Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 vs Motorola Razr (2024): flipping pancakes

The new Motorla Razr (2024) is a non-pro model, inheriting features from the Razr Plus (2023). Namely — the large external screen. It's a very welcome upgrade on a foldable phone that costs $699.99 — with pretty finishes and vibrant colors, the Razr (2024) certainly looks like a sweet deal.

On the flip side — ha-ha — the Galaxy Z Flip 6 came out in July with an MSRP $100 higher than before, but without huge upgrades or improvements to its formula. It's now $1,099 — unless you land a sweet deal during a sales period or the enhanced trade-in promotions.

OK, so is the Samsung worth the $400 on top? It's clearly the more powerful phone, it has a tough hinge that inspires more confidence, it has the Galaxy AI tricks, and it has the better camera.

The Razr has a signature unique feel with its colorful faux leather back, and the bigger cover screen — it looks lovely, and is very useful, as it can run full Android apps instead of being restricted to widgets.

(512GB) Z Fold 6: up to $1,500 off; Z Flip 6: up to $750 off

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 are available at Samsung.com. Right now, you can get the 51GB Galaxy Z Fold 6 for $300 off before trade-ins in select colors, plus an extra $1,200 max discount available with a trade-in. The Z Flip 6 is now $100 off before trade-ins in select colors, but you can save an extra $650 by sparing an older device in good condition.

$2250 off (69%) Trade-in

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Galaxy Z Fold 6 (512GB): Save $421 at Amazon

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 with 512GB of storage in Silver is now $421 cheaper than usual. The deal is live on Amazon! Don't miss out.

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Razr+ (2024): Save $200 at the Motorola Store

The incredibly stylish Motorola Razr+ (2024) is now $200 cheaper than usual at the official Motorola Store. All colors are available at the same price. You can also trade in eligible devices for extra savings.

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This offer is not available in your area.

Razr (2024): Save $100 at the Motorola Store

Motorola.com has an exciting offer on the non-Plus Razr (2024) as well. This bad boy is now $100 off without any trade-ins, though you can score an extra 50% off by trading in previous-generation Razr phones.

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$699 ⁹⁹

This offer is not available in your area.

Also read: Galaxy Z Flip 6 deals: Save on a new Galaxy Z Flip 6 today!

Motorola takes a pretty bold approach with its external ticker screen — it's actually an entire cover screen on the Razr (2024). It's a full-blown Android experience — it can show you an actual home screen and launch any app you tap on. Provided the app is coded to scale right to any screen (most are nowadays), you can do anything without even opening the phone — order food, track your Uber, do a quick Google search or email checkup. It manages to look pretty impressive, especially on a $700 foldable — the top flap is almost all screen. It still has some bezel unlike the Razr+ (2024), which is very edge-to-edge.

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 — like last year — has a slightly smaller cover screen, which is not a full rectangular shape as it steers awkwardly around the cameras. It's fairly large, but it's mostly a "ticker screen" — capable of showing oversized widgets. This includes widgets for stock Samsung apps, but there's also an API for willing 3rd party developers to make their own.

The other half of the phones is also interesting to explore, as Motorola dresses its Razr phones in stylish vegan leather, which feels grippy and premium. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 has a matte glass, which offers its own cold touch of class.

When it comes to build quality — we still need to get our hands on that base Motorola Razr (2024) to confirm, but the Razr Plus (2024) did have a sturdier hinge, which feld much more reassuring than before. The Z Flip 6 — like before — has a tight-feeling hinge that lets you prop the phone up in multiple comfortable viewing angles.

The Z Flip 6 comes with the new Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protecting the cover display, but Motorola didn't skimp on shatter protection — it still has Gorilla Glass Victus for its own cover screen. Samsung did enhance its ingress protection to get an IP48 rating this year — it's not dust-tight, but it will prevent particles 1mm or bigger from entering the phone's hinge. Bit it's water-resistant, and so is the Moto Razr with its IPX8 rating.

Colors-wise, the Razr (2024) comes in Spritz Orange, Beach Sand (light gray-ish with a pinch of tan), and Koala Gray. Samsung's Z Flip 6 comes with more choice — Silver, Shadow, Yellow, Blue, Mint, then three more at the Samsung.com store — Crafted Black, White, and Peach.

The unboxing experience with both of these phones will be the same — both come with a USB C cable... and that's it.

Also read: Galaxy Z Flip 6 colors: all the official shades

Both of these phones pack OLED main screens — the Galaxy Z Flip 6 has the Samsung-branded Dynamic AMOLED X2 screen hits a peak brightness of 2,600 nits, which will be great for HDR content. Its dynamic refresh rate goes as high as 120 Hz for smooth animations, though the external screen is locked to 60 Hz.

The Motorola Razr (2024) main screen has 3,000 nits peak brightness — that little $700 overachiever — and a 120 Hz refresh rate, and its external display still has 90 Hz so it will feel smoother than a simple "substitute screen".

Display Measurements:

Also read: Galaxy Z Flip 6: Size Comparison

Both displays drift a bit towards the teal-ish hues, which is typical of today's OLED panels. However, Samsung shows its expertise better, with the Z Flip 6's display colors sticking closer to reality.

Both have color profiles you can choose inside the settings — whether you want to go for natural hues or all-out OLED punchiness. If the latter is your preference — the Motorola is not shy of dialing that saturation all the way up to 11.

The main screens are similar in size, but it's worth to mention that the Razr (2024) has a 6.9-inch display, the Z Flip 6 is slightly smaller at 6.7 inches. Both companies have worked to reduce — but not yet eliminate — the crease.

Additionally, the Z Flip 6's cover display has 1,600 nits of peak brightness, which less than the 2,400 nits of the Moto's external display. Keep in mind, though, these are peak brightness numbers — an area of the screen, measured for a small amount of time. We measure fullscreen brightness, and both phones performed similarly — getting close to 1,200 nits, which is excellent for outdoor visibility. The Z Flip 6 is noticeably better at bringing the brightness down — 0.7 nits is an incredible achievement and people who don't put the phone down when the lights are out will appreciate it! The Razr's 2.9 nits may be a bit annoying to sensitive eyes.

The Z Flip 6 comes with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, tuned in partnership with Qualcomm to bear the "Mobile Platform for Galaxy" moniker. What that means is that it's slightly overclocked, and maybe both companies were exchanging emails while designing the thermal management around the silicon. It's built on a 4 nm process, has eight cores, and ticks with a max speed of 3.39 GHz.

The Motorola Razr (2024) has a MediaTek Dimensity 7300X chip — that's where the corners were cut. Its a midrange processor, which will feel slower than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, no way around that. It's another octa-core, 4 nm chip, but taps out at 2.5 GHz. 

The Dimensity does have an NPU core, but Motorola doesn't utilize it for any fancy AI features — just a wallpaper generator, AI system optimization, and a photo booth with effects. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 has the full plethora of Galaxy AI on board — live call translation, generative image editing, recording and text summaries, the works.

And, with those scores, we can see why there's no AI on board. The Motorola Razr (2024)'s low scores definitely raise an eyebrow. In general, it will run the phone for daily tasks quite reliably — we were kind of surprised how smooth it ran, we even booted up Arena Breakout: Infinite and managed to game a bit without the phone heating up too much. Granted, everything is on low and we dare not touch it.

Touch response is also pretty good — that's something that will generally make phones feel slower than they actually are, so it's good to see that Motorola is on top of it.

However, if you are interested in ensured snappiness and more power, the Z Flip 6 is the way to go here.

The only storage option for the Motorola Razr (2024) is 256 GB with 8 GB of LPDDR4X RAM. You can boost the latter by dedicating another 8 GB from the storage for Virtual Memory. The storage type is not disclosed in the Moto specs, but the Dimensity 7300X supports UFS 3.1, so that's that.

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 comes with 256 GB and 512 GB UFS 4.0 storage options, and 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The memory chips, combined with the processor, are definitely a huge boost in performance over the Motorola.

As for software support, Samsung has started to offer 7 years of Android updates and security patches with its more premium phones, and the Z Flip 6 is no different. In comparison, Motorola continues to offer 3 years of Android updates.

The two phones come with similar camera specs — 50 MP main and 12 MP ultra-wide on the Flip 6; 50 MP main and 13 MP ultra-wide for the Razr (2024).

For selfies, the Z Flip 6 sticks to a 10 MP snapper, the Motorola Razr (2024) has a 32 MP sensor for bragging rights.

So, here goes — which of these phones utilizes their cameras better?

In terms of colors, they are pretty close. However, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 handles high dynamics much better, where the Motorola Razr (2024) almost burned out the grass strands there. Also, there's a ton of oversharpening happening on the Moto image here, which is why grass and leaves look a bit jagged, with some slight auras around them.

At night, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 produces significantly less noise and more balanced colors. It also keeps details nicely sharp and objects somewhat clear. The Moto Razr (2024) lets more noise show through, but that also helps it show off a bit more of the finer details in objects. However, its colors are heavily skewed towards the yellows, which is an effect often seen when phones are trying to expose a dark scene.

None of these phones has a dedicated zoom camera, so our hopes weren't up for neither of them.

Yet, the Galaxy Z Flip 6's algorithms do a better job at cleaning up noise and sharpening detail. The zoom photos don't look "real", mind you — the processing is definitely evident. But it helps that subjects are better-visible in them.

Both ultra-wide cameras show impressive sharpness and handling of high dynamics. However, the colors from the Razr (2024)'s ultra-wide seem to be more natural, grounded, and realistic.

The Moto Razr (2024)'s selfie camera gives us weird pink-ish skintones, flattens the dynamics in the face, and adds a bit too much sharpening. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 selfies look more natural, with soft, but realistic, detail and colors much more true to reality.

When shooting video, dynamics and details are comparable with both phones. However, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 skews colors a bit too much — towards the neon blue and neon green. The Razr (2024) keeps colors much more realistic in videos. Which is surprising, but hey — props to Motorola! Noise cancelation is a bit better on the Razr (2024), but stabilization seems to be less wobbly on the Z Flip 6.

The Motorola Razr (2024) has the slightly bigger battery here, at 4,200 mAh. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 sports a 4,000 mAh cell. Yeah, these aren't exactly flagship capacities here, but still quite impressive, considering how little room there is for battery in these folding phones.

Eventhough it only has 200 mAh more in its cell, the Motorola Razr (2024) lasts quite a bit longer than the Galaxy Z Flip 6 — about 10-15% more battery life during web browsing and YouTube streaming. That's also probably due to the fact that the processor inside is a less-powerful MediaTek Dimensity 7300X, so it's not such a power hog.

But when we get to heavy tasks — like 3D gaming — the Galaxy Z Flip 6 barely breaks a sweat and doesn't put as much stress on its battery. Which, together with the performance benchmarks, shows that powerusers should gravitate more towards the Z Flip 6.

The Razr (2024) supports 30 W charging, the Z Flip 6 maxes out at 25 W. It's a small difference and you won't notice much change in small bursts of charging — up to 30 minutes in, both phones get about the same amount of juice. However, for a full 0-100% charge, the Razr (2024) definitely goes faster, a full 30 minutes faster than the Z Flip 6 to be exact! Both phones also support 15 W wireless top-up.

We wouldn't say that either of these phones' speakers sound excellent. Both have a spike in the upper mids, which will help discern voice, but isn't pleasing for music or movies. But the Galaxy Z Flip 6 does, at least, have more bass and perceived volume. The Motorola Razr (2024) speakers sound thin overall. On a different note — the Razr Plus (2024) sounds fantastic.

For haptics, the Razr (2024) is definitely better. Strong, accurate, timely vibrations to reassure you as you navigate the UI. The Z Flip 6's haptics aren't bad — they just feel a bit slower and raspier by comparison. On its own, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 also feels nice.

Here's a quick overview of the Galaxy Z Flip 6 vs Razr (2024) specs:

Right now, the Motorola Razr (2024) seems like quite the deal — $700 for a foldable phone that looks like a fancy accessory and delivers a quality display experience. You will have to compromise a bit in photo quality (though the Moto did great with video), and its performance isn't top-tier, but if you live with those corners being cut, you may just end up enjoying a stylish foldable phone for a pretty good price.

In the meantime, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 goes all out — super-charged CPU, pretty good cameras, Galaxy AI, Google Gemini integration, and cool aesthetics. Its MSRP is up there at $1,100, but we feel like the Z Flip 6 has more headroom for the future. If you prefer to keep your phone for a while, you are probably looking to invest in a more long-lasting device. Of course, foldables are still fresh on the market, and we can't say they've all been perfect. Even if the Z Flip 6 comes with 7 years of software updates, it'll take a while before we can comment on its long-lasting durability.

For what it is — it feels solidly built and reassuring. If you can afford the extra $400 on top of the Razr, we'd say the Galaxy Z Flip 6 is the better buy. If you are drawn to the style and panache of the Razr (2024) — we totally get it. If you're not a poweruser, you'll be fine with it!