Moto G8 Plus review: Great daily driver
The Moto G8 Plus is a dependable phone to live with on a daily basis but it lacks the zing and flair that its Chinese rivals offer at similar or lower prices. At Rs 13,999, you can buy more exciting phones.
HIGHLIGHTS
- The Moto G8 Plus has been launched in India at Rs 13,999.
- Motorola brings in the impressive Night mode from the Moto One Vision for this one.
- The Moto G8 Plus is powered by a Snapdragon 665 chipset that’s tamed by stock Android 9 Pie.
Up until a few years ago, the Moto G series phones were the bestsellers in the sub-Rs 15,000 category. They offered good specifications with decent cameras and a super polished stock Android interface promising timely updates. This recipe was working for Motorola quite well until the likes of Xiaomi, Realme and other Chinese brands arrived on the scene, wooing us customers with even better specifications and build quality. The Moto G series has since then slipped into oblivion, with no one batting an eyelid with the recent launches.
All that changed with the Moto G8 Plus that launched a few days ago. After selling overpriced Moto G phones for a while, the G8 Plus suddenly marked Motorola’s return to senses. Motorola suddenly had a phone that offered good specifications, was priced sensibly and doesn’t belong to the One series phones. In fact, at Rs 13,999, the Moto G8 Plus is suddenly among the best phones you can buy today, going by on-paper specifications.
But is the best phone after considering all things? Is the Moto G8 Plus a good buy for less than Rs 15,000 in 2019? Read on to find out.
Design: A step back from phones of the past
Most of the Moto G phones from the previous years were average at best with regards to specifications but one area where Motorola continued to shine was the build quality. At a time when the Xiaomis and Realmes were stuck with plastic or metal bodies, Motorola was offering beautifully curved glass bodies with stunning gradient designs. The Moto G6 and Moto G7 were the prettiest phones in their respective classes. Sadly, that’s no more the case with the Moto G8 Plus.
Gone is the beautiful glass body and in its place now rests a plastic body. This plastic body is finished well and many around me have mistaken it to be glass. However, plastic is plastic and it accumulates scratches, smudges and dirt easily. That said, it won’t shatter if you drop it, which is good if you have a habit of dropping your phone a lot.
As for the design, it’s ehokayish. At first glance, it looks identical to the Moto One Macro and that phone wasn’t a looker. The G8 Plus gets some refinements in the form of a raised camera bump and a far better looking subtle gradient. But the design still looks weird with that unusual camera bump and ever after using for two weeks, I still can’t find it appealing. The Redmi Note 8 even with its blinding gradients looks better.
That said, the G8 Plus has curved edges and it’s comfortable to use. And thanks to a plastic build, it’s quite lightweight. The phone has a glossy finish even on the frame, which also is plastic, but it never feels cheap. It’s just that we are so used to glass bodies these days on affordable phones.
As for the front, it’s a standard affair – thin bezels on sides and top, a thick chin and a small waterdrop-style notch for housing the camera. It would have been better if Motorola went for hole-punch cutout like the One Action to go for a better-looking design.
On the whole, the Moto G8 Plus looks okay but has a very good build despite having an all-plastic construction. Hey Motorola, you seriously need to work on the camera design – this one looks weird.
Performance: Finally worthy of the Moto G nametag
The last few Moto G models were seriously underpowered, especially for the price Motorola sold them. With the Moto G8 Plus, the order has been restored. Motorola has taken care of the specifications which are of prime concern to the Indian consumer.
Let’s start with the display where there’s not much of a drastic change. There’s a 6.3-inch Full HD+ IPS LCD panel for duty and it looks good at first glance. Like any typical IPS LCD panel, this one also produces fairly vibrant colours and decent contrasts. Images look sharp on the 1080p panel. With the stock wallpaper (there’s only one – common Moto!), the screen looks dull but I chose some spicy wallpapers and it did the job for me. The viewing angles are wide and sunlight legibility is quite good too (I could see the display clearly outdoors even at noon). I would have preferred a slightly thin chin for a more immersive experience but given the price, I can’t complain much.
However, where Motorola has truly focused its sight this time is the specifications and even performance seekers will like it. The G8 Plus gets a Snapdragon 665 chipset paired with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage as standard. This is tamed by a stock Android 9 Pie interface sprinkled with Moto Experiences and a few preloaded apps. On paper, it sounds decent and in the real world, it’s fairly good.
For simple daily tasks, the Moto G8 Plus is fast and smooth. I was juggling between some commonly used apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, Outlook, a few music streaming apps and my smartwatch companion app connected via Bluetooth all day. And never did I found the G8 Plus struggling. The stock Android interface is smooth as expected and with the additional Moto gestures, using the phone is very easy. An Android 10 release for the G8 Plus would have been better out-of-the-box but Android Pie works well for now. And Motorola says the Android 10 update will be coming soon.
While the phone is fast for daily tasks, the Snapdragon 665 isn’t great at gaming. PUBG MOBILE was running at decent frame rates with low graphics settings. Same was the case for Asphalt 9 Legends and Call of Duty Mobile. It would have been better even if Motorola used the Snapdragon 710 chip on this one for better gaming performance.
The Snapdragon 665 isn’t a power-packed chip but it is power efficient and that translates into great battery life. You get a 4000mAh battery to power the phone and with my regular usage that included all the above-mentioned apps evenly distributed throughout the day, I was finishing the day on an average at around 40 per cent charge. That’s great by all means and the Moto G8 Plus delivered the same results consistently.
Cameras: Amazing night mode but there’s scope for improvement
Most phones in this price range offer triple cameras but Motorola goes for a completely different combo. Going along with the ageing trend, yes – there’s a 48-megapixel main camera using the Samsung ISOCELL GM1 sensor. Motorola has used this sensor on the One Vision and this meant to offer the impressive Night Mode we saw before. Accompanying it are the 16-megapixel Action Video camera and 5-megapixel depth cameras. And at the front, there’s a 25-megapixel camera using the Samsung sensor. Both the front and rear cameras use quad-pixel technology for capturing more details.
Are the cameras good? The answer is yes, but not by a massive margin. Photos taken in daylight look bright and have lots of details with good contrasts. However, the usual Motorola issue of overexposing exists and that tends to ruin photos at times. The camera struggles to manage the exposures well and in order to keep the photos bright and vivid, it overexposes light sources. You can manually adjust the exposure though and then, the photos come out good. There’s no desperate saturation happening in the background and photos wear a very natural look.
With falling light levels, the exposure issue persists but the camera continues to get the details right while suppressing noise successfully. Colour tones appear a bit washed out but if you like to edit, this natural colour tone is way better than the oversaturated tones from other phone cameras. At night, the camera tries to keep the noise at bay but messes up with the exposure. Thankfully, Motorola’s brilliant Night Mode comes to the rescue and it offers Pixel-like results with high details, spot-on colour accuracy and sharpness. And the best part is that the Night mode is fast and you don’t have to wait for long holding the camera. I clicked using the Night mode always and after a second’s pause, the algorithms do their thing and you get a brilliant photo even when your eyes are struggling. The portrait mode also works well with impressive separation of the subject and background, although exposures are still a struggle here.
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The selfie camera also keeps throwing good looking selfies but the colour tones appear washed out at times. However, selfies always look detailed and if you play around with the lighting, you can get vibrant colours as well. The Action Camera works similar to one from the One Action and if you love shooting videos, you will be happy with this one. The camera can shoot in horizontal orientation even when you hold it in portrait orientation. The maximum resolution it can shoot in is 1080p but the stability it offers rivals the kind you get while employing a gimbal. The videos also look vibrant with rich colours and good exposures. With the regular camera, you can shoot up to 4K videos at 30 fps and 1080p videos at 60fps. And the results in these modes are impressive for a phone under Rs 15,000. Do note that stability suffers slightly with the regular camera.
To buy or not to buy?
This is tricky to answer. So far, we have established that the Moto G8 Plus is an overall good daily driver and it nails the essentials well. It has got fast performance for daily tasks, a pair of good cameras with an impressive night mode, an all-day battery life even with heavy usage and big colourful display. If you aren’t a power user, the Moto G8 Plus fulfils all the basic needs one expects from an affordable smartphone.
However, the smartphone market in India a dozen of other phones at this price, including two more from Motorola itself. The Moto One Vision at Rs 14,999 offers a slightly better display and a much more stylish design with the promise of two guaranteed Android updates. Xiaomi’s Mi A3 also offers a similar stock Android interface with a much better glass build, an AMOLED display with an in-display fingerprint sensor and equally good camera performance. And if stock Android isn’t a big deal, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro and Realme 5 Pro or the Realme XT offer all-round better value in terms of performance and features.
And when you look at these options, the Moto G8 Plus appears to be bland. It lacks the zing that other phones offer at this price point, including Motorola’s own One Vision. And whether you are a smartphone geek or a casual user, you will always want the phone that’s interesting to use as well as look at.
Hence, the Moto G8 Plus is a step in the right direction for Motorola but it’s not quite up there to be the absolute recommendation. It’s a good smartphone though and if you like what Motorola has to offer, you should go ahead and buy it.
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