When Motorola unveiled the Moto Z and Moto Z Force smartphones in June the company revealed that they’d be available in the US exclusively from Verizon at launch. Now we know when they’ll launch: July 28th.

The phones are up for pre-order now with prices starting at $26 per month or $624 outright for the Moto Z Droid or $30/month or $720 for the Moto Z Force Droid.

Or you could pre-order from Best Buy and save about $200 and get a free speaker.

moto z_02

Both phones share a distinctive feature: support for MotoMods which are accessories you can attach to the back of the phone to extend the battery life, add a better camera, higher-quality speaker, or a projector, among other things.

Both phones have 5.5 inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel AMOLED displays, Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processors, and 4GB of RAM. But the Moto Z is a thinner phone with a 2,600 mAh battery, whiel the Moto Z Force has a 3,050 mAh battery and a plastic “Shatter Shield” screen.

So are the phones worth the price? That depends who you ask. Ars Technica concludes that the phones are overpriced and that the modules are expensive variants of existing peripherals. But other reviewers were more impressed: PC World says the phones show that modularity is the future, BGR calls the phones the best that Motorola has ever made, and The Verge falls somewhere in the middle, declaring that the phones are very good… but that the modules are expensive and pretty much useless.

Most of the reviews I’ve read seem to agree that the projector module sounds neat, but it’s not all that practical thanks to its 854 x 480 resolution, dim 50 lumen bulb, limited sub-2 hour battery life, and $300 price tag.

Reviewers also seem to agree that the Moto Z Force can take a lot of abuse without the screen cracking (although it is apparently prone to scratching).

via Verizon

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