When the Moto G5 Plus launched last year, it brought a compelling combination of capable hardware and an affordable price to all the major US carriers.
The new Moto G6 sticks to the same recipe for success.
Available for $249 unlocked, it too has solid hardware, support for the four big carriers, surprisingly good dual-sensor camera capabilities, and a refreshed design for a more modern appearance.
It's a great choice for the price, though if you value battery life over image quality, Motorola's G6 Play trades the extra camera sensor for a colossal battery and a lower price.
Design, Features, and Display
The G6 might be the successor to the G5 Plus, but it takes its design cues from the Moto X4.
It has a curved and reflective glass back, dual rear camera sensors with a slight hump, and a fingerprint sensor on the front.
It adopts the modern 18:9 aspect ratio to minimize bezels and make the phone easier to hold.
Overall, it's a very attractive look for the price.
The phone measures 6.1 by 2.8 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.9 ounces, making it a bit thinner than the G6 Play (6.1 by 2.8 by 0.4 inches, 6.2 ounces).
The volume rocker and power button are on the right, and a SIM/microSD card slot is up top (it's rated to take cards up to 128GB, but it also worked with a 256GB card we tried).
A 3.5mm headphone jack and USB-C charging port sit on the bottom.
If you've used Motorola phones before, you should be familiar with all the gestures and usability features here.
You can twist your wrist to launch the camera, double tap the screen to wake it, and chop it twice to turn the flashlight on and off.
Additional gestures and voice commands can be enabled with the preloaded Moto app.
One-button navigation is a particularly useful for maximizing screen space, as it lets you disable the software buttons and use the fingerprint sensor for navigation.
On the front you'll find the 5.7-inch, 2,880-by-1,080 IPS display.
The resolution works out to a crisp 424 pixels per inch, which is considerably sharper than the 1,440-by-720 Moto G6 Play.
Viewing angles are good, colors are accurate, and you can tweak color temperature and saturation to your liking.
The screen can become reflective under direct sunlight, but it remains usable at maximum brightness.
Network Performance and Connectivity
Like the G5 Plus, the G6 is available unlocked and has LTE bands 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/13/17/20/25/26/28/29/30/38/41/66, giving it it good support for all four major US carriers.
We tested the phone on T-Mobile in highly congested midtown Manhattan and recorded solid download and upload speeds, on par with similar devices we've tested on the network (for more on network performance, see our story on the Fastest Mobile Networks).
See How We Test Cell Phones
Other connectivity protocols include Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands and Bluetooth 4.2.
There's no NFC, so you can't use Google Pay, but that tends to be a common omission in this price range.
Call quality is good.
Voices can be a bit mechanical, but noise cancellation is good at blotting out background noise and there's no skipping or crackling in transmissions.
The earpiece is loud, and does double-duty as a speaker.
Processor and Battery
Under the hood, the G6 has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor clocked at 1.8GHz, and either 3GB or 4GB of RAM depending on your configuration; we tested the 3GB version.
In the PCMark benchmark, which measures a variety of tasks like web browsing, video editing, and data manipulation, the phone scored 4,583, which is only a bit lower than the Snapdragon 630-powered Nokia 6.1 (4,856) and more powerful than the Alcatel 3V's MediaTek MT8735A chipset (3,151).
Performance is smooth and responsive, with little to no slowdown and good multitasking capabilities.
Graphics performance is lackluster, however.
The G6 scored just 3.2fps in the Car Chase on-screen test in GFXbench, and suffered from choppy gameplay in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds despite low graphics settings.
Battery life is another weak point, at 4 hours, 42 minutes of streaming video over LTE at maximum screen brightness.
That doesn't come close to matching the G6 Play, which outlasted our 12-hour test video with its 4,000mAh battery.
On the plus side, you can use the included 15W TurboPower to fast charge the phone.
There's no wireless charging, which is something we still only see on flagship devices.
Camera
The G6 features a dual-sensor rear camera setup, with a primary 12MP sensor and a secondary 5MP sensor.
It's essentially the same approach as the Moto X4, giving you features like Bokeh Mode, which puts a foreground object in focus and blurs out the background, and Spot Color, which picks out a color from a scene and turns the rest of it black and white.
Compared with the Nokia 6.1, the Moto G6 delivers better images in terms of clarity, focus speed, and noise reduction.
In the above images, taken outdoors in good lighting conditions, the G6 blows the Nokia 6.1 out of the water in regard to the amount of detail captured.
The texture of the building, the clarity of leaves, and individual flower petals all come across with less noise and more defined features.
Color reproduction is also more pleasant, with more saturated greens and yellows, and a warmer tint under sunlight compared with the washed out look of the Nokia 6.1.
In the low-light shots below, the disparity is even clearer.
While neither phone is necessarily excellent in these conditions, the G6 is notably superior and more often able to acquire focus without suffering from the blurriness and muddy colors that plague the Nokia 6.1.
The front-facing 5MP camera takes clear photos in good lighting, with a nice amount of detail.
It becomes a bit soft and hazy in lower light, however.
For video, the G6 Play is able to record sharp 1080p footage at a smooth 60fps, though there isn't any optical image stabilization, making it jittery when you're moving around.
Software
The G6 ships running Android 8.0 Oreo. An update to Android P can be expected, but Motorola hasn't provided a timeline for it.
One aspect of Motorola's phones we always like is how closely they stick to stock Android.
There's little in the way of visual changes or bloatware.
The lightweight skin and minimal bloat means that out of 32GB of storage, you have 23.63GB available.
As mentioned, you can always use a microSD card if you need more space.
Conclusions
Unlocked phones are a dime a dozen these days, but it's hard to find ones that deliver quality camera performance for under $300.
With a dual sensor setup inspired by the Moto X4, the Moto G6 delivers some of the best image quality we've seen in this price range.
Aside from battery life, everything else about the phone is pretty strong as well, making it a strong value for the price.
If you aren't terribly concerned with camera performance, however, the G6 Play delivers a similarly smooth overall experience with much better battery life for less money.
The Bottom Line
The unlocked Motorola Moto G6 offers overall solid performance and surprisingly good camera capabilities for the price.
