Motorola Moto X review: Talk to me

Google Now taken another step up

Google Now was first introduced back in Jelly Bean 4.1 and is definitely one of the most interesting additions in the OS. Simply put, it's Google's version of a personal assistant. Google Now is in the same neck of the woods as Apple's Siri, but it learns constantly from your daily routine.

It's accessed by holding the home button and gives you short overview of information it believes is relevant to you right now in the form of cards. Going to work in the morning? Google Now knows this and lets you know there's a big traffic jam on your usual way to the office, so it offers you a re-route.

It can interpret a lot of things from your search history as well. If you've been searching for, let's say, your favorite football team, Google Now will prepare a card showing you the next match the team is playing and will provide you score updates once the game begins.

Google Now

In Jelly Bean 4.2.2, Google Now has become even smarter and, if you allow it, can scan your email for upcoming flights, deliveries or restaurant reservations and let you know when they are due. There are also numerous kinds of cards like birthdays (yours and those of your contacts) and what distance you've walked in a particular month. The last one could definitely feel creepy for some users, but it's easily turned off from the Google Now settings menu. The latest addition to Google Now cards are TV and Offers.

Google has also integrated Voice Actions. They can handle stuff like sending messages (SMS or email), initiating a voice call, asking for directions, taking a note or opening a site. Google Now can also launch apps, check and manage your calendar and look for nearby places of interest and stuff like movie openings in theaters.

However, Motorola wasn't happy with just that and has taken Google Now to a whole new level with the Moto X. Dubbed Touchless Control, the service is now always active and can be activated without even unlocking the smartphone - it is done by saying "OK, Google Now." That is enabled by a dedicated contextual computing core which has been developed by Motorola.

Moto X offers a new dimension of Google Now functionality

With a duo of noise cancelling microphones on board, the voice-activated Google Now worked like a charm even in noisy environments. Before you start you set teach the service to recognize only your voice, so having someone else activate it with the universal command is usually impossible.

Setting up Touchless Control

Touchless Control is optional. It can be enabled and disabled from the Moto X's settings.

One big advantage of Google Now is that the voice typing functionality doesn't require an internet connection to work. You can enter text by speaking anywhere you can use the on-screen keyboard - be it the Messaging app or a note taking app - without the need for a data connection as long as you have pre-downloaded the needed language packs (and those only take about 20-25MB of your storage per pack).

Making voice typing available offline also made it faster as it's not dependent on your connection. What's even more impressive is that the transition hasn't cost it anything in terms of accuracy.

Synthetic benchmarks

Motorola likes to call the Moto X chipset X8 and claims that it is a custom-developed 8-core unit. That's hugely misleading though, since as far as actual computing power is concerned this is a very standard S4 Pro chipset with two Krait cores clocked at 1.7GHz, 2GB RAM and the Adreno 320 GPU.

Single-core performance as measured by benchmarks is about what you can expect - it's the same as the Sony Xperia SP (which uses the same chipset) and about 30% slower than Snapdragon 600-powered smartphones .

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  132
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  132
• LG Optimus G Pro
  147
• HTC One
  151
• Sony Xperia SP
  184
• Motorola Moto X
  192
• Sony Xperia Z
  264
• HTC Butterfly
  266
• Oppo Find 5
  267
• HTC One X+
  280
• LG Optimus G
  285
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  305
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  330
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  350
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  359
• Meizu MX 4-core
  362
• Nexus 4
  431

Multi-threaded performance is a little over a half of the Snapdragon 600 performance, according to Linpack and that's hardly surpsing to anyone.

Linpack

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  791
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  788
• LG Optimus G Pro
  743
• HTC One
  646
• Sony Xperia Z
  630
• HTC Butterfly
  624
• LG Optimus G
  608
• Oppo Find 5
  593
• Motorola Moto X
  391
• Sony Xperia SP
  348
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  214.3
• Nexus 4
  213.5
• Meizu MX 4-core
  189.1
• HTC One X+
  177.7
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  175.5
• HTC One X
  160.9
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  141.5

In the Geekbench 2 processing and memory speed test the Moto X was slightly closer to the Snapdragon S600 elite competition - 22% slower than HTC One and 34% slower than the Galaxy S4 - not quite what you'd expect from a smartphone more expensive than both of those.

Geekbench 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  3324
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  3227
• LG Optimus G Pro
  3040
• HTC One
  2708
• Sony Xperia Z
  2173
• Motorola Moto X
  2123
• Sony Xperia SP
  2105
• HTC Butterfly
  2143
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1845
• LG Optimus G
  1723
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1661
• iPhone 5
  1601

Compound benchmarks like AnTuTu and Quadrant tell a very similar story - the Moto X is a snappy device but some way off the Snapdragon 600 chipsets.

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  26275
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  24716
• HTC One
  22678
• Sony Xperia Z
  20794
• LG Optimus G Pro
  20056
• HTC Butterfly
  19513
• Motorola Moto X
  19031
• Sony Xperia SP
  15874
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15547
• Oppo Find 5
  15167

Quadrant

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  12446
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  12376
• LG Optimus G Pro
  12105
• HTC One
  11746
• Motorola Moto X
  9018
• Sony Xperia Z
  8075
• Sony Xperia SP
  7897
• HTC One X+
  7632
• LG Optimus G
  7439
• Oppo Find 5
  7111
• HTC One X
  5952
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  5916
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  5450
• Meizu MX 4-core
  5170
• Nexus 4
  4567

GPU performance is the strongest suit for the Moto X - it has a quad-core Adreno 320 GPU, which is the same as the one used in the current crop of 1080p flagships. The 1080p offscreen performance turned out about with the top dogs and when you consider that the Moto X only has to push 720p resolution to its screen, you can see that it will handle every game with unrivaled smoothness.

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Motorola Moto X
  43
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  43
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  41
• HTC One
  37
• Oppo Find 5
  32
• Google Nexus 4
  32
• Sony Xperia SP
  31
• Sony Xperia Z
  31
• Sony Xperia ZL
  31
• Sony Xperia SP
  31
• Apple iPhone 5
  30
• LG Optimus G Pro
  30
• LG Optimus G
  21
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  17
• HTC One X
  11

GLBenchmark 2.7 T-Rex (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4
  17.1
• Samsung I9500 Galaxy S4
  17.1
• Apple iPad 4
  16.8
• Motorola Moto X
  16
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  16
• Samsung Galaxy S4 GPE
  15
• HTC One GPE
  13.9
• LG Optimus G
  13.9
• Sony Xperia Z
  13.5
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  13
• Sony Xperia ZR
  13
• Sony Xperia ZL
  12.8
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  4.9

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  59.8
• Motorola Moto X
  59.6
• Sony Xperia SP
  58.0
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  57.1
• HTC One
  56.4
• Sony Xperia Z
  55.6
• LG Optimus G Pro
  54.2
• Nexus 4
  53.9
• Asus Padfone 2
  53.4
• LG Optimus G
  52.6
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  41.3
• Oppo Find 5
  38.6

Web browser performance turned out excellent too. JavaScript performance is about average (when compared against 2013 flagships), but the Vellamo test yielded an excellent score.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  804
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  810
• Samsung Ativ S
  891
• Apple iPhone 5
  915
• Nokia Lumia 920
  910
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  972
• HTC One X+
  1001
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1011
• Motorola Moto X
  1050
• Motorola RAZR i XT890
  1059
• Sony Xperia SP
  1116
• HTC One
  1124
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1192
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1312
• Sony Xperia Z
  1336
• LG Optimus G
  1353
• HTC Butterfly
  1433
• Nexus 4
  1971
• Oppo Find 5
  2045

Vellamo

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia SP
  2497
• Motorola Moto X
  2446
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2418
• HTC One
  2382
• Sony Xperia Z
  2189
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  2078
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  2060
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  2056
• HTC Butterfly
  1866
• Oppo Find 5
  1658
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1641
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1568
• LG Optimus G
  1522
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1468
• Nexus 4
  1310

There are two ways to look at the Moto X hardware performance. On one hand the smartphone is hardly a scrub and its GPU is on par with the big boys. On the other however, it has half the CPU cores and that shows in many of the tests - we wouldn't mind those scores if they came from a mid-ranger, but at this price point they are somewhat disappointing.

Don't get us wrong - lag is unfamiliar territory for the Moto X and the smartphone goes about its daily duties with ease, but the relatively limited CPU power is bound to show up when faced with more demanding tasks.