DxOMark | The Motorola One Zoom's cameras aren't worthy of its price tag

Motorola launched the Motorola One Zoom a few months ago. The mid-range phone has now made its way over to DxOMark where it was put through the website's rigorous camera tests. Sadly, results were about par with most of Motorola's releases—poor.

The Motorola One Zoom recorded an overall score of 87, on par with a three-year-old flagship like the iPhone 7 Plus (88) and Galaxy S7 Edge (89). On the flip side, it's also in the same range as the LG G7 ThinQ (83) and Nokia 9 PureView (85), both of which are newer premium devices. Of course, the G7 and Nokia 9 can also be considered to be underperformers—by DxOMark's standards.

In the photo category, the Motorola One Zoom earned a score of 92. Notable weaknesses included focusing issues, poor color rendering, limited dynamic range, and depth estimation problems in bokeh shots in spite of the phone's 5 MP depth sensor. 

It's in the video category that the Motorola One Zoom completely fails to find its feet, as it comes away with a terrible score of 77. Notable weaknesses included low detail preservation, poor dynamic range, inaccurate color rendering, and autofocus steps visible when tracking.

Seeing as most of its problems are consistent across both video, it's obvious that the Motorola One Zoom's cameras are flawed in certain aspects; namely, color rendering, autofocus, and dynamic range. How much those problems can be mitigated by software remains to be seen.

The Motorola One Zoom costs a massive US$449, and it's a bit hard to recommend it at that price tag. Why, the Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro can be hard within that price bracket, and it delivers a much better camera performance while being just as versatile. The Pixel 3a phones lack the ultra-wide and telephoto shooters but are undoubtedly still better camera phones.