Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is at its best with an S Pen — but here's why I'm still disappointed

As you may have read in our review of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 , the new foldable phone has its upsides and downsides. But one thing the Fold is perfect for is a stylus.

The good news is that Samsung will sell you one that's compatible with its foldable in the form of the S Pen. But unfortunately, some key flaws remain that continue to impact using an S Pen with the Z Fold 6. As a result, the combination of this stylus with Samsung's foldable phone continues to feel like an afterthought.

I've spent almost two weeks using the Galaxy Z Fold 6 with Samsung's official S Pen Case, the easiest way to get a compatible S Pen with this new foldable (and one of our picks for the best Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 cases ). Since I'm a frequent doodler, it's been great having a notebook-sized canvas folded up in my pocket at all times. But it's also brought some long-standing issues into focus that I can only hope the Galaxy Z Fold 7 will finally fix a year from now.

Samsung's S Pen styluses are the best you can get on a phone, and arguably are better than even the still-great Apple Pencil for iPads. The physical button on the side is way more reliable than other styluses' tap gestures, too, plus Samsung's use of a soft stylus tip gives you better physical feedback than hard plastic on glass.

It's just a shame that to make the S Pen more compact, Samsung has flattened the S Pen's sides, which make it feel a little odd to hold compared to a traditional cylindrical stylus. And there are no remote features since this is a passive stylus without Bluetooth.

As well as providing responsive and smooth virtual inking, handwriting-to-text works well enough if you have the space on screen to write and neat-enough handwriting. And if you're artistically inclined then it's great for drawing. The new Sketch to Image feature is quite fun to play with, even if, like me, you're not an artistically talented person.

The one physical issue that hurt using styluses with older foldables is the central crease down the main display, which can make drawing across the screen a jumpy experience. But with the Z Fold 6 featuring a more compact hinge, you may feel the crease with the S Pen, but it doesn't interfere with your stroke as you pass over it. So kudos to Samsung for improving that.

The same old complaints

But using the Galaxy Z Fold 6 with an S Pen without storing the two separately still requires a case, and one that's sold separately at that, which is unfair on the user. Samsung has been innovating with its S Pen case design, with this year's design being the slimmest yet. But the best tablets, including Samsung's own Galaxy Tabs, still offer magnetic attachment points so you can keep stylus and device together. And the Galaxy S24 Ultra comes with a built-in slot for its S Pen.

The fact that only the inner screen works with the stylus seems stingy of Samsung too. I'm sure it would cost more to add a second digitizer, but since users are already paying close to $2,000 for the phone and stylus already, you can definitely swallow the cost of this yourself, Samsung.

All of this stings more when you consider how limited the other areas of innovation have been. If you're not that fussed about Samsung's Galaxy AI features, or the annual step up in performance due to new chipsets, there's not a huge amount that the Galaxy Z Fold 6 does differently to the Galaxy Z Fold 4 from two years ago.

Samsung's needed to overhaul the Galaxy Z Fold for years at this point, stubbornly making small tweaks while its competitors gain and overtake it in the best foldable phones race. The stylus is one of the sole benefits Samsung's foldable can claim exclusively, and yet its development seems to have frozen in place.

Implementing an onboard storage option for an S Pen on the Galaxy Z Fold series could be all Samsung would need to do to restake its claim on the top spot, but the phone maker seems reluctant to do so. And so I fear that in a year's time, I may be writing very similar things about the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and its S Pen.

More from Tom's Guide

• Samsung can't win the thin war as the Pixel 9 Pro Fold leaked to be even skinnier
• Galaxy Z Fold 6 vs. Galaxy Z Fold 5
• Galaxy Z Fold 6 hasn’t done enough to convince me to upgrade my Galaxy Z Fold 5