Gadgetory

by now you've probably seen the moto Z review of which we have one right here and they obviously come with a brand new idea to smartphones called the moto mods now essentially if we take off the cover here we have the magnets on the top and bottom and all of these connector pins which allow for a number of new capabilities when you slap on mods to the back of this phone now we already alluded to how we felt about the moto mods and our full review of the Moto Z and the Moto Z force but it's time to give them a closer look it's Josh freghar from Android thority what's going on everybody and these are our review of the Moto mods we start off with the JBL sound boost speaker which is this large unit right here that obviously makes the Moto Z a much larger device especially if you're using the Moto Z force the JBL sound boost speaker has a couple of big drivers on the back and a cutout for the camera optic package and no you do not get any vignetting when you're using the camera when using this mod on the back as well but you may not want to even use the camera while you have the mod on anyway those two large drivers will allow for stereo sound and in the middle of them is a nice red accented kickstand that will allow the phone to be in plain view but there's actually another advantage to having this kickstand on there which we'll get into in a little bit the inner portion of the Sambu speaker has an interesting pattern design along with a button that will allow for the checking of the battery level and then there is a USB type-c charging port there as well so you can charge the 1000 milliamp hour battery now 1000 milliamp hours doesn't really sound like a lot but it is dedicated to just powering the speaker and to JBL and moto have said that this battery can go for up to 10 hours now while we actually didn't go from 0 to 10 hours to bring the battery from 100 to 0 we did notice that it went for a really long time especially if you have it at half volume we're pretty confident that you can get up to those 10 hours with this that said sound from the speaker is incredible when you consider that it is being attached to a phone you have a front facing speaker on the Moto Z and the Moto G force which does a decent job really it's not all that great or not all that bad per se but once you attach this speaker to the back it just changes the entire experience there's a lot of body and richness to the sound it actually gets incredibly loud enough to fill a room even if it doesn't necessarily create a surround sound feel if you have it on a surface like a desk or a table having the kickstand out actually bounces the sound off of the surface that it is leaning on which is a great idea because it helps to reverberate the sound a little bit better it's really hard not to recommend such a convenient way of getting a lot of sound out of the Moto Z and the Moto G force and at $80 it might be somewhat more expensive than even some Bluetooth standalone speakers that are out there that provide arguably better sound but at the very least the JBL sound boosts speaker is one of the great examples of how the Moto mods can really add to the Moto experience which brings us to what might arguably be the most important of all of the moto mods that are currently available the incipio off-grid power pack now this power pack here is a white color with a matted finish that does help with a lot of grip definitely helps with the all-metal design of the Moto Z which can slip about from time to time it also adds a significant amount of girth to the phone so again you are going to get a heavier device because of the mod now power packs of different colors and styles will be made available so while you are adding to the battery life of your Moto Z or Moto Z force you can also do so in some style 2,200 milliamp hours is what you get extra in the power pack on top of the already existing batteries of the Moto Z and Moto z-force but there's another benefit to having the power pack in that it does include wireless charging it not only need wireless charging to be charged standalone it also adds wireless charging to the entire Moto Z experience and by sliding this onto there you can just put it onto any qi wireless charger and it will charge not only the phone but also the battery pack itself simultaneously and when using the power pack on the Moto Z you do have a couple of different ways of draining that battery you could use it as a straight charger just to charge the phone when you need that power or you can put it in an efficiency mode essentially you use the power pack already on the phone and it only activates in order to keep the phone at 80% but in either case I was able to get between one to two hours more on the Moto Z and moto Z force more realistically I did use it for obviously Pokemon go and it was able to get me another hour of screen on time overall incipio power packs will start at $59.99 and go up to about 89 99 as we were told which hopefully means higher capacities for these power packs but there are going to be other styles so that could dictate the price as well when there's a level of convenience like this to getting more power out of a smartphone it's really not something you can pass up so if you're getting a moto Z or a moto Z force we do recommend that the incipio power pack be part of your purchase as well and finally we take a look at the insta sir projector now this is a standalone projector that latches on to the Moto Z to mirror the display on to a projected pico projector image now you might recognize this idea from a Lenovo yoga tablet and we think that it's influences are pretty apparent here that said however this is a pico projector that latches onto the back of the moto Z devices and there is a kickstand that is available so you can angle the image onto any surface flanking the actual projector is a wheel to shift the focus and then a button that you must hold in order to activate it you can also press it in order to change a few of the settings so that deals with the brightness and also the keystoning which is usually done in auto auto keystoning basically means that if I were to have this projector projecting onto a surface at a particular angle it will actually shift that image so that it looks flat on the surface now the image that is projected is of 50 lumens in brightness and that's actually kind of impressive when you consider how this is just a small peripheral that latches on to a smart device but when compared to standalone pico projectors of similar size there are definitely some more powerful ones out there now specifically that is 854 by 480 resolution but the other thing that you might be seeing already in this shot is that the color is is severely lacking even when all of the lights are turned off and you get a pretty decent looking image the coloration just pales in comparison to when you look down at the phone and you realize that the AMOLED screen is doing an incredible job already of showing good saturation that also is the case when it comes to the battery which comes in at 1,100 milliamp hours and as moto has said this will go for about an hour now that's pretty good for business presentations and definitely ok for maybe just the short viewing session on something like Netflix but for just one hour it's not necessarily something that you would want to use for long term enjoyment really the big problem is that lackluster image not to mention just that one hour of battery life because of that we don't really see this projector being all that useful for a lot of people out there who might want to use it for media consumption and at $299 we just don't think that the fun you can have with this projector really outweighs the cost of value ratio in testing these devices we actually had a lot of fun with them and in the powerpack one of the most useful ways of getting something that we all sorely need in our phones which is battery power but the problem with these devices or these modal mods rather is that they only really work on one device and that's the Moto Z now of course it's going to be seen if these mono mods will be compatible with future versions of moto smart phones but as of right now if you pay the money especially that 299 dollars for that instachat projector you're only really going to be using it on one device at least currently the other thing is that there are alternatives to all of these mods the power pack log convenience can be done away with if you have an external charger and an extra large er could have higher capacity at a lower price and it could actually charge this phone feasibly faster than the Moto mod can the insta share projector while really fun has a very high price point and at that price you can get standalone pico projectors that arguably can put out better video and definitely have better battery life and finally with the JBL Sambu speaker while it does greatly enhance the sound experience of the Moto Z family you can get comparable or probably even better sound from standalone Bluetooth speakers overall if you're going all-in with the Moto Z family then you have one of the most innovative phones that we've seen and also one of the best executed new ideas for smart phones that we've seen in the last even two to three years so keep it tuned to Android 34 all of the best in the world of Android but you can also delve outside of the world of Android if you visit our sister sites our sibling sites rather be our source sound guys and tab times and you can find a lot there including our giveaways and then you can pop right back to andrew authority comm talk about android in our forums and then subscribe to this channel if you haven't already after done with all of that you can stick around because we are your source for all things Android