Gadgetory

we're aiming to knock out two birds with one stone here in that Motorola's new flagship phones are more alike than they are different they'll be sharing this review as siblings are often loathed to do when forced to share things these two devices come from a fully in twined Motorola and Lenovo partnership ringing both companies cultures to the forefront moto delivering excellent consumer choices in business great construction alongside lenovo's influence for experimentation and multimode usage this pairing results in one of the more exciting accessory systems we've ever seen for a consumer handset both phones follow similar design guidelines a mix of metal and glass achieves a premium look 5.5 inch quad HD AMOLED screens with fingerprint sensors located under each display above each screen we get a loudspeaker doubling as your phone call solution and a 5-megapixel selfie camera that also has a front LED flash the top of the phone is home to the shared microSD and SIM card tray the right side of the phone holds power and volume keys which we found to be a touch on the small side and the even spacing caused a little tactile confusion when first using the phone but we quickly acclimated to this fiddly button feel we get a USB type-c port on the bottom in the rear of the phone is pretty busy a sizable bolt holds the camera system and the bottom panel is covered in dots and dimples for the Moto mod accessory system the tech specs are also fairly similar both phones have Qualcomm 820 chipsets four gigabytes of RAM and 32 gigabytes of built-in storage so where do these phones differ first off the Moto Z camera is a 13 megapixel shooter while the Z force moves up to a 21 megapixel sensor and includes phase detection autofocus the battery on the Z force is also larger 3500 milliamp power to the 2600 milliamp power in the regular Z and the force includes a shatter resistant screen like the Droid turbo to back to aesthetics the Moto Z is a shockingly thin phone like a radical evolution of the Droid Razr this definitely feels like a lenovo idea where something pads are built as lean as possible but relying on fast charging for folks on the go it's tough to judge these phones naked as more than any other phone we've reviewed they feel designed to be used with some kind of moto mod a style backplate a mod will cover up the techie look of the rear pins and even the thinnest style mod will even out the camera module to sit flush with the back of the mod the Moto Z force is taller wider and thicker it's just a fraction of a millimeter thinner than a galaxy s7 but moto engineers have done something clever here in tapering the sides to the rear of the phone it shapes the Z force in a way where a slightly larger device can still use the same mods as its smaller stablemate looking at the displays these are very pretty screens colorful contrasting AMOLED panels with very good outdoor brightness even after a week though we're still having issues with the fingerprint sensors which on the moto Z and the z force act more like power button replacements we're just so well trained to reach for a home button down here that we're accidentally turning the screen off every time we mean to hit the home button this is not a familiar way to use a fingerprint sensor checking out the software modal is sticking to a near stock Android look very basic options for customizing home screens you're stuck with a 4 by 4 grid it's clean if a bit stark but purists should appreciate less manufacturer blow I personally switched over to Nova Launcher after a day though just to get back some options for a tighter homescreen grid there are only a handful of manufacturer changes here the front face sensors will wake the screen when you wave your hand over it the camera launches with a wrist twist and the moto assistant returns to augment the capabilities of Google now it's well-worn territory and very familiar being that these are droid branded devices though Verizon has seen fit to include some value-added software on our behalf hmm Verizon cloud audible caller ID ebay empire gem swab hotels comm NFL mobile slacker slot machine game and the verizon navigator hoof you can't uninstall these but you can disable most of them with how lean the user interface is we would expect these to be some of the performers and they are both phones chew up basic usage messaging email social networking and multimedia playback both phones also make good use of RAM as it's rare that we have to fully reload services when toggling back and forth between a handful of happily gaming performance shows a slight improvement over other phones using a Qualcomm 820 released earlier this year Marvel future fight has consistently performed poorly on Qualcomm hardware but here it's almost as smooth as what we've seen from X and O's powered phones and is noticeably smoother than the galaxy s7 running on a Qualcomm 820 it's very slight but we do see an efficiency advantage for many games on the Moto Z over competing Android flagships a quick word about networking around town we get excellent reception where we know that Verizon has strong signal those in good coverage shouldn't have any issues with Motorola antennas and that holds true for Wi-Fi performance as the Z stood neck-and-neck with the galaxy s7 connected to our router call quality is great and the earpiece speaker is respectively loud under normal conditions switching to speakerphone doesn't require that awkward dance of moving the bottom or back of a phone around the top of your head and we like that a lot now talking about cameras we have the most in-depth examination of the Z and Z force cameras available online where you can see over ten minutes of photo and video samples from both of these phones as a brief summary both are good but not quite top-tier imaging options in producing this review these phones had yet to be made publicly available so some bug fixes are certainly in order on the whole we prefer the higher resolution z4 sensor not only for the extra pixels but it generally delivered more even-handed white balance and had more consistent autofocus performance both phones deliver solid results when covering the basics and features some innovative settings like software stabilization and HDR modes for UHD video and mobile phone photons will certainly appreciate manual controls even if they do feel lifted from a Lumia unfortunately a number of the fun features could use some polish as panorama shots are mediocre at best and slow-motion video could certainly do with being spruced up a bit we'd also like to see moto and the ability to capture RAW files in this app for folks who like to edit we're ultimately happy with this camera as it shows Motorola's continued evolution over some of the truly awful cameras of Moto's past but the Z and Z Force just can't quite climb into the top tier of phone photography solutions we got to flip the script on audio though as the delivers solid sound from the front facing speaker but we're we're really impressed is with headphone audio sure the lack of a dedicated 3.5 millimeter jack is a bummer and we're not looking forward to keeping track of this adapter but the sound quality through this port is very good the moto Z down samples high resolution audio playing everything back at 16-bit but the actual output is loud and punchy this is delivering a better signal-to-noise ratio and includes a more powerful amp than the Galaxy s7 or the built-in DAC on the lg g5 but what good is all of this cool tech if you can't power it battery capacity is one of the differences between these two phones so it's unsurprising that battery life is different between these two phones running a media test streaming 30 minutes of HD video over Wi-Fi at 50 percent brightness the Moto Z drained 6% of its battery while the z4 strained 4% and these numbers definitely resemble our daily use where we ended each day with significantly more remaining battery on the force ultimately though we don't think we'd be overly concerned with the runtime on the Moto Z unless you really tax your phone hard throughout the day and there is something fun about the idea of slapping on a mod to add more battery when you need it but we'll have more to say about those mods in just a bit a recharge speeds were a little funky though testing the Moto Z several times after 30 minutes on the included moto turbo charger the best week a top off was 38% this isn't necessarily bad but we were easily able to best that on the Z force with a 43% recharge after 30 minutes no small feat considering the significantly larger battery we might hypothesize that the smaller moto could be slowing recharge speeds down to keep heat in check we're not sure what could account for this difference in performance lastly we have to talk about this Moto mod system motorola is aggressively launching a trio of mods alongside the phone and re received the JBL sound boost speaker back the lenovo inste share projector and the Tumey battery mod we have a separate video reviewing each of these in greater detail but as a quick summary this is a fun accessory system which we think will be easy for consumers to understand use the issue here might be buying into an ecosystem while we wait to see how well this method is supported by hardware partners but we can't find fault with the actual operation here activation of each mod is seamless and we're happy that there are actually products to play with for folks interested in the Moto Z mind you we already delivered a moto Z versus LG g5 comparison video so you can imagine how that showdown concluded so let's wrap this up where does that leave us with the Moto Z and the Z force motorola has a really interesting pair of phones here the Moto Z represents a solid flagship though battery life is a touch on the lean side but if we were pressed to pick between the two we'd probably side with the Z force over the Z shopping these phones on Verizon we're looking at six hundred and twenty four dollars for the Moto Z Droid and seven hundred and twenty dollars for the Z force Droid if/then is your thing you can't beat the regular Z and it will give off a stunning first impression however the additional battery nicer camera and more durable screen on the Z force are well worth the additional hundred dollars if you have the means the additional girth which happens to be less than the thickness of a galaxy s7 is hardly a compromise as to how these phones compared to other flagship devices we have an interesting fight on our hands these Moto's aren't quite the best jack of all trade devices instead part of what you're paying for is this moto mod system which requires additional buy-in for the accessories you might want if you're always traveling with a Bluetooth speaker or want better battery life in the field but don't want to lug around a battery pack moto mods will increase the cost of your investment but are arguably more convenient to use it's a premium offering backed up by some bleeding edge technology which means it's gonna cost you some cash to play along still though this is certainly one of the most fun gadgets we've gotten to play with in quite some time you know novelty is cool like that as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for our full moto Z coverage and definitely check out that camp review between the Moto Z and the Moto z force for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos bag now some gadget guy on Twitter and Instagram and I will catch you all on the next review um