Motorola Razr Fold proves ditching elite silicon was a smart move

The new Motorola Razr Fold is an interesting, if not perfect, ultra-premium foldable. A massive 6,000mAh battery and fast 80W charging give it some significant advantages over its rivals, but not everyone is convinced by the phone’s weight, camera or value for money.

But during our hands-on time with the phone, we’ve been particularly impressed with the foldable as a multi-tasking powerhouse. Android’s taskbar and 90:10 Split View help, and the Razer Fold, for example, prompts you to use them regularly via an “Open in split-screen mode” pop-up. But powering these multitasking capabilities is a high-performance Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5.

Keen-eyed readers may have noticed that there is no elite moniker attached to this chip. This isn’t the powerhouse 8 Elite Gen5 you’ll find in a top-tier flagship, but rather a smaller and slightly more cost-effective premium-tier option with a lower clock speed and a lower GPU slice. At first, this may seem like a significant drop for a super-premium $1,899 foldable. However, a closer look at the benchmarks shows that this may be a smart choice on Motorola’s part.

motorola razr fold benchmark

Taking a look at the CPU scores of Geekbench 6, we see results that are very competitive with other popular foldables in the US market. It’s better than the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold by a noticeable margin in both single-core and multi-core scores. It’s also pretty neck-and-neck with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 on both results, which confirms why this handset feels so agile when multitasking.

There’s also some pretty impressive news on the graphics front, taking a look at our two main stress tests, 3DMark’s Wildlife Extreme and Solar Bay.

The Motorola Razr Fold once again edges out the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, which isn’t at all surprising considering the Tensor G5’s weaker graphics performance. What’s more impressive is that the Moto Galaxy Z Fold 7 is very competitive with the best scores and actually wins on long-term stress tests.

The key to the Razer Fold’s success is low temperatures. In the Wildlife Extreme test it reached a peak of only 37.9°C and an average of only 33.5°C. That’s cooler than the Z Fold 7’s 39.2°C peak and 37.2°C average, and even cooler than the less powerful Pixel Fold, which peaked at 39.9°C and averaged 34.8°C in the same test.

The results from Solar Bay are not as favorable but still point to a similar theme. The Razer’s ray-tracing performance is significantly affected by missing GPU slices, but the phone retains the temperature advantage that kept it ahead until the end of the test.

The Moto Fold-able is slow to heat up, and with peak temperatures kept well below 40 degrees Celsius, Motorola’s latest foldable not only stays cool to the touch while gaming but also delivers its maximum GPU performance for long periods of time. We were able to play back-to-back rounds of COD Mobile with very high graphics and maximum frame rate settings without the phone heating up at all. This is rarely realized in a foldable form factor.

If you want a rough estimate of the temperatures seen from the 8 Elite Gen 5, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra reaches a peak of 41.5°C in Wildlife Extreme and 43.9°C in Solar Bay. More worryingly, the Oppo Find The 8 Elite Gen 5 is a hot chip when pushed to its extreme.

A foldable phone with a thin body and less space for heat dissipation will undoubtedly struggle to withstand temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius. Either that or Motorola will have to slow down performance more to keep the phone cool.

While the Motorola Razr Fold won’t top the benchmark rankings, the fact that it performs at a comparable level to last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite – already a powerhouse chip – while running cooler than rival foldables puts the phone in a very good position. Whether you’re working on multiple apps or planning long gaming sessions, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 has you covered.

This data confirms what I’ve said before – we’re struggling to find use cases that can really push today’s top-tier smartphone chipsets to the limits. Between persistently high temperatures and increased power consumption, today’s peak performance is often temporary. This is especially true for limited form factors like clamshells and booklet foldables.

While futureproofing is good, unless we’re using our phone as a desktop PC or replacing our AAA gaming console, choosing a chip with the best balance of performance, temperatures, and battery life is often the better choice. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 seems to be a great choice in this regard, and it works very well in the new Razer Fold.