Does the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra make the most use of its screen space? I streamed a bunch of movies and TV shows to find out

When it comes to streaming movies and TV shows, a larger screen is usually considered the better option. But, that only really works if the screen shape actually conforms to the aspect ratio of the content in question. That's not an issue for most phones or tablet screens, but what about the larger, oddly-shaped foldable displays like the one on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra?

I've been testing the Z Fold 8 Ultra for the past few weeks, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that watching video on the larger display means I also have to contend with large areas of blank space around the video. This can be rather irritating, especially in brighter environments that highlight both the display crease and my own reflection.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra: $2,098 at Amazon

The price may have gone up (again), there are are still plenty of reasons to pick up the Z Fold 8 Ultra. There's a large 8-inch foldable display hiding away, alongside a 6.5-inch cover display, trio of main cameras (with a 200MP main lens), powerful performance and excellent battery life.

Amazon is currently giving away a $350 gift card with each purchase too.

View Deal

But as many people will no doubt point out, there are multiple ways to watch videos on the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra. There's the cover display which, while narrower than most phones, offers a traditional viewing experience. The foldable display can also be oriented in portrait or landscape modes, and switching between the two flips the aspect ratio.

While this may not seem like a big deal, the Z Fold 8 Ultra isn't a perfect square, and that means the flip also changes how video content sits on your phone. But which mode is the better way to watch stuff? I tested the Z Fold 8 Ultra's three viewing experiences against the iPhone 17 Pro Max to find out.

Galaxy Z Fold 8 (WIDE) vs Fold 8 Ultra: Which One Should You Actually Buy? - YouTube

Watch On

How I tested the screens

It's easy to load up some content on a screen and rely on vibes alone to make your conclusion, but I took things a step further by actively measuring everything on screen. This started with the screen itself, measuring between the bezels and calculating the amount of screen space that is actually available.

I should caveat at this point that this is only a rough calculation, because all four phones have curved corners. This is less of an issue on the Z Fold 8 Ultra because those curves are very slight. However the iPhone 17 Pro Max's corners are larger and more rounded, which means the total screen area is slightly smaller than the math suggests.

Once the total area of each display was calculated, I got to work streaming, throwing up a bunch of different kinds of content and measuring how much screen space they took up. Content included:

• "X-Men (2000)" (2:39:1) purchased on YouTube
• "X-Men-97" (2:35:1) on Disney Plus
• "The Emperor's New Groove" (16:9) on Disney Plus
• "Scrubs" (2001) (4:3) on Disney Plus
• "Avengers: Endgame" (2:39:1) on Disney Plus
• "Avengers: Endgame IMAX Enhanced Edition" (1:9:1) on Disney Plus
• Various vertical videos on TikTok

I set up each video playing on the four screen types, then measured how large each video was. With that in hand, I was able to work out just how much screen space they actually used, and thus, how much space is just sitting there going to waste. Crucially, this means I can figure out the best option for watching content in something close to a full-screen experience.

I should also note that while a lot of streaming platforms offer a "zoom to fill" option on smart phones and tablets, I have not taken this into account since that essentially crops the video and means you don't see everything that's going on.

iPhone 17 Pro Max

The iPhone 17 Pro Max has roughly 17.6 square inches of screen space available, but it seems as though a bunch of the tested content struggles to fill up that space by default. The most efficient use of the screen comes from TikTok, which takes up 92.94% of the screen. This shouldn't be a huge surprise given the platform's vertical video feed that can take up almost the full length of the screen.

When it comes to horizontal video, the content doesn't fare nearly as well. The worst offender was "Scrubs," though this shouldn't really be a surprise since the early seasons were broadcast in the (then standard) 4:3 aspect ratio. That box-like shape isn't great at filling up wider-screen devices, reflected by the fact it only filled 61.41% of the available space.

Widescreen live action movies didn't do so well either. Both movies have been cropped vertically, and can't take full advantage of the landscape height, but they don't fail to take advantage of the iPhone's width and crop that way as well. In fact, all the movies suffered from this and left at least 1.1 inches of wasted space across both sides of the display. In the end, though, both movies wasted only slightly less space than "Scrubs" did, taking up 61.95% of the usable screen space

The IMAX edition of "Avengers: Endgame" fared a little better, with the IMAX scenes using up more of the vertical space that the standard aspect ratio. Because of this, the movie, along with the bizarrely proportioned "X-Men-97," used up 77.95% of the iPhone's available screen space. This was closely followed by the 16:9 "Emperor's New Groove," with 76.53%, a difference accounted for by a slightly shorter and narrower video.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra (Cover Display)

Looking at the results for the Z Fold 8 Ultra's cover display, and you'll see a couple of oddities. Both "X-Men 97" and the standard edition of "Avengers: Endgame" both took up 100% of the screen space. Which is certainly good, though this made me pause and wonder what's going on.

Checking the measurements of the cover display versus the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and I noticed that the video was actually smaller on the iPhone — despite the fact the 17 Pro Max has almost 2.5 extra square inches of available screen space.

Weirder still was the fact that my Google-purchased copy of "X-Men" was smaller than "Endgame," taking up a paltry 53.19% of the screen. They were both the same size on the iPhone, but the Z Fold 8 Ultra decided that the black bars must be preserved for this particular movie. This appears to be a YouTube issue, because X-Men on Disney Plus expanded to the full size of the display, just like Endgame did.

The IMAX version of Endgame obviously came out a little worse, since the taller image requires more space than the 8 Ultra's cover display allows — causing black bars at either side of the screen. That said, it still used up 87.54% of the available screen.

16:9 content like "The Emperor's New Groove" fared a lot worse here, though, since the narrow screen forced the video to shrink at the edges even more than an IMAX movie. Likewise the design meant "Scrubs" left a load more wasted space thanks to its square-ish aspect ratio. Both videos used up a respective 71.55% and 57.74% of the available screen space.

As for TikTok, this result did surprise me. The vertical videos used up all the available width when playing, but they didn't take full advantage of the screen length. Which again, I assume is down to the 8 Ultra's narrow cover display, and means TikTok only used 76.94% of the available screen space.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra Foldable Display (Portrait)

The Z Fold 8 Ultra's larger display is the size of two cover displays side by side, which should mean a larger video to watch, right? Well, apparently not. At least not when the phone is in portrait mode. The size of the screen means there is a lot more wasted space, but the videos themselves aren't automatically bigger than they appear on the cover display either.

Both "X-Men-97" and the standard version of "Avengers: Endgame" ended up being smaller than their counterparts on the Ultra's cover display — in terms of height, width and overall area. Both used a respective 41.08% and 37.71% of the available screen space.

That only worse performer was X-Men on YouTube, which used up 37.04% thanks to the way YouTube presents the video. That means almost two thirds of the screen is going unused. However, the video itself is larger than what I saw on the 8 Ultra's cover screen and the iPhone 17 Pro Max. So there is still a benefit to using the large screen.

There is an awful lot of wasted screen space watching in portrait mode. "The Emperor's New Groove" only used 47.33% of the screen, while the IMAX edition of "Endgame" took up just over half (50.34%). TikTok also suffered, using up 55.63% and showed off a video that was both shorter and wider than the one from the iPhone.

The major winner here is "Scrubs," thanks to the aspect ratio, which means it took up 67.51% of the screen and offered a much larger overall image than we've seen from it so far.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra Foldable Display (Landscape)

The key benefit to watching video in landscape mode is that the entirety of the display crease gets covered up by whatever you're watching, which makes it nearly impossible to see. The other main advantage to watching video this way is that the videos are larger (and less wasteful) than in portrait mode

The biggest winner is again, "Scrubs," or any other older TV show that was filmed with a 4:3 aspect ratio. The show took up 83.74% of the total screen space, over 16% more than it did in portrait mode. This obviously means that the video is noticeably larger, though the standard definition image does not look great if you're getting up close with the screen.

Most of the other videos take full advantage of the extra width, with the only exception being "The Emperor's New Groove," which is about 0.4-inches narrower. However the extra height afforded to 16:9 movie means it uses up 58.33% of the screen, compared to the 46.46% utilized by X-Men and the standard version of "Avengers: Endgame."

"X-Men-97" is 0.2-inches taller in this configuration, meaning its total raises to 50.09%, while the IMAX enhanced edition of "Endgame" fills up 58.88% on account of its extra height.

The only real loser here is TikTok, which is shorter and narrower in landscape mode, and wastes an extra 11% of the screen compared to portrait mode. That also makes sense, since this orientation is wider than it is long, and that means the vertical videos get squashed down compared to viewing in portrait mode.

Verdict

With the exception of TikTok, landscape mode actually seems to have the largest overall video size of all four display configurations, barring one. The way "Avengers: Endgame" is presented on the cover display means it is slightly taller on the outer screen, by one tenth of an inch.

The cover display's aspect ratio means it seems to be uniquely suited to playing live action theatrical releases. Assuming the service you're using actually makes the most of the space, and doesn't do what YouTube did with my copy of X-Men and squashes the whole thing down for no reason.

As for TikTok, it's clear that the Z Fold 8 Ultra's foldable display is not as well-suited to vertical video as non-folding screens. Likewise, those of you that are bothered about black areas of screen around your video, you may want to avoid foldables for the time being. If you need a larger image to watch, you should probably invest in some kind of tablet.

But now the one question I have is this: How different would the results have been if I'd had a Galaxy Z Fold 8 to compare everything to? Samsung has positioned the passport-shaped device as the ideal device for streaming and media after all, but that face-off is going to have to wait.

Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Subscribe to Tom's Guide on YouTube and follow us on TikTok.

More from Tom’s Guide

• I used a thermal camera to see how hot the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra gets compared to the Galaxy S26 Ultra — here's what happened
• I tested the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra vs Galaxy S26 Ultra for 2 weeks — here’s the one I’d buy
• I just tried the new Samsung DeX on the Galaxy Z Fold 8 — and it has one huge upgrade