The Motorola Razr Fold is the brand’s first book-style foldable in the Razr family, and it delivers as premium an experience as you could expect. With a gorgeous screen, top-notch camera suite, and powerful processor, the Motorola Razr Fold delivers a flagship experience in every way.
The experience is rounded out by Motorola’s fairly unobtrusive flavour of Android and premium materials like the vegan leather rear and metal frame.
In the broader foldable market, the Razr Fold sits at the more affordable end, but the foldable form factor itself still commands a price premium that’s worth considering before you spend.
Overall Rating: 4 / 5
Pros
- Excellent camera quality
- Bright, colourful display
- Seven years of support
Cons
- Speaker placement minimises stereo separation
- Photos are prone to overprocessing in default mode
- A little expensive for this chipset
Price: $2799 | For people after a foldable focused on attention to detail
Setup & First Impressions
Motorola’s familiar perfumed box makes a return with a signature scent that lingers after opening. Even after a few weeks of review time, the phone still smells faintly of fresh laundry.
Included in the box is the phone, charging cable, documentation, a SIM tool, and a slimline bumper case.
Setup is straightforward, requiring a sign-in to a Google account and optionally a Motorola account to use additional services. There are a few preinstalled apps, including Perplexity, Copilot, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and FIFA Heroes.
Motorola’s default widgets and apps are not too intrusive and I did not feel the need to overhaul the launcher.
Design & Aesthetics
The first thing you’ll notice about the design is the vegan leather back. It’s a nice touch that adds a premium feel and a bit more grip than glass or metal finishes.
Like other foldables we’ve reviewed this year, the Razr Fold is reasonably thin, even while closed. It comes in at 9.9mm thin while closed, or 4.6mm thin unfolded.
Motorola has opted for an in-button fingerprint reader that’s convenient for large hands, but if you have smaller hands you may find yourself reaching up to activate it.
There is a visible crease on the inner glass when the display is off or at slightly off-axis viewing angles, but the screen is bright enough to overcome this otherwise.
Life With the Motorola Razr Fold
I’ve had hands on with the Motorola Razr Fold for the past few weeks. Overall I’ve been very impressed with its performance, particularly with the camera quality.
Positives
The camera makes it easy to take great looking photos with good contrast and colour performance in the automatic mode. There is a little AI processing going on, but it hasn’t really missed a beat.
In day-to-day usage, the phone feels very snappy and responsive. During more intensive tasks like 3D gaming and multitasking, it’s more than capable of keeping up.
The Razr Fold supports fast charging up to 80W, making it very quick to top up in a pinch. Motorola says you can get 12 hours of screen time from just 12 minutes on the charger.
The 6000mAh silicon carbon battery provides plenty of battery life, comfortably lasting into a second day of regular usage.
Negatives
The extra action key can only be used to activate Moto AI. Most phones will let you rebind this to more useful functions, like quick access to the camera or toggling the flashlight, but your only option by default is to turn it off.
The loudspeaker quality is decent, but due to their placement, they don’t provide a great deal of stereo separation when the screen is unfolded. Other foldables I’ve tested have split the speakers so there is one on each side of the screen, but the Motorola Razr Fold places both on the left side.
Camera
Motorola’s continued commitment to smartphone photography shows. The main lens is a 50-megapixel Sony LYTIA 828 sensor with optical image stabilisation.
Motorola leans on computational photography to achieve its results rather than increasing sensor size like other brands. In this implementation it works fairly well, creating dramatic looking shots with strong contrast and colours.
The other lenses include a 3x optical zoom periscope telephoto backed up with a 50-megapixel Sony LYTIA 600 sensor, and a 50-megapixel ultrawide lens that offers close macro focus.
In daylight, the phone performs extremely well. It confidently nails exposure in most shots, and even trickier lighting didn’t affect the result too badly.
Low light performance is similarly impressive. The phone brightens up scenes without significant loss of detail or quality.
Video is another highlight. The Motorola Razr Fold provides 8K30 and 4K60 recording with Dolby Vision and 10-bit HDR10+ recording.
Performance & Reliability
The Motorola Razr Fold features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset paired with 12GB of RAM for smooth day-to-day performance, responsive multitasking, and solid gaming performance.
In demanding 3D games like Neverness to Everness I noticed a little slowdown, but for more casual titles the Razr Fold easily keeps up. The device maxed out 3DMark Wild Life and performed as expected in Wild Life Extreme.
Practical Considerations
Motorola offers solid support for its foldable modes, including foldable gestures, split screen, laptop mode, and desk display mode.
Split screen mode provides access to side-by-side apps or freeform mode with a floating window. Motorola’s laptop mode implementation is a compelling use case for the foldable form factor. You can sit it on your lap or a desk and type on it like a tiny computer.
Motorola’s Pen Ultra works on the Razr Fold and offers additional features. The stylus supports pressure sensitivity, tilt, and palm rejection for natural-feeling notetaking and drawing.
The Razr Fold features IP48/IP49 protection against water and dust resistance. That won’t help it survive anything serious, but it provides a little reassurance against minor splashes.
Value & Alternatives
Coming in at $2799, the Motorola Razr Fold is priced reasonably compared to other foldables on the market.
Some natural alternatives include the Oppo Find N6, which features a higher resolution sensor and stronger camera suite.
There’s also the Honor Magic V5 at around the same price point, though the overall experience feels a little less refined.
Would I Buy It With My Own Money?
Yes. If you’re sold on the foldable form factor, the Motorola Razr Fold is a compelling option. Although it’s Motorola’s first foray into foldables, it’s a polished device that’s hard to fault.
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