Motorola Moto One Macro initial review: Getting up close and personal

Motorola's One family is relatively new compared to the likes of the Moto G, with the key difference being that it's designed to sit on Android One software - hence the name. The idea is to give a clean Android experience with an expanding range of camera options.

The Moto One Macro joins the Vision, Action and Zoom, seeming to target a particular niche. It follows that mantra of "if there's a hole to fill, fill it" and admittedly there are few phones that want to be a macro specialist, so it's rather unique.

Losing the family design?

• 157.6 x 75.41 x 8.99mm, 186g
• Space Blue, Ultra Violet colours
• IPX2 water repellency

There's actually little that seems to tie the Moto One family together from a design point of view and the One Macro is remarkably similar to the Moto G8 Plus that it launches alongside. It's a svelte handset with a graduated colour finish to the incredibly glossy back, the cameras aligned in the corner.

It looks like a Huawei phone. Who'd of thought that we'd go full circle to arrive at the point where phones were aping something other than Apple's iPhone? Admittedly, Motorola's application of cameras is a lot more tidy. 

Flip to the front and you'll find that display with a waterdrop notch at the top - and let's just remember that the Moto Vision and Action were both punch-hole. There's nothing like variety to keep things interesting. One constancy is the provision of a headphone socket - something that will be appreciated by those who want to retain their wired headset.

For a phone at the affordable end of the spectrum it's surprisingly well built. That's become the hallmark of Motorola over the past few years and you'd never really know that this phone came in at under £200.  

Display and hardware 

• 6.2-inch, 1520 x 720 pixels (270ppi) display
• MediaTek Helio P70, 4GB RAM, 64GB + microSD
• USB Type-C, 4000mAh, 10W charging
• No NFC

There's big 6.2-inch display on the front of the Moto One Macro, but the thing you'll notice about it is that it's only HD. That's not unexpected at this price point and our first impressions are that it's bright and vibrant, regardless of the resolution. 

Sitting at core of the phone is another indicator of where Motorola has pinched a penny to cut the price down and that's the MediaTek Helio P70 octo-core processor; it more or less sits in the same position as the Snapdragon 660 - which is what you'll find in the Moto G8 Plus which is a mite more expensive. Exactly what impact this has on the performance of the phone we'll investigate as we test it for a full review - but first impressions are that this phone is smooth enough to use. It is supported by 4GB RAM and the storage comes in a t 64GB - again - measures that keep the price in check.

On the positive side you get microSD support up to 512GB, so it's relatively easy to expand the storage if you want to carry around more movies or music. 

The other big positive is that there's a 4000mAh battery stuffed into this phone. Ever since we used the Moto G7 Power we've been fans of Motorola's battery strategy and 4000mAh is generous by any measure. Motorola says that the phone will last 48 hours and we suspect that it will.

There's a 10W charger in the box which isn't the fastest, but it's fast enough. There's also a clear case to keep your phone looking sparkling. 

One omission is NFC - so you won't be making mobile payments with this handset.

Let's go macro!

• Main: 13-megapixel, f/2.0, 1.12µm, laser autofocus
• Depth: 2-megapixel, f/2.2, 1.75µm
• Macro: 2-megapixel, f/2.2, 1.75µm

We've had zoom, we've had wide-angle and now we have macro! Macro lenses are all about getting close to a subject and getting a nice sharp and detailed image of something. The important thing is that the camera will focus when it's really close to that object and there's where the Moto One Macro is a bit of a specialist.

You can focus at distances of 2cm - and just for comparison - attempting to do that on the highly-rated Google Pixel 4 XL camera just doesn’t work. That's a good thing, because it means that Motorola are actually offering something different here. Whether there's an appetite for that type of photography remains to be seen, but it isn't alone in offering it - it was one of the updates that came with the OnePlus 7T, although that phone is double the price.

Our initial tests reveal that the macro system works and while we've not had the chance to test it extensively to assess the quality, we're already enjoying the novelty of it.

Of course, such a specialist camera won't get used as often as the main camera. In this case it's 13-megapixel camera, which has a secondary lens for gathering depth data for the portrait mode it offers - for those nice blurred backgrounds. Our quick tests suggest this all works - but we need to put it through its paces more widely to examine low light performance and overall quality across the cameras.

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