I loved using the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, but I wouldn’t spend $2,000+ on it

It’s not a hyperbole to say that the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is one of the most powerful and capable folding phones available in the US this year. With its razor-thin design, outstanding displays, flagship Snapdragon chip, and oodles of One UI software features, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the Fold 8 Ultra is about as robust as foldables come.

However, the foldable world is more competitive than ever, thanks to both Samsung and its rivals, and that competition makes the Fold 8 Ultra difficult to be completely enamored with. The Fold 8 Ultra is a very good phone, and I certainly think there’s a decent audience for it, just as there always has been for Samsung foldables. But if it were my money going toward a folding phone in 2026, the Fold 8 Ultra wouldn’t be my first choice.

But you don’t care about my money; you care about your money —especially when you’re spending over $2,000 of it. So, let’s figure out whether the Fold 8 Ultra is the right choice for you or, like me, you’ll be happier with one of its competitors.

One of my favorite things about the Fold 8 Ultra is something it carries over from the Fold 7: its design. Specifically, how light and thin it is.

Just like the Fold 7, the Fold 8 Ultra weighs 215 grams — just a gram heavier than the non-folding Galaxy S26 Ultra. Paired with a chassis that measures 4.1mm unfolded and 8.9mm when folded shut, it’s wildly impressive how svelte the Fold 8 Ultra feels for being a book-style foldable. There have been moments while holding the phone folded that I would have believed I was using a slightly chunky slab phone, not one hiding an 8-inch display inside. Even if this design is a year old now, it remains extremely effective.

Also effective is the Fold 8 Ultra’s improved hinge. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Samsung continues to excel at creating high-quality hinges for its foldables, but the new one on the Ultra really is outstanding. The phone opens and closes with impressive smoothness and confidently props itself up when using Flex Mode.

More importantly, though, is how easy it is to open the Fold 8 Ultra. This was a common complaint with the Fold 7, but thanks to a slightly recessed frame, the Fold 8 Ultra is significantly easier to open up than its predecessor. In fact, I’d argue that it’s one of the easiest-opening foldables I’ve used. And in day-to-day use, that’s a big deal.

It’s also good that the Fold 8 Ultra’s hinge is so great, because this is a phone you’ll want to have open all the time. The 6.5-inch cover screen checks all the boxes you’d expect, but the 8-inch display inside is really special.

There are a few reasons for this — such as a less noticeable crease and an additional layer of Ultra Thin Glass — but the most impactful is the improved visibility. The Fold 8 Ultra’s inner screen now boasts up to 3,000 nits of peak brightness (up from 2,600 nits on the Fold 7), and that’s also paired with a new anti-reflective coating built into the display itself. The result is a foldable display that’s extremely well-suited for outdoor use. When held outdoors next to the Motorola Razr Fold, the Fold 8 Ultra completely hides the glare that’s clearly visible on the Razr, and it looks noticeably brighter, too. If you plan on regularly using your next foldable outdoors, this alone makes the Fold 8 Ultra worth your consideration.

Powering the Fold’s excellent display (and everything else) is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip. Yes, Qualcomm just announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 series, but the Gen 5 remains the most powerful Snapdragon chip in a phone you can actually buy today. And as we’ve seen from other phones with the 8 Elite Gen 5, it’s a monster piece of silicon.

Compared to the Razr Fold with its pared-down Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset, the Z Fold 8 Ultra benchmarks noticeably faster in our Geekbench 6 tests, delivering 34% faster single-core performance and 20% faster multi-core performance. GPU horsepower stands out too, with the Fold 8 Ultra delivering the fastest average and maximum scores in 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme and Solar Bay stress tests.

The Fold 8 Ultra also handles itself very well in the battery life department. In real-world use, the 5,000mAh battery pretty easily gets through a day and a half per charge. In our benchmark tests, the Fold 8 Ultra trades blows with the Razr Fold and mostly pulls ahead of last year’s Fold 7.

My final bit of praise goes to the Fold 8 Ultra’s primary camera. While unchanged from the Fold 7, the 200MP sensor remains effortlessly good. Photos are packed with sharp details and really pleasing colors, to the point where something as simple as a fall leaf on a walking path looks exceptional when viewed through this lens. Videos generally look great, too, with support for 8K recording at 30fps and 4K at 60fps.

Are pictures always true-to-life? No. Do they sometimes lean on high saturation and bold, popping colors? Absolutely. But I can’t help but like the results when I press the shutter button, and I’ve quite enjoyed my time with this camera.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the other cameras on the back of the Fold 8 Ultra. The phone’s 50MP ultrawide camera is fine, if nothing special, but the 10MP 3x telephoto camera is extremely disappointing. Regardless of its folding form factor or thin design, a telephoto camera this mediocre on a phone that starts at $2,100 really is inexcusable.

3x photos aren’t anything special, but they’re at least usable. However, if you go up to 10x (the next preset zoom option in the camera app), photos immediately start to look like watercolor paintings. And if you dare go to 20x or 30x (the maximum zoom on the phone), the results are laughable. If you want to take a closer look, you can view full-resolution versions of these photos in this Google Drive folder.

There was once a common understanding that foldable phones had to make camera compromises given their form factor, but in 2026, those days are behind us. When I reviewed the Motorola Razr Fold earlier this year, its 50MP periscope telephoto camera was one of my favorite features. Motorola’s telephoto camera is also a 3x optical zoom sensor, but it blows Samsung’s out of the water with vastly superior detail, depth of field, and more. For a phone debuting the “Ultra” moniker on a Samsung foldable, I expected much better.

I also expected better from Samsung’s software. Samsung gets a lot right here, be it floating app windows or wireless Samsung DeX support, but there are a surprising number of missed opportunities throughout the UI, especially considering Samsung’s years of expertise in the foldable world.

Once again, the Razr Fold highlights Samsung’s shortcomings. Motorola’s foldable features many clever optimizations to make the most of its large inner screen. While both Motorola and Samsung support up to three apps for split-screen multitasking, only Moto allows you to run all three apps in “regular” windows. On the Fold 8 Ultra, two of your apps are squished into small, awkward squares. Motorola also does a great job reminding you to take advantage of its multitasking capabilities, frequently suggesting split-screen app pairs to open up (something I find very useful). Samsung doesn’t offer anything like this.

There are other UI elements on the Fold 8 Ultra that feel oddly unoptimized for its large screen. The notification shade and quick settings, for example, take up just one half of the screen and offer the same amount of info you’d get on a normal phone display. The Razr Fold, by comparison, has its notifications and quick settings take up the entire screen, showing the former on the right and the latter on the left. Samsung’s recent apps menu also just looks like a blown-up phone UI, whereas Motorola’s looks like it was actually designed for a foldable.

While these aren’t game-breaking issues, it is a little shocking that the software for a first-generation Motorola foldable often feels more optimized than the software on an eighth-generation Samsung one. They’re little details, but on a $2,100 smartphone, the little details matter.

Charging is another of those little details the Fold 8 Ultra fumbles. On paper, Samsung’s upgraded 45W wired charging should be much faster than the 25W speeds on the Fold 7. In reality, the Fold 8 Ultra takes 25 minutes to go from 0-50% and 75 minutes to reach 100%. That’s barely any faster than the Fold 7, which takes 26 minutes and 79 minutes, respectively. Compare that to the Razr Fold’s 80W charging, which delivers a 100% recharge in just 52 minutes, and Samsung is still getting beat quite badly here.

There’s also the issue of stylus support — or, rather, the lack thereof. For a company that pioneered styluses (styli?) on Android phones, and for an “Ultra” foldable from that same company, the lack of S Pen compatibility on the Fold 8 Ultra is a huge miss. It’s especially noteworthy this year that not only does the Razr Fold ship with stylus support, but the iPhone Duo also supports the Apple Pencil. Meanwhile, the Fold 8 Ultra is left watching from the sidelines.

Pair that with the Fold 8 Ultra’s middling IP48 rating in a world where multiple foldables now feature IP68 protection, and you suddenly realize how much you aren’t getting on one of the year’s most expensive smartphones.

I started this review saying that the Fold 8 Ultra wouldn’t be the foldable I’d spend my own money on, but when it’s your $2,100 on the line, is the phone worth it? It ultimately comes down to how much you value the areas in which the Fold 8 Ultra excels — specifically, its design, display, and chipset.

As much as I love the Razr Fold, there’s no question that the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is the more comfortable foldable. The Razr Fold feels like two phones stacked together when shut, where the Fold 8 Ultra really does feel like a slab phone that just happens to unfold. If you’re sensitive to bulky smartphones or have been put off by foldables because of how chunky they’ve traditionally been, this is a real reason to buy the Fold 8 Ultra.

The inner display is also something Samsung knocks out of the park. I don’t personally use foldables outdoors in bright sunlight very often, but if you do, the anti-reflective layer on the Fold 8 Ultra’s display really is a big deal, and something you’re going to appreciate every time you unfold the phone. And if you’re someone who regularly plays the latest games and needs a phone with the fastest performance available, the Fold 8 Ultra handily takes the crown. Not everyone will notice the difference between a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and an 8 Elite Gen 5, but if you’re the type of power user who will, the Fold 8 Ultra is the foldable I would recommend.

Having said that, I’d also argue that, for everything the Fold 8 Ultra gets right, there are better options available if your priorities lie elsewhere.

If I were in the market for a foldable today, I’d buy the Motorola Razr Fold ($1899 at Motorola). It’s a bit heavier and thicker than the Fold 8 Ultra, but I’d much rather have its superior camera system. I don’t often use foldables outdoors, but I do charge them all the time, so Motorola’s faster wired charging is a more tangible benefit for me than Samsung’s anti-reflective screen tech. I also couldn’t push the Razr Fold’s Snapdragon 8 Elite to the max even if I tried, so I’d rather take the older chip in exchange for the Razr’s more enjoyable software.

I know I’ve brought up the Razr Fold a lot throughout this review, but it isn’t the only foldable you should consider before plopping down your money for the Fold 8 Ultra.

Personally, if I were buying a Samsung foldable this year, I’d sooner choose the regular Galaxy Z Fold 8 ($1899.99 at Amazon). It has one of the weaker camera systems on a mainstream foldable, and there’s no Flex Mode, but the form factor is so intriguing that I really don’t think I’d care about either. My colleague Tushar recently wrote that the Fold 8’s design has ruined all other Android phones for him, and based on that article and my very brief hands-on time with the Fold 8 earlier this year, I find it much more exciting than its Ultra sibling.

And, of course, there’s the iPhone Duo ($1999 at Amazon) of it all. People who are actually cross-shopping between Android phones and iPhones are usually a rare bunch, but the iPhone Duo is such a monumental release that I suspect some longtime fans are seriously considering Apple’s first foldable. Hell, multiple people here at Android Authority are doing precisely that.

The iPhone Duo is an untested first-generation product, but what we’ve seen so far is pretty damn exciting. As much as I love Android, if you forced me to choose between it and the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra right now, the tech nerd in me would pick the Duo to experience Apple’s vision for a foldable future. I personally find that a lot more interesting than Samsung’s refined but familiar formula used to create the Fold 8 Ultra.

None of this is to argue that the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is a bad smartphone, but for the first time ever, US foldable shoppers have multiple high-quality options to choose from — thanks to an increase in folding models from Samsung itself and its competitors. And that’s a good thing.

There are plenty of folks out there who the Z Fold 8 Ultra will speak to, and for them, it is the best foldable to buy. But it’s not the default choice for everyone, and that’s because the foldable market has never been more competitive. It may be bad news for Samsung that the Fold 8 Ultra isn’t the only good folding phone worth your money, but for you and me, it’s never been better.