Moto X Phone Review, Price, Specs: $500 Unlocked Model Steep For An Android Handset, Performance & Speed Not Groundbreaking, Decent Camera & Design

Moto X phone review, price and specs: The flagship Moto X, the first handset to come out of Motorola after its acquisition by Google is an expensive handset with OK specs whose performance is almost the same as cheaper Android-powered devices.

Though the range of opinions on the Moto X is a numerous as the number of Android handsets that can be purchased between the $300-500 price range, getting a second look of it with the presence of the $350 Nexus 5 and the released of it’s lower-end $179 Moto G doesn’t pain a good picture.

The Moto X lacks the most powerful hardware available, it lags behind by having a 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor. Performance though it’s still speedy, but nothing groundbreaking.

In a test done by LaptopMag, the Moto X took 12 seconds to load the game “N.O.V.A. 3” That time is faster than the Samsung quad-core Snapdragon 600-powered Galaxy S4. The latter flagship took 15 seconds to load. Compare both, however, to the iPhone 5S and its 64-bit processor and they’re left to dust - it took a blazing 4 seconds for it to load the game.

In a video transcode completion test by the website, the Moto X took 6 minutes and 41 seconds, better than the S4 (7:25) and HTC One (&L33). The test required transcoding a 204MB 1080P video file to 480P using the VidTrim app.

But in an overall synthetic benchmark the Moto X only scored 1,256, lower than the category average of 1,585 and the Galaxy S4’s score of 1,838.

In terms of camera specs - the centerpiece feature where numerous handsets are judge, the Moto X’s 10 megapixel camera does stand out, thanks to its QuickLaunch function. It allows the app to start quickly with a flick of the wrist. Images coming out of the device is crisp and does offer great detail.

A video with the Moto X shot using the Moto X’s rear camera was very sharp and it was also able to capture the fine details well in Laptop Mag’s test.

Nonetheless, at 10 MP, it slightly less than the 13MP offered by the Samsung lines, the 20.7 MP by the Sony Xperia Z1 and the gargantuan 41MP by Nokia Lumia 1020. Though it does have an advantage over the Nexus 5 and iPhone 5S, the design and appeal (price factored in) of the Moto X doesn’t just cut it as a must buy.