Gadgetory

folks meet the moto Z to play a very unique device among the competition that has been receiving a lot of praise for its modularity and that's an important term for Motorola because most of their flagship phones are geared towards adapting a different style that some users might like I've been using this phone for about a month or so and I have to admit I've been enjoying my experience using this device but as you would expect every phone has its own quirks that you'll have to work around with so let's discuss some of the positives and negatives of this device right after this invest in storage that makes a difference choose toshiba Rd 400 and vme SSDs that are incredibly fast and reliable backed by advanced warranty programs so you can focus on what matters Rd 400 check it out in the description below let's get pricing out of the way because it's the most important factor when it comes to a smartphone since the competition is pretty tough in 2017 the 32 gigabyte variant that I have here costs just a tad below four hundred ten dollars when he bumped that storage to 64 gigabytes you're looking at a $90 premium which puts it right against the 1 plus 5 and that breaks up a lot of questions especially for the specs you get for the price the 1 plus 5 comes with a high end Snapdragon 835 CPU 6 or 8 gigabytes of RAM 5.5 inch 1080p display a 3300 milliamp hour battery that supports the dash charge and it works wonders and it comes with a dual camera system the Moto Z to play on the other hand features a Snapdragon 626 processor 3 or 4 gigabytes of RAM a 5.5 inch 1080p AMOLED display 3000 milliamp hour battery with support for Turbo Power and a single 12 megapixel rear facing camera so from a value perspective the oneplus 5 seems to offer the best bang for your buck at least on paper now in my opinion specs are secondary because I'm not interested in having the latest and greatest smartphone with the fastest processor available in the market all I need is a phone that can perform well for my day-to-day tasks like email listening to music messaging and handling my social media accounts and over the course of these four weeks I've never experienced slowdowns on the z2 place so that check marks one of my main necessities motorola has also done a terrific job with the build quality of the device it's rock-solid given the aluminium unibody construction I would say it's right on par with the LG G 6 although they did manage to make the z2 play a little too thin for my taste here's a comparison shot with the g6 and you can clearly see the engineering marvel I'm just used to thick phones because the weight and the bulk gives me a better grip and unfortunately the z2 play didn't suit my taste did I also forget to mention that huge camera bump yeah it seriously gets annoying when you have the phone placed on a flat surface although the motor mods that we'll be talking about shortly addresses that problem easily watching content on the 5.5 inch 1080p display was a pleasing experience the MOA technology really shines with vibrant colors and deeper blacks is similar to what you would get with Samsung's ship phones viewing angles are also great but personally I prefer IPS panels over AMOLED because the colors are more natural to my eye and it's more visible in daylight conditions now the lack of thinner bezels to accommodate a larger screen might be a deal-breaker to some of you out there as it nowhere stands near the offerings from Samsung or LG where they offer more vertical screen real estate to enhance multitasking but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this would you prefer a smartphone with some bezels or lesser of them let us know in the comments down below speaking of bezels the front facing fingerprint reader is a great implementation on the Moto Z to play it's fast and responsive to the touch when unlocking and locking the device so that's convenient but be mindful it's just a fingerprint reader and not a home button Motorola uses on-screen navigation buttons for that task and the little things like the inclusion of USB type-c a headphone jack front-facing mono speaker which is surprisingly really good compared to the bottom facing setup on the g6 and the s8 plus are all great features for the Z to play it completes a smartphone in my opinion this phone is also water repellent and not water resistant both of them are very different from one another a Motorola has added an advanced nano coating technology to prevent moderate exposure of water like accidental spills splashes or light rain it's not designed to be submerged in water or even it's not designed to resist dust so it definitely lacks the ip68 rating be mindful of that the camera is unfortunately one of its weakest points when compared to the competition it's a 12 megapixel sensor that shoots at an F 1.7 aperture and the samples you're seeing now was shot in auto mode without any adjustments to the ISO white balance etc everything is straight out of the camera without any enhancements the dynamic range is pretty terrible to be honest colors look washed out there's not a good amount of detail to recover and I think part of that has to do with the processing done by the CPU the sensor also had a hard time exposing to a certain subject and that was disappointing here are some more samples the same story goes for a video it's capable of shooting 4k at 30 frames per second and it does feature slow motion recording but the footage is totally unusable guys all right I wanted to spend some time and talk about motor mods because it's quite a unique strategy to enhance your smartphone experience motorola uses these proprietary pins to link and transfer data through their modules that are designed for a specific purpose for example I have this JBL sound booster speaker mod that essentially adds a premium speaker setup to the Z to play a simple snap instantly improves the audio listening experience and I've taken advantage of this when going outdoors with family and it's amazing it comes with a built-in kickstand and battery to extend the phone usage by another 10 hours so that's cool tech to take with you when camping the other mod that I have here is the turbo pack that comes with a three thousand four hundred ninety milliamp hour battery it just snaps on to the phone and starts charging the device instantly or in some cases you could just leave it in there to get two days worth of usage out of the phone which is what I did because the thin profile on the z2 play wasn't comforting to hold in hand so I snapped this on and it added some weight and got rid of the camera bump that I talked about earlier so that solved the problem however investing in motor mounts will definitely hurt your wallet the battery mount here costs $80 and so does the sound boost a mod that we just looked at there are other mods too for instance this mod comes with a 360-degree camera and cost $300 the Moto aims to share projector mod costs another $300 Motorola teamed up with Hasselblad to create this mod that comes with ten times optical zoom and it costs $300 but it hasn't received positive reviews as far as I know and the list just goes on guys they even have an upcoming gamepad mod that comes with control sticks a d-pad and action buttons it's an interesting ecosystem in the smartphone market and I'm curious to hear your thoughts about motor mods the software experience on the z2 play is one of the best I've come across on an Android device the unit runs on the latest 7.1.1 nukid OS and I love the cleanliness of the UI I've got huge respect for Motorola for taking the stock Android approach as it helps a lot with performance and battery life it also doesn't eat up storage with unnecessary apps unlike other devices although I can't guarantee you on whether or not this device would receive software updates in the future because I highly doubt that this would get the Oreo update that Google just recently announced so be mindful of that one last thing before I wrap up my review I wanted to touch base on battery life so the Moto Z to play comes with a 3000 milliamp hour battery and I was easily able to get over 6 hours of screen on time so that was amazing considering the thin profile of this device now when you add the Moto mod so the turbo pack power that I talked about a little earlier you can easily get 12 hours of screen on time on that one sometimes even 10 depending on usage so if you're looking for a smartphone with the longest possible battery life and you know of course and then afford of a budget you should definitely consider this phone because the optimization with hardware and software I think Motorola has done a terrific job in that department so to conclude the C to play from Motorola is a very solid choice especially if you are really on a tight budget you know for $400 or 408 dollars to be more precise this is an excellent package all our package if you're considering a solid smartphone with a really good battery life and of course the a clean stock Android experience you could consider you could spend another $80 and up for the 1 plus 5 which offers better specs and of course a slightly better camera I think that's one of the disadvantages with the Moto Z to play the camera is just not the best so you know taking that into account I'd like to hear your thoughts on the Moto Z to play what do you guys think of this device would you consider this as a perfect fit for a $400 smartphone or would you consider alternatives like the 1 + 5 or even the LG G 6 after that ridiculous price drop let us know in the comments down below a kneebar with hurricane axe thank you so much for watching make sure to subscribe for more similar car make sure to subscribe for more similar content and we'll see you in the next one