I tried out the Pixel 11 Pro Fold and Google still can't convince me to buy a foldable

It’s been a while since I last used a book-style foldable. My previous dalliance was the OPPO Find N2 back in 2022, and while I was impressed by how far the form factor had already come, I ultimately didn’t see enough reason to make the switch. Like many other potential converts, the drawbacks simply weren’t worth the small benefits.

Four years on, I’m back to find out whether things have finally changed with the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold. I’ve spent plenty of time with Pixel Pro flagships in the intervening years and have generally been a fan of Google’s software, cameras, and even some of its latest AI-focused approaches. But does that familiar Pixel formula work when you double the screen and fold the whole thing in half? More importantly, has the foldable finally become something I actually want to use every day?

Google has an eye for design

Right out of the box, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold makes a rather compelling first impression. This is an immaculately built piece of hardware, further elevated by the stylish olive-green finish and metallic accents on my unit. Google has also struck an impressive balance between thinness and heft. It never feels overly weighty or cumbersome, whether folded shut or opened out, and while its closed profile is inevitably a little thicker than that of a conventional flagship, it doesn’t feel appreciably bulkier in the hand or pocket. I’m not bothered by the slight difference in thickness between the front and back panels. In fact, I’ve been genuinely surprised by just how natural and manageable the Pixel 11 Pro Fold feels to use one- or two-handed, even Samsung’s latest Ultra foldable is a fraction lighter.

Perhaps more importantly, it feels considerably more robust than the early book-style and clamshell foldables I last put through their paces several years ago. Gone are the wobbly, confidence-sapping hinges and the sense that you’re handling something that needs to be treated with kid gloves. There are no screen films to fret over, either. With an IP68 rating for protection against dust and water ingress, this foldable is designed for the realities of everyday life, rather than something to be admired from a safe distance.

There is, however, one conspicuous reminder that foldable displays still haven’t quite escaped their compromises: the inner screen’s crease. It’s readily visible when viewed even slightly off-center, with reflections — and particularly dark mode — making it considerably more pronounced. It’s not something that constantly demands your attention, but neither does it feel like a particularly meaningful step forward from some of the near-“crease-less” foldables I experimented with several years ago.

Still, that’s a relatively minor blemish on what is otherwise a reassuringly polished package. Whatever lingering apprehensions I had about returning to foldables have, for the most part, been put firmly to rest. The Pixel 11 Pro Fold doesn’t merely feel like a fragile piece of cutting-edge tech; it feels like a phone I can actually live with.

Average specs at an obscene price

My problem with the Pixel 11 Pro Fold isn’t its aesthetic hardware, but what’s underneath it. Stack Google’s ultra-premium foldable against the small selection of rivals on the market — including its own predecessor — and it’s surprisingly difficult to find an area where it clearly outguns the competition.

Battery life and screen-on time are a mixed bag compared with last year’s model, partly thanks to the smaller battery, while the Fold loses out to rival devices in our camera capture and Zoom battery tests. Granted, these are deliberately punishing tests conducted with the internal display exclusively, and my real-world experience has been rather better. Used like a regular phone for a good portion of the day, the battery generally gets me through to bedtime. Still, competing foldables offer more breathing room on particularly busy days. Charging is another sore point, taking an agonizing 80 minutes to reach full capacity compared with just 52 minutes for the excellent Motorola Razr Fold.

Then there’s performance. Graphics performance from the new Tensor G6 processor is so far off the pace that it borders on parody, made all the more embarrassing by the fact that last year’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold actually comes out ahead in 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme stress test. My review unit also suffered from graphics glitches in Genshin Impact that initially rendered the game unplayable. Google quickly planned a fix, and a subsequent update appears to have resolved the glitching, if not the underlying performance deficit. At this point, you have to start wondering exactly where that $1,899 is going — because it certainly isn’t being spent on raw performance. Of course, this price-performance delta is a factor for any Pixel Pro phone, but even more so when we’re almost at $2,000.

I’m not entirely convinced by Google’s traditional camera strength, either. In typical Pixel fashion, my pictures are almost invariably well exposed, with highlights under control and plenty of shadow detail intact. It’s difficult to fault the consistency. The problem is that this conservative approach can leave images looking rather flat, lacking the color, contrast, and punch that make photos from other flagship phones pop. You can find the full-res samples in this Google Drive folder.

Google has at least given users a new way around some of this with Camera Looks. The feature lets you replace Google’s standard processing with customizable filters. The results are reasonably restrained by default, although you can save considerably more aggressive presets if that’s your preference. It’s a neat way to sidestep some of Google’s signature processing, but it’s frustrating that these adjustments can’t be refined further after you’ve taken the shot.

Unfortunately, Looks can’t paper over the more persistent shortcomings in the camera system. Pixel’s portrait photography remains a below-par experience in my book. A modest crop into the finer details is often enough to expose the illusion; bokeh edge detection is highly questionable around both people and background objects. Skin can look overly harsh in non-ideal lighting, and hair is often sharpened to the point of looking unnatural. Low-light photography and the ultrawide are another weak spot: images from the smaller sensors can lack detail, show more noise, and struggle with focus in situations where a flagship-tier camera should be more dependable.

We’ve come to accept compromises in foldable cameras, particularly as manufacturers chase ever-thinner designs. There’s simply less room for the large sensors and elaborate optics found in conventional flagships. Even so, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold’s camera hardware doesn’t compare especially favorably even with the aging Pixel 7 Pro on paper, and its results reinforce the impression that you’re shooting with a phone that’s a generation — perhaps more — behind the very best camera phones.

The cameras are good enough for a foldable, but noticeably compromised compared with conventional flagships and Google’s other Pixel 11 Pro models. At $1,899, “competent” isn’t a particularly compelling selling point. The camera certainly isn’t the reason I’d buy the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, and considering camera performance is typically a big deal for Pixels, that’s a huge knock.

Can I find a use for a foldable display?

As someone who admittedly hasn’t dabbled in booklet foldables since their earliest iterations, I came into this review wondering whether the Pixel 11 Pro Fold could genuinely change the way I use a smartphone. I’ve been scouring for moments when the larger canvas suddenly makes something possible, easier, or simply better than it is on a conventional phone. I can’t say I found very many.

Initial impressions were positive, at least. The large-screen approach feels considerably more refined than it did a few years ago. Flicking between the cover and inner displays is effortless, and the apps and games I tested generally handled the larger 1:1 aspect ratio well — or at least did their best to make use of the extra space. There are multiple ways to launch split-screen multitasking, whether through the app drawer, taskbar, or recent apps, making it straightforward enough to run two apps side by side. I was even pleasantly surprised to discover that I could drag an image directly from Google Photos into Docs, skipping the usual copy-and-paste faff. It’s a small touch, but one that demonstrates how these larger form factors are finally starting to feel intuitive rather than experimental.

The Fold can genuinely be a potent multitasking machine. As someone without Android Auto, I also found the larger navigation display surprisingly useful on days out. There are moments when that extra screen real estate really does make the phone feel more capable.

The problem is that many of the multitasking features that could truly elevate the experience still feel conspicuously absent. When I first opened Gmail, for example, it defaulted to the standard phone layout rather than the much more useful two-pane interface. It eventually switched to the proper layout after I restarted the phone, at which point catching up on half a day’s worth of email became remarkably painless. But why should I have to restart the phone to get there?

I’m also not convinced by Google’s Flex Mode as a general-purpose multimedia solution. Propping the phone up and placing a video on the upper half of the display sounds useful in theory, but support isn’t universal, and the experience varies considerably between apps. In practice, I’d much rather see a media app intelligently occupy one side of the larger display. More broadly, I’ve found the 1:1 inner screen surprisingly disappointing for multimedia — at least compared with what I imagined a huge foldable display would offer.

Modern video is the obvious example. The screen is simply too tall for most widescreen content, leaving you staring at enormous black bars. Games face a different problem: many aren’t optimized for such an unusual aspect ratio, so you’re often rendering more vertical space without gaining a correspondingly wider field of view. That means more work for an already underpowered GPU, while controls can end up pushed further toward the edges and harder to reach. Reading is perhaps the strongest use case, but even here the Fold’s unusually thin profile makes it less comfortable to hold for long sessions, while partially closing the display to improve your grip brings that conspicuous crease right back into view.

These aren’t all necessarily failures of Google’s execution; they’re largely inherent to the phone/tablet hybrid itself. That said, Google doesn’t always help matters. The 1:1 aspect ratio can leave familiar interfaces looking downright bizarre. The camera app, for example, rearranges and repositions familiar controls into places that feel anything but familiar. Other apps that fall back to a full-screen layout can be equally awkward, forcing you to stretch your thumbs into uncomfortable positions just to reach basic controls. You can configure individual apps to retain their native phone aspect ratio, but doing so only reinforces how hit-and-miss the large-screen experience remains — particularly on a device costing $1,899.

And then there’s Gemini.

Like every recent Pixel, the Fold is ultimately a vehicle for Google’s larger ambition: putting an increasingly capable AI agent in everyone’s pocket. The trouble is that this vision feels at odds with the hardware sitting in my hands. At its best, Gemini takes care of tasks for you, reducing the need for the very screen real estate the Fold is designed to provide.

A large display is undeniably handy when you’re flicking between hotel options, comparing details, and keeping track of a booking. But Gemini can increasingly do much of that legwork for you. Likewise, who needs a gargantuan canvas for rough document editing when Gemini Live can take a dictated first draft, or Edit by Voice can handle the fiddly business of cropping and refining a photo?

That’s not to say the Fold’s big screen is pointless. Far from it. When an app is properly optimized, the extra space can be genuinely fantastic. But Google’s own AI ambitions are steadily changing what we need a smartphone screen to do in the first place. If you’re fully invested in the latest Pixel AI features, you arguably need that enormous inner display even less than I expected.

For me, that’s the fundamental problem with the Fold. It is unquestionably more capable when opened up, but I’m still waiting for the moment when the huge screen feels indispensable rather than merely advantageous.

Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold review verdict: Should you buy it?

I was more than willing to accept the odd compromise for the novelty — and, hopefully, the usefulness — of a large foldable display. But after three weeks with the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, I’ve come away underwhelmed as often as I’ve been impressed, particularly when this year’s increasingly accomplished foldable rivals are taken into account.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra ($2099.99 at Amazon), for example, closes the gap with traditional flagships thanks to an improved main camera, packs a larger silicon-carbon battery, and leaves the Pixel trailing for performance. Meanwhile, the Motorola Razr Fold ($1899 at Motorola) delivers excellent battery life, much faster charging, solid cameras, and some clever multitasking features of its own for roughly the same asking price.

Even Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 ($1899.99 at Amazon) makes a compelling alternative if you’re prepared to sacrifice a telephoto camera. Its 4:3 inner display is considerably better suited to watching content, too. And if money is no object, Chinese foldables such as the Honor Magic V6 continue to push the hardware envelope with fewer compromises.

The Pixel 11 Pro Fold is beautifully made, and its software is more polished than the foldables of a few years ago. But beyond that, if you’re more intrigued by a book-style foldable than I am, I’m still struggling to find a compelling reason to choose it over its rivals. You can get better battery life, faster charging, substantially stronger gaming performance, or more capable cameras elsewhere. The Fold’s hardware team has delivered a wonderfully refined device, but it hasn’t delivered a particularly compelling one.

So, who is the Pixel 11 Pro Fold actually for? I’d say it’s a niche within a niche: Google devotees with $1,899 to spend on a foldable, who love Pixel’s software, make heavy use of Gemini, and don’t mind Google’s conservative approach to photography. For everyone else, there are simply better ways to spend that kind of money.

Despite my best efforts, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold hasn’t convinced me that I need a foldable. And unless you have a specific use for that enormous inner display, I’d save the money and buy the Pixel 11 Pro XL instead.