Foldables have seen a significant leap forward in 2025 with the likes of the Honor Magic V5 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 – but which book-style foldable is really the best?
While both offer an ultra-slim, ultra-light design that gives much of the foldable competition (and a few non-foldables) a run for their money, there are crucial differences between the two that could sway your buying decision one way or the other.
We’ve spent time with both the Honor Magic V5 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, and while both are deserving of the best foldable title in one way or another, here’s how they stack up in real-world use.
Pricing and availability
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is the more expensive of the two foldables, starting at £1,799/$1,999 for 256GB of storage, though you can also get 512GB and 1TB models at additional expense. It’s available now, following release on 25 July.
The Honor Magic V5 is slightly cheaper at £1,699 in the UK (no US availability, sorry folks!), and starts with a larger 512GB of storage. Like Samsung’s option, it’s also available for purchase right now, following its global debut on 28 August.
Design
Pick up both the Honor Magic V5 and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 and you’ll immediately notice just how similar they feel in the hand. These are both feats of foldable engineering, offering the very thinnest in foldable tech available right now – though Honor’s foldable does have a slight edge.
The Magic V5 measures in at 8.8mm when folded, while the Z Fold 7 clocks in at 0.1mm thicker at 8.9mm. That said, Samsung’s foldable is ever so slightly lighter at 215g compared to Honor’s 218g. However, in reality, they’re essentially identical to hold and use, with both offering a surprisingly slim profile for a book-style foldable that makes them thinner than some regular ‘bar’ phones.
Instead, where the two foldables differ is their design language. The Magic V5 has a slightly more rounded look, with curved edges that sit nicely in the hand, and a hinge that integrates seamlessly into the design. The Z Fold 7, on the other hand, sports Samsung’s signature flat, squared-off profile, offering a slightly more industrial yet still undeniably premium look and feel.
Honor also has a slight edge when it comes to resistance from the elements, sporting a dual IP58/IP59 rating compared to the Z Fold 7’s IP48 – though neither can really compete with the IP68 of the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold, the first foldable to achieve such a lofty feat.
Winner: Honor Magic V5
Screens
The two foldables differ slightly in their approaches to screen technology. The Honor Magic V5’s outer 6.43-inch display is wide enough to be used like a ‘normal’ phone, which isn’t always a given with foldables. That means it’s well-suited to gaming, texting and the like, and matches the inner panel’s premium screen technology in most regards for a high level of consistency.
Open it up and you’ll be greeted with a 7.95-inch 120Hz OLED panel that looks wonderfully expansive, especially for video and reading. The lack of an obvious dip in the crease further elevates the overall experience, making the phone’s screens hard to fault in most regards.
Samsung’s competing 6.5-inch cover screen isn’t quite as wide as Honor’s alternative – though it is a significant improvement on earlier models whose cover panels were simply too tall and narrow for comfortable use.
The Fold 7 cover screen’s 21:9 aspect ratio is still slim, but it’s definitely in regular smartphone territory, and like Honor’s option, it matches the inner display offering quite tightly.
Open the phone, and you’ll find an 8-inch 120Hz AMOLED display, which, in most regards, sets the standard for brightness, colour depth, and refresh smoothness on foldables. Samsung knows its display tech, and it really shows here.
The crease is slightly more noticeable than Honor’s alternative, but it’s a massive reduction on previous attempts and, in all honesty, isn’t all that noticeable once you start scrolling through apps or playing games.
Winner: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
Cameras
Both foldables sport a triple camera offering on the rear, but the approaches are different.
Honor offers a more balanced experience with a 50MP wide, 64MP telephoto and 12MP ultrawide, with the wide and telephoto lenses also benefiting from OIS stabilisation. The telephoto in particular adds a notable level of flexibility, especially when combined with a high-res sensor, as it allows it to go beyond the native 3x without compromising on overall quality.
Daylight shots are sharp and vibrant, leaning slightly towards saturated stones that make them look lively on the phone’s OLED screen. Low-light performance is decent, but Honor still trails the very best in terms of consistency – you sometimes need a steady hand and patience for cleaner results in darker environments.
Samsung, on the other hand, goes all-in on the main camera, sporting the same 200MP lens as the Galaxy S25 Ultra and S25 Edge. This means that the Z Fold 7 has one of the best main cameras available in any 2025 phone, not just foldables.
As a result, the main sensor pulls in staggering detail and light with its 16-in-1 pixel binning, meaning shots look just as good at night as they do during the day.
That said, the accompanying 10MP 3x telephoto and 12MP ultrawide can’t quite match the output of the main lens, leading to a slightly lop-sided offering. The telephoto, in particular, can’t quite match what Honor can provide, especially beyond the 3x mark.
If you want a foldable that can genuinely stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best flagship camera phones in most scenarios, the Fold 7 earns that reputation more comfortably than the Magic V5 – though both offer great camera capabilities that most would be happy with.
Winner: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
Performance
When it comes to performance, you’ll notice very little difference between the Honor Magic V5 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, both in benchmark tests and real-world use. That’s because the flagships come with the top-end Snapdragon 8 Elite, though Samsung sports a custom ‘For Galaxy’ version of the chipset.
Both absolutely fly in day-to-day use, whether that’s opening apps side-by-side on the big internal screen, scrolling through media-heavy apps or playing AAA mobile games like Call of Duty Mobile. There’s very little that these foldables can’t handle in their stride.
It’s worth noting, however, that the Magic V5 comes in just one storage option – 512GB – while the Z Fold 7 starts at 256GB, though it’s also available in 512GB and 1TB flavours if you want to spend a little extra cash.
Winner: Tie
Software
It’s in the software department that the two smartphones vary – and Samsung’s mature software really shines through.
Samsung has been at the foldable game for years, and its One UI 8, based on Android 1,6 showcases it perfectly. Multi-window multitasking just works, whether that’s dragging text across apps, popping a video in a resizable window or using the taskbar-like dock to flick between recent apps. The company’s DeX software also shines here, allowing the phone to power a Windows-esque desktop experience when connected to an external display.
There’s also the suite of Galaxy AI tools to use, with some of the best image-based object removal tech of any smartphone manufacturer – even Google. It goes beyond photo editing smarts however, with Galaxy AI tools permeating practically every area of the operating system. Some tools are more useful than others, but you’ll likely find something to make your life a little easier.
Honor’s competing MagicOS 9, based on Android 15, has definitely evolved over the past few years, with smoother animations and increasingly better use of the big inner display. Split-screen and floating window support are also available here, but they don’t feel quite as seamlessly integrated yet.
The company is also trying to lean heavily into AI with smart gallery search, translation tools and an Honor-branded Circle to Search alternative dubbed Magic Portal. While a great start and useful in spots, these features don’t have quite the same level of mass appeal as Samsung’s competing offering.
That said, with both foldables promised to get the same seven years of OS upgrades, there’s a chance that the Magic V5 software experience could improve drastically over the next few years.
Winner: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
Battery Life
It’s in the battery life department that Honor pulls off something unexpected; despite being the thinner of the two, it packs the larger battery – and by a significant margin too. The V5’s 5820mAh silicon-carbon battery can comfortably see out the busiest of days, often with charge left to spare, something that’s rarely said about foldables – especially the thinner and lighter options on the market.
In comparison, the Galaxy Z Fold 7’s 4400mAh cell seems simply not up to scratch. Matching the capacity of the year-old Fold 6, the Fold 7’s battery life is fine, but it’s less than ideal considering the hardware it’s powering.
It’ll get you through the days with casual use, but with more moderate use, especially on the inner screen, you might find yourself reaching for a charger before bed.
Honor also wins in the charging department with support for boosted 66W charging compared to the Fold 7’s 25W support – though you’ll need an Honor-branded fast charger to achieve full speed from Honor’s foldable, something that doesn’t come in the box. You won’t get one in the Fold 7’s packaging either, but it’ll play nice with any regular USB-C PD charging brick.
Winner: Honor Magic V5
Final Thoughts
It’s a big year for Samsung’s foldable, offering a significant jump forward compared to last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 in practically every area, offering a much thinner, lighter foldable with better cameras and even more power under the hood – but it has been outshone by the Magic V5 in many respects.
The Magic V5 is 0.1mm thinner, but it’s more than that; the V5’s outer screen feels more like a regular phone than Samsung’s alternative, it offers a more balanced camera setup, the same top-end performance and, crucially, much better battery life thanks to the use of advanced silicon-carbon battery tech.
That said, the Z Fold 7 feels like the more refined device in terms of software, with an approach to Android that’s much easier to use with more foldable-focused features and functionality than Honor’s alternative.
That said, both are examples of foldables at the top of their game, and you likely won’t be disappointed with either in day-to-day use.