Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra

It doesn’t quite feel “Ultra,” but it’s a comprehensive improvement on last year’s phone.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra has a new name, but it's not a terribly new phone. Still, if you have the cash on hand, you'll hardly find a better foldable on the market.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is, despite its power, screen size, and excellent camera array, somehow the less interesting Z Fold 8 model, but it still reigns supreme in my book. Samsung has upgraded it just enough — it's flatter, lighter, and has a better battery and better cameras — to make the market's best-overall folding flagship virtually unbeatable, and I would choose it over the competition every single day. Yes, it's pricey; but as a true two-in-one Android device (a phone and a tablet!), it's actually better value than you might think.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is a nice refinement over its predecessor and an excellent foldable in its own right. However, Samsung's improvements for 2026 aren't nearly enough to make anyone who bought the previous model want to run out an upgrade. Plus, pricing starts at $2,100 compared to $1,900 for the base model. Unless you are a big time side-by-side multitasker, or are seriously turned off at the thought of not having a dedicated zoom cam, the regular Z Fold 8 remains my pick for this generation.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra gets a few minor upgrades that are worth celebrating: the new 50MP ultrawide camera is excellent; the higher-capacity battery delivers a small bump in battery life; and the new Flex Titanium display is as close to creaseless as a Samsung folding screen has ever been. It’s not a huge improvement on last year, but it’s a tight refinement of an already well-established formula.

While it's a bit more expensive than last year (blame the RAM crisis), the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra takes what made the Fold 7 great and adds a better camera, more battery and an ever-so-slightly better display. It's hard to complain about that.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra offers one of the biggest upgrades we've seen out of Samsung for years, to the point where it feels as though real effort has been put into ensuring it lives up to the Ultra branding. Highlights include powerful performance, strong cameras, excellent battery life, and the multitude of screen upgrades. However, it doesn't change the fact there are a few aspects that let the phone down, least of which is the $100 price hike.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is the most capable, most polished, most ambitious foldable Samsung has ever made. That sentence is also true of every previous generation's Z Fold — but in 2026 it finally carries a different weight. Previous generations were "the most capable" in a category where the competition was limited. The Z Fold 8 Ultra is the most capable in a category where the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold, the Honor Magic V6, the Motorola Razr Fold, and the anticipated Apple iPhone Fold are all pushing hard.