Motorola One Hyper review: Don’t believe the hype
Posted in Reviews on by Stein Jürgen ‐ Download .
Motorola have many great value for the money phones on the market – One Hyper is another phone that wants to be in that category but it actually doesn’t live up to the hype. See our test with pros, cons and price + a guide to three great alternatives.
Motorola One Hyper review
On paper Motorola One Hyper delivers high quality on most functions but in reality it’s a bit dissapointing and it’s time for Motorola to step up a show us a true premium phone. It’s not that it’s a poor phone – I have just it all in a better shape from Motorola before.
Design
It’s great looking but a step back on material. Glass on the front is fine – but the back is made of plastic and so is the frame. It feels okay build, solid, but it’s not waterproof – and it’s slippery. I have to use the cover in the box before I get a firm grip around the phone.
But I must admit that I have fallen in love with the purple colour on this version of the phone – it sure looks hot.
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User friendliness & Navigation speed
The UI is more or less stock Android as always on Motorola phones – Is has Android 10 out of the box and even though we don’t find a monster chip from Qualcomm in the phone the Snapdragon 675 does a fine job combined with the 4 gigabyte RAM that helps it running the phone with a decent navagation speed. Fast and reliable. I can have many browser tabs and apps running at the same time and a heavy game like Call of duty runs fine on One Hyper.
As always on this kind of mid end phones: The navigation speed can easily be improved. Go into Settings > Accessibility. Scroll down to remove animations. Animations slow down the navigation speed when you scroll from window to window on you phone – by removing animations it is simply speedier.
The fingerprint scanner is placed on the back and is working better than pretty much all phones with in display fingerprint scanner. The fact that is has 3,5 headphone jack and a FM radio might be important for some.
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Battery
The battery capacity is pretty impressive in this price range with 4000 milli amp hours. With the okay fine antenna quality and sar value right in the middle of the list and a simple user interface you have to work pretty hard not to get two days of battery life.
There is a 27 watt charger in the box and it’s an effective little bastard – in 15 minutes it charges the phone with 30 percent, 30 minutes 65 percent and in 1 hour and 10 minutes it’s fully charged. That’s amazing in the price range.
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Camera
The camera – this is were the dissapointment primarily sets in. The 64 megapixel main camera on the back and the 8 megapixel camera also on the back for ultra wide angle photo is not as great as on Motorolas own One Zoom.
There is no optical or electronical image stabilization on One Hyper and even though the main camera has 64 megapixel there is only 10 times digital zoom – no optical zoom feature.
Motorola explains that the camera is designed to deliver great pictures in the dark – but it doesn’t. I have seen better quality on quite a few other phones in this price level.
The selfie camera is actually pretty good with good sharpness and colours and fine bokeh effect – but listen to the default sound for the selfie camera when you activate it. Damn! Luckyli you can turn that sound of – but why is it there at all?!
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Display
The display – let’s not forget. It’s 6,5 inch big – LCD version and full HD resolution. Nice seize if you like ‘em big, especially for gaming but LCD is just not as nice as Super AMOLED as we find on One Zoom.
The display is fine, it’s okay, it does the job for my phone usage. but it’s nothing impressive to give it an advantage compared to most other phones in this price level.
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Price
The price for One Zoom starts from 400 dollars or around 350 euros. No extremely cheap, not extremely expensive, but right there in the middle with loads of other phones.
Read more: Compare prices on phones with great value for money
Cons
- Camera is not good enough overall compared to similiar priced products.
- Build material is poorer than on One Zoom
- No IP – it’s not waterproof.
- Finally – it’s just to much of the same from Motorola
Alternatives
If you agree with me on this, that One Hyper is just to much of the same from Motorola, and you are looking for a phone for 400 dollars or less then take a look at these three alternatives
Conclusion
It’s as if Motorola looked at the most poor things on One Zoom and improved on those features making One Hyper – and downgraded the phone compared to the best features on One Zoom.
It’s a strange mix and even though there are some fine features on One Hyper I’m overall simply not impressed. I’m actually a bit annoyed that Motorola give us yet another phone like this – we have seen it plenty of times. I want to see a true premium phone from Motorola.
In this price level around 400 dollars I would choose a different phone – for example Motorola One Zoom which is still a great phone for the price.
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