 1TB.

That looks especially expensive when you consider that one of its key rivals, the OnePlus Open, comes with a significantly lower £1,599 asking price. Having been on the market since late 2023, it’s not quite a match for the Fold 6 on performance, but comfortably holds its own elsewhere.

Google’s Pixel Fold is a little too long in the tooth to be classed as a rival this year, but at the time of writing a direct replacement is likely right around the corner. So, too, is the international release of the uncannily skinny Honor Magic V3.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review: Design and key features

Measuring 5.6mm when unfolded, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is half a millimetre thinner than the Fold 5. Folded, it’s 12.1mm, which is a whopping 1.3mm thinner than the Fold 5, though still a little thicker than the 11.7mm OnePlus Open.

Samsung’s re-engineered hinge has made the fit between the two halves tighter than ever, and a new IP48 rating adds a modicum of dust protection. The 239g weight is a decent drop from the 253g Fold 5, too, coming closer to the non-folding Galaxy S24 Ultra (232g).

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is more industrial-looking than ever, with a dead-flat Enhanced Armor Aluminum frame and a pleasing matte finish. The corners of the phone are now pointier than before, too, making it look a little more like the S24 Ultra head-on.

Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the external surfaces keeps things relatively scratch free – though I still noticed a surprise nick on the cover display after a week or so of soft handling. Still, these things happen with all phones, and the far more susceptible component remains the internal display, which comes with an ugly plastic screen protector that you’re strongly advised to keep in place.

The central display crease remains quite noticeable too, at least to these eyes, and you can clearly feel it when you run your finger across the two halves. Samsung has nailed the mechanics of the hinge, then, but it now needs to focus on the fit and finish of that internal display.

Returning to the Fold 6 is support for Samsung’s S Pen stylus – or a bespoke foldable version of it, at any rate. We weren’t sent one for review, which is reflective of the fact that it’s still bafflingly separate from the core Fold experience. With that huge square canvas, it would arguably make more sense to stash one in the Fold 6’s body than it would the Galaxy S24 Ultra, but that’s not how things are.

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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review: Display

There are two screens to consider with the Galaxy Z Fold 6. On the outside is a 6.3in Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X with a 968 x 2376 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. It’s gained a little width and lost a little height compared to previous Folds, but it’s still taller and skinnier than the vast majority of non-foldable phones.

The main internal screen is a 7.6in Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel with a 1856 x 2160 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. Again, this screen has filled out ever so slightly, but it still unfurls into a vaguely square shape. Through sheer convenience, you’ll likely use this display less than the cover screen, but it’s better suited to web browsing, and there’s a spacious split keyboard for typing out text.

As you’d expect from a Samsung flagship, the output of these screens is of a high standard. Even the default Vivid mode feels relatively balanced, but switching to Natural mode secured a strong Delta E score of 1.39, and an sRGB gamut coverage of 99.6% with 101.7% volume. One noteworthy improvement with both of these screens is a bolstered 2600 nits maximum brightness, up from 1,750 nits in the Fold 5. With auto brightness turned off and the Extra brightness toggle on, I measured a peak of 704cd/m².

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review: Performance and battery life

Samsung has given the Galaxy Z Fold 6 a straight up generational upgrade with regards to its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy processor – a slightly overclocked variant of Qualcomm’s flagship chipset.

It results in strong performance, with the Fold 6 proving to be way more powerful than the Fold 5 in most respects and roughly on a par with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is to say that it’s one of the fastest phones on the market.

Samsung has stuck with a 4,400mAh battery, which still feels a little small compared to non-folding Android flagships, which routinely hit 5,000mAh. It’s not a problem in practice, though, with a full 15 hour day of moderate usage (about 4 hours 30 minutes of screen on time) using up around 50%.

In our looping video test, with the screen set to 170cd/m² brightness and aeroplane mode enabled, the Fold 6 lasted 22hrs 29mins. That’s more than an hour shy of the Fold 5, which is a slight concern, but it still beats the OnePlus Open and its larger battery by three hours.

My main criticism here is that Samsung has stuck with the same old slow 25W charging standard, which takes more than 1hr 15mins for a full charge. That falls way short of the OnePlus Open and its 67W charging provision. With that said, the Fold 6 supports 15W wireless charging, while the OnePlus Open inexplicable omits wireless charging altogether.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review: Software

There’s little new to speak of with Samsung’s latest One UI 6.1 on Android 14, especially since it’s also available on the older Fold 5 by way of a firmware update. This is another busy but flexible UI that capitalises on that huge internal screen by letting you drag and drop items across three applications running on the screen at once. Flex Mode, meanwhile, works when you only partially open the Fold, and will run an app on the top half whilst adding controls to the lower half. App support is limited, however, with the default provision essentially turning that lower half into a trackpad.

If you stick with software buttons, rather than gestures, you’ll also get a desktop PC or Mac-style taskbar along the bottom of the screen, letting you quickly hop between apps. It’s through this tool that the aforementioned three-way split-screen function becomes more intuitive. You can still access this if you prefer a gesture UI, but it requires a touch and hold command to bring up and minimise.

Samsung has fully hitched itself to the AI bandwagon this year, and the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is no exception. Features such as circle to search and live transcription are nothing new or unique, but Samsung’s Sketch to Image feature is arguably better on the Fold’s large internal screen than anywhere else, especially if you add an S Pen stylus to the equation. This feature turns your rough sketches into AI-produced works of art. Its usefulness is hugely debatable, but it’s a cool showcase of the power of AI if nothing else.

Far more impressive in practical terms is Samsung’s seven year update promise. It’ll be interesting to see what that soft internal display looks like come the end of the update cycle, but you really can’t complain about Samsung’s commitment on this front.

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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review: Cameras

For a second year in a row, Samsung has kept largely the same camera set-up for its flagship foldable. That means the same 50MP (f/1.8) main and 10MP (f/2.4) 3x optical telephoto cameras as the Fold 5 and Fold 4, but with a new 12MP (f/2.2) ultrawide. Once again there are two selfie cameras, with a 12MP f/2.2 lens housed in the cover display, and a pokey 4MP f/1.8 camera stashed underneath the flexible display.

That leaves the superior image processing power of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Samsung’s algorithmic tweaks to shoulder the burden of improvement. The result is images that continue to deliver decent results in most conditions, but which can’t match the very best non-foldable phones on the market.

The main sensor produces nicely detailed shots with strong HDR and rich colours in brighter conditions, and it also does a good job in Night mode. The latter shots didn’t exhibit too many signs of noise or over-brightening, though again you’ll get crisper, clear results from non-foldable flagship phones from Apple, Google, and Samsung itself. When you’re being asked to pay £1,799, it’s always worth pointing that out.

The ultrawide was the Fold 5’s weakest rear camera, so it’s good that Samsung has swapped it out here. I was quite pleased with the 12MP ultrawide shots – they might lack the depth and detail of the main sensor, but the tone is comparable, and they’re not excessively soft.

Telephoto images are broadly as before – fine and dandy at native 3x, but detail rapidly drops off as you move through the 10x, 20x, and 30x hybrid zoom ranges. It gets nowhere near the Galaxy S24 Ultra in this regard.

Video support once again extends to 8K at 30fps, though most people will want to stick at 4K/60fps, where the capture is crisp, well-exposed, and free from judder.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review: Verdict

Samsung has refined the design of its class-defining full-sized foldable phone, with the Galaxy Z Fold 6 coming in lighter and stronger than ever before. It’s also cranked the brightness of its displays up, both of which remain lovely to behold.

However, it would have been nice to see more advancements elsewhere, with a familiar (if capable) camera system perhaps the biggest disappointment, as well as battery life that if anything has gotten a little worse. While it’s easier to use as a ‘normal’ phone than ever, Samsung’s choice of a tall and thin external display remains questionable when the OnePlus Open and Pixel Fold have demonstrated a preferable alternative. All this and Samsung is asking for even more money, without so much as a bundled S Pen to show for it.

With all that said, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 remains the go to full-sized foldable on the market. If you’re in the fortunate position to be able to spend £1,799, it remains the safest choice for most people, although the novelty factor is starting to wear off.