Motorola One Action review

Competition

The One Action is facing a tough crowd with some popular names against it. Long time fan-favorite Samsung Galaxy A50 can be had for about as much as what Motorola charges, and comes with a superior display and a much better battery life. Its One UI is diametrically opposed to the One Action's Android One (alotta ones in that sentence) and updates won't be as speedy or frequent. The Galaxy's ultra wide angle cam can take pictures unlike the One Action's, but we'd actually go with the Moto for picturetaking or video capture.

Samsung Galaxy A50 • Panasonic Eluga Z1 Pro • Huawei P30 lite • Realme 3 Pro

A Huawei P30 lite will set you back about as much as a One Action and it too delivers better endurance. Displays are mostly a tie, the Huawei may have a slight edge in image quality but is hardly a match for video, and the Moto One Action has a minor advantage in performance. Once again, this can also be decided in a simple Android One vs. EMUI bout.

Same in a potential One Action vs. Mi 9 SE dilemma, though MIUI may have more fans than EMUI. The Xiaomi phone has the most versatile triple-cam setup you can have for the money, and a really nice display, plus it still beats the Moto in battery life, even though it's not strictly impressive. A much more powerful chipset ticks inside the Mi 9 SE, and that makes a particular difference in GPU-intense tasks where the One Action lags behind. The Moto does have niceties like a headphone jack and a microSD slot, which could sway things that way.

Those trump cards don't work against the Realme 3 Pro - it's got both features too. A brawnier GPU is also in the Realme's favor and so is the better battery life. It takes much nicer photos in low light, with daylight images largely on par. The Realme has no answer to the Action's action cam, however - not even a plain ultra wide angle shooter.

Verdict

The Motorola One Action's one defining feature is also sort of its curse. The thing is, most phones in its price range already have ultra wide angle cameras and those would be ultra wide cameras you can also take pictures with, unlike the Action's video-only implementation.

And it's not like the One Action impresses when it comes to the basics - its display is only so-so in the tests, battery life leaves a lot to be desired, and the selfie cam takes up a lot of space on the front, both physically and in software.

However, that selfie cam takes really nice pictures, and it captures 4K video which isn't too common on high-end phones, let alone ones in this segment. The main cam on the back is reasonably capable too, and the Action cam's footage isn't half bad, all things considered. The display is good enough and well suited to gobbling video if you can look past the hole, the Exynos inside isn't going to keep you waiting, and Android One updates should be coming in for the next 3 years.

Plus, the One Action comes at a reasonable price. Don't take this as a straight-up recommendation, but we won't judge you if you get one of these.

Pros

• Ultrawide 21:9 cinematic screen.
• Dependable performance across the board.
• Unique ultra wide angle camera concept, potentially useful to the right folk.
• Excellent selfies, 4K selfie video capture.
• Vanilla Android OS, part of Android One program.

Cons

• Underwhelming battery life, slowish charging.
• Selfie camera hole seems too big and interferes with content in some apps - a notch would have likely been better.
• The ultra wide angle camera can't be used for stills.