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Motorola’s much anticipated 2015 Moto X Pure Edition (AKA the Moto X Style) is available for pre-order and should start shipping in a few weeks. This device has flagship-level specs, but it’s being sold for the low, low price of just $400. In fact, you can’t even buy it directly from any carriers. Motorola is handling everything itself. Sound like any other devices you’ve heard of? The Moto X is similar to the $390 OnePlus 2 in a number of ways, but how do they stack up?

Design and displays

The Moto X can be purchased pre-configured or with customization from the Moto Maker online tool. You have your choice of various color back panels, wood, and even leather. The Moto X is just a very attractive phone. The OnePlus 2 has less universal aesthetic appeal. It’s very basic and a bit awkward with the fingerprint sensor below the screen (at least it has one, unlike the Moto X). The back is made of a grippy sandstone material that you’ll either love or hate, while the rim is a magnesium alloy. You can get replacement back covers for the OnePlus 2, but they make the phone thicker and don’t look as nice as the Moto X.

OnePlus 2 packs a 5.5-inch screen and Moto X has a 5.7-inch IPS LCD panel, but Motorola’s device runs at a much higher resolution of 2560×1440 (QHD). The OnePlus 2 is only 1080p, although that’s probably fine for most people, and it’ll use less power than a 1440p display would. The pixel density of the OP2 is 401 pixels per inch and the Moto X is 515 pixels per inch. The Moto X might look a bit sharper in some situations, particularly with antialiased rounded lines.

If you’re going to use a QHD screen, you need to source a good part. Cheap 1440p screens have terribly brightness and power usage. That’s probably something that OnePlus was wary of when designing the OnePlus 2, but Motorola and parent company Lenovo have much more stable supply chains.

Internals

The new Moto X is based on the Snapdragon 808, which is the same chip used in the LG G4. This is the first difference between the OnePlus 2 and Moto X. OnePlus chose to go with the Snapdragon 810. That’s the chip used in the HTC One M9. On paper, the 810 is a much more capable chip, but the truth is more nuanced.

The Snapdragon 808 has four (LITTLE) Cortex-A53 cores and two (big) Cortex-A57 in a big.LITTLE configuration. Meanwhile, the Snapdragon 810 has four of those high-power CPU cores and four low-power ones, also in a big.LITTLE configuration. The result is higher benchmarks for the 810, but the heat generation can be a little out of control. The M9 suffered greatly from this, but the OP2 is a bit better. It does still heat up and throttle down, though. In my testing, the OP2 ends up at about the same speed as a Snapdragon 808 when it gets hot.

Where the 810 does come out ahead is with the GPU. The Adreno 430 in this chip is more powerful than the 808’s 418. That might make for somewhat lacking performance in games rendered at the Moto X’s native 1440p resolution. LG included a setting that downsampled games to 1080p to avoid this, but it’s not clear if Motorola will do something similar.

Powering that Snapdragon 810 in the OP2 is a 3300mAh battery. The Moto X has a 3000mAh cell, but its SoC is more efficient. The screen will use more power, though. Early reviews say the Moto X will last a day, and that’s about it. It’s pretty much the same story with the OnePlus 2. The Moto X has Qualcomm Quick Charge built-in, allowing for about 10 hours of use in just 15 minutes of charging. The OnePlus 2 does not have this feature, and it also lacks NFC. That’s weird to say the least.

The OnePlus 2 has 4GB of RAM in the premium variant and 3GB in the cheaper one (coming later this year). The Moto X only has 3GB. While one number is definitely larger than the other, it probably won’t matter much in practice. Android will likely end processes to save power (especially after the Marshmallow update) long before 4GB of RAM is completely filled up.

OnePlus has 64GB of storage in the $390 version of its phone, but the $399 Moto X only has 16GB. It does, however, have one thing OnePlus doesn’t — a microSD card slot. That’s going to make a lot of people happy. You can pay for more internal storage in the Moto X of course, but the card slot is nice to have.

Cameras

Neither Motorola nor OnePlus have been known for camera image quality, but both are touting the cameras of their new flagship phones. The OnePlus 2 has a 13MP camera with laser autofocus. That’s a trick that LG first used last year in the G3. It allows for the OP2 to focus on its subject extremely quickly. It takes great outdoor shots and manages to keep dark shots bright enough to be usable. There’s a lot of shutter lag, though.

What we know of the Moto X Pure’s camera comes from the early reviews from photo-centric sites like DxOMark. This is a 21MP sensor that uses traditional autofocus instead of a fancy laser. It seems to still work reliably, though. Overall image quality is apparently just behind the Galaxy S6, but the low light shots aren’t as good. Reviewers report the Moto X has excellent color balancing and low shutter lag. So, the Moto X camera might be a little better than the OP2’s not so much because of the resolution, but because of the processing and software.

Software and everything else

Motorola has been making consistently smart decisions when it comes to Android software. The Moto X Pure has almost completely stock Android 5.1 with a few of Moto’s signature features added in. For example, Motorola includes Moto Display, which wakes up the screen to display notification information without waking the rest of the phone up. It’s way better than a notification LED. You also get Moto Actions, which lets you trigger features like the flashlight (a “chopping” motion twice) and the camera (twist the phone twice).

The OnePlus 2 also runs a very clean build of Android, but it’s not Cyanogen like the OnePlus One. It’s a ROM created by OnePlus called Oxygen OS. It doesn’t have a ton of custom features, although neither does Motorola’s ROM. Still, Oxygen OS doesn’t feel as thoughtful or useful as what Motorola is doing. It’s not bad for a first try, though. Oxygen OS has screen-off gestures that can wake up the camera or turn on the flashlight. There’s also a full permission manager system, but that’s going to be obviated by Android 6.0 very soon.

One other thing to note, Motorola has an expanded system of setting automation called Moto Assist. You can have it silence your phone at night or during a meeting, or read your SMS when it detects you’re driving. OnePlus has made notification settings more manual on the OP2 with a hardware mute switch. It has three positions for all, priority, and none — the notification modes in Android 5.1. There are no software controls for notification modes with the OnePlus 2, which some will find annoying. If you like the peace of mind you get from a physical switch, though, you might really like the OP2.

Both Motorola and OnePlus are selling phones direct rather than going through carriers, so that means no carrier bloatware or interference with the update process. Motorola has traditionally been very on the ball when updating phones, but OnePlus is still new at this whole software development thing. We’ll have to wait and see who can get Android 6.0 out first, but I would place my money on Motorola.

The real differentiator is that Motorola will happily take your money in exchange for a Moto X Pure. OnePlus is using an invite system to control costs on the OnePlus 2. You have to add your name to the list or ask around for an invite to buy the phone. The Moto X Pure Edition will work on almost any carrier, including GSM and CDMA (like Verizon). The OnePlus 2 is only compatible with GSM.