The New Motorola Turbo Review

PROS

• Long battery life
• Attractive Quad HD screen
• Powerful performance
• Camera a clear improvement over the Moto X

CONS

• Less charming design than the Moto X
• No expandable memory
• It's exclusive to Verizon 

While it lacks the style and charm of the

2014 Moto X, the Droid Turbo is a powerhouse that manages to outperform its relative in nearly every way that matters. 

The Moto X and the Droid Turbo both sport 5.2-inch AMOLED screens, but that's where the similarities end (much to the chagrin of X owners, I'd wager). That's because the panel Motorola used on the Turbo runs at Quad HD (or 2,560 x 1,440, if you haven't already committed it to memory), making it one of the most pixel-dense displays you'll find on a smartphone. The effect, as you'd imagine, is pretty stunning. Your stories, your videos, your apps; they're going to look just lovely. That said, a screen like this will make you all too aware that the internet is peppered with low-res images and icons, so be ready to shield your eyes whenever you come across them. Skype is a good example of this visual discrepancy in action: Your messages will look crisp, while emoticons will be tiny since they're so low-res.The Moto X's lackluster 13-megapixel camera might've been one of its biggest failings, and it's clear that Motorola wasn't about to let that happen again. That would explain why the Turbo instead packs a 21-megapixel rear shooter with a wide f/2.0 lens, a combination that's just utterly, staggeringly better than what its poor cousin has to offer. The full-resolution photos I snapped looked crisp and vivid, though not to the point where I'd worry the shots were technically inaccurate somehow. That said, low-light performance wasn't much to write home about -- smartphone cameras have historically been pretty lame when the lights start to dim and it wasn't long at all before I started noticing grain creeping into my shots. At least Motorola's HDR mode is surprisingly solid when it comes to eking a little extra depth and verve out of those dim photos. All told, though, the Droid Turbo produced livelier and more detailed shots than the Moto X, and occasionally captured a few shots I preferred over those I took with an iPhone 6 Plus.We'd be looking at one hell of an anticlimax if the Droid Turbo were a laggy piece of junk, but the thing definitely lives up to its name. I mean, of course it would. There's a 2.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 805 running the show, paired with 3GB of RAM, an Adreno 420 GPU and a software stack that more or less stays out of the way (I can only imagine how buttery it'd feel running Android 5.0). I spent the past week trying to push this thing to the limit, by cooking up one obnoxious stress test after another, but I ultimately couldn't detect so much as a hint of lag or visual slowdown while flicking through menus, bouncing between open applications and popping in for a quick zombie smash in Dead Trigger 2... though that last bit does get the Turbo running a little warm. Make no mistake: The Turbo has enough oomph to take on anything else currently on the market, to say nothing of your to-do list. Oh, and in case you were curious, that long speaker grille up front helps make the thing perform well as an actual phone -- call quality was crisp and clear, though folks on the other end occasionally thought my voice sounded a little muffled.

MOTOROLA DROID TURBO	SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 4	MOTO X (2014)	IPHONE 6 PLUS
Quadrant 2.0	23,706	24,425	22,721	N/A
Vellamo 3.0	3,803	1,808	2,093	N/A
3DMark IS Unlimited	20,030	20,692	19,568	17,902
SunSpider 1.0 (ms)	807	793	787	388
GFXBench 3.0 Manhattan Offscreen (fps)	18.1	18.8	11.9	18.2
CF-Bench	48,861	43,234	39,018	N/A