Motorola Razr (2024): tomorrow's bargain foldable?
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Motorola Razr (2024) Intro
Motorola's revived Razr brand was off to a rocky start initially, but last year's Razr (2023) and Razr+ (2023) were quite good. They had high quality displays, slim builds, premium feel with a grippy "vegan leather", and a very competitive price points.
Which is why we are excited about the new Razr 2024 models, which just recently dropped. The top-class Razr+ (2024) is business as usual — huge external screen, 165 Hz screen on the inside, an... OK camera.
But the regular Moto Razr (2024) is a very attractive choice here. For one, it is still $699.99, which is very affordable as far as foldable phones go. And, instead of a tiny ticker screen on the outside, it now has a 3.6-inch external screen, like the panel that was on the Razr+ (2023). It's a "big boy" upgrade for the same price as before, for sure!
Table of Contents:
Motorola Razr (2024) Specs
Cutting some corners, but making a lot of friends
Let's start with an overview of the expected Razr (2024) specs:
| Specs | Motorola Razr (2024) |
|---|---|
| Size and Weight | Unfolded: 6.74 x 2.91 x 0.29 in (171.30 x 73.99 x 7.25 mm) Folded: 3.47 x 2.91 x 0.62 in (88.08 x 73.99 x 15.85 mm) |
| Display | Main: 6.9-inch FHD+ OLED, 120 Hz External: 3.6-inch OLED |
| Processor | MediaTek Dimensity 7300X 8-core, 2.5 GHz, 4 nm |
| Software | Android 14 |
| Cameras | 50 MP main 13 MP ultra-wide 32 MP front-facing |
| Battery Size | 4,200 mAh |
| Charging Speeds | 30 W wired charging 5 W wireless Reverse-wireless |
| Prices | 8 GB /256 GB for $699 |
Motorola Razr (2024) Design and Display
Midranger getting the premium features
The Motorola Razr (2024) looks like a Razr+ (2023) — an external screen with a 3.6-inch diagonal, and a nice metal frame with a grippy texture, pleasant vegan leather wrapping, trendy color options. The hinge, however, feels sturdier now and allows you to kind of prop the screen up, locked in a single position. The Razr models from last year were a bit floppy and the phone couldn't "sit up" — they were either fully open or fully closed.
The outer display also comes with a 90 Hz refresh rate, which is pretty cool to see on a "midrange" foldable. The main screen goes all the way up to 120 Hz for super-smooth animations. It will also be a 6.9-inch diagonal, same as before. It's a pOLED panel and ensures pretty striking colors and contrast — Motorola has been doing quite good with tuning the OLED panels it uses in its phones.
No charger in the box, but you may get a free complimentary case with your Razr (2024) purchase. That's market-dependent, and as far as we know, the US-bound units don't have the case included in the box.
The screen inside may have a 6.9-inch diagonal, but its ratio is 22:9, so it's perceived as "tall" more so than "big". Using the Razr with one hand is a bit of a challenge if you need to reach icons up top, or flick down the notifications shade. That said, you can type with one hand just perfectly fine, with your thumb over the lower area of the screen.
The OLED panel is quite vibrant and punchy, but its colors are just a tad skewed — as usual, we are getting a bit of a teal cast. Worth noting, the more expensive Razr+ and the Z Flip 6 have more accurate screens. However, just using it as a main phone, you can get used to the Razr (2024), and its software color calibrations allow for some fine-tuning. Plus, you do have a blue light filter on board, naturally.
Peak brightness is listed at 3,000 nits for HDR content. That is... a lot of nits for sure, but it's peak brightness, so only a single area of pixels for a limited time. We measure all-screen brightness — in the case of the Razr (2024), it's very good, at 1,189 nits — the sun won't bother you with this thing! Minimum brightness can be better — at 2.9 nits, it's not ideal for bedtime viewing.
Motorola Razr (2024) Camera
32 MP selfies, anyone?
Last year's Motorola Razr (2023) had a 64 MP main camera, word is that the Razr (2024) has a 50 MP sensor there. That's not to be perceived as a downgrade — what's important is how the phone utilizes those pixels!
The regular Razr (2024) doesn't have a zoom camera, but a 13 MP ultra-wide snapper. And, the selfie camera is expected to have a 32 MP resolution — a bit overkill, we'll see how it performs.
Photos with the main camera look a bit jagged, due to some excessive oversharpening, and colors are a bit skewed to the vibrant blues and greens. Dynamics are mostly good — it gets close to burning the highlights here and there, but manages to keep things in check. At night, the image becomes yellowish and a bit noisy, but we like that the Razr (2024) preserves some details where other phones would smudge them up with noise reduction.
The ultra-wide camera looks surprisingly more balanced — with a good amount of detail and very mature color reporoduction.
Zooming with the Razr (2024) isn't going to be your favorite activity — it does clear things up with post-processing, but the pictures don't look awe-inspiring.
As for video, the cameras should still be capable of the 4K at 60FPS, and 1080P at 120FPS for slow motion. We don't expect fancy features like HDR10+ video, at least not on the base Razr (2024).
Its colors are surprisingly much more natural than when taking photos. Its audio also clens noise up and tries to only let voices in. But stabilization needs a bit of work as walking footage looks a bit wobbly.
Motorola Razr (2024) Performance
Good chunk of storage!
The base Razr (2024) is rocks a MediaTek Dimensity 7300X. It's a new chip, built on a 4nm process that hits a top clock speed of 2.5 GHz — it won't be crushing the benchmarks for sure. In fact, the benchmarks kind of crushed it:
Yeah, the Geekbench scores aren't great, but they do tell the story that the phone can handle casual tasks. That's also our experience — it runs OK. We don't wait for apps to load, and scrolling throuhg our emails didn't seam teary or stuttery.
The GPU of this phone is not here to handle any type of heavy 3D graphics — hence the bad 3DMark scores. Hey, the good news... we managed to play some FPS games — all settings on low. And the touch response of the Motorola Razr (2024) is pretty quick, so it doesn't "feel" laggy.
The starting storage is 256 GB — quite generous for a folding phone that starts at $700, we'd say. But it doesn't seem to be UFS 4.0 chip — more likely an old gen UFS 3.1, as that's the type of storage the MediaTek Dimensity 7300X supports. It comes with 8 GB LPDDR4X RAM — not top-tier spec, but we wouldn't say they are below what is standard for Android phones nowadays.
Motorola Razr (2024) Software
Pretty obvious — the new phones launch with the latest Android build, which is Android 14 right now. Of course, it would be Motorola's skin on top of it, which comes with the adored classic features such as the twist gesture to turn on the camera even while the phone is locked, or the chop gesture to turn on the flashlight.
Moto also has some slight generative AI features sprinkled in, like the wallpaper generator, which will build a fresh new image based on your outfit (you need to take a selfie or picture of the fit). It also uses AI to optimize apps in the background. But nothing crazy or in-depth like the Galaxy AI or the new iOS 18 features.
For longevity, we expect something to the tune of 3 years of Android updates and 4 years of security patches. Motorola updates come out relatively quickly, but there's some room for improvement.
Motorola Razr (2024) Battery
No mega speeds
The new Razr (2024) has a 4,200mAh battery, which is not amazing by today's standards, but still quite impressive considering the cell fits in only one half of the phone. It is still somehow 200 mAh bigger than what the Galaxy Z Flip 6 has, for example!
And the battery life we get from it is quite respectable. Pushing the phone with 3D gaming can melt those percentages a bit faster, true. But for your typical smartphone tasks — browsing the web a binging YouTube, it does hold up. Our web browsing test simulates constant web page reloading and scrolling, so 18 hours on that basically means that the phone can last you a day and a half if all you are doing is chatting, emailing, social media scrolling.
As you get a bit demanding, the battery will last less, but still — 8 hours 40 minutes of gaming is in the realm of the norm for flagship phones nowadays.
For charging, the Razr (2024) can accept up to 30 W of power:
That'll take you from 0% to 100% in exactly one hour, which is pretty good! If you don't have the time, you can still get up to 57% in only 30 minutes, so even if you are in a pinch, you can get away with forgetting to charge your phone on time.
There's wireless charging, and reverse wireless for giving off juice to your accessories like earbuds or smartwatch. Yeah, you can use the Razr (2024) to charge another phone, but that will be incredibly inefficient and should be only used as a last resort.
Audio quality and haptics
The speakers of the Motorola Razr (2024) are not going to be turning any heads. They sound thin, with little bass and a hump in the upper mids. So, any voice audio will be clear — like talking head videos or a phone call on speaker. But you won't be enjoying music or artistic video on it.
The haptics are, as usual, fantastic. The Razr (2024) clicks with a strong and punctual vibration, and it's very pleasing and reassuring to use.
Should you buy Razr (2024)?
By all means, the Motorola Razr (2024) is a proper upgrade to last year's non-Plus Razr. Just adding that 3.6-inch screen but keeping the price at $700 already is a gamechanger. The hinge feels better now, and the battery efficiency is pretty great. Those performance scores, though? It's a bit of a tough pill to swallow, but we can't say we noticed any performance issues while using it. By all means, the Razr (2024) is the casual user's flip phone.
The camera is OK... it won't be entering any "best camera phones" competitions any time soon, but you should be able to capture some memorabilia or some social media photos with it. We specifically enjoyed the realistic colors of its videos.
The display has fast touch response and can look great, no matter your preference. Want natural colors? There's a setting for that. Want your reds to be so saturated that they poke your eyes out? There's a setting for that.
People that are new to the foldable space and don't feel like spending $1k on the new concept may find this device has enough to hook them in and keep them as Moto fans. It looks lovely, feels great, and performs decently. If top performance and excellent cameras are your main requirements — look elsewhere. The Razr Plus (2024) is a bit of an upgrade, but for its $1k asking price — it's really hard not to throw the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 into the conversation as well.
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