The cheapest place to buy a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6

Following the Samsung Unpacked event in Paris on July 10, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 is now available for pre-order across the globe. Folks in the US with an eye on the device will have to find $1,099 if they want the base model of the foldable phone, as well as an extra $100 or so for the sales tax. It’s no small outlay, and time will tell if it’s a worthy investment. With Samsung offering the device for a different price in every country, we got to wondering, where’s the cheapest place to buy the Galaxy Z Flip 6?

There’s a reason we mentioned the sales tax, as this is usually something that only residents of a country are required to pay. This stings you for an extra charge in the US, but you might be able to avoid it when you buy the device abroad. Couple this with the prospect of a lower retail price than the US, and the possibility of buying the phone cheaper on your travels is worth considering.

We decided to investigate. Our findings are below.

What are the cheapest countries to buy a Galaxy Z Flip 6?

We visited the official Samsung online shop in 38 countries to discover the pre-order price of the Galaxy Z Flip 6. We then converted the local price of the base model into US dollars, according to the exchange rate on the date of publication. You’ll find the results in the table below, ranked in order of cheapest to most expensive.

The one exception in the table is the US price, which has had an approximate 10% sales tax added to represent how much a resident of the United States is likely to pay. For every other country, the price shown is the maximum you’re likely to pay for the Android phone. In some cases, the retail price includes that country’s sales tax, which you may be able to claim back before you leave.

Of the countries we surveyed, Japan is the cheapest place in the world to buy the Galaxy Z Flip 6. The retail price of the base model there is the equivalent of $1,015, which is around $200 cheaper than the tax-adjusted price you’d pay in America. There are then three countries that are more or less the same in terms of how cheap the high-end flagship is: Canada, Malaysia, and South Korea. The phone is around $1,070 in each of those places.

At the other end of the scale, Turkey is the most expensive place in the world to buy the Galaxy Z Flip 6, and by some distance. The huge $1,784 asking price there is almost $300 more than the next most expensive country. We’ll explore why this might be the case later in the article.

Even after the sales tax is applied, the USA is still one of the cheaper places to get the phone, sitting in 11th place on the list.

It’s notable that price variations are not particularly region-specific. There is some correlation, with the East Asian countries all being among the cheaper places to get the Z Flip 6, but the three most expensive countries in our rundown are from three different continents.

So I won’t find the Galaxy Z Flip 6 for cheaper than this?

Other than the chance of getting the sales tax back when you buy the phone abroad, you won’t see an unlocked model of the Galaxy Z Flip 6 for cheaper than the prices listed above. The phone just launched and isn’t even available to buy yet, so discounts on the base model are very unlikely at this early stage. If a non-Samsung-affiliated vendor offers you the phone at a better price, your suspicions should be raised — it could be stolen or a replica.

There will be opportunities to pay less than the full price for the flip foldable, such as trade-in offers and carrier plan bundles. You might even be able to get the Galaxy Z Flip 6 for free if you jump through the right hoops. All of these deals will have some strings attached, so be sure you know the terms on which you’re purchasing the phone, especially when buying from a foreign country.

Should I buy the Galaxy Z Flip 6 from another country?

While there are clearly places in the world where you can buy the phone cheaper than in the US, you should consider if the marginal savings are worth it. You might be passing through Japan for some reason and decide that getting the handset for $200 less than back home is a good opportunity, but there are other factors to take into account. For instance, the software configuration might be unfamiliar to you, and any warranty the device comes with may be near-impossible to use once you’re back on home soil.

What is clear is that there is nothing to be gained by traveling with the purpose of saving on the Galaxy Z Flip 6. Getting a $200 cheaper handset is a drop in the ocean of how much a round-trip to Japan would set you back.

It’s also worth noting that while you can’t yet get a cut-price base model of the phone in the US, that doesn’t mean you can’t save money. Samsung is offering a free storage upgrade during the pre-order period, which is an effective $120 savings on the 512GB model. Amazon is offering the same free upgrade as well as a $200 gift card, which is like free money to regular users of the online vendor.

Before we get to the business side of things, we have to acknowledge that comparing the prices in US dollars isn’t a perfect system. It makes things easier for sure, but the retail price of the Galaxy Z Flip 6 in each country will have been decided a long time ago. Exchange rates are constantly fluctuating, and this would move certain countries up or down on our list. For instance, while Canada is in second spot right now, it wouldn’t take much movement in the global money markets to have Malaysia and South Korea leapfrog it.

Some of the other factors to consider are the costs to Samsung of selling the device in each country. Even if all the phones are made in one place, the company then has shipping costs, import duties, local labor costs, and many more country-specific overheads to pay. Samsung is going to build all of its costs into the sale price, so where the costs are different, the price will be different. Both high taxes on imports and currency issues are likely to be why Turkey is such an expensive place to buy the phone.

Samsung is also a profit-driven brand that knows its customer base in each country. It will have considered the demand for the phone and the level of disposable income in each country in order to work out how to maximize the bottom line. That’s capitalism.