Motorola hits the mark with its mid-range Moto G6
says Motorola’s Moto G6 will not disappoint people looking for a good phone at a fair price.
The Motorola Moto G6 is a mid-range phone that offers a lot for not too much money (€250).
However, in a day and age where some phones cost as much as a couple of months’ mortgage payments, then you can’t expect as much from a phone that’s a fraction the price of most flagships.
The Moto G6 is a great looking phone with premium materials. You get a glass back with rounded edges and a metal band.
The corners edges are rounded and the top and bottom are curved, but at 8.3mm, it’s not the slimmest. That being said, it’s a nice size that fits comfortably in the hand and you’ll find a soft plastic protective case in the box, which is great for protecting the Gorilla Glass 3 front and back.
On the bottom edge, there’s a USB-Type C port for charging, as well as the not so common, 3.5mm headphone jack. On the bottom chin is a small capacitive home button that doubles as a fingerprint reader.
The latter works well enough, but I didn’t find it 100% reliable all of the time. However, you also get face-unlock, which is impressive on a mid-range phone and it works great, as long as it has good light. The combination of the two makes for a solid method of unlocking the phone.
The display is 18:9 aspect ratio, making it ideal for media consumption from watching your favourite shows on Netflix to posting on Instagram or Facebook. Also worth mentioning is the loudspeaker, which sounds pretty impressive albeit mono, in part thanks to it being front facing.
The 5.7-inch full-HD+ IPS display has decent viewing angles and colours are accurate.
The display doesn’t get super bright and lacks the contrast levels that you’d get from an OLED panel, but is above average for a phone in this price range.
Clever solution
Despite it not having an always-on display, the G6 does an ingenious job of getting around this.
Simply wave your hand over the phone while it’s sitting on your desk and you’ll immediately get an always-on style display on the lockscreen.
From here you’ll see the time and notifications of new emails, etc. You can also do quick replies to messages, which is something that some flagships can’t even do. Running the budget Snapdragon 450 octa-core processor at 1.80 GHz, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, the Moto G6 runs well but feels noticeably slower than more expensive phones.
You can expand your storage using a microSD card of up to 128GB.
General performance is fine and gaming is also possible, but don’t expect buttery smooth frame rates in more demanding titles.
An almost stock version of Android 8.0 Oreo comes with Moto G6 and this definitely helps to keep the phone running well throughout the day with excellent memory management. Moto Actions are the only real OS tweaks to Android, some of which are useful.
For example, double-twist the phone to launch the camera app, even from the lockscreen, or use the chop gesture to turn on the torch. I also like the way you can use the fingerprint sensor for gestures that can replace the onscreen navigation keys.
Battery performance from the 3,000mAh battery is enough to get most through a day on a single charge and using the supplied 15W Turbo Charger you can get from flat to 100% in 90 minutes.
The Moto G6 dual camera system has a 12MP primary sensor and a 5MP secondary sensor. The front-facing camera has an 8MP sensor.
On the rear is a dual-LED flash and a single-LED flash to complement the front-facing camera. The camera software offers a lot of modes and options in an easy-to-use layout.
Innovative features
Other features include Auto HDR, Panorama and Portrait mode that isolates the subject by artificially blurring the background (bokeh). You can also alter how much blur is applied after you take the photo, a feature that’s only now available on the new iPhones.
You can also use this feature on the front-facing camera including changing the blur in post software. The results aren’t bad considering the price, but you often get poor edge detection and you can’t create very out of focus backgrounds.
That being said, if you understand its limitations, good photos can be taken with this camera, especially in good light.
For those who enjoy their photography and want to get creative, you also get a Pro Mode where you can tweak and play with things like the ISO, exposure, white balance and shutter speed.
The phone’s video quality is fine at full HD and can do up to 60fps, but you only get electronic image stabilisation. It does offer slow motion and time-lapse features. After using the Moto G6 for a few weeks I came to enjoy the look and feel.
It does everything well, but nothing exceptional.
For the money, this is an excellent phone for those who are on a budget and it manages to cram a lot into a great looking phone with a premium build.
