Motorola Moto Z3 Play Review - Review 2022

Moto Mods live on. The Moto Z3 Play continues Motorola'southward three-year run of modular add-ons, providing a new phone to go with your actress battery, speaker, or Polaroid printer Mods. But at $499.99 (or $449.99 on Amazon), the Z3 Play is priced on the loftier finish of the midrange spectrum, putting it in competition with more powerful phones similar the OnePlus half dozen. It's a solid choice if you already own or want to get started with Moto Mods, but it doesn't really offer anything new or compelling on its own.

Blueprint, Display, and Features

The Z3 Play has all the sleek looks and premium qualities of a flagship phone. It'southward quite bonny, with a shimmering deep indigo glass back, and super-thin at 0.27 inches. Notwithstanding, despite an 18:9 attribute ratio, it'southward limited in form factor by Motorola'south commitment to sticking to the same overall body shape as previous generations of the Z series in order to retain compatibility with the various Mods.

That means dimensions haven't changed much from previous models. The Z3 Play measures 6.2 by 3.0 inches (HW) and weighs in at five.v ounces. That'south identical to the Z2 Play, and like to the OnePlus 6 (6.one by three.0 past 0.3 inches, 6.two ounces). The relative thinness of the Z3 Play is a big plus, because with exception to the Style Shells, every Moto Modernistic you utilize adds considerably to its thickness.

At that place are some minor pattern tweaks from previous models to arrange the xviii:9 aspect ratio. Because of the minimized summit and bottom bezel, the fingerprint sensor has been moved to the right side, nether the clicky volume buttons. The left side of the phone has a ridged power button, while the bottom has a USB-C charging port. The tiptop has a SIM/microSD carte slot that worked fine with a 256GB card, though it's certified to take cards up to 2TB.

There's no 3.5mm headphone jack, just the phone does ship with a USB-C dongle for wired audio. The shimmery glass back has a protruding dual-sensor camera setup (upward from the single sensor earlier) and the magnetic connector pins on the bottom enable Moto Mods functionality. The phone is splash resistant, but non waterproof.

The forepart is an 18:nine, six-inch, 2,160-past-i,080 AMOLED screen with very rich colors and dumbo, inky blacks. It's easy on the eyes with a well-baked 402 pixels per inch. That's no match for the Quad Hard disk Samsung Galaxy S9 (570ppi), but information technology'south on par with the OnePlus half dozen (402ppi). Viewing angles are first-class, and the screen gets very bright, assuasive it to remain visible under directly sunlight. In Display Settings, you're able to tweak screen color temperature and command saturation to suit your preferences.

As always through the preinstalled Motorola app, you can enable you can enable Moto Deportment that include gestures similar twisting the phone to launch the photographic camera app, chopping it twice to trigger the flashlight, and swiping down to shrink the screen for one-handed use. The screen can also be enabled to brandish notifications the moment you pick it upwards, along with the time, appointment, battery percentage, and media controls.

Moto Vox is still effectually (and perpetually in beta), letting yous control the phone through "show me" vocalization commands. Ultimately, it doesn't provide much extra functionality beyond what Google Assistant already offers, and we prefer using the latter for its deeper Google integration and AI-assisted capabilities. If you purchase the Amazon Prime exclusive version, you lot go Amazon Alexa preloaded, though that doesn't hinder you from using Google Banana.

One Push Navigation is gone, but at the bottom of the screen, you can still switch between Android virtual buttons or a new, Android P/iOS-like horizontal bar, which you can tap or swipe to navigate. It'southward a smooth and relatively seamless style to collaborate with the phone once y'all go the hang of it.

Network Performance and Connectivity

The Z3 Play is available unlocked through Motorola or Amazon. Regardless of where y'all get it from, it supports both CDMA and GSM carriers, with LTE bands ane/2/3/four/5/7/8/12/13/14/17/20/25/26/28/29/30/38/40/41/66. The but band missing here is LAA, which increases downlink and improves coverage through carrier aggregation. Still, y'all tin utilize the Z3 on all major The states carriers with a good degree of connectivity. We tested it on T-Mobile in heavily congested midtown Manhattan and saw fairly average speeds.

Call quality is solid. Transmissions tin sound grainy and somewhat robotic, simply overall clarity is fine. Noise cancellation is great at blotting out the vast majority of background noise. Considering the earpiece doubles every bit the chief speaker, it makes for good speakerphone calls, but average music playback.

There are plenty of ways to connect outside of the cellular modem, including dual-band Wi-Fi, NFC, and Bluetooth 5.0 for wireless listening on more than i sound device at a time.

Mods Are Here to Stay...For Now

Mostly, the Z3 Play feels like a somewhat affordable platform for Moto Mods: It'south a telephone you can add a battery to, or one of several big speakers, or a projector, or a printer. Information technology works just equally well every bit it always has. You're able to seamlessly snap the magnetic back onto the phone, the Moto Mods platform recognizes it, and you're expert to become. Some Mods similar the Moto Gamepad can exist charged separately via USB-C, others like the Power Pack can charge through the phone itself.

We've brought Moto Mods to trade shows, because slapping a battery Mod onto a telephone is easier than using a battery case or a cabled battery, and adding the JBL speaker Mod with its kickstand makes the phone a great bedside radio. The major problem is that Motorola but doesn't sell enough Modern-compatible phones to create its ain third-political party accompaniment ecosystem. No company but Apple seems to sell enough phones to do that.

While there are currently more than a dozen Moto Mods, the high-profile, third-party add-ons we saw at CES over six months ago oasis't hit the market even so. The Livermorium Slider Keyboard Moto Mod, which was supposed to come up out months agone, is still being tweaked. The Lenovo Vital Moto Mod for healthcare uses was supposed to be out in April, just it "doesn't have a sales channel," according to Motorola.

For most consumers, the only Moto Mods of interest are likely to be the various Way Shells and Ability Packs.

Processor and Battery

The major corner cutting here is on the processor and memory. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 with 4GB of RAM is fine, and Motorola says information technology's 30 per centum faster than the Z2 Play, but it can't come anywhere near the OnePlus 6's performance. For instance, the Z3 Play scored 5,786 on PCMark'south work functioning test, which measures a variety of tasks like web browsing and video and photograph editing, compared with the OnePlus 6'S 8,484.

Meet How We Test Cell Phones

The 4GB of RAM is sufficient for multitasking, and Motorola's minimalistic UI layer doesn't cause any slowdowns. Graphics performance is mediocre, withal, with the Z3 Play scoring but half-dozen.0fps on the Car Chase on-screen test. When information technology comes to playing demanding games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the Z3 Play tin can only manage medium graphics settings; gameplay is choppy, just doable.

Battery life is solid. The phone clocked 5 hours, 44 minutes when streaming video over LTE at maximum effulgence. That's on par with the OnePlus 6 (5 hours, 49 minutes), though both fall brusk of height-tier phones like the Samsung Galaxy S9 (which lasted over 10 hours in the aforementioned exam). Fortunately, if you lot want more than power, you ever accept the option of using one of the various Power Pack Mods. The included 15W Turbo Power adapter supports fast charging. Wireless charging isn't congenital in, merely information technology's available with a Moto Manner Beat Wireless Charging Modern.

Camera

The rear cameras (one 12MP, one 5MP for depth effects) pop out on a pronounced disc with sharp edges. That bump is there so the cameras aren't recessed too far when you put on a magnetic back cover or a Moto Modern. Outdoors and in good lighting, the Play takes crisp pictures with minimal dissonance. Color reproduction is accurate, though greens and reds can look a little slow if you're used to the brighter, more saturated colors of a Samsung device. Depression-lite shots are on the average side, with the Z3 Play managing well enough when information technology comes to focus and lighting, but suffering from some noise and loss in clarity. It's about on par with the Moto G6 in low-light performance, but not up to snuff with the OnePlus 6. Manual controls that let you tamp up settings like ISO.

The Z3 Play does bokeh both on the forepart and back cameras. On the rear photographic camera, information technology can practice selective black-and-white or partially moving cinemagraph effects, which are cool.

The 8MP front-facing camera sensor is good and generally quite clear, though it can exist a little on the soft side in direct sunlight. For video, the phone offers fairly stable 4K recording at 30fps.

Software

The phone runs Android 8.1 Oreo. Motorola says that it volition get upgraded, but hasn't offered a specific timeline. In terms of software, the phone runs a fairly stock version of Android with Motorola's same add-ons. The unlocked model doesn't have much in preloaded content bated from the Motorola app and the Alexa app if yous buy it from Amazon.

Out of 64GB of total storage on our unlocked reviewed unit, we had 47.10GB available for utilize. That's ample space for adding more apps and games, and y'all always have the option of using external memory.

Conclusions

The Moto Z3 Play has plenty going for it, including solid overall performance, a capable camera, and support for Motorola'south useful modular backs. Unfortunately, it runs into the same problem as the One Plus 6—the United states of america just doesn't accept a market for $500 phones that don't accept a monthly payment programme. And if y'all do have $500 to spend and want an unlocked phone, the OnePlus half dozen is a better option in about every regard, with much more than powerful hardware and a sharper photographic camera. That said, given that the newly announced Moto Z3 is exclusive to Verizon, the Z3 Play is the only modern style for everyone else to get access to the Moto Mods ecosystem, which could upwardly its entreatment considerably if you lot're sold on the concept.

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Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/smartphones/21436/motorola-moto-z3-play-review

Posted by: weldonhatiou.blogspot.com

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