Though the Pixel Fold and Z Fold 4 share the same overall concept — a phone-sized device that opens up into a small tablet — they go about accomplishing it in different ways. The most obvious difference is the Z Fold 4 has a portrait-first approach: when you open the phone, the screen’s default mode is in a portrait orientation. The Pixel Fold is flipped 90 degrees: when you open it, the inside screen has a landscape orientation.

This difference has notable impact on the experience each device provides and determines the size and shape of the outer display. The Pixel Fold’s orientation allows it to have a shorter, wider, and more useful cover screen. Its familiar proportions just “look right”; apps run as expected, and it’s easy to type on it. The Samsung has a taller, narrower cover screen, which feels notably more cramped, and some apps have difficulty flowing their layouts on it.

But once you open the Pixel Fold, this landscape-first orientation often gets in the way. It’s not a problem for apps that are optimized for it (mostly Google’s own), and it’s ideal for watching video or playing most games. Split-screening two apps at the same time works well here, too. But a lot of third-party apps are not expecting a landscape-oriented phone screen, which leads them to launch in pillarboxed windows on the Pixel Fold. Rotating the phone 90 degrees often fixes the problem, and most apps can then fill the screen. But that means I spend a lot of time turning the Pixel Fold on its side to do everyday tasks, which gets tedious.

The Samsung doesn’t have this issue. Apps launched on its default orientation just work the vast majority of the time. The Z Fold requires rotating it 90 degrees for an optimal experience watching video or split-screening two apps, occasional but not primary activities for me. Most of my time spent on the phone is in single, vertical-scrolling, portrait-oriented apps, so I prefer the default mode to be the one that works best for most apps.

The landscape orientation of the Pixel Fold also allows it to work better in a half-folded, laptop-like shape. It’s nice to have this for propping the phone up when watching a video, but I personally do not use this feature very much on either phone, so the advantage of the Pixel Fold is lost on me.

For me, the whole point of buying a phone like this is to have that inside screen, not to spend most of my time using the outside display. The Z Fold 4’s outer screen is not as nice to use as the Pixel Fold’s, but it works well enough for the brief amount of time I spend on it. Its inside screen, however, is much better suited for the vast majority of Android apps and is more enjoyable to use as a result.

The two phones trade blows in other hardware areas, too. Despite having the same exact size inside screens, the Z Fold 4 is both lighter and smaller than the Pixel Fold. I noticed this difference every time I used the Pixel Fold — even though it’s only 20 grams more, the weight plus the larger footprint makes it more unwieldy. It’s just more comfortable to hold the Z Fold.

I didn’t observe much in the way of performance differences between the two devices, despite their different processors, but I did notice that the screens on the Samsung are a bit better than the Pixel’s. That’s not to say the Pixel’s are bad, but both of the Z Fold 4’s screens are brighter, which was immediately apparent when using the phones outdoors. It’s almost like the Pixel Fold is using screens from a generation or two ago, which I suspect it is since Samsung increased the brightness of its displays for the Z Fold 4.

The Z Fold 4 also has more predictable and reliable battery life than the Pixel Fold, which was all over the place in the week or so I’ve been using it. Sometimes I would be able to use it for five or six hours of screen time and still last to bedtime; other times, it would need a charge mid-day just to make it through dinner. Standby time on the Pixel seems to be really bad, which we observed across multiple test devices. The Z Fold also has louder, better-sounding speakers than the Pixel Fold and has both of them in the same “half” of the phone, as opposed to splitting them between the two halves like the Pixel does, so you’re less likely to block them when holding the phone. Both of those things are important when one of the most common use cases for these phones is watching a lot of video.

Google does have one absolute advantage over the Z Fold 4: the Pixel Fold is able to close completely flat, with no visible gap between the halves like on the Samsung. It’s also noticeably thinner when closed, which makes it slip into a pocket a little easier. It’s the one area where I wish my Z Fold 4 was better. But all reports indicate that Samsung will catch up here with the Z Fold 5, due to be released in about a month.

The Pixel Fold also has a better camera system than the Z Fold 4, which isn’t a surprise. I’ll lay my biases on the table here: I’m deeply bored by phone cameras at this point, and the differences between the majority of them are minute or only seen in edge cases, so this advantage for the Pixel does not matter much to me. If it does to you, I encourage you to go read Allison’s Pixel Fold review, which has lots of camera samples and details about it. I do like the longer 5x telephoto on the Google phone, but otherwise, they both perform the same function for me.