Moto Z review: A modular phone done right

Display

It helps that the Moto Z has such a top-notch display. With a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440, images look pin sharp, and its perfect sRGB gamut coverage of 100% means colours exhibit a wonderful sense of rich vibrancy. Combine that with a perfect black and contrast ratio, and the Moto Z’s display sits alongside the very best smartphone AMOLED screens available today.

The only slight niggle is that it’s not hugely bright, topping out at a fairly average 356.32cd/m2. This should serve you perfectly fine in most conditions, but in really bright conditions outdoors, it will be more difficult to read than, say, the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, which can temporarily boost brightness to 500cd/m2 and beyond.

That’s a shame, but the Moto Z does have a few extra features to help it stand out. Chief among these is its front-facing proximity sensors. Move your hand over the front of the screen and the lockscreen will appear automatically, allowing you to see the time, date and any notification icons without touching the phone. The same thing happens when you pick it up off the table, too. It might not be quite as convenient as the S7’s always-on display, but it’s a neat touch that makes it more practical than many of its rivals.

Camera

The Moto Z’s camera is a little harder to unpick. On paper, it looks excellent. Its 13-megapixel sensor has pixels measuring 1.12um in size (the same as last year’s Galaxy S6), a wide aperture of f/1.8, built-in optical image stabilisation and laser autofocus. And yet the end result is a little muddled, with much of the fine detail in my outdoor shots ending up looking rather soft and hazy. This could be the result of aggressive noise reduction, but after the pin-sharp precision of the camera in the Google Pixel XL, the Moto Z leaves something to be desired.

This is disappointing, as colours looked great and there was a pleasing amount of contrast on show. I’d recommend keeping the HDR mode turned off, though, as this tended to make images look rather artificial, creating unwanted halo effects around certain objects.

Bizarrely, photo quality actually improved indoors, with test images demonstrating a lot more detail in well-lit rooms. In our low-light still-life test, noise was kept to a minimum, and I was able to clearly discern the grain in the wooden mannequin and on the waxy leaves of the artificial plant. Sadly, this all started to deteriorate in lower light conditions, with edges becoming soft and smeary and shadows quite obviously mottled. It’s by no means a bad camera, but it’s not the best I’ve seen in recent months.

Verdict

The camera might be a bit of a disappointment, then, but elsewhere, the Moto Z gets a lot of things right. Its take on modular design is by far the most sophisticated and practical so far, and its wealth of accessories solve a lot of potential problems created by its super-slim design, giving you the best of both worlds without a huge amount of compromise.

The proof will come once I’ve finally had a chance to test some of its Moto Mods in more depth, but right now, the Moto Z is another great Android phone from Motorola and Lenovo, and it offers something truly different to everything else out there. It comes Recommended.