Motorola Moto Z review
So we all are living in an era of slim smartphone obsession. Most manufacturers out there are favoring slimness over battery life😒. This is another one of them. The twin brother of the Moto Z force. This is a review of the motorola moto Z.
I've already reviewed the Z force. Click here
Now let's see the world's slimmest flagship holds up.
Design: This phone is downright feeling like a meta sheet in the hand. Super slim and fragile. And the frame is kind of slippery. There's a gigantic camera bump on the back but it has a reason to be so huge. It's supposed to hold up the Moto mods. I've mentioned them in my Moro Z force review. There's an audio mod, a battery mod, and a pico-projector too! They just snap onto the magnetic pins on the back of the phone and hang by the camera bump. There are swappable back covers that attach on top of the existing back panel of the phone. This phone certainly looks gorgeous in someone's hand but personally if you don't use the mods, that camera hump will bother you for sure. I really don't prefer these super slim 5.2 mm thickness in a smartphone. It barely gives you enough area to rest your fingers on! But the good thing is that it's lightweight at 138 gm. Otherwise the battery mod would've weighed it down even more.
The power button is nicely textured and rests on the typical right side. The volume buttons are separated in a groove and rest above the power button. Both buttons are very robust and feel really tactile when pressed. There's a single USB type C port on the bottom and a secondary mic on he top. NO headphone jack! Yeah, this year's Moto Z phones have ditched the headphone jack and you have to use a USB-to-3.5 mm adapter, included in the box, to listen to music. It's the future according to Motorola. Fine! We'll have to deal with more of this anyway.
Display: The Moto Z has a 5.5' QHD AMOLED display at 534 ppi. The screen is protected by Corning gorilla glass 4. Display is the same as the one on the Z force. Bright, saturated and crystal clear with excellent viewing angles and good outdoors legibility. I'm quite satisfied with the display panel. All you need to know is that it's awesome. Somewhere right below a Samsung QHD panel.
Performance: Like it's sibling, it's powered by a quad core Snapdragon 820 kyro processor clocked at 2.15 GHz, with Adreno 530 GPU and 4GB of DDR4 RAM. The phone is just zooms through anything you through at it. Multitasking, heavy gaming, media streaming or whatever. It handles itself like a boss. That's to be expected from a flagship grade CPU like the 820. You won't face any issues with performance but the phone seems to get a bit hot after extensive usage. It's mainly because of that slimness that the heat is directly felt onto your skin. Another disadvantage of a sleek body. There is 32 GB/64 GB of on board storage and yes, it's expandable up to another 256 GB. The fingerprint sensor on the front is very fast to unlock. I just wish it was a home button rather than just a sensor. After you unlock your phone, it's useless. The phone still has on-screen buttons like all Motorola phones do. That's fine, but I really feel they could've added something more to it, at least on this flagship is not on the mid rangers. But that's how it is!
The Moto Z runs mostly on a stock-ish UI of Android 6.0 marshmallow. It supports all the Google goodies, which is always appreciated.
Camera: The Moto Z has a 13 mp rear camera with a nice f/1.8 aperture and dual led flash. It can record 4K video at 30 fps. The front camera is 5 megapixels with f/2.2 aperture and there's a front flash as well. I have to say the camera quality is pretty average for a flagship. It's good enough outdoors, but struggles to take a good shot with proper focus in lower lighting. You could expect it to perform wonders with that large aperture sensor, but nope! Motorola needs to work on its image processing. This guy is decent, but nowhere near the clarity you get out of the LG G5 or the galaxy S7, which still is the camera king in my list.
The front camera is OK. The flash helps to some extent in brightening the scene and can take good shots. But don't expect it to capture award winning shots all the time.
Battery: Slimmer phone=smaller battery.
This flagship has a relatively small 2600 mAh battery. If you thought the G5 was small at 2800mah, think again. But battery life is kind of average here. You'll get anywhere from 3½ to 4 hrs of usage out of a single charge. There's quick cheering too, not that it was never too charge such a small battery😂, but it's good to have anyway👍
Price: The premium moto Z costs 34,000 INR. A slim phone with powerful hardware and the customization with Moto mods! It's a good choice IF you don't care about the mediocre camera but love to have lots design options and add on accessories for your smartphone
I've already reviewed the Z force. Click here
Now let's see the world's slimmest flagship holds up.
Design: This phone is downright feeling like a meta sheet in the hand. Super slim and fragile. And the frame is kind of slippery. There's a gigantic camera bump on the back but it has a reason to be so huge. It's supposed to hold up the Moto mods. I've mentioned them in my Moro Z force review. There's an audio mod, a battery mod, and a pico-projector too! They just snap onto the magnetic pins on the back of the phone and hang by the camera bump. There are swappable back covers that attach on top of the existing back panel of the phone. This phone certainly looks gorgeous in someone's hand but personally if you don't use the mods, that camera hump will bother you for sure. I really don't prefer these super slim 5.2 mm thickness in a smartphone. It barely gives you enough area to rest your fingers on! But the good thing is that it's lightweight at 138 gm. Otherwise the battery mod would've weighed it down even more.
The power button is nicely textured and rests on the typical right side. The volume buttons are separated in a groove and rest above the power button. Both buttons are very robust and feel really tactile when pressed. There's a single USB type C port on the bottom and a secondary mic on he top. NO headphone jack! Yeah, this year's Moto Z phones have ditched the headphone jack and you have to use a USB-to-3.5 mm adapter, included in the box, to listen to music. It's the future according to Motorola. Fine! We'll have to deal with more of this anyway.
Display: The Moto Z has a 5.5' QHD AMOLED display at 534 ppi. The screen is protected by Corning gorilla glass 4. Display is the same as the one on the Z force. Bright, saturated and crystal clear with excellent viewing angles and good outdoors legibility. I'm quite satisfied with the display panel. All you need to know is that it's awesome. Somewhere right below a Samsung QHD panel.
Performance: Like it's sibling, it's powered by a quad core Snapdragon 820 kyro processor clocked at 2.15 GHz, with Adreno 530 GPU and 4GB of DDR4 RAM. The phone is just zooms through anything you through at it. Multitasking, heavy gaming, media streaming or whatever. It handles itself like a boss. That's to be expected from a flagship grade CPU like the 820. You won't face any issues with performance but the phone seems to get a bit hot after extensive usage. It's mainly because of that slimness that the heat is directly felt onto your skin. Another disadvantage of a sleek body. There is 32 GB/64 GB of on board storage and yes, it's expandable up to another 256 GB. The fingerprint sensor on the front is very fast to unlock. I just wish it was a home button rather than just a sensor. After you unlock your phone, it's useless. The phone still has on-screen buttons like all Motorola phones do. That's fine, but I really feel they could've added something more to it, at least on this flagship is not on the mid rangers. But that's how it is!
The Moto Z runs mostly on a stock-ish UI of Android 6.0 marshmallow. It supports all the Google goodies, which is always appreciated.
Camera: The Moto Z has a 13 mp rear camera with a nice f/1.8 aperture and dual led flash. It can record 4K video at 30 fps. The front camera is 5 megapixels with f/2.2 aperture and there's a front flash as well. I have to say the camera quality is pretty average for a flagship. It's good enough outdoors, but struggles to take a good shot with proper focus in lower lighting. You could expect it to perform wonders with that large aperture sensor, but nope! Motorola needs to work on its image processing. This guy is decent, but nowhere near the clarity you get out of the LG G5 or the galaxy S7, which still is the camera king in my list.
The front camera is OK. The flash helps to some extent in brightening the scene and can take good shots. But don't expect it to capture award winning shots all the time.
Battery: Slimmer phone=smaller battery.
This flagship has a relatively small 2600 mAh battery. If you thought the G5 was small at 2800mah, think again. But battery life is kind of average here. You'll get anywhere from 3½ to 4 hrs of usage out of a single charge. There's quick cheering too, not that it was never too charge such a small battery😂, but it's good to have anyway👍
Price: The premium moto Z costs 34,000 INR. A slim phone with powerful hardware and the customization with Moto mods! It's a good choice IF you don't care about the mediocre camera but love to have lots design options and add on accessories for your smartphone