Galaxy Z Fold 6 Review: Samsung's Best Foldable Yet Comes at a High Cost
Samsung's Galaxy Z fold six is here and it comes with big improvements at an even bigger price. Let's dive in. I've used every generation of the Galaxy Z Fold. And I have to say Samsung really did achieve its goal of making the Z fold feel more like a regular phone when it's closed. Everything from the lighter design to the fact that the crease is less noticeable and the new larger cover screen with more symmetrical borders really make this feel a lot easier and more natural to use. Plus there's a new processor some more A I features and a better ultra wide camera. But at $1900 the Galaxy Z Fold six is painfully expensive. It feels like a step backwards in terms of making foldable phones more accessible. Despite the fact that Samsung did make some important steps forward when it comes to design, the Galaxy Z Fold six is available for preorder now and launches on July 24th. So my favorite thing about the galaxy Z fold six is its new design. I may sound like a broken record, but this thing is just so light compared to the previous generation. It really does kind of feel like a regular phone and not only is this slightly bigger, so the screen is 6.3 inches, whereas the Galaxy Z fold five was 6.2 inches, but the borders framing the screen are also more symmetrical. So again, this really does feel like a regular phone when it's closed. If I was looking at it just from the front, I might not even know that it's a foldable phone. And that's really the goal here on top of that, the hinge has been improved a little bit and there's also some improved uh layers in the display that make the crease less noticeable. Unfortunately, the crease is still there. You can still see it, especially when light hits the screen at a certain angle, but it's a lot less noticeable. And I don't really feel it as much when I'm scrolling around the display as I have in the past. So it's not just the design and hardware that's new, there's a few new A I features on this phone as well. There are a lot of fun to play around with uh a couple of them that come to mind sketch to image, which as the name implies, creates an image based on a rough drawing and portrait studio, which takes an image of a person and stylizes it in a different art style. So that can be watercolor sketch, things like that. So these features are a lot of fun. I don't know how useful they will be in everyday life, but I am a really bad artist. So I was really interested to see what Samsung would make for my really bad sketches, especially since I don't have pen and I'm just drawing with my finger. So sometimes it surprised me pleasantly. Uh for example, when I tried to sketch the Eiffel Tower, I really just drew a few curved lines and that's about it. And I was able to get that. I was trying to draw the Eiffel Tower. Uh There are times the results were a little weird. For example, you can also do this on images by the way. So I tried to draw a little hat on top of a photo of my cat and instead of making a hat, it, it put a book there, which felt like an odd choice. Even if my drawing was really bare bones, I was hoping that maybe it would get that since it's on the cat's head, it would be a hat. I don't know either way. It's still a lot of fun. But beyond that, I think my biggest criticism is that these new A I features don't feel like they were specifically designed for foldable phones in mind. Uh There's no reason in theory why Samsung couldn't bring this to the Galaxy S series. And I was hoping to see more that really took advantage of the inner screen and the outer screen. But there is one new feature that does that and that's the new conversation mode in the interpreter app. So right now we're trying out the conversation mode in Samsung's interpreter app. So basically what this does is it will show the conversation, what I'm saying in Spanish on the outer screen. And then when my colleague, Danny responds to me in Spanish, I will see it in English on the screen facing me. So um we're going to try it out and see how it works. What's the nearest train that will take me to Times Square? Oh Bueno Mira Entonces, Sala de Aqui Coe re en creo yo Cinco se Paradas. Tutu Aara Times Square. Great. Thank you so much. Are you from here? See uh Nasia fro is familia is the Laura Dominicana and don't say you have lo lo lo Espanol, Unlace Duarte. So what I'm seeing is a little bit of a mix of my actual words and his response. So it's a little bit hard to understand and it doesn't look like all of it has actually been translated to English. So maybe this is just something that I have to get a feel for, but I do feel like the translation also wasn't as instantaneous as I expected it to be. So it took me a minute to respond to your initial question because I was waiting for the translation to catch up to what your first response was. I felt the same way waiting for the text to pop up on my side in Spanish, right? The Galaxy Z fold six has a 50 megapixel main camera, a 10 megapixel telephoto camera and a 12 megapixel ultra wide camera that's been updated with the new sensor that's better in low light scenarios. So for the most part, these are the same cameras as the ones on the Z fold five except for that new sensor on the ultra wide. And I did test this against last year's phone and I did see a difference when I took photos in a really dim underground tunnel. I did notice that the Z fold pictures were brighter and had a bit more detail than the Z fold fives in general. Though this camera system is very similar to what we've seen on other Samsung flagship phones. The cameras on the Z fold six tends to really punch up the color which I think worked in this phone's favor when compared to the Google pixel fold on the one plus open. In most cases, I did prefer Samsung's photos and how they were able to capture more lively color. But I will say the pixel fold does still excel over the Z fold in certain areas. Um For example, with the ultra wide camera and with low light photos, there's also a four megapixel camera on the inside of the phone, which is the same as it's been in years past. It's a very low resolution compared to what we're used to in the selfie camera. But I did find that Samsung's post processing does take care of a lot of the noise. The Galaxy Z fold sixes battery life is good enough to last for a long day. But it will depend on how often you're using the big screen on the inside versus the outer screen and how bright those screens are. So, for example, after about 15 hours, I typically had about maybe like the mid thirties to high thirties percentage in terms of battery life at the end of the day. But on other days when I spent more time outside and I really had to pump up the screen brightness and I was using the inner screen more to look up directions. It was a bit lower, I would say after 14 hours, it dropped down to like the high twenties, low thirties. So again, battery life will always vary depending on how you're using your phone. But this should last a full day in terms of performance. The Galaxy Z fold six runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon eight gen three processor that's been optimized for Samsung's Galaxy phones. So that is the same processor that's in the galaxy S 24 series, which isn't a surprise. Samsung usually puts the latest generation chip in its new foldables. So far performance has been pretty fast and smooth, whether I'm multitasking and you split screen mode, playing a game processing um edits to photos things like that. I haven't noticed any lag, but again, that is to be expected for a phone of this price. So let me spell out exactly what I liked and didn't like about this phone for one. I really love the new cover screen with the slightly larger display area and more symmetrical design. I also like that. Samsung's providing seven years of software updates for this phone and the new ultra wide camera also does live up to Samsung's promises in terms of what I didn't like that $100 price increase is really hard to swallow. Plus there haven't been major improvements to battery life or charging speeds. And also a lot of these new A I features don't feel like they were specifically tailored to foldable phones, but for more details and my full thoughts on the galaxy Z fold six, don't forget to check out my written review on CNET. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.