The latest Samsung foldable for $500 is very tempting

Samsung has gotten better and better at making its foldable phones over the last few years — the latest Galaxy Z Flip and Fold are the most refined yet — but not very good at making them more affordable. Unless you’re willing to adopt the compact Galaxy Z Flip form factor, you’ll have to spend nearly $2,000 dollars to get the company’s flagship foldable. That is, unless you take advantage of Amazon’s excellent deal on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 for Prime Big Deal Days.

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 was released in July 2024 as less of a radical reinvention, and more of a fine-tuning of what the company had attempted before. There’s no denying that being one of the sole foldable makers for years allowed Samsung to rest on its laurels, but that doesn’t mean the Galaxy Z Fold 6 isn’t a good smartphone. The biggest thing the company changed, besides adding the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, were squaring-off the edges of the Fold’s body and reducing the size of its bezels. It’s all in all a thinner and lighter phone, but just as good if you need extra space for multitasking or if you want a larger screen for videos that’s still able to fit in a pocket. You can purchase the $1,899.99 Galaxy Z Fold 6 for $1,399.99, or $500 off its usual price. If that discount isn’t enough to convince you, here’s why the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is worth the upgrade.

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is the best foldable Samsung’s made

From hardware to software, what makes a good foldable has mostly been figured out

Galaxy Z Fold 6

$1400 $1900 Save $500

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 isn’t all that surprising as a foldable, but years of refinement have made it one of the best ones. It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, three rear cameras, and a tweaked design that makes it thinner and lighter. You’ll save $500.

The best thing about the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is consistency. Samsung’s foldable journey may have started with disaster, but now the company’s foldables are consistently the most polished and durable foldables available for purchase. That consistency also means that the Galaxy Z Fold 6 really hasn’t changed all that much in the last three or so years. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 still features a narrow, remote-control-like cover screen, just this time with smaller bezels. And it’s 7.6-inch inner screen is still more of a vertical rectangle than a horizontal one, which limits some of its appeal as a tablet in my book. If you’re looking for something that when closed looks and works more like a normal smartphone, you’re much better off getting a Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

But those are ultimately small quibbles in the grand scheme of things, because the rest of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is premium as premium gets. A Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip powers everything on the phone, from your daily email grind to a few hours in Diablo Immortal. The cameras on the rear, including a 12-megapixel ultrawide, 50-megapixel wide, and 12-megapixel telephoto with a 3x zoom, produce fantastic, if a little too-vibrant photos. And the design changes Samsung’s made to the look of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 have made both follow the current trend of thin boxy smartphones, while still feeling comfortable to hold.

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You don’t have many options when it comes to foldables

The players are basically Google, OnePlus, or Samsung

Samsung differentiates the Galaxy Z Fold 6 in other ways, like Galaxy AI, which covers photo editing, text summarization, and the automatic translation of calls, but ultimately, it doesn’t have a lot of competition in the foldable space. In North America, your only other options are Google’s foldable Pixel, and the OnePlus Open. And the thing all three phones share in common is that they’re pretty expensive — each costs more than $1000. The cause is likely that there still isn’t enough demand for foldable phones, so the individual components aren’t made on a scale to be affordable and still make a company like Samsung money. Someday that might change, but until then, a discount like Amazon’s is necessary.

Dropping the Galaxy Z Fold 6 to $1,399.99 isn’t cheap, but it’s competitive with the OnePlus Open, and feels much more reasonable than the $1,900 Samsung normally charges. You buy Samsung’s phone not because it’s the most interesting or exciting, but because it’ll give you the still-novel foldable form factor in a package that’s nearly as reliable as a normal flagship smartphone. Now that the competition is heating up, maybe future Folds will have to be reliable and unique, but until then, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is a pretty great option, especially for $500 less than usual.

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