Motorola Moto Z3 Play Review

Motorola unveiled its Moto Z line of devices in 2016, which was a new series from company under its new owner Lenovo. Firm also unveiled Moto Mods to go alongside it, modules that could be attached at back of a compatible phone and do all sorts of things, from giving phone more juice, adding a speaker, giving it a better camera and so much more. Now for 2018, Motorola has launched its new Z series phone, Motorola Moto Z3 Play. It's the latest entry in Z series lineup with support for swappable mods and midrange specs for a midrange price point. Overall design remains similar to previous Z-series phones and being a Play device, this should be one designed for users who love to use their phones for long hours. Question remains, whether Motorola's new Z-series entrant remains triumphant in impressing its supposed audience or is it another modular device with a very short hype life? Let's find out.

Motorola Z3 Play is a pretty good-looking phone as Motorola has amped up premium quality of design all around, opting for a strong aluminum build and shrinking bezels on top and bottom of display to allow for more screen area without changing size of phone. Phone is made of metal and glass, so it feels nice in hands. First thing you'll notice about this phone is that it is very thin, at just 0.26 inches. For comparison's sake, Apple iPhone X is 0.30 inch thin. It makes this phone quite lightweight (156 grams), which definitely helps with ergonomics. That being said, it is not as slim as its predecessor, which sits at only 0.23 inches.

At front of this device, there's a large display with small bezels at top and bottom. There's your usual earpiece and front facing camera on top while bottom bezels hold a microphone and Motorola branding. You won't find any physical buttons at front of this phone so navigation will be done via software.

Back of this device is made of glass which looks sleek and beautiful, especially because this is a thin smartphone. There's a dual camera setup on top middle, with lenses and LED flashlight enclosed in a circular module which does pops out a bit and isn't flushed inside phone's body. Below that, there's a Motorola logo embossed inside glass with rest of phone kept clean. At bottom of back is where you will find 16 contacts mod pins which are used to attach Moto Mods to this phone. Pins are accented with golden color and they give a classy look to this device. At bottom right of back, you'll also find a noise canceling mic which Motorola uses for better audio quality during calls and video recording.

A notable change is that power button is now on left side of phone, while a new side-mounted fingerprint sensor and volume keys occupy right side. Historically, Moto allows users to power on and off screen by holding their finger to sensor, so this oddly-placed power button might not be too much to get hung up on for now. A downside to this design is that you won't find a 3.5 mm headphone jack on this phone. At bottom of this device, there's a USB Type-C port which can be used for to fulfill audio needs together with charging. Phone is protected with Gorilla Glass 3 on front and back but you won't get wireless charging as glass is used only for aesthetic purposes.

Overall, it's a sleek looking phone, with better aesthetics than its predecessors. Design changes come with some compromises but in my opinion, most Motorola fans will be pleased with how sleek and pretty this phone looks.

Motorola Moto Z3 Play comes with a solid display for a midrange smartphone. It's a 6.01 inch Full HD AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080x2160p, aspect ratio of 18:9 and pixel density of 402 ppi.

Thanks to its AMOLED screen, Motorola Moto Z3 Play is able to display absolute blacks, which in theory means an infinitely high contrast. Colors look very vibrant on this display. I've found brightness levels to be adequate, colors to be accurate enough and not weirdly punchy like HTCs U12+'s display with view-ability to hold at somewhat steep angles. AMOLED panel also plays well with Moto Display, so you don't have to worry about edges constantly lighting up when notifications come in as you would with an LCD. Motorola is offering up a couple of color modes (Standard and Vibrant) with a warm-to-cool slider for some customization. Display test showed that AdobeRGB color space was covered by 93%. These values make display suitable for more demanding activities, such as checking colors in photos. However, smartphone's color representation should be adjusted first because standard settings (vibrant-neutral) show a slight blue tint and too much color saturation. Standard-neutral setting has a significantly better color accuracy, but slight blue tint is still there.

Only downside about this display is that brightness levels are on low end. When in dark situations, this phone just doesn't get dark at all. No matter how hard I try and pin brightness slider all the way to the left, Motorola Moto Z3 Play almost never follows my command and dims. Motorola should work on adjusting that as we use phones in dark situations often and this phone just stays too bright.

Overall, Motorola Moto Z3 Play is definitely suitable for outdoor use, but reflections on screen might pose a problem and brightness has to be set to high values in brighter environments. For general use, display on this phone is pretty good for almost all activities.

Despite this phone's flagship design, Motorola Moto Z3 Play has all makings of a mid-range performer. It's powered by Snapdragon 636 processor and Adreno 509 GPU coupled with 4GB of RAM with either 32 or 64 GB of on-board storage, both of which make this phone feel super speedy on first impressions. There's also a 6 GB RAM variant with 128 GB of on-board storage but that option is restricted only to Brazil at this moment. If you'd need more storage, there's a microSD card slot available which can be used to expand storage up to an impressive 512 GB.

For most part, performance has been fine, but I'm not blown away by it on this phone like I have been on Motorola phones in past. Phone is going to do a good job for most people, but as someone who typically hangs in top tier category of phones, I've noticed some slowness here and there. I'm not talking about general slowness after heavy use, but mostly stutters and lags like a gesture swipe that doesn't register first time or press of a home button not working initially or a bit of scroll lag.

Reason for Motorola going with a Snapdragon 600-series on Motorola Moto Z3 Play is because it will conserve battery life without impacting performance. There are eight 1.8GHz cores included in Snapdragon 636 and it performs perfectly fine in day-to-day usage. Only time that you may notice a drop in performance is when playing games but even then, Adreno 509 still performs quite well. In my opinion, lag could be due to pre-built software and not because of hardware so there's hope an update will fix issues of hiccups.

My major concern with hardware performance is that Motorola Moto Z3 Play scores 93813 on AnTuTu benchmark as compared to 230421 by OnePlus 6 which is only 30 dollars more. Even Nokia 7 Plus scored higher with a score of 117165. Another downside to Motorola Z3 Play is that browsing web is not as fast as on some other midrange smartphones. There is a clear speed boost in comparison to Motorola Moto Z2 Play, but other devices render websites much faster. More-demanding HTML 5 applications such as Google's Interland stutter noticeably.

Phone does well with more complex games such as Arena of Valor even in 60 fps mode. However, games that really push hardware, such as PUBG Mobile, cannot be displayed fluently at high details and they show fps drops repeatedly. For users who are not planning to download most recent smartphone games, Motorola Moto Z3 Play should be sufficient. Phone also does a great job with controls via touchscreen and position sensor, though, as everything works precisely and quickly.

Motorola has decided to go with just one earpiece speaker on Motorola Moto Z3 Play and this speaker doesn't get all that loud either. This could be a way for Motorola to motivate customers to buy JBL SoundBoost 2 Moto Mod, but it is rather surprising that sound is this low. Actual quality of audio here is not bad as bass is pretty heavy, with mids and highs still sounding crystal clear and only issue is volume. However, for those that want to use their headphones, they're going to be stuck with using a dongle or going Bluetooth as there's no 3.5mm headphone jack. This is unfortunate as previous two Moto Z Play smartphones had headphone jacks.

For security, Motorola has included both Face Unlock and a Fingerprint Sensor for unlocking this phone. Face Unlock is pretty decent, as far as speed goes. It's not the fastest version of Face Unlock I've seen, but it does get the job done. Fingerprint sensor also works well and it is also just as fast as you'd expect. Fingerprint sensor can be used for authentication in apps, however, Face Unlock cannot yet be used for authentication, only for unlocking device. There's no official IP-rated water resistance, but Motorola does say an advanced "nano-coating technology" protects Motorola Z3 Play from splashes of water and spills.

Overall, it's a typical midrange hardware experience that you would expect from a midrange Android smartphone in 2018. It certainly falls short behind competition but Moto Mods are the unique selling point of this phone and for anyone who already has them from previous Moto devices, this phone is worth an upgrade.

Motorola Moto Z3 Play comes with same 3000 mAh battery as its predecessor and Motorola claims phone should last about same amount of time with it. That means you should expect around two days of battery life with light usage, and with heavy use, expect a little under 50 percent to be left at end of a work day and that's far better than most flagship smartphones.

During my battery test, phone lasted about 10 hours of WiFi web-browsing on full battery which is pretty impressive and close to most flagship devices with larger batteries. Motorola also enhances battery experience on this phone by adding a free Moto Power Pack Mod inside box. Having 2220 mAh Power Pack on, phone lasted more than 15 hours of WiFi web browsing. That means that if you let this battery mod on during day, you will still have around 80 percent of phone's own battery left at night even with heavy usage.

There's no wireless charging available on Motorola Z3 Play but it does support fast charging, with Motorola's own TurboCharge technology. My charging test concluded that you can charge this phone from 0 to 100 percent in over 1 hour and 30 minutes with given charging brick.

For people who use their phones extensively throughout the day and still want their phone to have good amount of power left at night, this phone with its battery pack is a major go.

For second time in Moto Z series, a dual camera system is installed in circular camera module on phone's rear. Dual-lens array consists of a 12MP lens with an f/1.7 aperture, and a 5MP lens that's used strictly for sensing depth for its portrait mode. It doesn't have telephoto or wide-angle lens capabilities of other recent phones.

Camera produced solid photos on an overcast day, retaining good color accuracy and detail. In terms of extra features, there's Spot Color, which singles out one color in photos (as seen on other Motorola phones), as well as Cutout mode, face filters, and more. Two of the most important camera features on this phone are Portrait Mode and Cinemagraphs. Former blurs out background of a subject, producing photos with a cool blur effect. Cinemagraphs lets you capture up to 10 seconds of a video, and then you can choose to keep one part of video in motion, and freeze the rest. Result is a neat GIF that's fun to share on social media, but it's still a bit gimmicky.

Another cool feature about Motorola Moto Z3 Play's camera is that Google Lens is now built right into camera app, and it'll let you use power of Google Assistant to identify object and landmarks, grab text from real-world objects, and more. I had a pretty good experience with it, however, it did struggle to grasp some hand-written text at times.

There are some issues with camera on Motorola Moto Z3 play as well. In regular lighting, phone's camera is going to give you a pretty good experience. With great looking shots, and even in dimly lit situations, there won't be much of an issue. However, things get a bit messy when you use its Portrait Mode. Rear camera does have a depth sensor, which should ideally make this Portrait Mode a bit better, but that's not exactly the case. While Portrait Mode does look pretty good on shots I've taken, it does have issues with edge detection. This is actually pretty common for smartphones, but it's not always as noticeable as it is on Motorola Moto Z3 Play's camera. Other than that, most pictures came out pretty okay. They were nice and bright and didn't look over saturated either. When it comes to low-light photography, Motorola Moto Z3 Play actually does quite well here, which is a bit surprising. Of course, there is also manual mode available, so if you really want to get a great shot, you can switch to manual and adjust things like exposure, ISO and more and get that perfect shot.

Phone is capable of shooting videos up to 4K at 30 fps with Full HD videos at 60 fps. It warms up slightly during a 4K recording, but that does not go as far as turning off due to overheating. Video quality is good, details are high, but in opposite to photo mode, colors could be a bit more vibrant. Exposure adjusts well to changes in light and slow-motion videos can be recorded, but only in 720p. Afterwards, they can be decelerated partly or entirely via software use. A major downer is lack of OIS or EIS as videos shot with this phone come out shaky, especially at 4K.

Front facing camera on Motorola Moto Z3 Play also got a boost from 5 MP to 8MP, with an f/2.0 aperture. In terms of color, photos shot with front camera are relatively good, but brighter areas quickly lose detail. Level of detail in general is quite decent, but image sharpness is not perfect. You can also shoot videos up to 1080p with this front camera but there's no stabilization so videos come out pretty shaky here as well.

Overall, the only real issue with this smartphone's camera is Portrait Mode and how it has trouble with edge detection. This is likely something that Motorola is going to improve on with software updates, so it shouldn't be that big of an issue further down the road. Still, there are plenty of other midrange smartphones out there which shoot better photos and videos than Motorola Moto Z3 Play.

As expected, Motorola ships this phone with a clean version of Android 8.1 Oreo. You get a stock experience of Android that includes zero skinning and is enhanced by Moto app. Moto app features Moto Display, Voice, and Actions still, which all have useful features within them. Moto Display is still one of the better ambient display options, where portions of screen light up as you receive notifications or wave your hand over it. Motorola includes a night display option in there too. Moto Voice is basically just a slimmed down version of Google Assistant that can be launched with a "Hello Moto" command. I did not understand why Motorola didn't just include a normal Google Assistant as it acts exactly the same way. My favorite Moto feature is Moto Actions which are pretty great. Motorola has included their chop action for turning on flashlight, wrist-twist for launching camera, 3-finger gesture for taking screenshots, a screenshot editor, and a one-button navigation that is far better than Google's implementation in Android P. There's a bar at bottom that acts as a home button, and you can slide it to right to open recent apps, and left to go back. Also, just swipe up from dock to open app drawer. It's simple, easy to use and a traditional navigation bar is also available if you prefer it.

Overall, software experience on Motorola Moto Z3 Play is about what you would expect. It's pretty fluid and doesn't hang up at all, which is nice to see. It also offers plenty of customization for those that want to change launcher, change up icon colors and much more. Motorola has stuck to its approach of keeping things simple and not changing things just because they can and that makes this phone run smoother with slower hardware, compared to companies like Samsung and LG who have much heavier skins on their smartphones.

My only concern here is about software updates as Motorola doesn't have a great reputation recently when it comes to updates. However, Motorola has guaranteed updates for 2 years on Motorola Moto Z3 Play so I'm hopeful Motorola will keep their promise.

Motorola Moto Z3 Play comes bundled with Moto Battery Pack mod with a price of $500. It's available in Brazil with release soon to happen in USA. Phone will be available in one color, Deep Indigo, with an Onyx Black version only available for 6 GB RAM variant.

It looks to have been made to attract new fans, not old ones looking to upgrade. Crafting a device that's more in line with what you might expect out of a flagship phone is something that Moto is clearly very good at, and it's great to see this phone launch at a sub-$500 price point. Given fierce mid-range competition, it will be fairly tough for Motorola to win the crown of best midrange smartphone in 2018. Its Moto Mods function is certain to make it a must-buy for those who want easy and relatively affordable access to some really cool features. However, even with extra features like mods, for 30 dollars more, you can get a OnePlus 6 which has exceptional performance and is miles ahead of Motorola Moto Z3 Play, with a much better camera as well.

So, should you but it? Well, Motorola Moto Z3 Play is a solid phone. It's designed well, has good battery life, great software, a nice display, and works with Moto Mods. On flip side, its camera is not that great at all and price is arguably high. If your budget is around $500, this certainly isn't a phone I'd steer you clear of as there are better options available. If you still want to use mods then it is indeed a well-rounded device, with some pretty cool features.