Samsung’s Galaxy Z TriFold is finally going up for sale in the US this Friday, but as expected, it won’t come cheap. You’ll have to shell out $2,900 before tax for the company’s first tri-folding smartphone — nearly $1,000 more than Samsung’s already-expensive Galaxy Z Fold 7.
To some people (early adopters, road warriors), $2,900 is a small price to pay for as futuristic a device as this. The Galaxy Z TriFold appears to fix plenty of the issues some users — myself included — have had with the mainline Fold series. That larger, tablet-shaped interior display should make all the difference, properly expanding real estate for movies on the go and giving more space for productivity tools while working from a cramped airplane seat.
But the TriFold is bound to arrive with plenty of compromises for those in search of a portable, pocketable 10-inch display, and the biggest one is undoubtedly the price. $2,900 is a lot for any gadget, let alone a smartphone, but if this all-in-one promise is convincing you to hit “Add to Cart” on Friday, allow me to just remind you some of the other things you can buy for that price, smartphone included.
First of all, if all you’re doing is looking to buy a new smartphone… literally any other option you’ll find lining the shelves at Best Buy will be cheaper. That includes Samsung’s own Galaxy Z Fold 7, which, while not as cutting-edge as the TriFold, comes with a tried-and-true formula that also happens to fit a whole lot better in your pocket.
But this isn’t about just buying a new phone — this is about buying a new phone along with a bunch of other gadgets designed to emulate what you’d get out of Samsung’s $3,000 foldable.
For example, let’s say you’re a gamer, and you’re looking to pick up the Galaxy Z TriFold to play everything from Genshin Impact to Balatro to a vast collection of (legally obtained) emulated titles. Great! For just $2,450 before tax — $450 less than the TriFold — you can pick up a Pixel 9a, a Nintendo Switch 2 with Mario Kart World, a PS5 with disc drive, and LG’s 65-inch B5 OLED TV.
Mix and match the phone, TV, and console selections as much as you want. You’re still going to come out well below the TriFold’s MSRP, and with nearly half a grand to spare, that’s a pretty good chunk of cash to spend on games.
Looking for mobile productivity? Consider grabbing Samsung’s own Galaxy S25 Ultra — complete with S Pen — alongside an M4-equipped MacBook Air! This shopping cart doesn’t even break the $2,000 figure before tax, so if you need more storage or RAM in your laptop, or you’d rather swap to a fully-fledged MacBook Pro, well, by all means, you have the headroom to pull it off.
Oh wait, I get it. You wanted a foldable, right? Here’s your updated cart — still well under that $2,900 limit.
One of the biggest selling points of the TriFold is how it rolls a laptop, smartphone, and tablet into one device. But for $70 less, you can score a Galaxy S25 Ultra, a 13-inch MacBook Air, and Samsung’s 11-inch Galaxy Tab S11 (I had wanted to price out the Ultra, but it’s not officially on Amazon at the moment). It’s a lot more weight in your bag if you’re carrying around all three devices at once, but we’re talking about a lot more raw horsepower too — not to mention two displays that both dwarf what you’ll find on the TriFold.
And look, why keep it just to laptops and computers? That Galaxy S25 Ultra pairs perfectly with something like Sony’s RX100 VII camera, and all together, you’ll score both for $2,750. (I’ll spare you the screenshot.)
I’m not trying to take away anything from the technical achievement that something like the Galaxy Z TriFold demonstrates, nor am I trying to tell road warriors that they need to carry 10 pounds of gear on their back at all times. Rather, I think it’s worth everyone considering just how much $3,000 can buy — even in an economy increasingly wrecked by an ongoing RAM shortage. It’s a lot of money to buy a stake in a potential future for smartphones, without a whole lot of obvious, immediate upside. Just remember what the first-gen Galaxy Fold looked like compared to Samsung’s seventh-gen model.
Personally, though? I’ll be saving that $3,000 for whoever brings the first rollable to market. That‘s the real future of mobile computing.
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