Moto Z2 Play preview: Sharp and ready

Software

The Moto Z2 Play ships with Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box, which is about as good as it can get right now. As is usual for Motorola phones, the level of customization done here is minimal and is mostly for the good.

The Moto UI

Visually the UI looks very close to stock Android. Take the launcher for example, which looks similar to the Pixel Launcher. It even has support for circular app icons and you can press and hold on them to see additional options - if supported by the app - like on the Google Pixel. The only thing that would give it away is Motorola's rather unpleasant looking stock app icons.

The Notifications area

Similar minor changes exist throughout the software but the biggest additions are Moto Actions, Moto Display, and Moto Voice.

Moto Actions lets you use gestures to control your phone. Things such as twisting the phone to turn on the camera or shaking it to turn on the flashlight. You can even turn the fingerprint sensor into a makeshift trackpad and use gestures to navigate through the phone (this disables the on-screen buttons).

Moto Actions

Moto Display is where you will find the option to enable or disable Moto Display, which shows a clock and your notifications on a lockscreen when you move the phone or wave your hand over the screen while the phone is in sleep. While Moto Display is fine it doesn't stay on all the time and we wish Motorola would just go all-in and include an always-on display mode, especially since they have AMOLED displays on these phones.

Moto Display

Also, the Moto Display has a tendency to wake up even when there is slight movement happening in its vicinity and no one is really trying to wake it up. Motorola also got rid of the Ambient Display mode in Android so if you disable Moto Display you basically don't see notifications on your screen at all unless you wake it up manually. And let's not forget, there is no notification LED on these phones.

The Moto Display also includes Night Display option, which is essentially a blue light filter mode that can be set to turn on or off at a particular time or with sunrise and sunset. For some reason it also saturates display colors, which is not what we see on other phones, and could just be a bug.

Lastly, there is Moto Voice, which is a basic voice assistant that can be used to see your calendar, messages, etc. Unfortunately, it only works with select languages and with Google Assistant is now mostly superfluous.

Moto Voice

The Z2 Play is also free of bloatware. The only bloatware as such comes from Google, with the entire suite of Google apps, including all the document apps, pre-installed. None of these can be removed either, which is a bit annoying, especially if you have no need for, say, Sheets or Google Translate or perhaps you like some other wallpaper app other than Google Wallpapers.

Apart from that the software experience is clean and really simple. Android now is at a point where practically anyone can pick it up and start using it without any difficulty and stock Android, in particular, is user-friendly. We are glad that Motorola continues to keep things simple when it comes to software and the few additions it makes are mostly useful. Then there's also the fact that the phone ships with the latest version of Android and Motorola has been quite decent when it comes to updating its phones on time.

Performance

With only a small upgrade that the Snapdragon 626 brings over the last year's Snapdragon 625, we weren't expecting much performance improvements on the Z2 Play compared to the Z play. And we didn't get any. But that's fine since the last year's model had no issues with performance.

Like the Z Play, the Z2 Play performs reliably and in a satisfactory manner. It won't exactly enthrall you with its speed or fluidity but what we saw left us plenty satisfied. The Z2 Play just gets things done and does them well and we were rarely left wanting for more performance. Apps opened and closed quickly enough, multitasking worked well and scrolling through apps was also fine. In terms of day to day use, the Z2 Play is a pleasure to use.

Gaming, however, isn't all that impressive. The Adreno 506 isn't really very good and not much better than what you get in the Snapdragon 400 series. This means basic 3D and 2D games will work fine but heavy 3D games are still an issue. It also affects Augmented Reality performance, as apps like Snapchat and Instagram with face filters usually struggle to maintain a decent frame rate while having the filters on during video. Fortunately, the phone does not heat up at all and even after prolonged gaming or other heavy usage it remains cool to touch.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• OnePlus 3T
  165097
• Moto Z
  151619
• Moto Z2 Play
  68680
• Moto G5 Plus
  63390
• Moto Z Play
  62217
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  61616
• Nokia 6 (Chinese version)
  44062

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Moto Z
  49
• OnePlus 3T
  49
• Moto Z2 Play
  9.9
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  9.9
• Moto Z Play
  9.8
• Moto G5 Plus
  9.7
• Nokia 6 (Chinese version)
  7.2

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 3T
  48
• Moto Z
  31
• Moto Z Play
  10
• Moto Z2 Play
  9.9
• Moto G5 Plus
  9.7
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  9.7
• Nokia 6 (Chinese version)
  7

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 3T
  33
• Moto Z
  32
• Moto Z2 Play
  6.5
• Moto G5 Plus
  6.4
• Moto Z Play
  6.2
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  6.2
• Nokia 6 (Chinese version)
  4.6

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 3T
  33
• Moto Z
  18
• Moto Z Play
  6.7
• Moto Z2 Play
  6.5
• Moto G5 Plus
  6.4
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  6.2
• Nokia 6 (Chinese version)
  4.6

GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 3T
  20
• Moto Z
  19
• Moto Z2 Play
  3.6
• Moto G5 Plus
  3.5
• Moto Z Play
  3.4
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  3.4
• Nokia 6 (Chinese version)
  2.5

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 3T
  20
• Moto Z
  12
• Moto Z Play
  3.7
• Moto Z2 Play
  3.6
• Moto G5 Plus
  3.5
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  3.4
• Nokia 6 (Chinese version)
  2.5

Basemark X

Higher is better

• OnePlus 3T
  36958
• Moto Z
  36322
• Moto Z2 Play
  10536
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  10446
• Moto G5 Plus
  10406
• Moto Z Play
  10401
• Nokia 6 (Chinese version)
  7522

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Moto Z
  2690
• OnePlus 3T
  2678
• Moto Z2 Play
  1259
• Moto G5 Plus
  1089
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  1050
• Moto Z Play
  1031