Moto G6 Play: A Phone You'll Want to Play With

Moto G6 Play: A Phone You'll Want to Play With

OUR VERDICT

The Moto G6 Play is that the most elementary model within the G6 range but still has plenty going for it, including a long-lasting battery and an honest screen. If you're on a decent budget it is easy to recommend.

FOR

• Good battery life
• Surprisingly good screen
• Great value

AGAINST

• Camera slightly slow
• Mediocre night photos
• Scrolling software bug

The Moto G6 Play may be a cheaper alternative to the Moto G6 and Moto G6 Plus. It trades away advanced features like 1080p resolution and a glass back to knock the SIM-free price right down to A level budget buyers are going to be easier with.

What does one lose? The Motorola Moto G6 Play doesn’t take great photos in the dark and therefore the fingerprint scanner is slower than most. However, it’s still stunning value and is additionally one among the best-looking phones during this class.

Moto G6 Play Price and Availability

• Launch price: $199.99 (£179.99, AU$329)
• Current price: $189.99 (£159.99, AU$329)
• Release date: May 2018

The Moto G6 Play price was $199.99 (£179.99, AU$329) SIM-free at launch, making it one among the most cost effective 18:9 screen phones you'll buy.

It's only been a couple of months since its May 2018 arrival, but if you go searching you'll find the Moto G6 Play slightly cheaper within the US and UK, with SIM free prices starting at $189.99 (£159.99).

Key Features

A big 4,000mAh battery

32GB of storage and a microSD card slot

Fast charging

MOTO G6 PLAY SPECS

Weight: 175g

Dimensions: 154.4 x 72.2 x 9mm

OS: Android 8.0

Screen size: 5.7-inch

Resolution: 720 x 1440

CPU: Snapdragon 430

RAM: 3GB

Storage: 32GB

Battery: 4,000mAh

Rear camera: 13MP

Front camera: 8MP

There are two important areas to hide within the Moto G6 Play’s features. We’d like to see out what we miss buying this rather than a Moto G6, and appreciate the neat extras Motorola has managed to suit in at the worth.

Let’s start with the parts that deserve some applause. The Moto G6 Play has 32GB of storage, which is superb for the worth. There’s a memory card slot if that’s not enough, but there’s many room for a few of your favorite games and thousands of photos.

Battery life is that the real standout here, though. A 4,000mAh unit lets the Motorola Moto G6 Play press on through a full day of intensive use, including, for instance, an hour of YouTube streaming alongside the standard messaging, browsing and camera use.

The Moto G6 Play is additionally one among the cheaper phones to possess true fast charging. It’s an enormous point if you would like a low-maintenance phone. Its 13MP rear camera takes very pleasant shots in daylight too.

The missing parts? it's a micro USB charge socket instead of the newer USB-C and while the rear looks tons like that of the Moto G6, it's made from plastic instead of glass. It’ll devour light scratches in your pocket quickly if you’re not careful. That said, Motorola includes a protective covering within the box.

Screen resolution takes a step down from the Moto G5’s 1080p too. It’s a 720 x 1440 screen, although we’re pleasantly surprised by how well it holds up next to its costlier brothers.

The chipset is additionally an equivalent as that of last year’s Moto G5, a Snapdragon 430. It’s not a super-powerful chipset but does get you more-than-acceptable performance altogether areas, including high-end gaming.

Design

• A plastic back with reflective elements
• Surprisingly compact and straightforward to handle

This latest generation of Moto G phones marks the primary time Motorola has used glass this series. Well, apart from the front panel, which has been glass since the very first Moto G.

The Moto G6 and G6 Plus have curved Gorilla Glass rear panels. Within the step right down to the Moto G6 Play you lose this glass. It’s replaced by plastic. However, we’re pleasantly surprised by how close its and feels to the higher-end design. It’s just slightly tackier and doesn’t get that cool-to-the-touch feel of glass or aluminum.

There are a couple of important elements that make the plastic seem quite classy. First, the Moto G6 Play’s back doesn’t perceptibly flex under hand pressure. And it's an equivalent reflective elements under the highest layer because the costlier models during this range.

When they catch the sunshine, you’ll see a stunning S-shaped pattern of azure snaking across the rear. It’s great.

It’s also much subtler than it's going to appear in a number of our photos, because we’ve deliberately used light to bring out the effect. Use it indoors and therefore the Moto G6 Play just seems like a really navy glass-backed phone.

It is not all-plastic, either. The edges are aluminum, although they're coated to stay the finish consistent.

Size is one other important aspect you’ll got to get your head around. From the spec list alone, you would possibly imagine the Moto G6 Play is large. It’s a 5.7-inch screen. However, it isn’t huge.

Width is that the main element that determines how large a phone feels. And at 72.2mm, the Moto G6 Play is really less wide than the 73mm Moto G5. It’s easy to handle, and while around a centimeter longer than the Moto G5, this is often due to its significantly taller screen.

Classier than the respect 7A and cheaper than the respect 9 Lite, the Moto G6 Play is one among the foremost pleasant phones you’ll find at the worth.

There are a couple of compromises, though. It doesn’t have the water repelling Nano coating of the higher-end Moto G6 models and there’s a micro USB on rock bottom, not a USB-C.

The difference? As we get fast charging anyway, it’s all about the convenience of fixing the charge cable. USB-Cs are often jammed in either way, micro USBs can’t.

It has a, hallelujah, headphone jack, too. This sits on the highest edge. All the Moto G6 models have one, though, so it’s not a reason to select this cheaper model. Lower cost is.

There’s a fingerprint scanner on the rear too. Motorola told us it lives here because it’s cheaper to implement a rear sensor than a front one, as seen within the Moto G6 and G6 Plus, especially during a phone with fairly narrow surrounds like this.

The scanner works fine but is way from the fastest around. Huawei’s P9 Lite is quicker, and therefore the Motorola Moto G6 Play may be a little pickier than most about your finger position. However, it’s worth highlighting what the important difference is.

You’re watching a standby to home screen time of about one second (or slightly under), where the quickest take about 0.3 seconds. It’s slower, but still quicker than employing a passcode.

Screen

• 5.7-inch 18:9 screen gives you tons of space
• 720 x 1440 resolution is less than the remainder of the G6 range

The screen shows off both the Moto G6 Play’s most vital upgrade, and one among its notable budget compromises. It’s a 5.7-inch 18:9 aspect screen. Until late last year all affordable phones had less 'tall' 16:9 aspect screens. This phone proves such a display is not any longer only for costlier mobiles.

Benefits include more room for your fingers while playing console-style landscape orientation games and more lines of text on-screen once you read a piece of writing . You’ll notice this all the more when the on-screen keyboard pops-up. It takes tons of a 16:9 phone’s screen. Not so with an 18:9’er just like the Moto G6 Play.

Resolution is that the compromise. 720 x 1440 pixels may sound like quite lot still, but this is often just a stretched combat 720p. The Moto G4 Play is last time we saw a Moto G phone with this class of resolution, back in 2016.

If you currently have a 1080p phone, you’ll probably notice the phone isn’t quite as sharp within the primary jiffy. However, we were quite surprised by how quickly our eyes bedded in.

Android uses font aliasing (smoothing) lately, and there’s no 'screen door' effect, which is where pixel density is so low you'll see the sunshine gaps between pixels. The Motorola Moto G6 Play still features a 282ppi pixel density, after all, which isn’t bad.

Color performance is merely very slightly worse than the Moto G6 too. Vivid reds look just a touch less saturated when using the Vivid mode.

You can choose from this mode and 'standard', which is meant to seem more natural but also loses some richness. Color temperature is customizable too. There are warm, neutral and funky settings.

Use 'vivid' color and 'warm' temperature and therefore the Moto G6 Play looks great, more inviting and luxuriant than the respect 7A. This is often a really nice screen for the worth, although the upper pixel density of the Moto G6 does get you closer to the design of an ultra-high-end phone because of its smoother fonts.

Out on a sunny day, the Moto G6 Play holds up about also because the Moto G6, with enough brightness to form the display contents comfortably visible.