Motorola Moto G6 Xt1925-2 32gb 57 Dual Sim 4g Lte Review

Pros

Superb photographic camera

Sensibly priced

Attractive glass and aluminium trunk

Cons

Protruding camera housing attracts unsightly dust

Battery life could exist better

The Moto G6 is an Android smartphone with a lot of baggage. Six years agone, Motorola was a company struggling to find its identity just it hit upon a aureate strategy almost by accident with the original Moto G. Since then, the Chiliad has gone from forcefulness to strength and has go firm's most popular ever phone.

With the previous twelvemonth's Moto G5, still, Motorola stood withal and we were reluctant to recommend information technology over its predecessor, the Moto G4. Information technology quickly followed up with the more than accomplished Moto G5S in an attempt to paper over the cracks, but the damage was washed. Tin it get back to winning ways with its latest budget telephone, the Motorola Moto G6?

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Motorola G6 review: What you need to know

The brusque answer is yes. If you lot have £220 to spend on a smartphone, this is the telephone you want. It has a big 5.7in, 18:9 screen, runs the latest version of Android and looks like a mini Samsung Milky way S9.

For a budget phone, the Moto G6 is cipher brusk of exceptional. Information technology doesn't take quite the same level of specifications as flagships costing hundreds of pounds more than, but it delivers astonishingly expert value for money and has a peachy camera, too.

Motorola Moto G6 review: Price and competition

Although the price has risen over the G5 and G5 S, £220 is still pretty reasonable for what you get with the Motorola Moto G6, and with the price of flagship phones rise exponentially it actually looks pretty reasonable.

The Moto G6 isn't lacking cardinal rivals at this price. The strongest competition comes from the Accolade 9 Lite, which like the Moto G6 is built from glass and metal, has an 18:9, 1080p brandish and costs a mere £199.

There's also Motorola's ain Moto G5S, which y'all can pick upwards for £180 and the forthcoming Honor 7A (£140) and Honor 7C (£170) to consider, both of which also have big xviii:9 screens. You have plenty of pick. The question is, exercise you need information technology?

All-time Motorola Moto G6 contract and SIM-free deals:

Motorola Moto G6 review: Pattern and key features

Just to reiterate, the Motorola Moto G6 is one seriously proficient-looking smartphone, but the dazzler is not just skin-deep. It's clad in Gorilla Glass three at the front and back, so it'south easy to make clean and should exist resistant to scratches, scuffing and cracks – and those curved edges at the rear lend it a seriously swish look. A colour-matched chrome-finish frame and a circular photographic camera housing that gleams an expensive watch finish off the high-course expect.

And it'southward skillful to see that Motorola has retained a piffling of the original Moto G'southward design Dna. Instead of sheep-like following the crowd, the G6's slightly bowed-out height and bottom edges, and its softly rounded corners assistance to requite the phone an identity all of its own.

On the negative side, the camera housing sticks out quite a long way and it does tend to choice up and harbour pocket grit at an alarming rate. There's also no full waterproofing or IP rating here. Yous go a p2i water-repellent coating instead, which at least should keep information technology prophylactic from harm should you lot spill your tea on it.

There'southward also a fingerprint reader on the front below the screen, which is a impact awkward to attain, and within is a 3,000mAh bombardment. That'south on the pocket-size side, given the size of the screen, but Motorola says it's good for a day'due south use and, with a "TurboPower" charger supplied in the box, you should be able to gain effectually half dozen hours' use from 15 minutes of charging.

At that place are a couple more positives about the design of the Motorola Moto G6. It has a microSD slot, which can exist used to aggrandize storage past upward to 128GB, and a three.5mm headphone jack, then no messing around with adapters. Information technology has virtually of the important boxes ticked.

Motorola Moto G6 review: Display

The Motorola Moto G6'due south display is more acceptable. It'due south large, at 5.7in from corner to corner; it uses IPS tech; and the resolution is 1,080 10 two,160, which is about as sharp every bit yous need at this screen size. It'south colourful, also, and in the default "Vibrant" mode, graphics, photographs and video all wait pleasingly rich.

When it comes to the crisis, though, information technology's clear this isn't the best screen effectually. Effulgence is the chief issue. It reaches only 408cd/m2, which means in actually vivid conditions information technology can be a challenge to read.

Color accuracy isn't wonderful, either, and sRGB coverage in Standard mode is a disappointing 86.3%. The display's contrast ratio is fine at 931:1, but fifty-fifty this is a long way behind the all-time screens on flagship phones.

What is peradventure more damning is that it isn't even equally good as the screen on the Honor 9 Lite, which is 24% brighter, has a more impressive dissimilarity ratio of ane,531:ane and only slightly worse sRGB coverage in its equivalent fashion.

All things are relative, though, and while the Moto G6's display is undoubtedly its weakest adjust, most folk will find it perfectly acceptable.

Motorola Moto G6 review: Performance and bombardment life

Inside the Motorola Moto G6 is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 – an octa-core 14nm processor running at 1.8GHz – with 3GB of RAM and a rather measly 32GB of storage to back information technology upward. It's a modern chip merely not the well-nigh powerful on the cake, and information technology's worth noting, too, that the Honour 7C has the same specification for a price that'due south £sixty less.

While operation is far from storming, it is at to the lowest degree a step forward over the Moto G5 and G5S. As you tin see from the graphs to a higher place, the CPU is quicker – by around 17% – and the Adreno 506 graphics bit is also more rapid, by 8%. You won't be playing demanding games at high detail levels, simply I found that PUBG Mobile at low quality was playable, admitting with the odd frame drop.

Battery life wasn't amazingly good from the phone'due south iii,000mAh power cell. It lasted 10hrs 46mins in our video-rundown exam, which is below average. Still, truthful to Motorola'south claims, information technology volition last a twenty-four hours in regular use, if not a little longer if you're careful.

Motorola Moto G6 review: Software

Every bit with previous Moto 1000 phones, the telephone runs pretty shut to stock Android (Android 8 Oreo, in this instance) with some useful extras tacked on. I've always liked the Moto phones' gesture controls, which permit y'all to launch the camera with a double twist or toggle the torch on and off by twisting the phone or shaking it, and those are yet in place here.

New this year is the addition of Dolby Audio processing, which you can enable and configure by tapping the Dolby icon in the pull-down notifications carte du jour. This allows yous to tweak the EQ, employ volume levelling or choose from a number of unlike sound profiles, which include music, game and voice. The presets are a scrap overkill for motion picture and music, applying a little too much bass for my liking, just the volume levelling and Vocalization presets are useful for making poor-quality podcasts more listenable.

The phone too supports Moto Phonation, which comes in addition to support for Google Banana. This works with the screen off and allows you to control some things you lot can't with Google'south voice-recognition organization. Finally, there's also face up unlock, which and then far I've found pretty darned fast and reliable.

Motorola Moto G6 review: Photographic camera

As for the quality of the images the Moto G6's camera produces, that's even more positive. Let's talk most the dual camera capabilities get-go. Dissimilar on the iPhone 10 or Samsung Galaxy S9, the second camera doesn't add together zoom or wide-angle capabilities. It'south intended primarily to aid the camera with depth perception and so it can more effectively use a background-blur portrait effect, or cut out the background.

Pop the camera into portrait style, snap your field of study and and so you can go into the gallery and apply various different effects based on this depth data. You can mistiness the groundwork to varying degrees, supersede or desaturate the background. This works reasonably well, simply the edges of in-focus objects can take on a bit of a ragged edge.

There'south nothing special about the specifications. The chief camera is a 12-megapixel unit with an discontinuity of f/one.8 and phase-detect autofocus. Information technology can't shoot 4K video – simply 1080p at up to 60fps. The secondary depth photographic camera is 5-megapixel and the selfie camera on the front is eight-megapixel and comes with a front wink.

For the coin, though, the quality of the photographs you can capture with the Moto G6'southward camera are nothing brusque of stunning. In low light, the Moto G6 achieves the perfect rest of grain to noise suppression with the photographic camera retaining a truly impressive corporeality of detail and colour. It'southward non Samsung Galaxy S9 or Google Pixel two levels of good, only this telephone costs a fraction of those handsets, and it isn't far behind.

Outdoors and in expert light, the Moto's impressive functioning continues. Our exam shots of the fundamental London skyline were bursting with crisp details and colours were both neutral and accurate. The HDR mode worked sublimely well, too, equalising bright and dark areas effectively without making everything look unnaturally candy-coloured.

The 8-megapixel forepart-facing camera follows the same tendency. Selfies aren't quite every bit crisp as shots taken with the rear photographic camera, merely they're well-balanced and packed with detail.

There are flaws, of course, just they're flaws I'chiliad happy to alive with at this cost. Beginning, there's a noticeable delay between pressing the shutter and the photographic camera really capturing your image, which can catch you out if you're not prepared. More than than once I ended up with a blurry image because I had expected the camera to take the image direct away. 2d, the Moto G6 can't capture video at 4K, but then 1080p at 60fps isn't a bad compromise.

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Motorola Moto G6 review: Verdict

The Moto G6 is a stunning budget phone, and although I take been comparison information technology to the Honor ix Lite, it's actually a level higher up. It has its shortcomings – at that place'southward a bear upon of lag on the photographic camera shutter, and the screen isn't the brightest – but these aren't bargain breakers.

The quality of images the camera tin produce is amazing, the design is fabulous, and the software is brimming full of useful extras, while all the same retaining the await of stock Android.

With the Moto G6, Motorola is well and truly back on form. If yous're in the market place for a phone at effectually this price, the only alternative y'all should consider is its slightly more than expensive sibling, the G6 Plus, which is faster, has slightly longer bombardment life, and a better brandish.

Hardware
Processor	Octa-core i.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 450
RAM	3/4GB
Screen size	5.7in
Screen resolution	2,160 x i,080
Screen type	IPS
Front camera	8-megapixel
Rear camera	12-megapixel, v-megapixel
Flash	LED
GPS	Yes
Compass	Yes
Storage (complimentary)	32/64GB
Memory card slot (supplied)	microSD
Wi-Fi	802.11ac
Bluetooth	4.two
NFC	Yes
Wireless data	802.11ac
Dimensions	153.8 10 72.3 x viii.iii mm
Weight	167g
Features
Operating system	Android 8.0
Battery size	3,000 mAh

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Source: https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/motorola/1406990/moto-g6-review-budget