Survey proves most of you want a foldable — just not at full price

Foldables aren’t exactly cheap thrills. Most new flagships will set you back the best part of $2,000, and the triple-panel options are north of that mark. The price tags are understandable, even if they’re off-putting, but they also make the idea of picking one up for $560 feel almost suspiciously reasonable. When my colleague Rita El Khoury spotted the original Google Pixel Fold going for that price and spent a week using it, she argued it might be one of the most interesting deals in tech right now. Naturally, we wanted to know if you would actually pay that much for a three-year-old foldable?

In her piece, Rita wasn’t exactly arguing that the 2023 device could still be a flagship killer. Her pitch was on value for money, praising the design, solid Android 16 experience, and surprisingly capable multitasking on the inner display. That said, she didn’t gloss over the compromises, such as the noticeable crease, the Tensor G2’s heat, and long-term durability concerns. But, in her view, it delivers most of the modern foldable experience at a fraction of today’s asking prices.

We asked your view in the form of a poll in Rita’s article, so let’s take a look at the consensus view.

As the chart shows, most of you share Rita’s thinking. The largest slice of voters, at 32.5%, said they’d pay $560 and happily make the Pixel Fold their daily phone. Another 21.3% would grab it as a secondary device or just to try out foldables without spending flagship money, and 12.9% said they already own one. On the flip side, 14.4% want it to drop even lower before they’d bite, while the rest wouldn’t be tempted at all.

Taken together, that’s more than half of you who see the appeal at this price, either as a main phone or a relatively low-risk experiment. That’s a surprising number for a smartphone style that is already something of a niche, and it just goes to show that most users are looking for value over perfection. For the record, if any of those people are reading, the Pixel Fold is still available at this price on Amazon via the widget below.

The comments section of Rita’s article mostly backed up the idea that price is the real game-changer, and that stepping back a generation or two for a steal is a popular move. Reader John said he “never could justify the $1,700 or more launch prices,” but picked one up for $320 and called it “an absolutely fantastic phone,” adding that it still felt fresh in 2026. Others shared similar deals in the $379 to $480 range and praised the passport-style design, with more than one reader saying they love the form factor.

The OG Fold obviously isn’t the only bargain foldable on the market. One commenter chose a refurbished Galaxy Z Fold 5 instead, while Keith described a rough experience with a newer Fold model, calling it “the worst phone I ever owned.” Still, the sentiment is clear: foldable phones are certainly tempting for most, but the four-figure price tags make them hard to justify for many people’s budgets.