Motorola One Zoom review

The Motorola One Zoom is a mid-range phone that has a flagship camera setup, and while it doesn’t deliver top-tier power, it’s a very compelling package. There’s a big screen, a near stock take on Android inside, and an under-display fingerprint scanner, not to mention those four cameras around the back.

Capable of shooting wide, ultra-wide and 3x zoom snaps, its setup competes directly with top-enders like the OnePlus 7 Pro, winning on many accounts – on paper.

Other affordable, comparable devices like the Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro have hit the scene too though, so can Motorola’s comparably priced Zoom hold its own?

Motorola One Zoom release and price

• Launched in September 2019
• Costs $449 (£379, about AU$660)

Lenovo (the maker of Motorola phones) wasted no time getting the Motorola One Zoom to market. The phone was only announced less than a week before it was in our hands for review, and it’s out now. If you're in Europe there's also a version with Amazon Alexa available exclusively from Amazon.

The phone costs $449 (£379, about AU$660), which is a little on the high side for a Snapdragon 675 handset with 4GB of RAM, but few other phones with four rear cameras come close from a price point of view.

Design and display

• Big, bright 6.4-inch screen
• Boxy design
• Has an in-screen fingerprint scanner

The Motorola One Zoom sports a solid mid-range design with a bit of heft and a host of flagship features.

For starters, it has a glass back which has a OnePlus 7 Pro-esque matte finish and a brushed metal effect. In the upper middle of the back of the phone, you'll see the huge camera bump with four lenses and a light-up Motorola insignia.

Flip it around and a big, bold 6.4-inch AMOLED screen, complete with an under-display fingerprint scanner, takes center stage.

At the bottom there's a USB-C port and a headphone jack, on the right are all the buttons, and at the top there's a mono speaker and SIM card slot.

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Honestly, we don’t love its design as much as Xiaomi’s Mi 9T-series, and it falls just behind the Honor 20 from an in-hand feel point of view.

It’s a bit boxy, the bump on the back feels and looks gratuitous (does that logo really need to sit on the raised portion - and does it really need to light up?). That said, we can absolutely get past that when we consider the price of the phone.

The Motorola One Zoom also includes a soft-touch case in the box, and while the phone isn’t waterproof, it is splash and dust resistant.

Meanwhile, the screen impresses with its 1080 x 2340 resolution and AMOLED tech. The 19.5:9 aspect ratio isn’t quite the 21:9 of its smaller siblings: the Motorola One Action and Vision, and it also doesn’t feature a punch-hole selfie camera either, which we’re happy about. It strikes a great balance with its teardrop notch.

It’s also a decent quality display; brightness goes low and gets high, though not as high as flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus. Viewing angles are also solid, with minor blue shifting at extreme angles, and in the settings you can change the phone's color profile, choosing between Natural, Boosted or Saturated.

All in all, therefore, the screen is great for the price, and the design is perfectly functional, even if neither are best-in-class.