Most people look at foldable devices as a way to be more productive when they don’t have a laptop or tablet handy. I bought mine to completely replace my laptop. As strange as it sounds, I find it difficult to go back to a traditional PC.

I now only carry one device with me

As someone who works from home and adjusts to the different schedules of my family members, I have to be flexible. Sometimes I work best at the grandparents’ kitchen table while the kids play. Sometimes in the library. Sometimes in the car.

I used to always carry a shoulder bag. In it I carried my laptop, a charger, a hotspot and a mouse. If I decided to use a tablet instead of a laptop, I also carried a Bluetooth keyboard. Sometimes I also carried a heavy DSLR.

Now that I’m used to working with a foldable device, I can leave the bag at home. I keep my Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 (which we tested) in my pocket along with an S Pen when I leave the house. My phone has all the features, power and capabilities I need to do my work.

Where and how I work has changed

I was already used to working from all sorts of places with my laptop. I wrote for years in a public library when my son was in preschool. I wrote in my car while it charged at a free public Level 2 charging station. I worked at the picnic tables in nearby parks.

Now, the list of places has grown exponentially. A foldable device allows me to write while I walk around. I also regularly use voice-to-text with my phone to give my fingers a break. This means I can work while walking around on the porch, driveway, or another quiet space. I’ve written while sitting on a bench in the woods, looking out at the nearby creek. I jot down a few notes while waiting in line to pick up my kids after school.

I’ve also become a huge fan of apps that are compatible with my S Pen. There’s a qualitatively different feeling to writing down ideas by hand than typing them, which is why I use Samsung Notes on a daily basis.

Returning to the laptop has severely limited my ability to work, and although I can technically still use voice recognition on a laptop, I’m mostly hunched over the keyboard in front of me by default.

Accessories are everything

Although I can type on my phone’s large internal screen much more comfortably and quickly than on a regular phone, that’s not what I use the device for most of my work or play. I’ve bought a lot of accessories.

If I want a desktop, I connect my phone to a monitor. If I want a laptop, I connect my phone to a lapdock.

Pairing a Bluetooth controller and wearing AR glasses has become my favorite way to play games. I have portable monitors in different rooms of my house, as some models are inexpensive and take up minimal space. My wife and I put one of them in bed to watch movies together.

The beauty is that none of these accessories have an artificial end of life that comes from no longer receiving software updates. They’re just hardware.

My phone is faster than my old laptop

Book-style flip phones are some of the most expensive premium phones you can buy. Mine has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor. When my phone came out in 2023, it was the most powerful mobile chip available for Android phones.

That processor, paired with 12GB of RAM, is absolutely powerful. Everything I threw at this phone loaded quickly. With a refresh rate of up to 120Hz, everything feels smooth. As any YouTube review will tell you, this phone can easily handle demanding games like Genshin Impact.

I can’t say any of that about the laptop it replaced. Don’t get me wrong; my laptop was never a powerhouse, but many of us don’t have gaming PCs or professional ultrabooks. $400 Windows PCs or Chromebooks feel significantly slower than a modern high-end phone.

Is a foldable phone more powerful than a high-end PC? Not really. But thanks to the good memory management of mobile devices, using one can offer a level of speed that most PCs don’t quite match.

The foldable Samsung is the only one that can do everything

I chose a Galaxy Z Fold over the competition because it’s the most powerful device available right now. Sure, other options might have better cameras, more RAM, or faster charging speeds, but they lack lesser-known features that allowed me to go all-in on one device.

I’ve already mentioned the S Pen, which I love. It’s become an important part of my workflow. A stylus provides mouse-like precision and allows you to hover over links, navigate drop-down menus, and perform other tasks that are awkward with your fingers.

More importantly, the Z Fold has an Android-based desktop mode called Samsung DeX, which activates whenever I connect my phone to an external display.

If a task requires more space than my phone’s internal screen provides, I don’t have to switch between devices—I can just connect my phone to an external display. This also means if I want to watch a movie at my parents’ house, I just cast DeX to their Miracast-enabled TV and stream the video from my own account.

The OnePlus Open and Pixel 9 Pro Fold only support screen mirroring when connected to an external display, which means your phone has to stay open and black bars usually spoil the experience. The first-generation Pixel Fold doesn’t support connecting to an external display at all.

Samsung’s multitasking is also more comprehensive than its competitors, and it offers better app compatibility across the board. The OnePlus Open has an innovative Open Canvas mode that I really like, but not every app works with it, and even fewer apps support floating window display.

A few months with a foldable device has changed the way I work, play, watch videos, and more. Overall, I now have less to carry around and a different set of accessories in the house. When I unpack my laptop today, it feels like I’m going back in time because I’m giving up so much flexibility.