You ever talk badly about something just so you won’t want it? That’s me with fold phones. I would say, why would anyone want to bother with that? If you want a phone, get a phone. If you want a tablet, then buy a tablet. Fold is absurd. And who wants that crease in the middle of your screen?

But I have been using the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 for a month now and honestly, I hate how much I like it. It’s like through using the Z Fold7 I crossed some kind of threshold and now I can’t go back.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 is the top of the line of fold phones, and once you get it in your hands, you immediately feel it. It runs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite which means that everything is snappy and quick and it has no trouble multi-tasking; with multi-tasking being one of the things that this device is really built for. And its full screen is 8 inches which is pretty close to what you would get using a mini tablet. But these specs are just the tip of the iceberg here.

Again I’m emphasizing here my starting point of basically being a hater, and where I am now as a convert. Those aren’t because of its processor or RAM or any spec in particular, but because of the overall new experience that this phone gives me. When you say gadgets at the cutting edge, this is the kind of thing you are talking about.

Just from first impressions, its form factor wows. Even in its slab state, it’s surprisingly slim and light. You would expect something packing so much power to have a little more weight to it. But it’s really striking how light it is. I can’t help but compare it to my other “normal” phones lying around and it’s even lighter than a good number of them with smaller screens. While the slab screen is markedly narrower than a normal phone’s screen (even with the ultra-thin bezels), it’s something I just got used to.

Then unfold it to full screen: that’s where the magic happens. Maybe the people around me haven’t been messing around and seeing phones as much as I have (not on the MB office but in other settings); at times I’ve unfolded to full screen I’ve been greeted with “Wows.” To be fair, the first time I did it, I said wow myself. The dreaded crease was something that I didn’t notice unless I was actively looking for it.

For something you can pull out of your pocket, the screen real estate is spacious. I was pleasantly surprised each time I used an app optimized for the full screen. For example, Instagram on the Z Fold7 screen feels like it’s jumping out at you. Apple Music’s library and music playing suddenly became even more navigable and intuitive. There are some points when things aren’t optimized, like when you stream video. Due to aspect ratios and letterboxing, if you stream movies they (thus far) won’t maximize the screen size in the way that other apps do.

Perhaps a weird thought, but my mind went to, “Man I can do so much work on this.” And true enough, my ability to switch and multitask across writing, project management, and other work apps, as well as to sneak in some comic book reading and light gaming, showed me that this device could be a “do-everything” device.

To test if the Z Fold7 could indeed be a do-everything device, I took it on a weeklong trip abroad. It felt extreme to leave my laptop, tablet, and Kindle at home. I brought a bluetooth keyboard with a slot to stand the phone in. The trip involved media coverage of a conference. I loved switching from full screen version + keyboard to take notes during interviews, to folding it back into slab to take pictures, and then back and forth depending on the needs of the moment and the space available. There were some browser-based work apps that I kind of struggled with, but I’m not sure if it’s a problem with the phone or the app design. But on the whole, it handled everything I threw at it with relative ease.

What remains the biggest challenge for me is the price tag. I guess if you want to be at the cutting edge, you have to be willing to pay to be at that cutting edge. If money were no object (and if you have the cash to spare or are willing to make the investment) then the Samsung Z Fold7 is an incredibly compelling option.

Now I’m sold on folds. And it’s clear that the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 is charting a path forward for productivity and everything else you want to do between a phone, tablet, and laptop.