Motorola Moto X Style review: Now under £300

Motorola Moto X Style review: Performance

It’s a shame, as the hexa-core, 1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor and 3GB of RAM give the Style a significant leg up in speed over the Play. In GeekBench 3, for instance, it scored 1,243 in the single core test and 3,579 in the multicore test, putting it way out in front of the Play’s respective scores of 708 and 2,567. The Style’s multicore score isn’t that far off the HTC One M9 either, and it’s over 1,000 points faster than the LG G4, which also uses a Snapdragon 808.

The difference was plain to see in everyday use. The Moto X Style not only loaded apps much faster than the Play, but menu animations were a touch smoother as well. The Moto X Style was also more adept at handling complex games, as it managed a much more respectable 919 frames (around 15fps) in the offscreen Manhattan test of GFX Bench GL. The Moto X Play, on the other hand, only manged 361 frames (around 5.8fps). As a result, demanding games like Hearthstone ran much more smoothly on the Style, and games like Threes! felt slicker and more fluid when playing at speed.

The Style also produced a high Peacekeeper web browsing score of 1,557, which sails past other flagships, including the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. Web pages loaded quickly and it handled embedded videos, images and adverts with no problem at all.

Motorola Moto X Style review: Camera

The 21-megapixel camera produced some great photos even in cloudy, overcast weather conditions. Motorola’s camera app is fairly basic, so don’t expect to find any fancy filter options, but images were detailed and well-exposed with rich and natural colours. More importantly, detail levels didn’t drop off toward the edge of the frame and skies weren’t overexposed.

^ On default settings, the camera produced excellent, if slightly dark, detailed photos

^ With HDR mode enabled, colours were much brighter, and it also captured more cloud detail

Some photos were perhaps a tad dark for my liking, but Motorola’s excellent HDR function soon rectified this. HDR can be a little harsh at times, but it does help brighten up your photos if lighting conditions aren’t great.

Indoor shots were equally excellent, and photos were much less grainy and gritty than those I took on the Xperia Z5, for example. With my external lamp turned on, my still life arrangement looked great, offering plenty of contrast in the dark flower petals, crisp outlines and plenty of fur detail on our teddy bear. Lines did become quite soft in places when I turned the lamp off, but colours still looked pleasingly punchy.

^ Outlines could be slightly blurry in lower lighting conditions, but colours still look excellent

Motorola Moto X Style review: Conclusion

When it’s marred by a yellow screen and exceedingly poor battery life, the Moto X Style just doesn’t measure up to its cheaper cousin. 

Then there’s the problem of price, the Moto X Style is simply too expensive for what it offers and is similarly priced to the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Sony Xperia Z5 Compact. Both of these are faster and longer-lasting, and more importantly, their screens look much better. There’s really no contest, get the Sony or Samsung instead.