Motorola One Macro Review: Is Mororola heading in the right direction with the One Macro in the budget smartphone segment at 10k??

Motorola’s best offering with good internals at Rs.9999

Motorola has been launching many smartphones in the market like the One Vision, Motorola One Action, and many others making them affordable with good cameras and software which is almost close to saying Stock Android.

Now Motorola has launched another smartphone in the budget segment named the One Macro which is aimed at buyers who want good performance and camera as it provides that macro lens which would be discussed in the camera section.

Does the phone have enough grunt to make it a value for money purchase in the sub 10k segment??

Motorola One Macro Design:

The Motorola One Macro build is similar to many smartphones as it features a 6.2-inch screen with thick bezels at the front with a dewdrop notch. The notch is a little bit large and more prominent but still, it gives a good look from the front.

Coming to the back Motorola has gone with a polycarbonate build with a back-mounted fingerprint scanner embossing the Motorola logo which gives a premium look. Then there is the triple camera setup housing the main camera, depth sensor, and macro lens with a LED flash and laser autofocus ( a huge ring below the cameras).

On the top, there is a 3.5mm headphone jack with the secondary noise-canceling microphone. The SIM tray is to the left of the phone which is a hybrid slot and power button with volume buttons to the right.

At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port (which many smartphones lack at this range) with a single loudspeaker vent.

On an overall basis, the phone is built very well considering it is a budget smartphone.
It even comes with IPX2 rating i.e. can be taken out in rain but not fully water-resistant.
Overall the build is good but does attract some fingerprints.

Motorola One Macro Display:

On the front, the One Macro houses a 6.2 inch HD IPS LCD screen (1520 x 720 pixels) with a notch on top. The screen is good but we would have liked to see a full HD+ screen that is found on the similarly priced Xiaomi Redmi Note 7S.

The display on the One Macro is average. There is decent color production while viewing the screen but there is a slight color tint in the display which won’t bother much. There is good visibility under direct sunlight but the colors don’t look saturated as a whole.

The smartphone does not support Widevine L1 which means you cannot stream HD videos on Netflix, Amazon, etc. Motorola should address this issue in future software updates.

Motorola One Macro Performance:

The Motorola One Macro is powered by the Mediatek Helio P70 which is an octa-core processor clocked at 4×2.0 GHz ARM Cortex A73 & 4×2.0 GHz ARM Cortex A53 coupled with a Mali-G72 MP3 GPU built on a 12nm process. The performance of the smartphone is quite decent at this range.

The One Macro breezes through most of the applications smoothly but still it isn’t as fast as the Snapdragon 665 that powers the Realme 5 but still it is close to the Snapdragon 660 chipset. On Antutu the smartphone scores 135643 which is quite lower as compared to Snapdragon 660 and 665 at this range.

In terms of gaming, the chipset is quite decent as many games like PUBG, Call of Duty ran fine at lowest, or sometimes medium graphics settings but in Asphalt 9 Extreme there were massive frame drops noticed. It has been seen with extended gaming of more than 2hrs the back of the device tends to get warm which isn’t an issue as it is a polycarbonate back.

Overall whether it is the day to day use or gaming, the chipset will just handle everything well but struggles in heavy gaming.

Motorola One Macro Software:

The Motorola One Macro runs Android 9 Pie out of the box and will be soon updated to Android 10. This is one place where Motorola provides a very good user experience as it delivers a Stock Android like the feeling of its UI while using it.

Unfortunately, the One Macro doesn’t come under the Android One program but provides a good user experience. Just like other Motorola smartphones, it comes with its Moto gestures like twist the phone twice to start the camera, karate chop to turn flashlight, and flipping the phone to enable Do Not Disturb.

Well these features are very handy and are not found in any of the smartphones today. The phone also comes with a Moto display showing all notifications and time just like the Always-On display on Samsung smartphones. The UI isn’t much customized or feature riched like the MIUI or OneUI but still it is very clean and easy to use for a lot of people.

Motorola One Macro Camera:

Here the One Macro gets three cameras to the back consisting of 13MP f/2.0 main camera + 2MP f/2.2 macro camera + 2MP f/2.2 depth sensor with a LED flash and laser autofocus for faster focusing.

The photos taken from the main camera is adequately good and it can shoot some very good pictures during the day. The colors look natural and the white balance was accurate. The images look detailed but when you zoom into the image the colors seemed to be washed out and it tends to overexpose the background.

The dynamic range isn’t good but the HDR mode makes up for it. During night the pictures came out to be less detailed as it lacked a Night Mode.

Now coming to videos the One Macro can shoot up to 1080p videos which come out to be quite good with natural colors but when shot at night the videos come out to be average.

The highlighting point of the One Macro is the macro lens which is a 2MP one. The pictures come out to be adequately good but lacked details. You do have an advantage as you can focus almost 2cm from the object which does block some light. The pictures came out to be less noisy as compared to the pictures shot by the main camera. The images have good dynamic range but with HDR it comes out to be adequately good.

The videos taken from the macro lens is good but there is lot of overexposure in the background in the videos.

The 2MP depth sensor is quite good as the portraits come out to be good with proper edge detection and accurate colors.

On the front, you get an 8MP camera that provides some good selfies but there is some noticeable blur in the pictures when zoomed in. The front can also shoot videos up to 1080p. On an overall basis, the camera needs some improvement as the similarly priced Xiaomi Redmi Note 7S with 48MP and Realme 5 with the quad cameras to perform better than the Motorola One Macro.

Motorola One Macro Battery Life:

The Motorola One Macro packs a 4000mAh battery which is quite good at this particular price point. Motorola has optimized the UI very well so that you can easily use the phone continuously for two days. At the end of the day there was 30-40 percent left in the tank which is really good after extensive use from the battery stats.

Unfortunately, the phone doesn’t support fast charging so it comes with a 10W charger bundled in the box. The supplied charger charges the phone from 0-100 percent completely more than 2hrs i.e. approximately 2hrs 15-20mins. Nonetheless, you get a very good battery life on the smartphone.

Motorola One Macro Loudspeaker:

The Motorola One Macro is adequately loud with its single bottom loudspeaker and the audio through the 3.5mm headphone is also very good.

Verdict:

Now the question arises is the phone value for money at the price point which Motorola is offering?

Well if you compare it with some of its rivals like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7S and Realme 5 which have a Snapdragon processor and better camera, the One Macro with the Mediatek Helio P70 is a very good offering. The Motorola One Macro is available in one storage option that is the 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. The phone does come with faster eMMC storage compared to other phones in this range.

On an overall basis for the price it offers a good build for a budget smartphone and the performance is also decent whether daily use or gaming. The battery life is also very good and the UI experience is almost close to Stock Android. With the Motorola devices you can receive faster updates compared to other manufacturers.

One of the major things that the One Macro lacks is an ultrawide camera and the main camera needs a lot of improvement. It does fall short in the display as it features a low-resolution display but if a user wants a clean UI like Stock Android with a good chipset and battery life, the Motorola One Macro will be a very good value for money budget smartphones around.

Anonymous

December 2, 2019 at 12:06 pm

Snapdragon 665 is better compared to Helio P70

December 2, 2019 at 12:07 pm

Good macro camera

Arabind Achary

February 12, 2020 at 5:44 am

A good device overall but the Helio P70 feels short as the Note 8 has a Snapdragon 665 which is very much powerful.