Samsung Galaxy Fold6 vs. Galaxy Fold5 | Infinium-tech

If you’ve been eyeing this year’s Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6, you’re probably thinking that the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 is probably the more sensible choice. Some people may appreciate the improvements, while others may prefer to save some money with the older model as both offer a nearly identical foldable smartphone experience.

So why is the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 so good that it’s worth the price? Let’s take a look at it.

Table of Contents:

For starters, you can compare the full specs sheets or jump straight in with our editor’s review in the following text.

Size Comparison

Samsung has managed to make the Galaxy Z Fold6 more compact than its previous model. The designers have cut down a millimetre or two on all sides without compromising on the screen diagonal. What’s even better is that the cover screen is now bigger, but we’ll talk about that later.

The hinge is also a bit smaller now and the device feels more compact when used folded. The sharp angles on the frame might not be to everyone’s liking, but others find them helpful for a more secure grip.

The Z Fold6 is also believed to be built better. Samsung has introduced an “enhanced armor aluminum” frame that is stronger than last year’s. The Fold6 is probably lighter because of the new material and the new hinge.

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 against particles larger than 1mm. To be honest, that’s not too impressive, as most dust particles are smaller than 1mm. But, hey, we guess sand should be kept at bay now.

Performance Comparison

Regardless of what the specifications sheet might make you think, the Fold6 brings a lot of upgrades in the display department. And we’re not talking about the aspect ratio of the inner display. That’s not a major change. The new Z Fold6 features a brighter LTPO panel with a variable refresh rate.

The new fold reaches comfortably 1,600 nitswhich is much more than that Sub-1,300-nit The outer panel of the Z Fold5. Fold6 also goes much further than that 1,500 nitsWhile the Z Fold5 settles for a 1,114-night Panel.

In addition, the Z Fold6’s outer screen is wider, increasing the diagonal by 0.1 inches. It’s not perfect, but it’s a little more usable with the new aspect ratio.

cover display

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

battery life

In our battery endurance tests on the inner screen, the Z Fold6 posted scores similar to last year’s Fold 5, except for call times where we see a bigger difference. We also saw shorter call times with the Flip, so we think the new modem is to blame.

The situation is slightly better for the new model when we run tests on the new screen as web browsing and video playback runtimes improve. However, the overall active usage score remains the same.

Charging Speed

And just like battery life, the new model charges slightly slower than the older model. And that’s after retesting multiple times to get the best possible speed (our original test results for the Fold6 review were even slower). The Fold5 is a few percentage points faster at the 15-minute and 30-minute marks and also reaches 100% a few minutes earlier.

And we wouldn’t suggest the Z Fold5 is a charging speed champion, either, but to see numbers drop over a generation for no apparent reason (let alone be so inconsistent from charge to charge) is disappointing.

Speaker Testing

There is a slight drop in volume in the Fold6 compared to the Fold5, but the Fold5 still sounds better than its predecessor. The Z Fold6 sounds warmer and deeper, while the Fold5 doesn’t sound great at all in comparison. We’d choose the Z Fold6 over last year’s Fold any day.

Display

As usual, the new Fold generation sports Qualcomm’s latest flagship SoC, which promises better performance and improved efficiency. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 powers the Z Fold 6, which is the successor to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 inside the Z Fold 5. Both phones use special “For Galaxy” versions of the chipset, which means the main CPU cores are slightly overclocked.

Memory options remain unchanged on the Z Fold5. Both devices come with 12GB/256GB memory configurations as standard, but you can choose between 512GB or 1TB. UFS 4.0 storage is standard in both cases.

Benchmark Performance

According to synthetic benchmarks, the Z Fold6 is about 25% faster than the Z Fold5 in pure CPU-bound tasks, while combined scenarios like AnTuTu 10 show a lead of about 6%. In GPU-heavy workloads, the SD8 Gen 3 inside the Z Fold5 performs only about 2% faster than its predecessor.

If we are to draw any conclusions from the tests, the Z Fold6’s improved performance will probably not appeal to most users. Especially if you plan on playing games, both handsets perform very similarly.

Camera Comparison

Both devices have exactly the same camera hardware. There are no changes. The main 50MP f/1.8 camera still does the heavy lifting and is accompanied by a 10MP f/2.4 telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom and a 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera with a 123-degree field of view.

The two selfie cameras are also unchanged – a 4MP f/1.8 under-display camera for the inner screen and a 10MP f/2.2 unit in the cover screen’s own cutout.

image quality

Despite having identical hardware, both devices produce slightly different looking photos with all three cameras at the back. This is because Samsung has changed its approach to post-processing and is now using slightly less saturated colours and less sharpening.

Samsung Z Fold6: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x

Samsung Z Fold5: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x

You can see that the Z Fold5’s main camera is better at capturing fine details like grass, slightly better than the Z Fold6 thanks to the extra sharpening, but other than that, noise and artifacts are clearly visible in the Z Fold6’s photos.

However, the 2x (digital zoom) photos taken by the Z Fold6 are better, as they have significantly less noise.

The Z Fold6’s ultrawide camera delivers better photos overall – better detail, better contrast, more balanced HDR. Colours are more vivid, too.

And finally, the 3x camera presentation is similar, but the Z Fold6’s 3x zoom photos are again clearer and less blurry, if you will.

We also found some notable differences in night-time post-processing. The Fold6 has a more balanced, natural-looking approach to Night mode. It sacrifices a bit of fine detail in shadows but gets rid of noise. The extra sharpening and overly bright shadows on the Fold5 make the stills look dull, even artificial.

Samsung Z Fold6: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x

Samsung Z Fold5: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x

The observations are correct for the secondary cameras, although there is little difference between the two devices. In fact, the 2x zoom crops look identical.

video quality

Samsung doesn’t seem to have tinkered much with the video processing. We find it hard to find any difference between the two 4K footage with the main cameras. However, the Z Fold5 offers stronger contrast.

The same can be said for 3x, ultrawide, and low-light footage.

Samsung Z Fold6: 0.6x • 1x • 3x • 1x

Samsung Z Fold5: 0.6x • 1x • 3x • 1x

Decision

As you can see, comparing the specification sheets of the two handsets can mislead you. Even though the Galaxy Z Fold6 and Z Fold5 look very similar, they differ from each other in various departments and the results are not always in favour of the latest model.

The Galaxy Z Fold5 has slightly better battery life, the speakers are a bit louder, charging is a bit faster, and some people might like the photo processing.

On the other hand, the Z Fold6 now has better displays, the speakers’ sound quality has improved, and it runs on a slightly faster, more recent chipset. Plus, you get three years of additional major OS updates, considering that a full year has passed since the Z Fold5’s release and it was promised four years to begin with.

Having said that, we can see that some users will hardly justify the €250 difference between the Z Fold6 and the Z Fold5. And it is this price difference that could be the deciding factor.