Priced at Rs 13,999, the Motorola phone competes directly with the Realme 5 Pro and Samsung Galaxy M30s (Review) in the market. Not only this, Redmi Note 8 Pro (Review) is also available in the same price segment. Are the features and performance of the Moto G8 Plus better than other smartphones in this price segment? Let’s find out…
Design of the Moto G8 Plus
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The design of the Moto G8 Plus is similar to that of the Motorola One Macro (Review), especially the arrangement of the camera sensors on the back panel of the phone. The polycarbonate body in the Cosmic Blue color variant looks good. Apart from this, there is also a Crystal Pink color variant of the Moto G8 Plus. The back panel of the phone looks like glass.
The phone isn’t too heavy but it is a little thick at 9.09mm. The sides are glossy and can be a little slippery at times. The textured power button is well placed but the volume buttons are a little higher. The SIM tray is on the left side of the phone which supports two nano-SIM cards and the second slot supports up to 512GB of microSD card.
The Moto G8 Plus has a headphone jack at the top and a USB Type-C port at the bottom. The earpiece and bottom speaker work together to create a stereo effect. Motorola has given a 6.3-inch LTPS IPS display in the Moto G8 Plus, Panda Glass has been used for scratch protection.
The Moto G8 Plus comes with a full-HD+ (1080×2280 pixels) resolution and a 19:9 aspect ratio. The panel is vivid and displays colours well. The brightness is decent even when used outdoors and viewing angles are also good. You will get the option for basic colour adjustments in the settings menu.
The bezels around the display are not very thin. There is a waterdrop notch on the front panel which houses the selfie camera. The Moto G8 Plus has Moto Display which is an ambient display mode that will show you missed notifications, battery level and time on the lock screen.
Talking about the Moto G8 Plus Camera, the rear camera on the back of the phone is slightly raised. The fingerprint sensor is placed in the Moto logo on the back panel. You can also use the face unlock feature, it works well in sufficient light. In the retail box, you will get a 15 watt turbo charger, SIM eject tool and Type-C cable.
Moto G8 Plus Specifications and Software
The Moto G8 Plus is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 655 processor, which is the same chipset that powers the Realme 5, Xiaomi Mi A3 (Review), and Redmi Note 8. The Moto G8 Plus comes in just one variant with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.
The phone supports dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth version 5, dual 4G VoLTE, NFC and three satellite navigation systems. Motorola claims that the Moto G8 Plus is water resistant, although it does not come with an official IP rating.
The software is quite clean and very close to stock Android. There is no bloatware on the phone and the default apps won’t bother you by sending spammy notifications. The Moto G8 Plus comes with Android 9 Pie and our review unit ran on the September 2019 security patch. Digital Wellbeing and standard Android gestures are present.
The Moto app gives you the option to select a Moto Action and set up the Moto display. Moto Actions are shortcuts and gestures used to quickly turn on the camera and flashlight and take quick screenshots.
There is also a Dolby Audio app that boosts the volume and quality of sound coming through speakers, wired and wireless headphones. You will find some Google apps like Slides, News and Sheets in the phone.
Moto G8 Plus performance and battery life
Talking about day-to-day usage, Moto G8 Plus manages everything well. Multitasking was also quite easy and we did not face any heating problem in the phone. Due to the large display in the phone, there may be some difficulty in reaching the upper part of the screen but many gestures given in the phone will help you. The phone did get a little hot while gaming.
The benchmark numbers of the Moto G8 Plus are also very good. The Moto G8 Plus scored 170,004 points in AnTuTu while in GFXbench’s T-Rex test it scored 34fps. Due to the presence of Dolby Audio in the Moto G8 Plus, the sound from the speakers in the phone is quite good.
The earpiece is also quite loud, as is the speaker at the bottom of the phone. The Moto G8 Plus supports Motorola’s 15W Turbo Charging feature. In our battery loop test, the Moto G8 Plus lasted for 14 hours and 10 minutes with normal usage, which included playing games, using the camera and surfing the internet.
The phone lasted for more than a day. The Turbo Charger that comes with the phone charges the Moto G8 Plus battery from 0 to 36 percent in half an hour, up to 70 percent in an hour, and fully charges in about two hours.
Moto G8 Plus cameras
There are three rear cameras in the back of Moto G8 Plus, the primary sensor is 48 megapixels, its aperture is F / 1.8. It will be accompanied by a 16-megapixel wide-angle camera. The phone also has a 5-megapixel depth sensor. Moto G8 Plus also has a laser autofocus module and LED flash.
The camera app is easy to use due to its simple layout. Apart from the main shooting modes, additional modes like Portrait, Panorama and Night Vision are given in a separate menu. You will also get some fun modes like Spot Color and Cutout in the Moto G8 Plus.
In daylight, the primary camera sensor captures good landscape shots and close-up shots. It also handles HDR well, and balances light exposure well. Colours look vivid but don’t look overly boosted and details are captured well.
The phone saves photos at 12 megapixels by default, the handset does not have the option to shoot at 48 megapixel resolution. RAW files can also be captured in manual mode. Close-up shots came out well and details were captured well in them.
The colors were vivid and the sharpness was also good. Close-up shots taken in low light were also good. You will also get night vision in Moto G8 Plus. Colors were captured correctly but there was not much improvement in details. If you look at the photo without zooming, you will see good pictures.
The depth sensor does a good job of detecting the edges around the subject and blurring the background. The blur effect can be adjusted before and after taking a shot. The 16-megapixel action camera can only be used for video shooting and not for stills, which is a bit disappointing.
In video mode, you’ll find a button to access the wide-angle camera near the shutter button. Videos shot with the Moto G8 Plus’ wide-angle action camera were stabilised at 1080p 30fps, but not at 60 frames per second. Video quality was good in daylight and the electronic stabilisation worked well.
The video quality was not very good in low light, grains were visible in the video. While switching to the primary camera, you can set the resolution up to 4K at 30 frames per second but without stabilization. The videos came electronically stabilized at 1080 resolution 30 frames per second and the footage was also good with better color reproduction. For your information, let us tell you that the quality also decreased a bit in low light.
Moto G8 Plus has a 25-megapixel selfie camera, you can capture selfies at full resolution if you want. Selfies came out well in daylight, colors and details were captured well in them. You can enable Face Beauty mode which smoothens skin texture.
In low light, the image quality was below average. Details were not captured properly and noise was also visible. When shooting with the selfie camera, you will get several shooting modes such as spot color, group selfie, portrait and slow-motion video.
Our verdict
The Moto G8 Plus has good features, the stereo speakers are also good. The battery life of the Moto G8 Plus is also quite strong and the camera quality was above average when shooting in daylight. The Motorola One series smartphones Motorola One Macro (Review), Motorola One Action and Motorola One Vision (Review) come in the same price segment, compared to these handsets, we chose the Moto G8 Plus for better display and faster processor.
Compared to the Realme 5 Pro and Redmi Note 8 Pro available in the market, the processor given in the Moto G8 Plus is not very powerful. Other smartphones in this price segment come with more powerful processors. Talking about the camera of Moto G8 Plus, you cannot capture wide-angle photos with it and the camera performance in low light is also not very good. Moto G8 Plus is not the best all-rounder phone but a good display and stereo speakers are good.
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