Motorola introduced the X Play this year in hopes that it will be able to capture the attention of users who are looking for a budget phablet. However, with other premium devices from last year still available in the market, including the Sony Xperia Z3, the device from Motorola needs to put up a good fight.

Design

The metal frame on the Moto X Play gives it a good look but the strength of the device lies in its ability to be customized on the Moto Maker website. Users simply go to the website to choose from various colored back panels created from materials like silicone, leather and wood, as well as outfit the device by selecting from a wide range of colored metal accents and lenses. However, it is not waterproof and it only comes with a coating that repels splashes of water unlike its competitor which has an IP68 rating allowing it to be dunked in up to 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes.

The Xperia Z3 also has a metal frame but its front and back panels are crafted from glass. Its corners are well protected as it has a layer of nylon. In terms of colors, the device from Sony comes in copper, black, white, purple and green.

Display

The display on the Moto X Play is bigger as it is a phablet-sized device. Its 5.5 inch capacitive screen has a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and a density of 403 pixels per inch. In the Xperia Z3 is a smaller IPS LCD screen measuring 5.2 inches with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and a density of 424 pixels per inch.

Specs

The hardware in the device from Motorola is better as it was just recently released. It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset, an octa-core CPU comprised of four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.7 GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.0 GHz and an Adreno 405 GPU. As for the Xperia Z3, it has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801chipset, a Krait 400 CPU with four cores clocked at 2.5 GHz and an Adreno 330 GPU.

Memory

There are similar memory slots on the devices and each can be used to add up to 128 GB of external storage. As for RAM, the Xperia Z3 has 3 GB while the Moto X Play has 2 GB.

Price

The Sony Xperia Z3 is now available at $470, unlocked, while the Moto X Play is expected to be priced at $300 without a contract.