New aspect ratios, curved displays, and iris scanners—manufacturers have spent the past six months doing just about everything to make their phones stand out from the crowd. The unlocked Moto Z2 Play, on the other hand, builds on a concept Motorola established last year: It has a unique design that works with Moto Mods, useful modular back panels that bring new functionality. It also has snappy performance and great battery life, and it’s compatible with all major U.S. carriers. In addition, unlike the Z Droid, it even has a headphone jack. That makes the Z2 Play a great phone for anyone who’s sold on the modular build. Otherwise, the ZTE Axon 7 gets you a bit more power for less money.
A SLIM, SMOOTH, FAMILIAR DESIGN
Available in black, blue, gold, and gray, 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 by a band of metal along the sides, with a set of clicky volume buttons and a ridged power button on the right. The back panel is made of matte metal and features a protruding camera bump and a row of magnetic attachment pins for Moto Mods (more on those later).
Measuring 6.1 by 3.0 by 0.2 inches (HWD) and 5.1 ounces, the Z2 Play is identical to the slim Z Droid in dimensions, but it manages to include a headphone jack on the bottom. That said, it’s quite a bit bigger than the Samsung Galaxy S8 (5.9 by 2.7 by 0.3 inches, 5.5 ounces) and the LG G6 (5.9 by 2.8 by 0.3 inches, 5.8 ounces), which feature new aspect ratios to accommodate taller, thinner displays. There’s a sizable bezel above and below the display, making the Z2 Play hard to reach across with your thumb and difficult to operate with just one hand, especially when you’re using a thick Moto Mod.
Motorola Moto Z2 Play
PROS: Useful modular design, Current software and virtually no bloatware, Compatible with all major U.S. carriers, Long battery life
CONS: Difficult to use with one hand, Tinny speaker, slightly pricey for the specs
EASY ON THE EYES
The Moto Z2 Play features a 5.5-inch, 1080p AMOLED display, Colors are rich and saturated, and blacks are dense and inky.
There’s a USB-C charging port on the bottom with the aforementioned headphone jack next to it. The top has a combined SIM/microSD card slot that worked fine with a 256GB card. The phone has a water-repellent coating to help resist splashes, but it’s not IP-rated in any way, so keep it dry when possible. If you want a waterproof handset, the Galaxy S8 is rated IP68 for water protection (and is significantly more expensive).
The phone’s 5.5-inch, 1,920-by-1,080 AMOLED display is easy on the eyes, with 401 pixels per inch. While it’s not as sharp as the Quad HD S8 (580ppi), G6 (564ppi), or Axon 7 (538ppi), it’s 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 excellent, so you’ll have no trouble using the phone outdoors. The phone also has a Night Display mode that automatically adjusts color temperature to warmer tones to help you sleep better at night.
TWIST IT, BOP IT, SPLIT IT, SWIPE IT
Using the preloaded Moto app, you can enable Moto Actions. These include gestures such as twisting the phone to launch the camera app, chopping it twice to trigger the flashlight, and swiping down to shrink the screen for one-handed use. The most useful feature is Split Screen mode: Holding down the Recent Apps button allows you to divide the screen and run two apps side by side.
Moto Display works similar to the always-on display on the Galaxy S8 to show you notifications without you needing to press a button or unlock your phone. Instead of being continuously on, however, the screen lights up only when you reach for the phone. Simply extending a hand toward the Z2 Play will bring up the time, date, battery percentage, music controls (if music is playing), and notifications. You can set the display to fade in and out, so even when you trigger it accidentally; it won’t drain too much juice.
Moto Voice lets you control the phone with voice commands. You can have the phone speak calls and texts aloud and ask questions using the trigger words “show me.” For instance, “show me the weather” will bring up the forecast, and “show me the calendar” will pull up your schedule and upcoming events. Ultimately, this doesn’t provide much functionality beyond what Google Assistant already offers, and I prefer using the latter for its deeper Google integration and AI-assisted capabilities.
Like the Moto G5 Plus, the Z2 Play supports One Button Navigation. Enabling it lets you use the fingerprint sensor to perform various on-screen functions. Swiping to the left takes you back, swiping right brings up recent apps, touching the sensor once unlocks the phone, touching it again lets it function as a home button, and holding it down brings up Google Assistant. This is a simple and intuitive way to interact with your phone: It also spares your thumbs from reaching around so much and frees up some screen space.
A TRULY MODULAR EXPERIENCE
Along with its predecessors, the Z2 Play is among the few truly modular smartphones. Unlike LG, which abandoned its Friends accessories, Motorola has not only stuck with Moto Mods but has also opened the door to third parties. The sky’s the limit, which is part of what makes Moto Mods so fun and flexible. You can add such components as a wireless charging and backup battery, a projector, or just a simple, stylish back cover. The best part is that they’re perfectly streamlined: Snap on the magnetic back, and your phone instantly recognizes which Mod you’ve attached, shows you how much battery power it has, and turns the Mod on automatically.
Enabling One Button Navigation lets you use the fingerprint sensor to perform various on-screen functions.
Several new Mods launched with the Z2 Play. We tested the JBL SoundBoost 2 ($79.99), a compact but powerful speaker with a kickstand, a splash-proof coating, and 10-hour battery life. There’s also the Moto TurboPower Pack ($79.99), a snap-on battery pack with a 3,490mAh cell that can add an extra day of battery life and fast charge your phone at 15W speeds. The Moto Style Shells ($39.99) offer attractive designs and add support for both Qi and PMA wireless charging standards at 10W speeds with minimal bulk, but you’ll need to buy a wireless charging pad separately.
Don’t worry if you already own earlier 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 (1/2/3/4 /5/7/8/12/13/17/20/25/26/28/29/30/38/41/66). You’ll find the same set on the G5 Plus. It works on all major U.S. carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. We tested it on T-Mobile in midtown Manhattan, where we recorded solid network performance 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 home about. Transmission clarity is fine, but voices have a rasping, robotic edge. Noise cancellation is good at blotting out background sounds, and we didn’t have any trouble carrying on a conversation in a noisy environment. The earpiece is loud, which is good because it also serves as a speaker. That makes it great for phone calls, but subpar for music. Then again, you can always use the Soundboost 2 Mod.
PLENTY OF POWER
The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 processor clocked at 2.2GHz. It’s a solid chipset, scoring 68,040 on the AnTuTu benchmark, slightly edging out the 625-powered G5 Plus (63,845). It can’t match the powerful Snapdragon 820 processor in the Axon 7 (141,989) or the top-of-the-line Snapdragon 835 in the Galaxy S8 (158,266), but testing ran without a hitch.
The combination of a lightweight Android skin and 4GB of RAM under the hood is more than enough to handle all of your multitasking needs. We were able to play demanding games like GTA: San Andreas and Injustice 2 without a single stutter.
Battery life is excellent. The phone clocked 8 hours 18 minutes in our battery rundown test, in which we stream full-screen video over LTE at maximum brightness. That’s nearly an hour longer than the G5 Plus (7 hours, 35 minutes) and significantly better than the S8 (5 hours, 45 minutes). With average use, it’s more than enough juice to get you through the day. If you want even more power, the aforementioned TurboPower Pack Mod will give you a nice boost. The included Turbo Power adapter supports fast charging.
FAST, LONGLASTING POWER
The Z2 Play comes with a Turbo Power adapter, which supports fast charging. In addition, battery life is excellent; the phone lasted 8 hours 18 minutes in our rundown test.
SOLID SHOOTING
The Z2 Play has a 12-megapixel rear camera that takes crisp pictures in well-lit settings. It can’t quite match higher-end phones, but we were impressed by the accurate color reproduction and the fast-focusing laser auto-focus. Shots of detailed objects such as plants and buildings showed little to no noise, and clarity was good. That said, the Z2 Play does lean heavily on post-processing, and shots taken on a cloudy day looked over-processed and a little artificial.
The phone’s camera performed reasonably well in low lighting. Some pictures taken indoors were noisy, and auto-focus didn’t lock on as fast, but that’s the case with most phones. We were still able to get some solid low-light shots by using manual controls to adjust exposure and shutter speed. You can also tweak white balance, ISO, and focus to improve picture quality. The Z2 Play can record 4K video at 30fps. Recordings are crisp and stable. Generally, we found the phone to be a better shooter than the G5 Plus but unable to compete with the S8.
The 5-megapixel front camera is also solid. Pictures are sharp and detailed, and objects in the background come across clearly. Low-light shots can be a little grainy, but there’s a dual-LED flash on the front and support for HDR, so we were usually able to take clear photos.
PURE ANDROID (ALMOST)
The Z2 Play comes with Android 7.1.1 Nougat, the same up-to-date build you’ll find on the Google Pixel XL and essentially stock, aside from some special Motorola flavoring (the aforementioned Moto Actions, Moto Display, and Moto Voice). Motorola has a respectable record of accomplishment with updates, so there’s a good chance you’ll see Android O on the Z2 Play in the near future.
The phone is free from bloatware aside from two preinstalled apps from Motorola. One is the Moto app that allows you to configure gestures and voice controls. The Moto Mods app doesn’t do much aside from take you to the Motorola website; all the functionality that recognizes a new Mod and gives you configuration options is built right into the Settings menu, so this app seems superfluous.
Out of the 64GB of internal storage, the phone has 48.68GB free for use. That’s a decent amount of space, but if you need more for apps, games, or 4K video, you can always use a microSD card and format it as internal storage.
CONCLUSION
The Moto Z2 Play is yet another solid modular phone from Motorola. On its own, it offers respectable performance, long battery life, and compatibility with all major U.S. carriers. It pulls ahead of some of the competition when you start snapping on Moto Mods, offering a unique level of flexibility you don’t get with the G6, the S8, or any other non-Motorola phone, for that matter.
That said, the Z2 Play doesn’t have the fastest processor or the highest resolution screen you’ll find in this price range. The ZTE Axon 7 may be nearly a year old, but it gets you a higher-resolution display, a more powerful processor, and consistent software updates for $100 less than the Z2 Play. If you’re willing to spend more, the Galaxy S8 is the best Android phone we’ve tested, with a sharper display and the fastest processor you can get. In addition, if you’re looking to save money and Moto Mods aren’t of interest to you, the Moto G5 Plus remains a perfectly solid option.
A SLIM, SMOOTH, FAMILIAR DESIGN
Available in black, blue, gold, and gray, 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 by a band of metal along the sides, with a set of clicky volume buttons and a ridged power button on the right. The back panel is made of matte metal and features a protruding camera bump and a row of magnetic attachment pins for Moto Mods (more on those later).
Measuring 6.1 by 3.0 by 0.2 inches (HWD) and 5.1 ounces, the Z2 Play is identical to the slim Z Droid in dimensions, but it manages to include a headphone jack on the bottom. That said, it’s quite a bit bigger than the Samsung Galaxy S8 (5.9 by 2.7 by 0.3 inches, 5.5 ounces) and the LG G6 (5.9 by 2.8 by 0.3 inches, 5.8 ounces), which feature new aspect ratios to accommodate taller, thinner displays. There’s a sizable bezel above and below the display, making the Z2 Play hard to reach across with your thumb and difficult to operate with just one hand, especially when you’re using a thick Moto Mod.
Motorola Moto Z2 Play
PROS: Useful modular design, Current software and virtually no bloatware, Compatible with all major U.S. carriers, Long battery life
CONS: Difficult to use with one hand, Tinny speaker, slightly pricey for the specs
EASY ON THE EYES
The Moto Z2 Play features a 5.5-inch, 1080p AMOLED display, Colors are rich and saturated, and blacks are dense and inky.
There’s a USB-C charging port on the bottom with the aforementioned headphone jack next to it. The top has a combined SIM/microSD card slot that worked fine with a 256GB card. The phone has a water-repellent coating to help resist splashes, but it’s not IP-rated in any way, so keep it dry when possible. If you want a waterproof handset, the Galaxy S8 is rated IP68 for water protection (and is significantly more expensive).
The phone’s 5.5-inch, 1,920-by-1,080 AMOLED display is easy on the eyes, with 401 pixels per inch. While it’s not as sharp as the Quad HD S8 (580ppi), G6 (564ppi), or Axon 7 (538ppi), it’s 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 excellent, so you’ll have no trouble using the phone outdoors. The phone also has a Night Display mode that automatically adjusts color temperature to warmer tones to help you sleep better at night.
TWIST IT, BOP IT, SPLIT IT, SWIPE IT
Using the preloaded Moto app, you can enable Moto Actions. These include gestures such as twisting the phone to launch the camera app, chopping it twice to trigger the flashlight, and swiping down to shrink the screen for one-handed use. The most useful feature is Split Screen mode: Holding down the Recent Apps button allows you to divide the screen and run two apps side by side.
Moto Display works similar to the always-on display on the Galaxy S8 to show you notifications without you needing to press a button or unlock your phone. Instead of being continuously on, however, the screen lights up only when you reach for the phone. Simply extending a hand toward the Z2 Play will bring up the time, date, battery percentage, music controls (if music is playing), and notifications. You can set the display to fade in and out, so even when you trigger it accidentally; it won’t drain too much juice.
Moto Voice lets you control the phone with voice commands. You can have the phone speak calls and texts aloud and ask questions using the trigger words “show me.” For instance, “show me the weather” will bring up the forecast, and “show me the calendar” will pull up your schedule and upcoming events. Ultimately, this doesn’t provide much functionality beyond what Google Assistant already offers, and I prefer using the latter for its deeper Google integration and AI-assisted capabilities.
Like the Moto G5 Plus, the Z2 Play supports One Button Navigation. Enabling it lets you use the fingerprint sensor to perform various on-screen functions. Swiping to the left takes you back, swiping right brings up recent apps, touching the sensor once unlocks the phone, touching it again lets it function as a home button, and holding it down brings up Google Assistant. This is a simple and intuitive way to interact with your phone: It also spares your thumbs from reaching around so much and frees up some screen space.
A TRULY MODULAR EXPERIENCE
Along with its predecessors, the Z2 Play is among the few truly modular smartphones. Unlike LG, which abandoned its Friends accessories, Motorola has not only stuck with Moto Mods but has also opened the door to third parties. The sky’s the limit, which is part of what makes Moto Mods so fun and flexible. You can add such components as a wireless charging and backup battery, a projector, or just a simple, stylish back cover. The best part is that they’re perfectly streamlined: Snap on the magnetic back, and your phone instantly recognizes which Mod you’ve attached, shows you how much battery power it has, and turns the Mod on automatically.
Enabling One Button Navigation lets you use the fingerprint sensor to perform various on-screen functions.
Several new Mods launched with the Z2 Play. We tested the JBL SoundBoost 2 ($79.99), a compact but powerful speaker with a kickstand, a splash-proof coating, and 10-hour battery life. There’s also the Moto TurboPower Pack ($79.99), a snap-on battery pack with a 3,490mAh cell that can add an extra day of battery life and fast charge your phone at 15W speeds. The Moto Style Shells ($39.99) offer attractive designs and add support for both Qi and PMA wireless charging standards at 10W speeds with minimal bulk, but you’ll need to buy a wireless charging pad separately.
Don’t worry if you already own earlier 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 (1/2/3/4 /5/7/8/12/13/17/20/25/26/28/29/30/38/41/66). You’ll find the same set on the G5 Plus. It works on all major U.S. carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. We tested it on T-Mobile in midtown Manhattan, where we recorded solid network performance 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 home about. Transmission clarity is fine, but voices have a rasping, robotic edge. Noise cancellation is good at blotting out background sounds, and we didn’t have any trouble carrying on a conversation in a noisy environment. The earpiece is loud, which is good because it also serves as a speaker. That makes it great for phone calls, but subpar for music. Then again, you can always use the Soundboost 2 Mod.
PLENTY OF POWER
The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 processor clocked at 2.2GHz. It’s a solid chipset, scoring 68,040 on the AnTuTu benchmark, slightly edging out the 625-powered G5 Plus (63,845). It can’t match the powerful Snapdragon 820 processor in the Axon 7 (141,989) or the top-of-the-line Snapdragon 835 in the Galaxy S8 (158,266), but testing ran without a hitch.
The combination of a lightweight Android skin and 4GB of RAM under the hood is more than enough to handle all of your multitasking needs. We were able to play demanding games like GTA: San Andreas and Injustice 2 without a single stutter.
Battery life is excellent. The phone clocked 8 hours 18 minutes in our battery rundown test, in which we stream full-screen video over LTE at maximum brightness. That’s nearly an hour longer than the G5 Plus (7 hours, 35 minutes) and significantly better than the S8 (5 hours, 45 minutes). With average use, it’s more than enough juice to get you through the day. If you want even more power, the aforementioned TurboPower Pack Mod will give you a nice boost. The included Turbo Power adapter supports fast charging.
FAST, LONGLASTING POWER
The Z2 Play comes with a Turbo Power adapter, which supports fast charging. In addition, battery life is excellent; the phone lasted 8 hours 18 minutes in our rundown test.
SOLID SHOOTING
The Z2 Play has a 12-megapixel rear camera that takes crisp pictures in well-lit settings. It can’t quite match higher-end phones, but we were impressed by the accurate color reproduction and the fast-focusing laser auto-focus. Shots of detailed objects such as plants and buildings showed little to no noise, and clarity was good. That said, the Z2 Play does lean heavily on post-processing, and shots taken on a cloudy day looked over-processed and a little artificial.
The phone’s camera performed reasonably well in low lighting. Some pictures taken indoors were noisy, and auto-focus didn’t lock on as fast, but that’s the case with most phones. We were still able to get some solid low-light shots by using manual controls to adjust exposure and shutter speed. You can also tweak white balance, ISO, and focus to improve picture quality. The Z2 Play can record 4K video at 30fps. Recordings are crisp and stable. Generally, we found the phone to be a better shooter than the G5 Plus but unable to compete with the S8.
The 5-megapixel front camera is also solid. Pictures are sharp and detailed, and objects in the background come across clearly. Low-light shots can be a little grainy, but there’s a dual-LED flash on the front and support for HDR, so we were usually able to take clear photos.
PURE ANDROID (ALMOST)
The Z2 Play comes with Android 7.1.1 Nougat, the same up-to-date build you’ll find on the Google Pixel XL and essentially stock, aside from some special Motorola flavoring (the aforementioned Moto Actions, Moto Display, and Moto Voice). Motorola has a respectable record of accomplishment with updates, so there’s a good chance you’ll see Android O on the Z2 Play in the near future.
The phone is free from bloatware aside from two preinstalled apps from Motorola. One is the Moto app that allows you to configure gestures and voice controls. The Moto Mods app doesn’t do much aside from take you to the Motorola website; all the functionality that recognizes a new Mod and gives you configuration options is built right into the Settings menu, so this app seems superfluous.
Out of the 64GB of internal storage, the phone has 48.68GB free for use. That’s a decent amount of space, but if you need more for apps, games, or 4K video, you can always use a microSD card and format it as internal storage.
CONCLUSION
The Moto Z2 Play is yet another solid modular phone from Motorola. On its own, it offers respectable performance, long battery life, and compatibility with all major U.S. carriers. It pulls ahead of some of the competition when you start snapping on Moto Mods, offering a unique level of flexibility you don’t get with the G6, the S8, or any other non-Motorola phone, for that matter.
That said, the Z2 Play doesn’t have the fastest processor or the highest resolution screen you’ll find in this price range. The ZTE Axon 7 may be nearly a year old, but it gets you a higher-resolution display, a more powerful processor, and consistent software updates for $100 less than the Z2 Play. If you’re willing to spend more, the Galaxy S8 is the best Android phone we’ve tested, with a sharper display and the fastest processor you can get. In addition, if you’re looking to save money and Moto Mods aren’t of interest to you, the Moto G5 Plus remains a perfectly solid option.
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