Gadgetory

circling back to the Moto Z and one of the more exciting moto mod announcements slapping the Hasselblad name on a product brings very high expectations for performance our resident photographer Adam Lane wrote up an in-depth look at what this system can do but he failed to answer one key question will investing $300 in the Hasselblad true zoom improve on the photos and videos produced from the camera built into the Moto Z now for this comparison we'll be using the better camera on the Moto Z force and for you specs junkies you can pause here to see how the tech compares between the phone and the Moto mod starting off with some outdoor shots exposure seems more consistent from the phone than from the true zoom the Hasselblad was more prone to blowing out highlights after focusing we also found a little funkiness with saturation clipping the shaded shot of a small flower for example the phone captures a lovely image where the Moto mod clips the color yellow delivering very poor output and sticking with close-up shots both cameras feature very similar macro focusing distances but the z4s has a significantly wider aperture and produces a prettier bouquet to depth of field blur the zoom on the mod changes the minimum focusing distance and at max zoom it's well over a meter so unfortunately that hardware won't get you closer to your subject for a close-up shot speaking of the zoom this is an easy victory for the Moto mod a telescoping lens handily beat software cropping the image to get closer but while you can use that zoom while shooting video the Moto mod only pumps out a mediocre 1080p where the z4s outputs a fairly high quality UHD video the Moto is also capable of shooting HDR at 4k and Hasselblad removes that fun feature entirely from the true zoom for low-light shots the Hasselblad is just no competition for the Z force sure the sensor is a tiny bit bigger and the pixel size substantially favors the mod but the Z force aperture serves up a significant victory in dim conditions also it's odd to see such stark differences in white balance where after cranking the ISO Hasselblad routinely delivered really orange-tinted photos at night of course in conditions like these you'd probably just throw your Flash and the mod packs a proper xenon burst flash which handily out powers the LEDs on the moto this is a bit of a toss-up though as the more powerful flash again has a tendency to blow out highlights and image processing is doing some odd things with color saturation and white balance so let's wrap this up where's that leave us between the Moto Z force camera and the Hasselblad true zoom moto mod I was going to produce a fancy chart but for real folks here's the breakdown the Moto mod has a great zoom when used in well-lit conditions and it has the more powerful flash basically everything else the Z Force camera will more consistently produce better photos and videos this is a very difficult accessory to recommend when looking at a $300 price tag and it's supremely disappointing to see the Hasselblad name applied to a product which could be outperformed by point-and-shoot cameras from several years ago we take no joy in delivering a negative review but folks who were hoping for a fantastic partnership between a reputable phone manufacturer and a top-tier photography company should probably look elsewhere for a more complete look at the true zoom we'd highly recommend reading Adams in-depth review on pocketnow.com which is linked below this video as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for more videos like these including our series of real camera reviews to dig deep into phone camera performance and we hope you'll help us out with some sharing on your favorite social networks for PocketNow i'm juan carlos Pagnell some gadget guy on Twitter and Instagram and I will catch you all on the next comparison