14 DAY TRIAL // Camera performance is one of the most important things that people take into consideration when buying a new phone. C4ETech conducted a test on the newly released Moto G4 Plus and the Lenovo ZUK Z1 and compared camera performance for the two handsets.
Lenovo unveiled the Moto G4 Plus this month, and the device comes with pretty decent specs for a mid-ranger. In the same price range is Lenovo’s ZUK Z1, which was announced last August. However, it seems that the Moto G4 Plus has some major heating problems that overshadow its camera performance.
When it comes to camera capabilities, there are some differences between the two phones. The Moto G4 Plus sports a 5MP front selfie camera and 16MP rear snapper, coupled with phase detection and laser auto-focus. It also features touch focus, face detection, panorama, and dual-LED flash.
It supports f/2.0 aperture compared to ZUK Z1’s f/2.2. ZUK Z1 has a 13MP rear camera with OIS, autofocus, as well as dual-LED, touch focus, face detection, and panorama, plus a more powerful front-facing camera of 8MP.
Images captured with the Moto G4 Plus have a greater depth of field. The results are very similar indoors and with mixed lighting, but the Moto G4 Plus still holds an edge. Under low light, Moto G4 Plus manages to produce brighter images, with less noise levels. Moto G4 Plus is able to focus faster, and the transitions are much smoother when shooting a video.
It also gets the exposure better while the digital stabilization on the G4 Plus was better than the optical stabilization on the Lenovo ZUK Z1. Still, the video shot on the Z1 is a bit smoother, and the level of detail is also better due to the higher bitrate.
Moto G4 Plus faces major overheating problems
Considering that the Moto G4 Plus comes with a dedicated manual mode that the Z1 lacks, it would seem that the G4 Plus would win the camera performance test. However, the recently released smartphone has a tendency to overheat when the camera is used for a prolonged time.
The video shows that, after 30 minutes of usage, even the UI on the Moto G4 Plus starts lagging, an issue that wasn’t encountered on the ZUK Z1. Still, after about half an hour of intensive use in a gaming app, the smartphone didn't encounter any issues with heating. This means that the overheating problem is directly connected to the camera mode, which is quite inconvenient.
In conclusion, although the Moto G4 Plus has the better camera and manages to focus the image faster when shooting videos, ZUK Z1 does provide the more reliable camera without the major heating problems found on the G4 Plus.
