Motorola Moto Z2 Play - Review 2022

New aspect ratios, curved displays, and iris scanners—manufacturers accept spent the past half-dozen months doing just about everything to make their phones stand up out from the oversupply. The $499 unlocked Moto Z2 Play, on the other mitt, builds on a concept Motorola established last year. It has a unique blueprint that works with Motos Mods, useful modular dorsum panels that bring new functionality. Information technology also has snappy operation, great bombardment life, and is compatible with all major The states carriers. And unlike the Z Droid, you even get a headphone jack. That makes the Z2 Play a great phone if y'all're sold on the modular build. Otherwise, the ZTE Axon 7 gets yous a bit more ability for less coin.

A Slim, Smooth, Familiar Design

Bachelor in black, blue, gilt, and grey (pictured here), the Moto Z2 Play is largely the same phone as the Moto Z Droid and Play Droid in terms of design. The svelte device is ringed past a band of metal along the sides, with a ready of clicky book buttons and a ridged power button on the right. The back panel is made of matte metallic and features a protruding camera bump and a row of magnetic zipper pins for Moto Mods (more on those later).

Measuring 6.1 past three.0 by 0.2 inches (HWD) and 5.i ounces, the Z2 Play is identical to the slim Z Droid in dimensions, but manages to include a headphone jack on the lesser. That said, information technology's quite a bit bigger than the Samsung Galaxy S8 (5.9 by two.vii past 0.3 inches, 5.v ounces) and the LG G6 (5.ix by ii.8 by 0.3 inches, five.8 ounces), which feature new attribute ratios in order to accomodate taller, thinner displays. At that place's a sizable bezel above and below the brandish here, making the Z2 Play hard to reach across with your thumb and difficult to operate with merely one mitt, especially if you're using a thick Moto Mod.

At that place'south a USB-C charging port on the lesser, with the aforementioned headphone jack next to information technology. The acme has a combined SIM/microSD card slot that worked fine with a 256GB card. The phone is covered in a h2o-repellent coating to help resist splashes, but it's not IP rated in any way, then go on it dry when possible. If y'all want a waterproof handset, the Galaxy S8 is rated IP68 for water protection (and significantly more than expensive).

The phone's v.5-inch, 1,920-past-1,080 AMOLED brandish is easy on the eyes, with 401 pixels per inch. While it'due south not as sharp as the Quad HD S8 (580ppi), G6 (564ppi), or Axon 7 (538ppi), information technology'south crisp enough that you won't notice any pixelation. Colors are deep and saturated and blacks are perfectly inky, only lighting up pixels as needed. Screen brightness is almost blinding at maximum and viewing angles are first-class, so you'll accept no trouble using the phone outdoors. There's besides a Dark Display way that automatically adjusts color temperature to warmer tones to help you sleep improve at night.

Left to right: Moto Z2 Play, Moto Z

Twist Information technology, Bop It, Split Information technology, Swipe Information technology

Using the preloaded Moto app, you lot can enable Moto Actions. These include gestures like twisting the telephone to launch the photographic camera app, chopping it twice to trigger the flashlight, and swiping down to shrink the screen for one-handed apply. The most useful feature is Split Screen mode. Belongings downward the Contempo Apps push button allows you lot to divide the screen and run ii apps side by side.

Moto Display works similar to the e'er-on brandish on the Galaxy S8 to show yous notifications without pressing a button or unlocking your phone. Instead of being continuously on, however, the screen only lights up when you reach for the phone. Simply extending a paw toward the Z2 Play will bring up the time, engagement, battery percentage, music controls (if music is playing), and notifications. You can prepare it to fade in and out, so even if you trigger it accidentally it won't drain too much juice.

Moto Voice lets you command the phone with vocalism commands. You lot can accept the phone speak calls and texts out loud and ask questions using the trigger words "testify me." For instance, "prove me the weather" will bring upwardly the forecast, and "show me the calendar" volition pull up your schedule and upcoming events. Simply ultimately, it doesn't provide much extra functionality across what Google Banana already offers, and I adopt using the latter for its deeper Google integration and AI-assisted capabilities.

Similar the Moto G5 Plus, the Z2 Play supports One Push Navigation. Enabling it lets you use the fingerprint sensor to perform diverse on-screen functions. Swiping to the left takes you back, swiping right brings up contempo apps, touching the sensor one time unlocks the telephone, touching information technology again lets it office every bit a home push button, and belongings it down brings upward Google Assistant. It's a uncomplicated and intuitive way to interact with your phone, spares your thumbs from reaching around then much, and frees up some screen space.

A Truly Modular Experience

Along with it predecessors, the Z2 Play is amongst the few truly modular smartphones you lot can get. Dissimilar LG, which abandoned its Friends accessories, Motorola has not but stuck with Moto Mods just opened the door to third parties. The sky'south the limit, which is role of what makes Moto Mods so fun and flexible. You can add anything from a wireless charging and backup battery, to a projector, to but a uncomplicated, stylish back cover. The best role is that they're perfectly streamlined: Snap on the magnetic dorsum and your phone instantly recognizes what Mod y'all've attached, shows y'all how much battery it has, and turns the Modernistic on automatically.

Several new Mods launched with the Z2 Play. We tested the JBL SoundBoost 2 ($79.99), a compact-simply-powerful speaker with a kickstand, a splash-proof coating, and 10-hour battery life. There'due south too the Moto TurboPower Pack ($79.99), a snap-on battery pack with a 3,490mAh cell that tin add together an actress 24-hour interval of bombardment life and fast charge your phone at 15W speeds. The Moto Style Shells ($39.99) offer attractive designs and add together support for both Qi and PMA wireless charging standards at 10W speeds with minimal majority, simply yous'll need to get a wireless charging pad separately.

Don't worry if you already have previously released Mods—the Z2 Play is fully compatible with them. The Moto Insta-Share Projector ($299.99) and Hasselblad True Zoom Camera ($299.99) both worked seamlessly with the phone.

Network Performance and Connectivity

The Z2 Play supports CDMA (850, 1900MHz), GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900MHz), UMTS (850, 900, 1700, 1900, 2100MHz), and LTE bands (1/2/iii/iv/v/7/8/12/13/17/20/25/26/28/29/30/38/41/66). It'south the same set yous'll find on the G5 Plus, allowing the telephone to work on all major US carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. We tested it on T-Mobile in midtown Manhattan, where we recorded solid network operation with top speeds of 14.3Mbps down and an unusually high 17.6Mbps up.

Other connectivity protocols include dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz and 5GHz), Bluetooth 4.2, and NFC, allowing you to use Android Pay.

Phone calls are decent, but nothing to write habitation well-nigh. Transmission clarity is fine, simply voices take a rasping, robotic edge. Noise counterfoil is expert at blotting out background sounds, and we didn't have whatsoever problem carrying on a conversation in a noisy environment. The earpiece is loud, which is good considering it also serves as a speaker. That makes it not bad for phone calls, but subpar for music. Then again, yous tin always use the Soundboost 2 Mod.

Plenty of Ability

The telephone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 processor clocked at ii.2GHz. It'south a solid chipset, scoring 68,040 on the AnTuTu benchmark, slightly edging out the 625-powered G5 Plus (63,845). It tin can't match the powerful Snapdragon 820 processor in the Axon seven (141,989) or the summit-of-the-line Snapdragon 835 in the Galaxy S8 (158,266), merely testing ran without a hitch.

Come across How We Test Cell Phones

The combination of a lightweight Android skin and 4GB of RAM under the hood is more than than plenty to handle all of your multitasking needs. We were able to play enervating games like GTA: San Andreas and Injustice 2 without a single stutter.

Battery life is excellent. The phone clocked 8 hours, eighteen minutes in our bombardment rundown exam, in which we stream full-screen video over LTE at maximum brightness. That's about an hour longer than the G5 Plus (7 hours, 35 minutes), and significantly better than the S8 (v hours, 45 minutes). With average use, it's more enough juice to get you through the day. If you want even more power, the aforementioned TurboPower Pack Mod will requite you a nice boost. The included Turbo Ability adapter supports fast charging.

Solid Shooting

The Z2 Play has a 12-megapixel rear camera that takes crisp pictures in well-lit settings. Information technology tin can't quite match higher-end phones, but we were impressed by the authentic colour reproduction and the fast-focusing laser autofocus. Shots of detailed objects like plants and buildings showed little to no racket, and clarity was good. That said, the Z2 Play does lean heavily on mail-processing, and shots taken on a cloudy day looked overprocessed and a petty artificial.

The telephone handled reasonably well in low lighting. Some pictures taken indoors were noisy and autofocus didn't lock on as fast, but that's inevitable with most phones. We were still able to get some solid depression-calorie-free shots by using manual controls to adjust exposure and shutter speed. You tin can also tweak white residue, ISO, and focus to improve pic quality. The Z2 Play can also record 4K video at 30fps. Recordings are crisp and fairly stable. By and large, we plant the telephone to be a better shooter than the G5 Plus, but unable to compete with the S8.

The 5-megapixel front photographic camera is also solid. Pictures are sharp and detailed, and objects in the groundwork run across clearly. Depression-light shots tin exist a trivial grainy, but there'due south a dual-LED flash on the front end and back up for HDR and then we were commonly able to take clear photos.

Pure Android (Almost)

The Z2 Play comes running Android seven.1.1 Nougat, the aforementioned up-to-date build yous'll find on the Google Pixel Twoscore and substantially stock, bated from some special Motorola flavoring (the aforementioned Moto Actions, Moto Display, and Moto Voice). Motorola has a respectable runway tape with updates, so there'southward a proficient chance you may see Android O on the Z2 Plus in the near future.

The phone is gratis from bloatware aside from two preinstalled apps from Motorola. One is the Moto app that allows y'all to configure gestures and vox controls. The Moto Mods app doesn't do much aside from take you to the Motorola website. All the functionality that recognizes when a new Modernistic has been attached and gives you configuration options is congenital right into the Settings carte du jour, so this app seems superfluous.

Out of the 64GB of internal storage, the phone has 48.68GB gratis for use. That's a expert amount of space, just if you lot need more for apps, games, or 4K video, you lot tin can ever use a microSD card and format it equally internal storage.

Conclusions

The $499 Moto Z2 Play is yet another solid modular phone from Motorola. On its own, it offers respectable performance, long bombardment life, and compatibility with all major US carriers. It pulls ahead of some of the competition when yous beginning snapping on Moto Mods. It's a unique level of flexibility y'all don't get with G6, the S8, or whatever other non-Motorola telephone, for that thing.

That said, the Z2 Play doesn't have the fastest processor or the highest-resolution screen you'll find in this toll range. The ZTE Axon vii may be nearly a year onetime, but information technology gets you a higher-resolution display, a more powerful processor, and consequent software updates for $100 less than the Z2 Play. If you're willing to spend more, the Galaxy S8 is the all-time Android telephone we've tested, with a sharper display and the fastest processor you lot tin can get. And if you're looking to save money and Moto Mods aren't of involvement to you, the Moto G5 Plus remains a perfectly solid option.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/mobile-phones/15870/motorola-moto-z2-play

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