Motorola Moto G6 review – in pictures

Motorola Moto G6 review – in pictures

Ever since 2013, the Moto G range has delivered just about the best budget phone of the year. Managing this for a sixth year running sounds downright improbable, but with its high-class build, decent specs and a camera that can cope better in low light, has the £219 Moto G6 done it again?

Design: a touch of glass

The G6 has an 18:9 screen, a curved Gorilla Glass rear and metal sides, but costs just a third of some phones that don’t feel or look all that much more expensive. There’s also a front fingerprint scanner, headphone port, at least 32GB of storage and a water repellent coating. While the bezel isn’t as slim as those pricer phones and the face-unlocking isn’t the iPhone-style fancy kind, on the outside there’s not much missing at all.

Display: looking sharp

The Moto G6’s 2160×1080 display is great too. It’s really just 1080p screen elongated with a stack of extra pixels in order to stretch out to a 18:9 shape. Colours are rich and natural, trying to see pixels will only give you a headache and it goes bright enough to deal with sunny days. The Moto G6 screen actually appears slightly sharper than a far pricier Huawei P20 Pro, which is kinda hilarious.

Software: tastes like vanilla

The Moto G6 runs Android 8.0 and has a light custom interface intended to look and feel very close to vanilla Android. If anything, the Moto style looks better. Trust your eyeballs on this one, but the Google approach can look a bit stiff at times. You’ll also notice when you setup the Moto G6 that it pushes you towards using Microsoft Outlook rather than the Google email client. But you don’t have to use it when the setup is done.

Sound: loud and proud

The Moto G6 has a pretty loud speaker, which passes the tests of making a podcast audible as you have a shower or boil the kettle. Still, there’s only one driver and it sits up by the call earpiece, so you don’t get stereo sound and the audio points at your left ear, which isn’t ideal. The inclusion of Dolby Audio is kinda neat though. It customises the sound of the speaker with EQ to make it beefier or clearer. As this is a phone speaker, fattening it up works best.

Performance and gaming: game for pretty much anything

The Moto G6 is a great gaming phone. Titles like Asphalt 8 run very well, with no obvious difference in frame rate between this and a more expensive phone. You get a Snapdragon 450 processor here and while load speeds aren’t quite those of a £700 phone this isn’t a phone that’ll cost you £700. The fingerprint scanner gets you to the home screen in just under a second rather than a billionth of one like the Huawei P20 Pro, but the Motorola Moto G6 still feels smooth and fast.

Camera: a solid snapping companion

The Moto G6 has a 12MP camera with a secondary 5MP sensor, the idea being you get the low-light chops of a phone with better sensitivity and the background blur effects of a double lens array. It can’t compete with the best at either but does a decent enough job of both. On the whole, it’s not super fast and its autofocus sometimes refuses to lock onto close-up objects, but shoot in the day and its Auto HDR mode does a good job of balancing highlights and shadow detail. Minor quibbles aside, you won’t find a much better camera for the money.

Battery life: not quite the best

With its 3000mAh battery, the Moto G6 will handle a quick stint of gaming, a few hours of audio streaming and the usual messaging before needing a top up, so unlike a true workhorse you might need to give it a boost before heading out for the evening. With fast charging onboard even a ten-minute injection will get you a decent extension. There’s no wireless charging, which is no surprise at the price, but you do get a USB-C port rather than the oldie microUSB kind.

Motorola Moto G6 verdict

The Motorola Moto G6 is more of the same for the series. But when that means a great value phone that makes almost all the right design choices, that’s only a good thing. A glass back and 18:9 screen make the G6 seem not just “current” but unusually high-end given the price. The Moto G6 doesn’t just step on the toes of more expensive phones, it stamps on them. Stuff says: ★★★★★