Moto Z Play review

FEATURE

• The Moto Z Play is compatible with Moto Mods to extend its functionality
• The phone performs well across the board but lacks Wi-Fi ac and is bulky
• It is priced at Rs. 24,999

Specification:

• Android v6.0.1 (Marshmallow), 4G, 3G, VoLTE, Dual Sim, Wi-Fi
• 2 GHz Octa Core
• 3 GB RAM
• 32 GB Storage
• 5.5 inches Full HD
• 16 MP / 5 MP
• 3510 mAH Battery
• Fingerprint Scanner
• Quick Charging
• Waterproof

Display:

• 5.5-inch, 2560 x 1440 resolution (535ppi) 
• AMOLED protected with Gorillla Glass 4 

The Moto Z fits in with its 5.5-inch display. Not wanting to compromise on the premium position, however, the Moto Z delivers a Quad HD resolution - that's a significant 2560 x 1440 pixels, for 535ppi. That puts it up alongside other flagship phones, like the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge or Google Pixel XL. Using an AMOLED panel the Moto Z offers deep blacks and can offer vibrant colours, although the "standard" screen mode see things a little flat. Switching to "vibrant" in the settings will make the whites a little cooler so they look brighter, while boosting the colours for more punch. There's adaptive brightness too and we're happy this is capable in adjusting to ensure that you can see the display in all conditions.

Battery:

• 2,600mAh battery
• USB Type-C connector
• Turbo Power charging

Slimming a handset down ultimately means reducing bulk somewhere and 99 per cent of the time, that means squeezing down the battery capacity. The Moto Z has a 2,600mAh cell, which is a low capacity for a device of this screen size and resolution. Motorola claims that you will get 30 hours of use from a full charge, but we didn't get anywhere near the figure. Typically, in light use, the Moto Z will just about scrape through the day, but you'll probably have to visit the charger for a top up if it's a busy day or you plan on doing anything that's going to hit the battery harder, like playing games or listening to lots of music. This sets it at something of a disadvantage compared to many rivals that just have more capacious batteries and last longer. You might have to pay more for the latest Samsung flagship, but it performs better too. Arguably you could get around this by using the Incipio Moto but you have to accept that going slim, means charging more often. At least the charging is nice and fast, and there's a Turbo Power charger in the box. 

camera:

One of our favourite shortcuts has been included on the Moto Z: a double-press of the power button to launch the camera. It's a standard Android feature often lost on non-Google devices and here Motorola dresses it up as a Moto customisation. We have mentioned that the camera sits in a bump on the rear, but that's probably because it packs in optical image stabilisation. It's a 13-megapixel sensor with 1.12µm pixels. Manufacturers have started including the pixel size recently, with larger pixels being the play - the Google Pixel is 1.55µm, the S7 edge is 1.4µm - so we're not sure that Moto has much to shout about here. 

There's a f/1.8 aperture lens, laser focusing and the promise of zero shutter lag, along with a dual tone flash. In a rarer arrangement, the front camera gets itself 1.4µm pixels and a flash too, resulting in a selfie camera that's skilled in lots of areas, dark or light, giving plenty of detail. There's also a beauty mode for those wanting a little digital boost. The rear camera is competent, but doesn't really raise itself to being hugely impressive. The app is a little fiddly, mostly wanting to keep things in auto, but offering some more advanced features.

There's the option to change the focus point by tapping on the display, but this also offers metering tweaks. That's good, to a point, allowing you to quickly change the exposure compensation if it doesn't look right. However, once you take a photo it sticks to that manual focusing point, rather than shifting back to automatic - so it's a faff to get back to regular shooting, without focus sticking to that corner you manually picked previously. For those wanting more control there's professional mode to give a wide range of useful controls, like focus, ISO sensitivity and shutter speed - the last of which so you can take longer exposures up to two seconds for nighttime exposures.

Performance:

The Snapdragon 625 and near vanilla Android together ensure that basic tasks are handled well by the Moto Z Play, which means you can make phone calls, text and WhatsApp, watch movies, listen to music, browse some Internet and also play less demanding games on it, rather at ease, most of the time. The phone is, however, prone to lag or stutter every once in a while, especially when being used for longer periods. More demanding games like Asphalt 8: Airborne will give you hiccups at medium and maxed-out settings.

The mid level chipset however ensures the phone is a lot more heat efficient than counterparts. The phone simply never gets too hot to handle, no matter how you push it. The front-firing mono speaker on-board the Moto Z Play is downright disappointing. It gets loud, but not loud enough. There are better options in the market if you are looking for better audio. Phone calls made with the phone are, however, of excellent quality and we did not encounter any odd call drop issues with our review unit.

The camera app is quick to open, focus and shutter speed is also fairly decent for a phone in this price range. There is room for improvement, but let's just say the Moto Z Play will not keep you waiting. Also, you can twist your wrist twice or use a voice command to quickly open the camera app in a jiffy, and these work quite well. The camera app itself is disappointing though. It is bare basics with very limited manual control with only drag to focus and automatically adjust exposure option available. 

The phone captures good photos in good lighting and adequate ones in low lighting provided the subject is still and not moving. Low-light photos are not that great with prominent noise and subject going out of focus is also fairly common. All in all, the Moto Z Play is hard to recommend as a stand alone camera phone. Every phone right from the ZenFone 3, to the Nubia Z11 to the OnePlus 3T is miles ahead. It has a killer battery life. The 3,510mAh battery on-board the Moto Z Play may not be as big as the 3,630mAh battery inside the Moto X Play, but it lasts longer. We subjected the device to three hours of 1080p video playback, one hour of music playback, half an hour of graphics intensive gaming, phone calls to the tune of one hour over 4G and web browsing. We also clicked some photos with the device. This gave us close to 15 hours of battery life on the device.

There's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset with 4GB RAM. That puts it in flagship position alongside 2016's greatest handsets, only bettered by the more recent Pixel phones from Google. There is a microSD card slot for storage expansion. This sits in the same tray as the SIM card, but is hot swappable. You also have the option to provision the microSD as internal storage, using Android's adoptable storage function, meaning seamless and easy storage expansion. With this loadout of hardware, you'd expect the Moto Z to be every bit as capable as its counterparts that offer a similar configuration. We've not found that to be the case, however. Although the Moto Z offers a fairly unfettered Android experience, it doesn't feel as quick and fast as some of the other flagship devices out there. We've encountered a number of problems, like stuttery scrolling on webpages, which more than suggests something isn't right.

That's led us to restart the phone to try to eliminate some of the performance frustrations, like never being able to find GPS on Pokemon Go (something we never managed to resolve). That might just be an isolated incidence, however, as other GPS-based apps work fine. Sadly that's not the case, so once you've unlocked your phone, you're back to onscreen controls, leaving that fingerprint scanner feeling under-utilised. We had a similar issue with the more budget Moto G Plus model: we never quite understood the fingerprint scanner's necessity at that handset's positioning.

Pros and Cons: 

Pros: 

• Fantastic battery life 
• Sturdy build quality 
• It has a headphone jack! 
• Big screen 

Cons: 

• Not great for gaming 
• Rivals have better cameras 
• Pricier than competitors 

Verdict: 

The Moto Z Play is flying dangerously close to the current favourite, the OnePlus 3. Let’s not forget the Asus Zenfone 3 and the Honor 8 too, both of which offer excellent all round performance. The Moto Z Play does hold its own in all departments making it a very good all rounder too. For the price, we could have used a more powerful processor. It’s also a bit on the bulkier side, even without the Style Shell. While we don’t have a problem with a bit of extra weight and thickness in a phone, it’s the length that could pose an issue for some.

There are more powerful phones in the market at under Rs 30,000 right now. The OnePlus 3T and the Nubia Z11 are a few of them. The Asus ZenFone 3, meanwhile, is a recommended buy if you are looking to buy a phone that you can flaunt. It has a fantastic camera, too, by the way. The camera is good and the lack of bloat results in a clean handset, but lacking stellar performance and taking a hit on the battery life, the Moto Z struggles to make its case as a day to day phone, unless you're going all-in on Moto Mods. 

The Moto Z Play does have one party trick that no other phone in this segment can match and that’s its support for Moto Mods. There’s a decent selection to begin with and if you plan on investing in this ecosystem, then the Moto Z Play is the least expensive way to do so.