Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 review

Displays

We already spoke about the display and how much we like its proportions, but let's now focus on performance. We'll start with the cover display first since it is certainly a lot different than the "tall and skinny" one on the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra as well as Z Fold devices of old.

It measures 5.5 inches in diagonal, which is technically smaller than the 6.5-inch panel on the Z Fold8 Ultra, though with a vastly different aspect ratio. The Z Fold8 Ultra has a FullHD+ resolution of 1080 x 2520 pixels on its outside display, which works out to a not-exactly-popular 3:7 aspect ratio. In contrast, the Z Fold8 cover display has a resolution of 1,248 x 1,972 pixels, which Samsung calls WUXGA+ and, at first glance, it does seem deceptively higher than the one on the Z Fold8 Ultra. In reality, both panels have very similar pixel density figures. The aspect ratio on the Z Fold8 outside display works out to an awkward 312:493, which is quite close to the 10:16 Samsung advertises.

As we already mentioned, we found the cover display to be quite versatile. Typing on it, in particular, was an excellent experience. Also, we particularly enjoyed scrolling social media like Instagram on this panel. Here are a few comparisons between the cover display of the Z Fold8 and an iPhone 17 Pro we had at hand. The iPhone 17 Pro certainly fits more content in a single screen, so there is that.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 next to Apple iPhone 17 Pro

Let's look at some brightness numbers. The Z Fold8's cover display is about as bright as the one on the Z Fold7, which is interestingly slightly dimmer than the Z Fold6 cover display. The difference is about 100 nits, though, which is far from actually meaningful. In any case, the cover display on the Z Fold8 is perfectly comfortable to use outdoors even if it's not topping charts.

Left: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra * Middle: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 * Right: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

Mind you, we achieved the 1,468 nits figure by enabling extra brightness and auto brightness in a 75% window, as our test conditions demand. The display itself is actually capable of hitting over 3,000 nits in a 10% window. That's certainly plenty to even deliver a great HDR experience. However, as far as we can tell, the cover display doesn't actually have a formal HDR certification as the inner one does. In practice, it does seem to recognize and react to HDR videos, boosting brightness in the process, so technically it kind of has HDR.

On to the main display. Sitting at 7.6 inches in diagonal, it is smaller and lower resolution than the main display on the Z Fold8 Ultra. That said, it is a very different aspect, which kind of makes the size comparison more complicated. As for the resolution, the Z Fold8 Ultra only has it beat since Samsung boosted resolution on its traditional foldable this year. With 1828 x 2448 pixels and about 403 ppi, the Z Fold8 is sharper than the main panel on last year's Z Fold7.

Samsung typically does a great job when it comes to "unifying" the brightness output of the displays on its foldables. Not only can you generally expect both screens to be capable of roughly the same maximums, but you can even expect them to output roughly similar brightness figures at the same brightness setting on the slider, which is why having just one brightness slider is perfectly feasible.

Samsung specifically boasts that its latest generation of Z Fold displays can go up to 3,000 nits peak and indeed we easily confirmed that claim. In fact, the main display on the Z Fold8 easily clears the 3,000 nits mark by 130 nits or so. In normal operation with auto brightness and extra brightness enabled on a 75% window, we got around 1,468 nits.

By the way, both displays had excellent light control at minimum brightness, with the main display outputting just 0.9 nits at point white, but the cover screen was even better at just 0.3 nits.

High refresh rate handling

The Z Fold8 has two Samsung AMOLED 2X panels. Both can refresh at up to 120Hz, and both have LTPO tech for proper dynamic refresh rate adjustment. This is yet another bit of display behavior that Samsung managed to unify, making life with twin displays a lot simpler overall.

Samsung has really simplified things at least as far as settings are concerned while introducing some more complexity and polish in the background. In our opinion, Samsung's current way of handling high refresh rate is among the best in the industry. Anyway, you get two settings to choose between - Standard and Adaptive. Despite your first inclination, Standard is not actually a fixed 60Hz mode. It is a 60Hz cap, essentially. The refresh rate is still dynamic. Samsung has excellent detection for what is actually happening on screen. For example, it will happily go down to 30Hz to accommodate 30fps video playback as well as 24Hz to specifically cater to 24fps video. That's not something you see that often.

In Adaptive mode, the general behavior is 120Hz while you are interacting with the display and 60Hz while idling. Some apps are limited to a 90Hz cap for one reason or another, but most can do 120Hz just fine.

Aspect ratio selection

Naturally, we tried a few test games that we know can push past the 60fps mark, and most of them indeed reached 120fps on the Z Fold8 with no issues. Also, on a side note, Samsung does have a special menu to select what aspect ratio you want to run any given app at on the main screen, so there is that as well, and it can definitely come in handy to combat some bugs in certain apps and games. Speaking of which, this is a good place as any to mention that while not all apps technically support multi-window and side-by-side operation, Samsung has had a Labs toggle for a while now that forces said behavior on any app and very few of them actually break or misbehave in our experience.

HDR

The Z Fold8 offers an excellent HDR experience. Certainly on the main display, but also, as far as we can tell, on the cover display. Even though the former seems to lack a formal HDR certification. On a decoder level, the phone has support for HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG. No Dolby Vision.

The phone has the highest possible Google Widevine L1 DRM certification, allowing apps like Netflix to offer up FullHD streams.

Battery life

The Galaxy Z Fold8 has a 4,800 mAh battery on board - not huge by modern standards, but not small either. As per Samsung's latest statement on the matter (and hopefully the final one), the Z Fold8 uses a Si/C battery just like the Z Fold8 Ultra. That helps engineers cram more capacity in the same volume among other things.

Anyway, we did our standardized testing and got nearly fourteen hours of Active Use Score out of the Z Fold8, which is quite decent for a foldable. It should comfortably last you through a whole day.

The Z Fold8 holds its own pretty well in our folded set of tests too. Sure, most of its competitors have it beat, but not by a lot.

Charging speed

The Galaxy Z Fold8 supports up to 45W wired charging. This is achieved through what Samsung calls and has historically called Super Fast Charging (SFC). More precisely, Super Fast Charging 2.0 is the one that goes up to 45W. It is based on USB Power Delivery (PD) with Programmable Power Supply (PPS) on top. In its current iteration, the protocol does not require a 5A cable to function properly. It works just fine with a 3A cable, like the one in the box.

45W is no small deal - it's actually a first on Samsung foldables as the Z Fold7 only accepts 25W charging.

Samsung promises the Z Fold8 can charge from dead to 63% in thirty minutes. We matched that and even exceeded it on our test, which was able to go from 1% to 39% in fifteen minutes and then to 65% in thirty. A full charge took just shy of seventy minutes, which is not amazing in the grand scheme of things, but still a marked improvement for a Samsung foldable.

Speakers - loudness and quality

The Galaxy Z Fold8 has a stereo speaker setup with two dedicated speakers quite similar in appearance and layout to that of the Z Fold8 Ultra. Both speakers are positioned on the same half of the phone, one on the top and the other on the bottom. One of these is pulling double duty as the earpiece.

During media playback, sound is certainly getting directed both up through the speaker hole and to the front above the cover display. Generally, this positioning works well when the phone is closed and held in landscape. When the phone is open in portrait, the arrangement works pretty well too. But any illusion of proper stereo separation and spacing falls apart in open landscape use. That's just the reality of the foldable form factor in general.

Left: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra * Right top: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 * Right bottom: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

As mentioned, the speaker setup on the Z Fold8 looks a lot like that on the Z Fold8 Ultra. However, it's likely that Samsung had even less room to work with on the inside for proper resonance chambers. Hence, it comes as no surprise that the Z Fold8 is a tad quieter than the Z Fold7, which was already a downgrade compared to the Z Fold6 and even that one only managed a "Good" rating in our loudness test. Well, unfortunately, the Z Fold8 just misses the cutoff for "Good" territory and falls into "Average". To be clear, it is not terrible, but don't expect room-filling sound.

Quality is actually quite good, which frankly comes as no surprise. Samsung has great expertise when it comes to tuning smartphone speakers. Even working with limitations, the Z Fold8 sounds clear, especially where it matters most in mids. Highs rarely get distorted either. There is practically no bass, but that is expected as well.

There is Dolby Atmos support on board with plenty of presence as well as a full equalizer. Of course, Samsung included separate app sound, which remains one of our favorite features.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.

Connectivity

The Z Fold8 is a 5G device with a single physical nano-SIM slot at its disposal. It is not available with a second slot, nor do you get a microSD slot for that matter. Still, you can get up to two active network connections at a time through either one physical card and an eSIM or two eSIM subscriptions.

Location services include GPS, GALILEO, GLONASS, BDS and QZSS. Local connectivity includes tri-band Wi-Fi 7, which means you get access to the still uncongested 6 GHz band. Bluetooth is version 6.0 with LE and aptX HD support. There is, of course, NFC on board. No 3.5mm audio jack, no FM radio and no IR blaster, in case you were wondering.

The Type-C port on the Z Fold8 is backed up by what is marketed as a USB 3.2 data connection. That is technically true, but it is what is known as USB 3.2 Gen1, which is sometimes also referred to as USB 3.1 Gen 1 or USB 3.0. The important bit is that you get up to 5 Gbps data transfer speed. Of course, there is OTG/Host support, but beyond that the Z Fold8 also offers DP video output over USB Alt mode. That is not something you see every day. Samsung even has its industry-leading DeX system powering the second screen experience.

The Z Fold8 also has a pretty full set of onboard sensors. There is an STMicro lsm6dsv accelerometer and gyroscope combo, an akm ak0991x magnetometer and compass combo, and a SensorTek light sensor - actually two of those: one for the cover display and one for the inner one. There is also a bosch bmp5 barometer. The proximity sensor situation is a bit nuanced. There only seems to be one proximity sensor positioned near the earpiece on the cover display. It is a Samsung Palm Proximity Sensor version 2, which means that it is technically a hardware solution with an IR emitter and everything, but one that effectively only the phone can access on a low level and not any third-party apps. This is a pretty typical Samsung solution. It is interesting to note that there appears to be no proximity sensing at all for the main display. That does make sense since there really isn't a good way to make a call while the Z Fold8 is unfolded. There is not an easily accessible earpiece.