Samsung Z Fold 8 Ultra review

Samsung has long championed its Fold series of phones to AV aficionados looking for an all-in-one entertainment device that can function as a flagship smartphone and small tablet, thanks to its clever bendy screen tech.

At first glance, that pitch continues with the Z Fold 8 Ultra, which offers a refined take on its Z Fold 7 predecessor – including a huge boost to both its screens' peak brightness levels and upscaling powers.

And were it not for one key issue, we would wholeheartedly be praising it as the best foldable for our discerning readers. But sadly, thanks to the appearance of a wildcard from Samsung, the Ultra is, ironically, not the ultimate option for Android AV enthusiasts; its cheaper sibling, the Samsung Z Fold 8, is.

Price

The Z Fold 8 Ultra is undeniably a premium product. The cheapest 256GB model we have in for review costs £1899 ( $2099 / AU$2999). The 512GB model will set you back £2069, while the top-of-the-line 1TB model sells for £2049. The extra increase for the 1TB model is also due to it having more RAM.

To put that in context, you could easily pick up enough entry-level Android phones and tablets to equip a family of three, or 2.4 Award-winning iPhone 17s, for the same price.

That also makes it over £100 / $100 more expensive than the older Z Fold 7 was at launch, £200 more expensive than the entertainment-focused Z Fold 8 and £620 more than Samsung’s flagship non-folding phone, the five-star Galaxy S26 Ultra.

Build

The price will be a hard pill to swallow for some, but there is no denying the Z Fold 8 Ultra feels premium and, dare we say, rugged (at least compared with past foldables we’ve tested).

The final point is a particular surprise for the team, one of whom had the joy of watching his first-generation Z Fold handset break in his hand when he first tested the folding mechanism many moons ago.

This is mainly thanks to Samsung’s Flex Titanium Technology display tech. The tech places a thin alloy mesh and flexible titanium plate under the AMOLED screens, which lets the firm reduce the phone’s size while improving its folding mechanism’s usability and durability.

Gone are the days when you would wince and pray to the tech gods whenever you opened it up. Now the Z Fold’s mechanism feels solid and suitably easy to use without requiring uncomfortable levels of force.

Uniformity is also improved, and unlike past Samsung Fold phones, the inner display’s crease is close to unnoticeable, resulting in a more immersive experience, especially when playing media.

The rigidity, smaller dimensions and generally polished design make the Ultra feel premium – though be warned, its IP45 rating means it's still not beach or pool-ready, and won’t survive most aquatic adventures.

The only other downside is that it retains the Fold’s atypical form factor, which, while having benefits for movie fans, is still firmly focused on 'power users' who want to have multiple apps open at the same time.

The 21:9 aspect ratio 6.5-inch outer display is thinner than most normal phones and has intuitively placed power and volume controls on its side, and also houses its fingerprint scanner.

But its 8-inch inner screen is still decidedly square-shaped, and the two side-facing speakers are pretty easy to block if you turn it on its side to make the most of the extra real estate. Doing so will also force the internal hole-punch-design selfie camera to block part of the screen, even when watching 21:9 content.

This makes the smaller Z Fold 8 feel fresher and more attuned to media consumption, thanks to its new passport-sized 10:16 aspect ratio outer screen and 7.6-inch 4:3 landscape interior display.

Features

Despite the power-user focus, the Fold 8 Ultra still houses several treats for movie and TV fans in particular.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chipset and 12GB of RAM ensure our review unit never stutters and is a speed demon with most processes – you’ll be able to game, edit spreadsheets and reels with zero issue. This is further aided by both screens’ variable refresh rate (VRR) 120Hz support.

For media, the phone doesn’t have the same Samsung ProScaler tech that wowed us on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. Instead, it relies on Samsung’s mobile Digital Natural Image engine (mDNIe) hardware. Rather than upscaling content, as ProScaler does, mDNIe uses advanced image processing to help the Ultra deliver more subtle and lifelike colours. Samsung specifically claims it’s “four times more accurate” than the older Z Fold 7.

Outside of this, both the Fold 8 Ultra’s screens support Samsung’s HDR10+ standard. The internal screen also has a staggering 3000 nits peak brightness. That’s 400 nits more than the older Fold 7. Combined with the handset’s Vision Booster feature, which adjusts contrast and the screen’s settings based on ambient light conditions, we never struggle to see what is onscreen, even in direct outdoor sunlight.

Dolby Atmos support is also included, both for the inbuilt speakers and connected headphones – though you have to activate it in the Ultra’s settings.

Despite its 4.1mm slimness when unfolded, the phone’s battery is also reasonably sized. The 5000mAh cell is quoted as offering 27 hours of video playback from a single charge. That figure requires some sacrifices to the display’s brightness, but we still find ourselves only losing an average of four-to-seven per cent of the phone’s charge watching Netflix on our hour-long commute home each day, which is solid by mobile standards.

Samsung’s One UI software sits over its base Android 17 OS. The skin brings some useful features, but they’re mostly to do with AI and making the most of the second screen. These include the ability to have multiple apps open on the inner display, which can be a boon.

Whether it’s chatting on Slack with the spreadsheet you’re discussing open on the other side of the screen, or WhatsApping your friends with Google Maps open as you try to navigate your way to the pub you’re meeting at, there are plenty of moments it's useful – though we do occasionally find ourselves hankering for a stylus like the one seen on the S26 Ultra, especially when working with spreadsheets.

Outside of the split-screen functionality, Now Brief and Now Nudge are probably the most used features. The first feature pushes contextual information throughout your day, while Now Nudge, rather creepily, raids data from all the apps on your device and the cloud to offer contextual replies.

Finally, the Ultra comes with a competent camera set-up. On its back you’ll find a 200-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel ultra-wide (up from 12 megapixels on the Fold 7) and a 10-megapixel telephoto. It also features the same ProVisual Engine with advanced AP processing for Nightography video.

The Fold 8 has a downgraded set-up, featuring a basic 50MP main and secondary 50MP ultrawide lens. Both feature 10MP selfie cameras with a hole-punch design embedded in each screen.

Given our AV focus, we won’t delve into too much detail here, but the cameras are good, though not the best you’ll find at this end of the market. The Ultra can take captivating shots and is more than good enough for shooting video for social media – as evidenced by a number of Reels we've posted on our channels using it.

Stabilisation is solid, and low-light photography looks good and is generally noise-free. But Samsung’s processing is still a smidgeon aggressive for those who value realism. Unless you go full manual, it still can oversharpen slightly, especially compared with a modern iPhone or Pixel, and colours occasionally look a tad overbaked.

Picture

The big question is, how does the Ultra perform as a home cinema in your hand? And here the answer is interesting. Our reviewers tested both of this year’s Fold phones and, despite the phones having the same nit count and upscaling powers, ended up using them fairly differently.

Side by side, playing Crime 101 in HDR10+ on Amazon Prime Video on the unfolded screens, it is immediately clear both are cut from the same cloth. Colours are nicely rich, despite the low-light scene’s tricky nature, and there’s a pleasing level of dark detail throughout the cityscape.

But interestingly, the basic Z Fold 8 goes a smidgeon brighter in certain parts, with the night-time sky initially offering a tad more contrast than the Ultra.

We make next to no adjustments to the screen settings, outside of turning off the ambient light and colour temperature controls, to ensure uniformity, as Samsung has refreshingly set the screen to its natural, not vivid mode, out of the box.

Moving to Ready Or Not 2 on Disney+, the phone’s AMOLED screen does a stellar job, delivering dark details that are lost on cheaper handsets, but it's the Fold 8 Ultra’s ability to retain colour volume, even in low light, that steals the show.

Avoiding spoilers, the viscera during a heated scene, mixing intense sections of light and dark elements, retains a pleasing level of realness, without ever being oversaturated. Skin tones as characters creep through the shadows retain a realistic warmth, never looking jaundiced or flat as they often can on phone screens.

Masters Of The Universe, on Prime Video, continues the strong performance, with the intentionally bright, almost cartoony, colours of Eternia popping, but never veering too far toward becoming oversaturated.

If anything, the screen feels like it could go harder, especially when pushing the numerous explosions billowing around He-Man. Here, interestingly, the base Fold 8 appears to be willing to push the brightest part of the picture a little harder than the Ultra. But, as always, we’ll take finesse over bombastic artificiality any day of the week.

The upscaling is also solid. Switching to Batman Begins, the phone admirably sharpens the Caped Crusader, giving the film a wonderfully three-dimensional but never artificial feel. Movements in particular retain their weight, as we feel every one of Batman’s precise but heavy blows. It’s only when he switches to the Batmobile and begins racing across Gotham that we detect a hint of oversmoothing.

With episodes of One Tree Hill on Netflix, the upscaling can’t completely remove the fuzzy grain from the ageing millennial melodrama, and some black crush does creep into certain scenes. But the show looks leagues sharper, more three-dimensional and ultimately immersive than that which we find on most rivals.

Were it not for one big elephant in the room, we would wholeheartedly say that, for the most part, it feels like we’re watching a shrunk-down Samsung OLED. That elephant in the room is the aspect ratio. The tablet screen only offers a smidgeon more real estate than its smaller sibling. And taking advantage of it means putting up with giant black bars on the upper and lower edges, with the hole-punch camera intruding on what you’re watching.

Before, this was easier to put up with. But with the standard Fold 8 being cheaper and having a more entertainment-focused aspect ratio, for people who just want to watch media, it makes the more expensive Ultra a harder sell.

In fact, the lack of extra real estate garnered from unfolding the handset means that at times, especially when commuting (unless, say, we are reading a comic or book on Kindle), we regularly just use the front screen, with its much more movie-friendly 21:9 aspect ratio.

Sound

Audio performance is an area where Samsung phones have proven to be good, but not best in class for a while – hence the four-star (and below) 'Sound' ratings on every handset we’ve reviewed since the Galaxy S23.

And this is largely because, outside Atmos and Spatial Audio, the firm doesn’t seem too bothered about improving its phones' musicality. This is a key reason Apple iPhones have dominated our Awards recently.

Does the Fold 8 Ultra reverse this trend?

Testing the audio with a pair of wired headphones using a USB-C to 3.5mm converter, the handset leaves a positive opening impression playing Philip Glass’s Floe on Apple Music.

There is a pleasing separation to every instrument as the demanding, rhythmically driven, harmonic progression strides forward. And the sound never feels out of control – an impressive feat considering how easy it is for the low-end, heavy bass synthesiser to overpower the more subtle string and flute sections.

As we move to 16 Horse Power’s Sinnerman, the phone’s focus on control continues. The handset accurately articulates the mid-heavy nature of the piece, retaining the track's intentionally swampy, raw, gritty Gothic Americana tone without pushing its own sonic signature on it.

But switching gears to the more energetic Good To Your Earhole (the all-analogue remaster, of course) by Funkadelic, the performance is a bit too tame. The attacking funk guitar doesn’t land with the intended scooped tone or have the rhythmic drive and precision we want. Our reviewers' feet remain firmly on the floor, rather than tapping along as they normally would, as a result.

Shifting to Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love, the phone once again plays it a little too safe; the crash of John Bonham’s drums entering the composition doesn’t have the weight and impact it should, showing the phone’s middling handling of dynamics and, dare we say, a lack of fun in the sound.

There’s nothing disastrously wrong with the audio. We just wish the Fold 8 Ultra was a bit braver, a bit more confident and ultimately a bit more exciting to listen to.

Switching to the handset’s speakers, the Fold 8 Ultra offers a nicely wide soundstage by phone standards.

The cars in F1: The Movie feel like they’re zig-zagging left to right with a precision and speed lacking on many phones. But the speakers are underpowered, lacking the low-end heft required to do the rumbling engines justice.

Musically, the sound is also too thin for enjoyable listening. Nine Inch Nails’ The Day The World Went Away sounds hollow and lacks its intended lumbering menace – though this is the case on nearly all the phone speakers we review.

The combination of factors makes the Z Fold 8 Ultra a reliable, albeit unremarkable, phone for audio.

Verdict

The Galaxy Fold 8 Ultra is a competent phone that’s ideal for its target market: power users and ’80s-style business folk who need to edit spreadsheets on the go. It’s also a competent mobile entertainment device for people who like to watch films and TV while out and about.

But thanks to its productivity-focused form factor, the benefits to AV fans of the second, foldable screen aren’t as pronounced as they are on its cheaper sibling, the Galaxy Z Fold 8. Its safe but unremarkable audio also puts it behind modern iPhones for anyone on the hunt for a phone that can double as a portable music player. This all adds up to make it a good, but not perfect option for AV fans.

SCORES

• Picture 4
• Sound 4
• Features 5

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