Lenovo Moto Z and Moto Z Force Review/Comparison

Motorola has recently made a surprising announcement at the Lenovo Tech World – a new phone, the Moto Z, that makes modularity a “snap”.

Newly announced to the world, the Moto Z is a new take on the Moto line. Going a step further than the Moto X, it brings modularity and brings it in a snap. The connectors on the back and bottom portion of the phone are able to take in, with the help of strong magnets, a number of different covers but also a number of different new functions based upon the different peripherals that you put on to them.

But first let’s talk about the actual phone itself: 5.5” in the screen, comes with a AMOLED quadHD display and it makes for a rather large device but not really anything too out of the ordinary when compared to other phablets of its size. It is a very thin device especially the Moto Z, but not the Moto Z Force, which has a little bit more girth to it and a bit of a chamfered edge on the sides.

Underneath the surface you can pretty much expect all of the same from a flagship device: a Snapdragon 820 and 4GB of RAM along with pretty much all of the different connections that you would expect including NFC for stuff like Android Pay.

Overall it’s a very nice feeling device. It might be a little bit big for some people at 5.5” worth of screen but it does feel very premium and the regular Moto Z that we are right now reviewing actually feels quite light. The Moto Z Force is a little bit “beefier”, a little bit heavier and it has that shatter proof screen so you can drop the phone and you’re not going to have to worry about the screen ever shattering. Overall though, the look is quite nice but you’ll notice the camera on the back does stick out quite a bit but using the phone combined with the covers actually makes the camera very flush with the body.

Moto Z Force design.

Among other things the Moto Z Force has a few different specifications when compared to the original Moto Z. First of all, its battery is larger at 3400 mAh compared to 2600 mAh.

And then you can also get the fast charging, the faster between the two, where you can get half of the battery charged in 15 to 20 minutes.

After that the camera is 21MP on the Moto Z Force instead of 13MP for the Moto Z and of course the Moto Z Force also has the shatter proof screen, so even if you are able to drop it, it should be fine.

As we’ve already mentioned the Moto Z and the Moto Z Force have different cameras. The interface is pretty intuitive and pretty simple to use but the actual cameras themselves will be 13 MP for the Moto Z and 21 MP for the Model Z Force.

The Moto Z is a very thin device, very lovely to hold in the hand and it’s also quite light. The Moto Z Force is of course going to be a little bit thicker and heavier but the one omission that we’ve noticed was the lack of a headphone jack. No, there’s not going to be a headphone jack on the Moto Z or the Moto Z Force. Instead it will come with an adapter that goes into the USB-C port and that is how you’re going to have a 3.5 millimeter jack available for this phone.

Now the software on the Moto Z and the Moto Z Force is really familiar, it’s very similar to a stock version of Android. Everything is pretty much what you would expect it to be and of course we still have the different dots on the top and bottom of the front of the device made for the active display. The active display is still a very nice feature to have on these phones and makes it really easy to look at what’s going on on the phone without having to actually turn it on.

Of course the main story with the Moto Z and the Moto Z Force is modularity. This is a arguably easier way of getting modularity on a device as you don’t have to pull the battery out or even turn off and turn on the phone again. You just have to snap on the peripheral to the back of the device and you’re good to go.

There are a number of different covers that Moto Maker will provide so you can change the look of the phone whenever you want to and it actually feels like this phone, because of how thin it is, it needs to have these covers to sort of round out or even complete the look and feel of this phone.

Moto Z Force Modules.

There are a few different peripherals that are available including battery cases and Incipio has already made a few extra battery cases that snap right onto the back and provide even more power to make sure that the battery life goes as long as you need to.

There’s a pico projector (yes, you’ve heard that right, a projector) which goes on to the back and does make the phone quite thick but it does have a people projector inside that can be angled onto the wall or onto the ceiling so you can easily provide presentations or just watch anything that you want on this bigger screen.

And finally there is a JBL speaker that goes around the back of the device adding a lot of growth to it but it does have a 10 hour battery inside and provide some really great sound.

UPDATE: The Moto Z and Moto Z Force are selling for $699 and $720 respectively.