Is the Galaxy Z Flip5 Worth Buying in 2024? A Foldable Reality Check

Foldables have spent years as the phone category tech reviewers get excited about and almost nobody actually buys. The Galaxy Z Flip5, which we scored 8.0, is the phone that made us genuinely reconsider that assumption. At $999 — the same price as the non-folding Pixel 8 Pro and Xiaomi 14 in our lineup — it's asking you to pay flagship money for a format that's historically come with real compromises. Here's whether those compromises still apply in 2024, category by category, based on the same weeks of daily use behind every verdict on this site.

The cover screen finally matters

Every previous generation of flip-style foldable shipped with a cover screen that was either missing entirely or so small it was little more than a notification strip. The Z Flip5's 3.4-inch cover display changes that calculation completely. You can genuinely reply to messages, check maps directions, run a surprising range of apps in a cropped view, and take selfies using the superior rear camera without ever unfolding the phone. This sounds like a minor convenience until you've lived with it for a week — it turns "check your phone" into something you can often do one-handed, folded, in about three seconds, which is a meaningfully different interaction than pulling out a full-size slab every time.

The crease: still there, still fine

Let's address this directly because it's the most common question we get about any Samsung foldable. Yes, there is a visible crease down the middle of the internal display. No, it is not distracting once you're actually using the phone rather than staring at it at an angle under a bright light specifically looking for it. Video and photos display fine across it, and after about two days most reviewers — us included — stop noticing it during normal use. If you're coming from a flat-screen phone expecting zero visual compromise, temper that expectation; if you're worried it will ruin the experience daily, it won't.

Durability: better, but still a folding phone

Samsung's fifth generation of this form factor uses a stronger hinge mechanism than earlier Z Flip models, and the IPX8 water resistance rating (though notably still no official dust resistance, unlike a fully sealed slab phone) gives real peace of mind that earlier foldables lacked entirely. That said, a folding phone will always have more moving parts and more places for debris or drops to cause problems than a phone with no hinge at all. If you're rough on phones — no case, dropped regularly, beach trips with sand everywhere — this is a real risk factor the Galaxy S24 simply doesn't share. If you're a normal, moderately careful phone owner, the risk is manageable but not zero.

Performance and battery: the actual tradeoffs

Here's where the format still costs you something concrete. Fitting a battery into a folding chassis means less capacity than a same-priced non-folding phone gets — the Z Flip5's battery life is noticeably behind the Galaxy S24's at the same $999, and behind the Pixel 8 Pro too. If you're a heavy phone user who's already anxious about battery life, this is a legitimate reason to look elsewhere. Processing performance, on the other hand, isn't a compromise at all — Samsung uses the same flagship-tier chip family across the S24 and Z Flip5, so day-to-day speed, gaming, and app performance feel equivalent. You're paying a battery-life tax for the form factor, not a performance tax.

Is the novelty worth the premium?

At $999, you're paying roughly $200 more than the Galaxy A54 tier and the same as considerably more camera-capable phones like the Pixel 8 Pro. That's the honest math: you are paying specifically for the folding format and the cover-screen convenience, not for class-leading specs elsewhere. Whether that's worth it depends entirely on how much you value pocketability — folded, this phone is genuinely small enough to disappear into a pocket in a way no slab phone can match — and how much the party-trick factor of a folding phone appeals to you. Reviewers are generally poor judges of this specific question, because we test dozens of phones and get less excited by novelty than a first-time buyer might.

Flex mode: a party trick that occasionally earns its keep

Half-folded at roughly 90 degrees, the Z Flip5 can prop itself up on a table without a stand — Samsung calls this Flex mode, and app support for it is still genuinely inconsistent. The camera app makes excellent use of it, letting the phone act as a tripod-free stand for hands-free video calls or timer-based group photos, and this is the single Flex mode use case we'd call a real, repeatable benefit rather than a demo-booth trick. YouTube and a handful of other video apps split into a viewing pane on top and controls below, which is pleasant but not transformative — you could achieve almost the same result propping any phone against a wall. Most third-party apps simply ignore the fold entirely and render as a normal full screen, which means the feature's usefulness scales directly with how many of the handful of well-optimized apps you actually use.

Our take

We'd recommend the Z Flip5 to a specific buyer: someone who wants a genuinely compact phone, checks their phone constantly for quick tasks that the cover screen now handles well, and isn't a battery-life-above-all-else user. We would not recommend it to someone whose main criteria are camera quality, all-day battery life, or maximum durability for a rough lifestyle — for those buyers, the Galaxy S24 at the same price point remains the safer, more capable choice, and our higher score for it reflects that it's simply the better all-around phone for most people. The Z Flip5 isn't trying to win that contest, though — it's trying to be something genuinely different, and on that specific goal, it succeeds more than any foldable we've tested before it.

One last practical note if you're on the fence: resale value on foldables has historically lagged behind flat-screen flagships, since the hinge mechanism is a wear item that makes buyers of used devices understandably cautious. If you like to sell or trade in your phone every one or two years, factor that into the real cost of ownership rather than just comparing the $999 sticker price against the Galaxy S24's. It doesn't change our recommendation, but it's the kind of detail that only shows up after living with the format for a while rather than reading a spec sheet.