Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 review: Lab tests

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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 review: Lab tests



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Bigger displays on the outside and inside

The Galaxy Z Fold7 now employs an 8.0-inch foldable LTPO OLED panel with 1968 x 2184px resolution in a nearly square-ish aspect ratio. Last year’s model had a 7.6-inch diagonal.

Of course, the panel has all the bells and whistles – 120Hz refresh rate with granular control (more on that later) and HDR10+ support. Unfortunately, as with any Samsng out there, there’s no Dolby Vision support, but the display plays well with YouTube and Netflix and can stream HDR content.

We measured the maximum brightness in manual and auto mode. With the extra brightness boost setting in manual mode, we achieved a maximum brightness of 707 nits.

In auto mode, the display reached 1,408 nits, which is approximately 200 nits lower than the measurement we obtained last year on the Z Fold6. It won’t matter in real-world usage, as 1,400 nits is bright enough for comfortable outdoors.

The cover screen has also grown by 0.2″, now 6.5″. It also has a better aspect ratio that’s closer to what you get on a standard phone. The resolution is 1080 x 2520px, which is slightly higher than before.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 review

Just like the main foldable display, the cover screen also supports HDR10+ streaming and since it’s LTPO OLED ticking at 120Hz, it offers granular refresh rate control.

Interestingly, this display is again slightly dimmer than its predecessor. In manual mode, we measured a brightness of up to 688 nits, while auto mode boosted the brightness to 1,409 nits. Still more than adequate for comfortable outdoor use.

Refresh rate

The refresh rate control is pretty straightforward. Samsung offers two modes – Adaptive and Standard. The standard caps the refresh rate to 60Hz.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 review

The displays can go down to 24Hz to preserve power when the system deems necessary or when you are playing a 24fps video on your phone. It works on YouTube.

High refresh gaming is supported as long as the game title offers higher frame rate rendering.

Battery life

Despite the thinner chassis, the Galaxy Z Fold7 retains the same battery capacity as last year – 4,400 mAh. The more recent Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, however, is marketed as a more energy-efficient than its predecessor and some of the results from our battery tests suggest so too.

The Z Fold7 scored an 11:44h Active Use Score. This is slightly below average considering its competitors, but it’s also an improvement compared to its predecessor. We see longer gaming and call runtimes (likely due to the new chipset), but lower web browsing scores due to the larger display.

We observed the same with the cover screen results. Naturally, you get considerably longer battery life with the cover screen, but the 12:56h Active Use Score is still a tad lower than what we were expecting.

Charging speed

Again, the charging rate on this year’s foldables from Samsung is far from ideal. The Z Fold7 is one of the slowest-charging devices in its category, with only 25W wired charging and 15W wireless charging. If you are buying a third-party charger, you should know that the 25W is possible only with a USB-PD PPS-enabled Power Delivery charger, though.

In any case, the phone replenishes half of its battery charge in 30 minutes, while a full charge takes almost an hour and a half.

Even though the slow charging rate is already sparing enough to the battery, Samsung has still implemented several battery protection features. For instance, you can limit the charging to 80, 85 or 90%. Or you can also turn off fast charging altogether.

Speakers

The Z Fold7 features stereo speakers and has both drivers on its cover screen half. The sound is emitted through the slits on the frame, while the top unit has an opening towards the cover screen since it serves as an earpiece too.

In terms of loudness, the Galaxy Z Fold7 scored an “Average” -28.3 LUFS, which is far from ideal for a device in this class. The handset is also quieter than its predecessor, which is likely due to the smaller cavities used for the thinner chassis.

Overall quality is okay. It’s not particularly impressive, as the bass is not very pronounced, so the tracks sound a bit flat. However, the vocals and highs are well-defined.

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 their differences. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.



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