Motorola Moto G6 Plus review: Plans | Pricing | Specs

Where to buy

Sure, Motorola still sells the Moto Z series phones and their intriguing Moto Z2 Play and that's more than a year old at the time of writing.

We never saw the Moto Z2 Force and there's no news around the Moto Z3 Play showing up Down Under either. The Moto X4 is sold locally, but it has a lot less presence than the G series phones, which are the ones people buy in large quantities.

All of this puts a lot of weight onto Motorola's more affordably priced handsets and especially the well-regarded Moto G series phones. Thankfully, while it's not an extraordinary evolution of the Moto G concept, the Moto G6 Plus is a solid and reliable handset that outperforms its siblings for the most part.

Design

• Pleasing 18:9 display.
• Slippery.
• Dual SIM as well as microSD, rather than instead of.

• Read more on the Motorola Moto G6 Plus design

  As you might expect from a phone with an existing smaller sibling and a "plus" suffix, the Moto G6 Plus is like the Moto G6, only bigger. That means that it shares the same 18:9 ratio display, which is somewhat taller and thinner than last year's G series phones.

  We're seeing a lot of manufacturers, even in the budget and mid-range spaces, switch over to 18:9 displays. In the case of the Moto G6 Plus, what you're faced with is a 5.9-inch 1080x2180 LCD display. It's nicely bright, but still below what you might see out of a decent OLED display.

  Like the Moto G6, the Moto G6 Plus offers a fully glass and metal build, which does give it a kick up in the style stakes. We're seeing a lot more mid-range devices that challenge the designs found on premium phones and the Moto G6 Plus makes the most of Motorola's new designs at this size.

  That's not always a positive point, though. Like so many other large glass-backed phones, the Moto G6 Plus is noticeably slippery in the hand. A case would be a very wise investment here. A larger phone also means that the Moto G6 Plus's camera bump is even more noticeable around the back.

  The Motorola Moto G6 Plus's controls are very simple, with a thin fingerprint sensor below the display and volume and power controls on the right-hand side of the handset. The Moto G6 Plus has very fine ridging on the power button to make it stand out, although it's so thin that you might not even notice that until you look at it.

  The Moto G6 Plus is a dual SIM phone, but it's one with a very welcome point of difference. The vast majority of dual SIM phones use the secondary SIM card slot for microSD expansion as well, forcing you to choose one or the other, but not both. Like the Moto G6, the Moto G6 Plus has a SIM tray that features two distinct SIM slots plus a microSD card reader. It's a great inclusion and one that I hope every other dual SIM phone maker picks up on.

Camera

• Solid but unspectacular camera performance.

• Read more on the Motorola Moto G6 Plus camera

  Motorola has never been a powerhouse name in the camera space, with the majority of its phones delivering solid but unexceptional performance for their relative price ranges. That's pretty much exactly what you get out of the Motorola Moto G6 Plus.

  

  It has a very slight edge on the regular Moto G6 in camera specification terms, with dual 12MP f/1.7/5MP f/2.2 lenses to the Moto G6's 12MP f/1.8/5MP f/2.2 lenses. However, like the Moto G6, you can't actually access that secondary lens on its own terms. It's strictly there to deliver portrait-style bokeh effects on your shots should you need it.

  

  It's still fundamentally the case that premium phones sell themselves on their camera chops, but we've seen impressive strides in the cameras found on many mid-range devices.

  

  I can't say that the Moto G6 Plus stands ahead of its competition in this regard because realistically it doesn't. It's a perfectly functional camera that will deliver solid results in decent light, but not spectacular ones if pushed. That's what you should expect from a mid-range phone and it's what the Moto G6 Plus definitely does.

Performance

• Snapdragon 630 delivers solid results.
• Simple actions work well, but this isn't Android One.
• Sadly no water resistance.

• Read more on the Motorola Moto G6 Plus performance

  The Moto G6 is an average performer, but Motorola gives the Moto G6 Plus a definite edge with the use of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 630, where its smaller sibling makes do with the Snapdragon 450 instead.

  The Moto G6 Plus pairs that with 4GB of RAM in the unit as tested, as well as 64GB of onboard storage. We've seen a number of Snapdragon 630 handsets here at finder, including the Nokia 6 2018, the HTC U11 Life and the Sony Xperia XA2, so the Motorola Moto G6 Plus has plenty of competition.

  In benchmark terms, the Moto G6 Plus acquits itself with solid performance, very much on par with other Snapdragon 630 handsets:

  Motorola Moto G6 Plus

  Geekbench 4 CPU

  Source: finder.com.au benchmark tests, July 2018

  It's the same story in 3D graphics performance, where the Moto G6 Plus ever so slightly outpaces its immediate competition:

  Motorola Moto G6 Plus

  3DMark Slingshot Extreme

  Source: finder.com.au benchmark tests, July 2018

  The Motorola Moto G6 Plus isn't an Android One phone, although Motorola's own modifications leave it awfully close to feeling like stock Android.

  You do get Motorola's by-now-standard action modifiers, such as chopping motions to enable the flashlight built in by default. Being Android, of course, you're left with plenty of control over how you want the interface to look.

  The Moto G6 Plus lacks any kind of water resistance. It'll repel light rain, but don't get it seriously wet. It won't live to regret it.

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Battery life

• A great balance of battery life and performance.
• USB-C isn't common in the mid-range space yet.

• Read more on the Motorola Moto G6 Plus battery life

  There's a balancing act in play for any large-screened handset when it comes to battery life. A larger display rather naturally uses up more power, but having a larger frame often gives manufacturers more space to expand battery capacity. The Moto G6 Plus features a 3,200mAh battery, which isn't all that large for a phone this size.

  Still, we've recently seen Motorola's phones do very well in benchmarking terms, so I was keen to see how the Moto G6 Plus would fare with Geekbench 4's punishing battery life tests:

  Motorola Moto G6 Plus

  Geekbench 4 battery

  Source: finder.com.au benchmark tests, July 2018

  The Motorola Moto G6 Play strikes a very nice balance here between actual performance and battery life. It didn't run for as long as the smaller Moto G6, but it achieved a much higher battery score, indicating it was working much harder during the testing period. That's what you should want out of a phone.

  In real-world testing, it's very easy to get a single day's battery life out of the Moto G6 Plus and while I didn't push it that far, two days should be feasible for moderate users.

  The Motorola Moto G6 Plus charges via USB-C and it's great to see more phones in the mid-range switch away from micro USB. There's sadly no sign of wireless charging.

Verdict

• A good phone, but more of the same from Moto, rather than something innovative.

• Read our full Motorola Moto G6 Plus verdict

  If you're an existing Motorola phone user looking for an upgrade, the Moto G6 Plus is a solid option. However, it's very much a case of being more of the same from Motorola rather than any kind of radical reinvention of the form.

  As I noted in the review of the Moto G6, Motorola is somewhat coasting with this generation of Moto G handsets. They're good devices, but there's a lot of competition locally that you should also consider. Motorola should make sure that its 2019 G series phones start pushing the mid-range envelope a little harder, or it could easily find itself left behind by newer challenger brands.

Pricing and availability

• Price: RRP $499
• Where to buy: Amazon

Specifications

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