Motorola One Fusion+ review

Quad-camera with macro and depth snappers

The Motorola One Fusion+ has a quad-camera on its back with three snappers and a 2MP depth sensor. There is a 64MP primary shooter, an 8MP ultrawide snapper, and a 5MP macro imager. A single LED flash is around, if you ever need it.

The primary camera uses a 64MP Samsung ISOCELL Plus GW1 1/1.72" sensor with 0.8µm pixels and f/1.8 lens. It is a Quad-Bayer imager and it will save 16MP photos, though high-res 64MP shooting mode is available as well. Phase-detect autofocus is supported.

The ultrawide camera uses an 8MP Samsung ISOCELL S5K4H4 1/4.0" sensor with 1.12µm pixels behind f/2.2 lens. The focus is fixed.

The macro camera uses 5MP Samsung ISOCELL S5K5E9 1/5" sensor with 1.12µm pixels. It supports autofocus between 4cm and 10cm distance. This camera can capture 720p videos.

The depth camera has 2MP OmniVision OV2180 sensor.

The pop-up selfie camera offers a 16MP OmniVision OV16A1Q 1/3.06" sensor with 1.0µm pixels and Quad-Bayer filter. The sensor sits behind an f/2.2 aperture lens that has a fixed focus. Being a Quad Bayer type of module, the selfie cam takes 4MP images by default, but this one can be set to output 16MP shots if that's necessary.

Motorola has been installing its own custom Camera app on the otherwise mostly stock Android software, and that's the case on the One Fusion+, too. It is straightforward and functional with a swipe action for switching between stills, video, and assorted modes (tapping on the icons works too).

A set of quick settings is available in the viewfinder for the HDR modes (Auto/On/Off), flash modes (Auto/On/Off), self-timer (Off/3s/10s) and Active Photos (Auto/On/Off). There's also a shortcut to the settings menu right in the viewfinder.

Night Vision and Macro camera can be found within the Modes selector.

The Manual mode is accessed from another toggle in the viewfinder - not the extra modes. It lets you dial in your own ISO (100-3200), shutter speed (1/6000s-1/3s), or exposure compensation (-2EV to +2EV in 1/3EV and 0.5EV increments), as well as pick a white balance by light temperature (with markings for common light types), and you can manually adjust focus - all pretty standard. There's also a tiny live histogram.

Camera app

Image Quality

The main camera saves 16MP by default and those we took in broad daylight turned out excellent, especially for this budget class. They photos have excellent contrast and dynamic range, and true to life colors. There is no visible noise whatsoever. The sharpening is one bit more aggressive that we would have preferred, but it does not ruin the overall great quality.

We shot the photos below with Auto HDR as intended by Motorola. And it triggers all the time during the day. It boosts the dynamic range a lot, plus - it also gets rid of noise. There might be minor loss in detail because of the HDR, but it is barely noticeable, and we suggest leaving the HDR setting to Auto.

Main camera, 16MP, Auto HDR

And here are the same photos show with HDR forced off.

Main camera, 16MP, HDR off

There is a high-res 64MP mode and it does a stunning job. The 64MP images look like the real deal with exceptional detail, great contrast and colors. They can't benefit from Auto HDR, so their dynamic range is not as great as on the default photos.

Note that shooting in 64MP takes a couple of seconds and one photo weighs about 30MB.

Main camera, 64MP

Now, the million-dollar question - can you get better 16MP shots from downsizing the 64MP ones? Short answer - yes.

If you want to get more detailed image, one that's not over-sharpened, shooting in 64MP and then manually downsizing to 16MP is the way. Is it worth the hassle? We will leave that for you to decide.

64MP-to-16MP

The Fusion+ has an 8MP ultrawide camera and yet its photos are upscaled to 16MP when saved. And they are far from good - the detail is extremely poor. The photos do fit a lot inside thanks to the 13mm lens, their contrast and colors are very good, as is the dynamic range, but these images won't hold up under closer scrutiny.

Ultrawide camera, 16MP

Now, what about if we look the same photos in the native 8MP resolution? Well, the detail is still rather poor, so if you are going to downsize them, it better be to 5MP or so.

Ultrawide camera, 8MP (manually downscaled)

The 5MP macro cam has a dedicated shooting mode, and it focuses pretty well on the subjects. The images are not exceling in detail or contrast, but they are macro alright. We give Motorola points for making macro mode easy by giving this camera autofocus capabilities - few are that generous.

Macro camera, 5MP

The 2MP depth sensor comes in handy when shooting portraits. The 16MP portraits taken with the main camera are excellent - the detail is abundant, the contrast is great, and the subject separation is proficient enough for this class. The artificial blur looks quite good, too.

Portraits, 16MP, main camera

Now, let's look at some night photos. The main camera's Auto HDR is not as trigger happy as it is in daylight. All the photos below were taken with HDR and they are very good, if not great. The detail is high, the highlights are restored pretty well, the noise is low, and overall - the contrast and the color saturation are excellent.

Main camera, 16MP, Auto HDR (HDR triggered)

If the Auto HDR decides not to trigger, you would get noisier images with blown highlights. We recommend leaving the Auto HDR always on - as intended by Motorola.

Main camera, 16MP, Auto HDR (HDR not triggered)

Night Vision is available on the main camera of the One Fusion+ and it does a fabulous job in making a night picture bright, colorful and contrasty. It pops more detail in highlights and shadows, and makes for a bright night photo, at the expense of some detail and over-sharpening.

Main camera, 16MP, Night Vision

The ultrawide photos aren't worse than any other similar camera at night, but the upscaling to 16MP makes them look bad. You can see what's in the photos, be it at 16MP or 8MP. We doubt anyone will be using this camera in low-light conditions.

Ultrawide camera, 16MP

Once you're done with the real world samples, head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the Motorola One Fusion+ stacks up against the competition.

Motorola One Fusion+ against the Redmi Note 9 Pro and the Realme 6 in our Photo compare tool

Selfies

The selfie camera on Motorola One Fusion+ is on a motorized pop-up module and it rises every time you switch to selfie mode. The snapper has a 16MP Quad-Bayer shooter behind f/2.2 fixed-focus lens. It saves 4MP images by default, as it should, but if you want - you can set it up to save upscaled 16MP photos instead.

The 4MP images present very good detail, colors and contrast. The dynamic range is limited, but the Auto HDR helps expanding that a lot.

Selfies, 4MP

Portraits are possible with the selfie camera and they aren't bad - the subject separation isn't perfect but the algorithm masks this with blur and the results are acceptable. We've seen much better, but we've also seen much worse.

Portrait selfies, 4MP

Video recording

The Motorola One Fusion+ records 4K@30fps and 1080p@30/60fps videos with its main camera, while the ultrawide and macro snappers are limited to 1080p@30fps clips.

All videos feature stereo audio with 256Kbps bit rate.

The 4K footage from the main camera is has good resolved detail, though we expected a bit more from a video captured at 50Mbps video bitrate. Colors are pleasingly saturated and the contrast is nice. The dynamic range could have been higher, but it's not bad either.

The 1080p clips shot at 30fps are great across the board - detail, contrast, colors. They are unnecessary over-sharpened though, while the dynamic range is rather limited.

Then the Full HD videos at 60fps from the main camera are extremely poor in detail and the processing tries to mask this with excessive over-sharpening. You should stay away from this mode.

The 1080p clips from the ultrawide camera are very soft, but otherwise pretty good.

You can use electronic stabilization on any camera and any mode, although it worked only on the 1080p@30fps mode on the main camera. Maybe a software update will fix that.

And here, you will be able to compare the Motorola One Fusion+ to the competition in our Video Compare Tool.

Motorola One Fusion+ vs. Redmi Note 9 Pro vs. Realme 6 in our 4K video compare tool