Samsung Galaxy Fold6 vs. Galaxy Fold5

If you’re eyeing this year’s Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6, you’re probably wondering if the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 isn’t a better choice. Some will appreciate the improvements, while others might prefer to save some cash on the older model, as both offer essentially the same foldable smartphone experience.

So how much better is the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 to deserve its premium price? Let’s take a look.

Contents:

To get started, you can compare complete spec sheets or go straight to our editor’s review in the text below.

Size comparison

Samsung has managed to make the Galaxy Z Fold6 sensibly more compact than its predecessor. Designers have shortened it by a millimeter or two all around, without sacrificing the screen diagonal. What’s more, the external screen is now larger, but more on that later.

The hinge is also now a tad smaller, making the device feel more compact when folded. The sharp angles on the frame may not be to everyone’s taste, but others find them helpful, providing a more secure grip.

The Fold6 is also reportedly better built. Samsung is selling an “enhanced armor aluminum” frame that’s stiffer than last year’s. The new material and new hinge are likely the reason the Fold6 is lighter.

And while last year’s Z Fold6 only had water protection (IPX8), the Fold6’s design now has full ingress protection — IP48. The “4” in the rating means the device is protected from particles larger than 1mm. To be honest, that’s not terribly impressive, since most dust particles are smaller than 1mm. But hey, we suppose sand should be kept at bay by now.

View comparison

Despite what the specs might suggest, the Fold6 brings a fair few improvements in the display department. And we’re not talking about the aspect ratio of the internal display. That’s not a noticeable change. The new Z Fold6 uses a brighter LTPO panel with a variable refresh rate.

The new Fold arrives comfortably 1600 rivetswhich is much more than less than 1300 nits With Fold5. The Fold6’s exterior panel is also much brighter, going beyond 1500 rivetswhile the Z Fold5 is content with 1114 rivets plate.

Additionally, the Z Fold6’s external screen is wider, adding another 0.1″ to the diagonal. It’s not perfect, but it’s a tad more usable thanks to the new aspect ratio.

Display cover

All in all, the Z Fold6 easily wins this round thanks to its slightly wider screen ratio, thinner bezels, and of course, brighter screen.

Battery life

In our internal screen battery life tests, the Z Fold6 performed mostly similarly to last year’s Fold 5, except for call times, where we see a bigger difference. We also saw faster call times with the Flip, so we suspect the new modem is to blame.

Things are a bit better for the new model when we run tests on the new screen, as web browsing and video playback times improve. Still, the overall active usage score remains similar.

Loading speed

And just like with battery life, the new model charges a bit slower than the old one. And that’s after a few re-tests to get the best possible speeds (our original test results for the Fold6 review were even lower). The Fold5 is a few percentage points faster at the 15-minute and 30-minute points, and reaches 100% a few minutes faster, too.

We won’t even claim that the Z Fold5 is the champion when it comes to charging speeds, but seeing those numbers drop across generations (not to mention being inconsistent between charges) for no apparent reason is disappointing.

Speaker test

While there’s a slight drop in volume on the Fold6 compared to the Fold5, the former sounds noticeably better than its predecessor. The Z Fold6 has a warmer, deeper tone, while the Fold5 just sounds flat in comparison. We’d take the Z Fold6 over last year’s Fold any day.

Efficiency

As usual, the newer generation of Folds features Qualcomm’s latest flagship SoC, promising better performance and better efficiency. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 powers the Z Fold6, replacing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in the Z Fold5. Both phones use special “For Galaxy” versions of the chipsets, meaning the main processor core is slightly overclocked.

Storage options remain unchanged from the Z Fold5. Both devices offer 12GB/256GB storage configurations as standard, but you can choose 512GB or 1TB. In both cases, the storage standard is UFS 4.0.

Benchmark Performance

According to synthetic benchmarks, the Z Fold6 is about 25% faster than the Z Fold5 in purely CPU-intensive tasks, while combined scenarios like those in AnTuTu 10 show only about a 6% increase. In GPU-intensive workloads, the SD8 Gen 3 runs just 2% faster than its predecessor in the Z Fold5.

If we were to draw any conclusions from the tests, the improved performance of the Z Fold6 will likely be unnoticeable for most users. Especially if you plan on playing games, both phones seem to perform very similarly.

Camera comparison

Both devices have the exact same camera hardware. There are no changes. The 50MP f/1.8 main camera still does the heavy lifting, and it’s joined by a 10MP f/2.4 telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom and a 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide-angle camera with a 123-degree field of view.

The two selfie cameras also remain unchanged – a 4MP f/1.8 camera placed under the inner screen and a 10MP f/2.2 camera placed in its own cutout on the outer screen.

Image quality

Even though both devices have the same hardware, they take slightly different-looking photos with all three cameras on the back. That’s because Samsung has changed its approach to post-production, now opting for slightly less saturated colors and using less sharpening.

Samsung Z Fold6: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x

Samsung Z Fold5: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x

You may notice that the Z Fold5’s main camera handles fine details like grass slightly better than the Z Fold6 due to its improved sharpness, but other than that, the Z Fold6’s photos are less noisy and artifact-free.

However, photos taken with the Z Fold6 with 2x digital zoom are better because they have significantly less noise.

The Z Fold6’s ultra-wide camera takes better photos overall—better detail, better contrast, more balanced HDR. Colors are also more vibrant.

Finally, the look of the 3x zoom camera is similar, but 3x zoom photos taken with the Z Fold6 are once again cleaner and less blurry.

We also found some noticeable differences in night post-production. The Fold6 has a more balanced, natural-looking approach to night mode. It sacrifices some fine shadow detail but gets rid of noise. The Fold5’s extra sharpening and overly bright shadows make photos look rendered, even artificial.

Samsung Z Fold6: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x

Samsung Z Fold5: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x

The observations are true for the secondary cameras, although the difference between the two devices is smaller. In fact, the frames with 2x zoom look identical.

Video quality

Samsung doesn’t seem to have tinkered with the video processing. We’re hard-pressed to find any differences between the two 4K footage from the main cameras. The Fold5 does offer stronger contrast, though.

The same can be said about 3x, ultra-wide, and low-light recordings.

Samsung Z Fold6: 0.6x • 1x • 3x • 1x

Samsung Z Fold5: 0.6x • 1x • 3x • 1x

Verdict

As you can see, you can get confused when comparing the specs of two phones. While the Galaxy Z Fold6 and Z Fold5 look very similar, they trade blows in different departments, and the results don’t always favor the latest model.

The Galaxy Z Fold5 has slightly better battery life, slightly louder speakers, charges slightly faster, and some may find photo processing more enjoyable.

On the bright side, the Z Fold6 displays are now better, the speaker sound quality has improved, and the device runs on a slightly faster, newer chipset. You also get three more years of major OS updates, considering it’s been a full year since the Z Fold5 launched, and it was promised four years to start.

That said, we can see that some users won’t be able to justify the roughly €250 difference between the Z Fold6 and Z Fold5. And that price difference could be a deciding factor.