The Motorola Razr Fold proves skipping Elite silicon was a wise transfer

The brand new Motorola Razr Fold is an intriguing, if not fairly excellent, ultra-premium foldable. An enormous 6,000mAh battery and quick 80W charging give it some key benefits over its rivals, however not everyone seems to be satisfied by the telephone’s weight, cameras, or worth for cash.

However throughout our hands-on time with the telephone, we’ve been notably impressed with the foldable as a multi-tasking powerhouse. Android’s taskbar and 90:10 cut up views assist, and the Razr Fold prompts you to make common use of them through an “Open in split-screen mode” pop-up, for instance. However powering these multitasking capabilities is a extremely performant Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5.

Eagle-eyed readers could have observed there’s no Elite moniker hooked up to this chip. It’s not the powerhouse 8 Elite Gen 5 you’ll discover in top-tier flagships, however slightly a trimmed-down and barely cheaper premium-tier choice with decrease clock speeds and one fewer GPU slice. At first, this may appear to be a big downgrade for a super-premium $1,899 foldable. Nonetheless, a better take a look at the benchmarks reveals that this might need been a wise alternative on Motorola’s half.

Motorola Razr Fold benchmarks

Eyeballing GeekBench 6’s CPU scores, we see outcomes which might be very aggressive with different standard foldables within the US market. It bests the Google Pixel 10 Professional Fold by a noticeable margin in each single-core and multi-core scores. It’s additionally sizzling on the heels of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 in each outcomes, confirming simply why this handset feels so nippy when multitasking.

Having a look at our two key stress exams, 3DMark’s Wild Life Excessive and Photo voltaic Bay, there’s slightly spectacular information on the graphics entrance as properly.

The Motorola Razr Fold completely flies previous the Pixel 10 Professional Fold once more, which isn’t all that shocking given the lackluster graphics efficiency of the Tensor G5. Extra spectacular is that the Moto may be very aggressive with the very best scores of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and truly wins out over long-term stress exams.

The important thing to the Razr Fold’s success is decrease temperatures. It reached a peak of simply 37.9°C and a mean of simply 33.5°C within the Wild Life Excessive check. That’s comfortably cooler than the Z Fold 7’s 39.2°C peak and 37.2°C common, and even runs cooler than the much less highly effective Pixel Fold, which peaked at 39.9°C and averaged 34.8°C in the identical check.

The Photo voltaic Bay outcomes are usually not fairly as favorable however nonetheless factors to an identical theme. The Razr’s ray-tracing efficiency takes a much bigger hit because of the lacking GPU slice, however the telephone retains a temperature benefit that retains it forward by the tip of the check.

The Moto foldable is fairly gradual to heat up, and with peak temperatures saved properly under 40°C, Motorola’s newest foldable not solely stays cool to the contact whereas gaming but in addition delivers extra of its most GPU efficiency for longer. We’ve been capable of play back-to-back rounds of COD Cellular with Very Excessive graphics and Max body charge settings with out the telephone warming up noticeably in any respect. That’s seldom realized within the foldable kind issue.

If you would like a tough approximation of the temperatures we’ve seen from the 8 Elite Gen 5, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Extremely hits a toasty 41.5°C in Wild Life Excessive and a peak of 43.9°C in Photo voltaic Bay. Extra alarmingly, the OPPO Discover X9 Extremely and Xiaomi 17 Extremely attain 48°C and 49.5°C, respectively, at their highest temperatures, that are too sizzling to deal with. The 8 Elite Gen 5 is a sizzling chip when pushed to extremes.

A foldable telephone with a thinner physique and fewer room for warmth dissipation would undoubtedly battle to resist temperatures approaching 50°C. Both that or Motorola must throttle again efficiency a lot tougher to maintain the telephone cool.

Whereas the Motorola Razr Fold gained’t be topping the benchmark rankings, the truth that it performs at a comparable stage to final 12 months’s Snapdragon 8 Elite — already a powerhouse chip — whereas operating cooler than rival foldables places the telephone in superb standing. Whether or not you’re powering by means of a number of apps or planning on an extended gaming session, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 has you lined.

This information reaffirms what I’ve mentioned earlier than — we’re struggling to seek out use instances that may really push at this time’s top-tier smartphone chipsets to the restrict, anyway. Between ever-higher temperatures and elevated energy draw, at this time’s peak efficiency is usually non permanent at finest. That is very true in constrained kind components like clamshell and booklet foldables.

Whereas futureproofing is sweet to have, till we’re utilizing our telephones as desktop PCs or changing our AAA gaming consoles, choosing a chip with the very best steadiness of efficiency, temperatures, and battery life is usually the higher wager. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 looks as if an important decide in that regard, and it really works out very properly within the new Razr Fold.