Motorola has long held the title for the best budget smartphone with its Moto G family, and it continues to do so this year with the Moto G6.
On the surface of it, the Moto G6 Plus seems to be a bit of a free hit for the Lenovo-owned manufacturer. This is a chance to release some of the bottom line squeeze of the G6 and perhaps look to emulate whatever alchemy makes the OnePlus 6 and the Honor 10 such mid-range champs.
Sure enough, bolstered performance and an improved screen go some way to achieving that goal. The question is whether the margin of that improvement is sufficient to justify the existence of the Moto G6 Plus.
It’s certainly remarkable how little we missed the flagship experience in moving to the Moto G6 Plus, but then the same thing could be said of the Moto G6. So are there enough additions to make the Plus worthy of the name?
Moto G6 Plus price and availability
- Available to buy in the UK for £269 (about $380, AU$490)
- No US release
The Moto G6 Plus completes a trio of budget-priced 2018 phones from Motorola alongside the Moto G6 and Moto G6 Play.
If the name didn’t tell you that the Moto G6 Plus was the top performer in the range, then its £269 (about $380, AU$490) price tag probably should. It’s £50 more expensive than the regular G6, and £100 dearer than the Moto G6 Play.
While it’s available now in the UK, there are no plans to bring the Moto G6 Plus to the US at present, despite the ongoing availability of the Moto G5 Plus and Moto G5S Plus in the region.
We don’t know if or when the Moto G6 Plus will be arriving in Australia as yet.
Design and display
- 5.9-inch display is bigger and brighter than G6
- Curved glass design much closer to Moto X4 than Moto G5
Motorola has taken a very different approach to design with the Moto G6 Plus, at least compared to previous Moto G devices.
Just like the Moto G6, out goes the somewhat nondescript combination of plastic and metal in favour of a sleeker amalgam of metal and glass. While the edges of the phone have a slightly cheap and plasticky feel to them, the curved rear panel is all-glass.
You only need to look above the Moto G listing on the Motorola website to realise that this isn’t a completely fresh approach from the company. Last year’s Moto X4 looks and feels extremely similar.
There are telltale signs that the Moto G6 Plus is a less premium handset, however. Our test model seemed to have a slightly loose USB-C port on the bottom edge, causing the connector to wobble rather disconcertingly.
Then there’s the cheap plastic SIM tray that had scratched to a much lighter colour, evidently where some previous user had gone in a little too forcefully with a tray key.
Another sign that this is isn’t a premium phone is the lack of proper water-proofing. Motorola claims that it’ll stand up to splashes with a 'water repellent nano-coating inside and out,' but there’s no IP rating to be found. The omission of such is much less of a criticism than it is in something like the OnePlus 6, but it’s still worth pointing out.
One way in which the Moto G6 Plus design has evolved from the X4 is with the screen-to-body ratio. While this is far from a bezel-less display, the top and bottom edges of the phone have definitely receded in line with the 2018 trend.
This can also be seen by looking at the size and shape of the fingerprint sensor below the display. The Moto G6 Plus's sensor is much flatter than the X4’s, though it’s recessed enough to be easy to find, and it remains fast and accurate.
By expanding closer to the edges, Motorola has been able to keep the general size and feel of the Moto G6 Plus relatively modest, with dimensions of 160 x 75.5 x 8mm and a weight of 167g. It’s still a fair handful, and you won’t be using it comfortably with one hand, but it sits comfortably in the pocket, at least.
This is despite the fact that the Moto G6 Plus has the largest display in the family - just. At 5.9-inches it’s only slightly bigger than the 5.7-inch G6 and G6 Play, and there’s an argument to be made that there should have been more of a difference here.
Another way Motorola has kept its large-screen phone feeling slim, of course, is by making it longer and thinner. With an 18:9 aspect ratio, it joins the general trend for stretched-out smartphone displays.
It means that a lot of video content you encounter will have side borders by default, particularly when it comes to YouTube. However, most fresh gaming content is being made to fit such screens, and properly mobile-optimised websites are definitely more pleasant to navigate on the longer display.
As for the screen itself, we have absolutely no criticisms. Like the rest of the G6 family, you’re looking at an FHD+ (1080 x 2160) resolution, which you might think would be a problem given the sheer size of the display. While it’s less pixel-dense than the G6 - let alone QHD displays like the Samsung Galaxy S9 - it remains plenty sharp enough.
It also seems to be better than the G6 display when it comes to maximum brightness and colour contrast, which matters an awful lot more than a few inconsequential pixels.
Battery life
- 3,200mAh battery
- TurboPower charging enables 20% charge in 15 minutes
The Moto G6 Plus comes with a 3,200mAh battery, which is a little larger than the 3,000mAh unit in the Moto G6. This is a smart move given the larger, brighter display.
Sure enough, making it through a full day of moderate usage with the Moto G6 Plus was no problem at all. In fact, we found that we were able to get through a second day of light to moderate usage fairly frequently. It was when we started hitting the heavyweight media applications that things got a little more stretched.
When putting the Moto G6 Plus through the standard TechRadar video test (a 90-minute 720p looping video with the screen brightness set to full) the results weren’t massively flattering. It lost 20% of its juice on average.
That’s about the same as the Moto G6 (21%) but is a little shy of the Huawei P20 Lite (17%) and way short of the Moto Z2 Play (10%). Gaming performance seemed to be a little better, however, with 15 minutes of sustained Guns of Boom action sapping just 4% of battery life.
Motorola’s Turbo Charging function was one of the earliest smartphone quick charging solutions out there, and it’s present and accounted for on the G6 Plus. We found that we could get 20% of a charge after just 15 minutes of plug-in time. That’s about par for the course with such tech, but it’s mighty handy regardless.
One thing that’s not present here is wireless charging. You might not expect to see such a feature on a budget phone, but the presence of a glass back - and the phone’s ‘Plus’ status - might have raised your expectations somewhat.
Camera
- Dual sensor camera with 12MP and 5MP on the rear
- 5MP shooter is used for depth sensing for Portrait mode
- Front-facing 8MP shooter
Motorola might have fitted the Moto G6 Plus out with a completely different display and chipset to the original G6, but its camera setup looks distinctly familiar.
Once again we’re looking at a dual-sensor affair, with a main 12MP camera backed up by a 5MP secondary unit. Fundamentally this camera is capable of capturing vibrant, sharp images, but it requires a little care and attention to do so.
If anything, the G6 Plus is a slightly better shooter than the G6. It has a brighter f/1.7 aperture (as opposed to f/1.8), while dual-pixel autofocus provides a stronger lock-on process. On the video front you get 4K at 30fps, which is better than the 1080p capture that the G6 can manage.
In terms of image quality, there’s little difference. Give the Moto G6 Plus camera ample light and minimal movement, and it can take great shots with accurate colours. There remains a distinct case of shutter lag, however, and that’s not the only case of sluggish camera performance.
Following the exploits of a waddling duck one bright spring early-evening, we were struck by how many of the resulting stills were blurry and failed to freeze the subject in motion. The phone’s autofocus and shutter systems simply didn’t seem able to cope with what was a relatively straightforward situation.
The sluggish nature of the camera is something we experienced on numerous occasions, resulting in far more blurry motion shots than we would have expected.
Elsewhere, a number of landscape shots taken in similar conditions to the duck shots revealed a murky foreground and overexposed skies, suggesting that the automatic HDR mode wasn’t quite responding to the scene in an optimal fashion.
Generally speaking, though, the HDR mode is pretty good at producing balanced shots without any weird artefacts.
Quirks aside, there’s plenty to enjoy with the Moto G6 Plus's camera. As we’ve come to expect with similar efforts from other manufacturers (including Huawei and Apple), the second sensor is used to provide additional depth information for a dedicated Portrait mode.
It’s one of the more pleasant modes of this kind that we’ve used, with a pleasantly deep background bokeh effect and a subject that really pops. There are elements around the edge of that subject that invariably get smudged out in the process, but this isn’t uncommon with such dual-camera features at this point.
There’s also the ability to edit the depth data after the image has been taken, to the point where you could blur out the subject and focus in on a background detail. This actually works surprisingly well, and can completely change the tone of your shot.
Elsewhere, Motorola’s ‘dual twist’ gesture remains an effective way of jumping straight to the shot when you’re in a hurry.
Another interesting - if not wholly successful - Moto camera feature is object recognition. Tap the yellow box icon, near the shutter button, and the Moto G6 Plus will attempt to identify the subject. It will then provide appropriate links to help you locate those objects in (for example) online shops.
It’s impressive in so much as it recognises some objects (a PS4 controller, a particular brand of chocolate) and makes a reasonable fist of recognising others (it saw a retro Mario Amiibo as a generic Mario action figure).
But it also thought that a Nintendo Switch Pro controller was an Xbox pad, and while it identified a Panda Bear CD correctly, it thought that Primal Scream’s XTRMNTR was The Legend of Zelda for the Wii. Which was weird.
Plus, it invariably takes ages to process the image information, to the point where we’d be disinclined to try it in the middle of a shop.
Camera samples
Interface and reliability
- Android 8 Oreo more or less as Google intended
- Moto Actions provides useful gesture shortcuts
Motorola has always offered one of the best smartphone software experiences around, precisely because it doesn’t mess with the Android formula too much. In keeping with that, the Moto G6 Plus runs on an extremely clean version of Android 8 Oreo, and is all the better for it.
From the super-fluid home screen animations to the finest drop-down notification menu in the business (well, it’s better than iOS), this take on Android is a delight to use.
Accessing the app drawer is a case of dragging up from the bottom of the homescreen these days, while the multitasking menu contains a simple and effective drag-and-drop split-screen facility. In all this there are no flabby UI elements, ugly app icons, or bloatware.
That said, Motorola does include pre-installs of the Outlook and LinkedIn apps. The former is excellent, but also essentially duplicates the stock Gmail and Calendar apps, while LinkedIn will be of interest to a fairly small proportion of business-oriented users.
It grates a little more, however, that a fundamentally useful app like Google Pay isn’t pre-installed.
Elsewhere, Motorola makes its own (largely) thoughtful enhancements to the Android OS. The Moto app provides helpful pointers to these enhancements, including a Night Display mode and guidance on your storage and battery life, as well as a rundown of items you’ve taken an interest in through the aforementioned Smart Camera feature.
Moto Actions, meanwhile, are Motorola’s always handy (and entirely optional) gesture-based shortcuts. We’ve mentioned the twist-twice action for launching the camera, but others include a double chop motion for activating the torch, flipping the phone over to place it in ‘Do not disturb’ mode, and swiping to the bottom corners to shrink the screen for easier one-handed usage.
Less welcome are the now slightly obnoxious (to these ears) default Moto message tones and ringtones and the dreary default wallpaper, but there are plenty of sprightly alternatives to each.
We also found the way the screen partially lit up to reveal basic time and notification information whenever you move your hand over the display to be a little overenthusiastic - something you notice when you have the phone resting on a table in a bar or restaurant.
Movies, music and gaming
- 3.5mm jack included
- Bright 5.9-inch display makes it great for video
- Solid gaming performance
With the biggest and brightest display in the range, the Moto G6 Plus is the one you should turn to if media consumption is a major priority.
The 5.9-inch display is the star of the show here for things like watching movies and playing games. It’s considerably brighter than your average budget phone screen, meaning watching downloaded Netflix films in the park isn’t a complete write-off.
The audio for such a venture can be provided the old fashioned way, courtesy of a 3.5mm headphone jack to the right of the USB-C port. Combined with the pre-installed Google Play Music app and 64GB of internal storage (with a microSD slot for up to 256GB of expansion), it also makes for a well-rounded audio player.
While there’s only one speaker here, it is at least front-facing, so you won’t find yourself blocking it with your hand whilst watching videos or playing games.
Speaking of which, that large, bright display makes for a great gaming canvas. It’s particularly handy for 3D action games such as PUBG, Guns of Boom and Shadowgun Legends, where the screen is often full of virtual buttons and other UI elements. There’s just that little bit of extra room to breathe here.
Such advanced games run reasonably well on the Moto G6 Plus too, though it’s worth pointing out that PUBG defaulted to Low settings. We encountered smooth performance even with the technically demanding Into the Dead 2, which has brought many a budget phone to its knees in recent months.
Third-person action game Hero Hunters defaulted to Medium graphical settings, which looked a little rough blown up to 5.9-inches. However, we were able to manually bump it up to High without a major performance penalty.
Specs and benchmark performance
- Snapdragon 630 CPU is a minor upgrade from G6
- 4GB of RAM is arguably a more significant upgrade
Motorola has packed the Moto G6 Plus with 4GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 630. It’s the same mid-range chipset that impressed us in the likes of the Nokia 6 (2018) and the Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra.
We couldn’t fault the general performance when navigating through menus, hopping between open apps, unlocking the phone with the fingerprint sensor and jumping into the camera. It’s not flagship phone fast in any of these tasks, but if you’re not dropping down from such a lofty level (as most people won’t be) you won’t notice anything amiss.
That said, it’s not like the Moto G6 is a massive slouch either. Through a combination of the surprisingly capable Snapdragon 450 and Motorola’s light-handed approach to software, the regular handset punches well above its weight. As a result, the range-topping Moto G6 Plus doesn’t seem significantly faster.
This isn’t just a woolly experiential thing either. While the Moto G6 Plus scored a strong 4,167 average on Geekbench 4’s multi-core test, that’s not massively higher than the Moto G6’s 3,807.
All things considered, it doesn’t provide quite as much of a boost over the Moto G6 as you might expect. It’s even a little slower than its immediate predecessor, the Moto G5S Plus, on 4,312. We suspect the extra pixels in the G6 Plus’s stretched-out display to be responsible for that particular anomaly.
The main point to take from this is that the Moto G6 Plus is a smooth performer that won’t lag or hold you back in any task shy of the most demanding games.
Unless you really want to be able to shoot 4K video, however, it’s tricky to see where the day-to-day performance benefit is in choosing the Moto G6 Plus over the Moto G6.
Verdict
Motorola has made a fairly significant step forward with its Moto G family this year, and the Moto G6 Plus is without doubt the finest of the three.
That said, the Moto G6 offers a strikingly similar day-to-day experience, and it’s questionable whether the Plus offers quite enough of an improvement for the extra money. Its screen is undoubtedly better, but it’s only slightly bigger, marginally faster, and the camera has only received a tiny spec bump.
Taken in isolation however, the Moto G6 Plus has the speed, refinement and all-round competence of a mid-range smartphone worth a lot more money.
Who's this for?
The Moto G6 Plus is perfect for those who are operating on a strict sub-£300 budget, but who want the general experience and fluidity of a more expensive phone.
It’s got fundamental high-end features like a glass design, a dominant 18:9 display, and a dual-camera system that will make your portrait shots pop.
There’s not an awful lot between this and the Moto G6, but if you’ve tried that phone and found the display a little underwhelming, or you really need the ability to shoot 4K video, you won’t go far wrong spending the extra on the Plus.
Should you buy it?
Motorola continues to rule the budget phone sector with the Moto G6 family, and the Moto G6 Plus is undoubtedly the best of the lot.
Its 5.9-inch 18:9 display is the stand-out component here, offering a big, bright, super-widescreen picture. Combined with decent performance and a competent camera, it’s a great pick for anyone with less than £300 to spare.
For most buyers on a budget, however, we suspect that the Moto G6 will be more than enough.
The Moto G6 Plus isn't the only impressive phone in the budget space. You'll find some of the main alternatives below.
Moto G6
Motorola’s default budget phone remains the one to beat, with a well-rounded spec list, classy build quality and a premium software provision.
In fact, while the Moto G6 Plus tops the G6 in terms of performance, screen quality and camera tricks, the margin isn’t half as pronounced as you might expect.
If spending an extra £50/$50 feels like a major stretch for you, know that the Moto G6 will offer a very similar experience indeed.
- Read our Moto G6 review
Honor 7X
The Honor 7X was one of the first phones to bring the top-end bezel-less design philosophy to the budget end of the market.
It’s a very well built phone with an all-metal body and a large, sharp 18:9 display. It also features a capable chipset and a competent dual-sensor camera. So far, so Moto G6 Plus.
It’s not quite as fast as the Moto G6 Plus though, and its custom UI drops the day-to-day usability considerably short.
- Read our Honor 7X review
Nokia 6 (2018)
Like the Moto G6 Plus, the Nokia 6 (2018) is a classy sub-£300 phone that impresses in the hand and doesn’t mess with stock Android too much.
It doesn’t take the same bezel-less approach to design as the Moto, however, which leaves it looking a little more dated. There’s no second camera lens for depth of field tricks, either.
However, the Nokia 6 shares a Snapdragon 630 chipset with the Moto G6 Plus, so it’s just as capable a performer. It’s also a good chunk of change cheaper.
- Read our Nokia 6 (2018) review
First reviewed: May 2018
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