Motorola Razr And Razr+ (2024) Review: Phenomenal Flip Phones

Both the new Razrs are available as unlocked phones. They should connect to any network just by plugging in a SIM card or downloading an eSIM. They support a wide range of sub-6GHz 5G frequencies, so you should get full access to your carrier's latest improvements. There's no millimeter wave 5G support even on the Razr+, which is a negative on paper. However, mmWave 5G is only available in limited areas, and coverage is lacking relative to sub-6. There aren't many times when you need multi-gigabit speeds on a smartphone anyway. 

Motorola Razr and Razr+ (2024) Voice And Data

We've been testing the Razrs on T-Mobile's 5G network, mostly on the "ultra capacity" mid-bands Tmo got when it acquired Sprint. Speeds will vary from place to place, but the Razrs have performed well for us. Both phones manage to meet or exceed the 5G speed of other recent phones. That means (usually) several hundred megabits down and a smaller number up. 


Voice calls have been good on these phones. Both ends of the conversation are clear and loud—you almost have to max out the call volume on some phones, but not the Razrs. The ability to answer calls from the external screen means you may find yourself using speakerphone more often, and that works great on these devices. 

Motorola Razr and Razr+ (2024) Performance

While these phones look almost identical on the outside, the internals are quite a bit different. The Razr+ is the more powerful phone, with a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3. The Snapdragon chip is designed for "budget flagships" as it takes a step down compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It has a single Cortex-X4 prime core running at 3GHz, four high-performance Cortex-A720 cores with a maximum clock speed of 2.8GHz, and three 2GHz Cortex-A520 cores optimized for efficiency. 

Meanwhile, the Razr has a MediaTek 7300X, which was designed specifically for foldable flip phones. MediaTek says the graphics engine is tuned for external displays, but it's vague on the details. This chip has older A78 cores (4x at 2.5GHz) and A55 cores (4x at 2GHz) and a much less capable GPU compared to the Snapdragon chip. 

In daily use, both phones are very responsive and maintain high frame rates. The lower priced Razr might hesitate occasionally switching apps, and processing photos causes noticeable system slowdowns. However, general productivity tasks are fast enough. The Razr+ feels more like a flagship phone, but even it can get a little bogged down at times. The 12GB of RAM helps, though. The Razr's 8GB of RAM means it'll have to reload apps more often, which is slower than it is on the Razr+. 

Motorola Razr and Razr+ (2024) Geekbench Results

Geekbench is a cross-platform benchmark that simulates real-world processing workloads in image processing and particle physics calculation scenarios. We tested all of the smartphones featured here with Geekbench's single and multi-core workloads.


The latest Geekbench 6 test has new ways of testing multi-core configurations and uses higher-resolution diagnostic assets than older versions. As you can see, the two Razrs are on different levels. The Razr+ is competing with flagship phones from a year ago, but the cheaper model is firmly in the mid range. 

Motorola Razr and Razr+ (2024) Graphics And Gaming Benchmarks Results

Now, let's take a look at how the new Razrs stack up in GFXBench, which has been one of the standard mobile graphics/gaming performance benchmarks for years. To ensure that display refresh (v-sync) and resolution aren't limiting factors, we're comparing off-screen test results here. GFXBench tests OpenGL ES graphics workloads and we're specifically testing OpenGL ES 2.0 and 3.0, as well as Vulkan in the latest iterations.

While the CPU scores differ a bit between the SD8s Gen 3 and Dimensity 7300X, the graphical performance is much more divergent. The Razr+ puts up scores in-line with 2022-era flagship chips, but the Razr is much slower. It's really only ideal for simple games. 

Motorola Razr and Razr+ (2024) Wild Life Benchmark Tests

3DMark's Wild Life benchmark is newer and more demanding than Slingshot, and it allows powerful devices to shine.
The gap between these two chips is similarly wide in the Wild Life test. The Razr+ can run any game you throw at it, but the Razr will struggle with newer titles. Even the Snapdragon's potential throttling in smaller form factor devices won't level the playing field. 

The Wild Life stress test runs the above benchmark 20 times, tracking how a device slows down as it heats up. Most phones lose some speed as they approach their thermal limit, but the severity of the slowdown varies dramatically from one phone to the next.


These graphs are typical of what we see in flagship vs. mid-range Arm chips. The Snapdragon 8s inside the Razr+ starts fast but loses around half its speed over the long haul as it heats up. The Dimensity 7300X doesn't experience any noticeable throttling, but it's not pushing as many pixels. Even when the Razr+ heats up, its graphical performance is still twice as high as the cheaper model.