The cheapest countries to buy a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5

Even in the face of impressive new competition from Motorola and others, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 is still arguably the best clamshell-style Android phone you can buy. It retails for a cool $1,000 in the USA before sales tax, but what if we told you that not only might it be cheaper in other countries, but you could also swerve the sales tax in that foreign land? It’s true, and we know what your next question will likely be: which is the cheapest place in the world to buy the Galaxy Z Flip 5?

We’ve checked out the asking price of the flagship Samsung phone in more than 20 countries to find out. We’ll also explain why the phone’s cost is so different around the globe.

What are the cheapest countries to buy a Galaxy Z Flip 5?

The table below shows the price of the Galaxy Z Flip 5 in the local currency of each country and the equivalent price in USD as of the date of publication. All these prices are sourced directly from the Samsung.com official online store in each region.

US residents will be well aware that you’re unlikely to get the Galaxy Z Flip 5 for $1,000, hence the asterisk in the table. Sales tax in America varies depending on your state, but if we add on around $100 as an average, the United States drops well down that table to 10th or 11th place. The fortunate flip-side of that is that the price of the device in the other countries is the most you’ll pay as a globetrotter. In some cases, the retail price may include the sales tax from that country. Tourists may be able to claim this back before you leave.

After crunching the numbers, we can see that South Korea is the cheapest place in to buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5. The 1,249,000 South Korean won that the phone retails for there translates to $923, which is maybe $150 to $200 less than you’d pay in the US after considering sales tax. It’s fair enough that South Korea gets the device at the best price since this is the home of Samsung Electronics. Canada is a slightly surprising second place at $957, while the next cheapest countries are all in Asia.

The big European nations look to be getting a slightly raw deal in comparison, with the Z Flip 5 costing the equivalent of around $1,300 in many of them. But that’s cheap compared to Brazil and Turkey, where you’d be handing over closer to $1,600 to get your hands on it.

Remember that we’re only comparing the official Samsung retail prices here. If you’re on vacation in Brazil or Turkey and you’ve been offered the flagship foldable at a much cheaper rate by a third-party retail vendor, that’s your risk to take. We’d advise extreme caution in such circumstances, especially on such a recent device. The deal could be legit in some way, but it’s perhaps more likely that the phone is second-hand, stolen, fake, or there’s something else nefarious going on.

Should I buy the Galaxy Z Flip 5 from another country?

Our view is that it’s not worth doing. You might be passing through South Korea or Canada and get the idea that you’re saving yourself a bit of cash, but are the marginal gains worth it? You might get a confusing configuration of the phone, especially in Asia, and the guarantee could also be a problem. At best, the guarantee will be impractical once you return to the States; at worst, it will be completely unusable. It would be even more nonsensical for a US resident to travel to another country with the sole intention of saving money on the handset. The cost of your trip will far exceed even the biggest price difference you can find.

And all of these factors are before we’ve even considered the possible discounts you might find on the phone back on home soil. At the time of writing, it was on offer for $899.99 on Amazon (thanks, Jeff Bezos — you’ve made a mockery of this whole analysis.) With another big Amazon sale coming next week and then the whole Black Friday period around the corner, you can expect more than one opportunity to get the Galaxy Z Flip 5 notably under retail price.

Why is the Galaxy Z Flip 5 cheaper in some countries and more expensive in others?

It makes sense when you think about it. In every country, Samsung has to consider import duties, consumer demand, logistics prices, and many other market forces. Once they add on the profit margin they aspire to earn on top of this, they’ll end up with a completely different number in each region. Samsung probably has huge teams of economic boffins running these numbers to ensure they’re getting it right, so we assume the manufacturing giant knows exactly what price will work best in each part of the world.

The fact that we’re converting all these local prices into greenbacks also makes exchange rates a factor. For example, buying the Galaxy Z Flip 5 is significantly more expensive in Mexico than in the USA, but the price disparity was probably less several months ago when these regional prices were being agreed upon in a Samsung boardroom. The Mexican peso has been ripping against the dollar in recent months, driving the asking prices in dollar terms further apart. As the world economy continues to be pretty febrile, we’ll expect some regular switching of places in the table when we revisit this analysis in the coming months.

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