Pros
- Cover screen looks nice
- Silicon battery increases capacity
- Good cameras
Cons
- Best if upgrading from a 2023 phone
- Only one color
I have a hard time feeling the “Plus” in Motorola’s 2026 Razr Plus — especially given its $1,100 price tag, up from last year’s foldable phone, likely due to current market conditions. After testing it out following last year’s 2025 base Razr, which I quite liked, the Razr Plus doesn’t seem to offer much more functionality to justify the upgrade.
That’s not to say the Razr Plus is a bad device. It’s just trying to occupy a middle ground between the $800 Razr and the $1,500 Razr Ultra — while sharing most of the same specs as the 2024 and 2025 Razr Plus models. That’s why most Razr-curious people who don’t care about having the latest specs will probably be better off with the cheaper model, despite its lower processor performance and photo quality.
The Motorola Razr Plus has a 6.9-inch screen that you can use unfolded or half-folded, like this.
The 2026 Razr Plus has three noticeable improvements over this year’s base Razr: a slightly larger 4-inch cover screen, a faster 45-watt charging speed and the 3-year-old Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 processor that’s still faster than Razr’s MediaTek Dimensity 7450X. But all of those features were on the 2024 and 2025 Razr Plus models. While this 2026 edition does get a slightly bigger 4,500-mAh silicon-carbon battery, the cheaper Razr packs an even bigger 4,800-mAh one.
I still enjoy using the Razr Plus in all the same ways as I did the base Razr. The cover screen’s great for quick texts and looking up the weather. I like propping it up in a chair-like position to watch videos or for video chats, and unfolding the phone to use its 6.9-inch display for widescreen video and reading websites is very convenient.
But it’s still $300 more than the lower-cost Razr, which offers most of the same features and comes in more colors.
Menus on the cover screen can use the entire display on the Razr Plus. But other apps are constrained to the space above the camera.
Motorola Razr Plus (2026) design, battery life, features
Like the Razr Plus models from the past two years, the 2026 version features a 4-inch OLED cover screen that spans nearly the entire front of the phone, giving the impression that it’s easier to view than the 3.6-inch cover screen on the lower-cost Razr. But after using both, I found the difference to be imperceptible.
In certain apps, it’s easier to have the keyboard enter a fullscreen mode for typing out messages.
That’s because while the cover screen offers a lot of space, especially with the navigation buttons tucked in the bottom-left corner, most apps are cropped to fit above the cameras. This noticeably reduces the area of the display that’s actually usable, and I wish there was some kind of setting that would let me choose to expand this. Generally, chat apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger scale down well to this cover screen, while others feel crammed. (I had to use surgical precision to pull up my Amtrak ticket’s QR code on the cover screen.) These more crammed moments, in particular, made me wonder what the 4-inch screen was actually adding.
While the YouTube app is usable on the cover screen, it still feels crammed.
One “plus” I do see is the textured back of the dark green version of my review unit (Pantone’s “Mountain View”). While the lower-cost models also come in textured finishes — with Alcantara fabric and wood reserved for the higher-end Razr Ultra model — they all offer a more distinctive look than the silver and black designs that tend to dominate more expensive phones.
The phone feels more traditional when unfolded to use its 6.9-inch display. I typically use a phone with a 6.7-inch screen, so the Razr Plus feels noticeably larger, whether I’m holding it vertically or horizontally. Most apps scale well to the extra space, but some videos formatted for widescreen TVs rather than wider theatrical aspect ratios need to be zoomed in to fill the display.
I like the textured feel of the back of the Razr Plus, as well as the dark green color dubbed Pantone Mountain View.
The 4,500-mAh battery provides enough power for a day, but it’s nothing fancy. During my testing, I would typically end the day at around 30% with about three hours of screen time — which is liveable and comparable to other flip-style phones. In our three-hour YouTube streaming test, the Razr Plus depleted from 100% to 82%, which matches last year’s Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7. It’s an area where I feel like this phone makes a noticeable compromise, especially compared to other $1,100 non-folding phones, such as the iPhone 17 Pro, that have significantly longer battery life despite having smaller batteries.
That said, the 45-watt wired charging puts in a respectable effort, recharging the battery from 0% to 58% in our 30-minute test. The phone also supports 15-watt wireless charging and 5-watt reverse wireless charging for powering other devices.
Fortnite plays well on the Razr Plus using the medium graphics settings.
Even though this is the third year Motorola is using a Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 processor in its Razr Plus, it’s still a good pick for most tasks, especially paired up with 12GB of RAM. Those specs put it noticeably behind most similarly priced phones, including the Galaxy Z Flip 7, in benchmark tests such as Geekbench and 3DMark Wild Life Extreme. But its hardware is still powerful enough for smooth multitasking and to run Fall Guys at its highest graphical settings. Fortnite also performed well at medium settings, though it struggled more with the higher graphical presets than $1,100 nonfolding phones powered by Qualcomm’s latest chip do.
The Plus also includes the Moto AI feature suite introduced last year, which in its current form feels both light-touch and a bit heavy-handed. I find the features easy to ignore when I don’t need them, but I do appreciate the notification summaries provided by Catch Me Up. The broader assistant for looking up information, however, feels somewhat redundant alongside Google Gemini, even if it offers quicker access to a non-Google alternative.
Since many of these features — including Moto AI — are available on the 2024 and 2025 Razr Plus phones, you’re most likely to notice these upgrades if you’re coming from the 2023 Razr Plus or any of the base Razr phones. So if you have the 2024 Plus, just hold onto it.
On the external display, the Razr Plus has a 50-megapixel wide camera and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera.
Motorola Razr Plus cameras
In most settings, the cameras on the Razr Plus do pretty well, and I’m particularly happy with the 32-megapixel selfie camera on the internal screen. While one advantage of most folding phones is the ability to use their higher-resolution rear cameras for selfies, photos I took with the Razr Plus’ internal camera still captured plenty of detail in my face and hair.
Taken on the 32-megapixel selfie camera.
That said, being able to close the phone and use the main 50-megapixel wide camera does make selfies look a bit better. In this photo, taken in our studio under medium lighting, my skin tones appear less washed out despite the additional shadows in the room, and the camera does a better job of capturing the depth of the background.
Taken with the 50-megapixel wide camera.
These strengths also carry over to photos taken with the 50-megapixel wide camera, such as this shot of a trifle dessert at a friend’s baby shower in Washington, DC. The darker reds of the strawberries and fine details, such as the texture of the brownie, are clearly visible, with very little image noise.
Taken on the 50-megapixel wide camera.
And in this photo taken from the patio of the Fresca restaurant in Washington, DC, the camera captures the texture from the wood patterns on the blue gate in the foreground to the brick outlines in the building in the background, with few details blending in together as can sometimes happen when I take photos on cameras running on an older processor.
Taken on the 50-megapixel wide camera.
Taking a photo of the same scene with the 50-megapixel ultrawide camera kept much of the same colors intact. (On some phones, photos taken with the ultrawide camera can look dramatically different from those taken by the wide camera.) But by capturing the wider view from my seat, you lose some of the finer details, such as the petals of the flowers, that are easier to make out in photos taken with the wide camera.
Taken on the 50-megapixel ultrawide camera.
While I’m quite happy with the photos taken by the Razr Plus, I wouldn’t call this a photographer’s foldable phone by any stretch. In more challenging, low-light environments, the cameras do alright, but other phones in the $1,100 price range typically have more powerful processors that can capture more detail from a darker shot. In this nighttime photo of a tree in my friends’ backyard, you can make out plenty of leaves in varying shades of green, which is impressive. But there’s also some noticeable blur around the edges of the image, where the camera may have struggled to maintain sharp focus.
Taken on the 50-megapixel wide camera.
The Razr Plus can take video at up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second. Like the rest of this year’s Razr phones, it supports the fun ability to fold the phone halfway while the camera app is open, activating a camcorder-like mode. The top half becomes a viewfinder, while a tap on the bottom half starts and stops recording. It’s a little complicated to describe, but easy to get the hang of — especially if you handled an actual camcorder back in the day — and zooming in and out by tilting the phone left or right is a novel touch.
Folding the Razr Plus like this lets you use the phone in a camcorder-like mode.
Motorola Razr Plus (2026) bottom line
There are two groups of people that I think this Razr Plus is best for. The first group is anyone who purchased the 2023 Razr Plus or base Razr and is looking for an upgrade to the 4-inch cover display without spending $1,500 for the Razr Ultra. The second is anyone curious about the Razr line who knows they need a bit more power and memory than the base phone offers, yet isn’t willing to spend $1,500 on an Ultra with more powerful specs.
However, for most people interested in getting their first folding phone, I don’t think there’s enough here to justify the $300 premium over the base Razr. The bigger cover screen is nice, but not nice enough to justify the price difference. That $800 Razr includes the same 256GB of storage, at least in the version sold by Motorola; I’d avoid the 128GB model wherever it’s sold. It also has a similar 50-megapixel wide and 50-megapixel ultrawide camera, although the less powerful processor may struggle a little more in low-light environments. And all of the Razr flip phones include three years of software updates and five years of security updates — putting them on equal footing when it comes to longevity.
I’d say go ahead and save the money if you’re considering the Razr Plus, as the base Razr will probably meet 90% of your needs. Suffice it to say, I don’t see much of a plus in the Plus.
How we test phones
Every phone tested by CNET’s reviews team was actually used in the real world. We test a phone’s features, play games and take photos. We examine the display to see if it’s bright, sharp and vibrant. We analyze the design and build to see how it is to hold and whether it has an IP-rating for water resistance. We push the processor’s performance to the extremes using standardized benchmark tools like GeekBench and 3DMark, along with our own anecdotal observations navigating the interface, recording high-resolution videos and playing graphically intense games at high refresh rates.
All the cameras are tested in a variety of conditions from bright sunlight to dark indoor scenes. We try out special features like night mode and portrait mode and compare our findings against similarly priced competing phones. We also check out the battery life by using it daily as well as running a series of battery drain tests.
We take into account additional features like support for 5G, satellite connectivity, fingerprint and face sensors, stylus support, fast charging speeds and foldable displays, among others that can be useful. We balance all of this against the price to give you the verdict on whether that phone, whatever price it is, actually represents good value. While these tests may not always be reflected in CNET’s initial review, we conduct follow-up and long-term testing in most circumstances.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
