Moto G4 review: Lenovated

Google Photos is smarter than Skynet

Google Photos is your gallery app. The Moto G4 even comes with 2 years of free full-resolution backups (normally this is paid, free accounts get only limited resolution backups). Uploads can happen over Wi-Fi only or use cell data too.

Pinch zoom changes the size of thumbnails, but the search field is pure sci-fi - type in the name of a place, person or just name a thing (e.g. 'swimming pool') and it sifts through years of photos in a moment.

Google Photos • Amazing search • The assistant

The assistant continues the AI tricks by automatically creating panoramas and slideshows (complete with maps of your travels), it even processes certain photos with more skill than your average Joe - it straitens them, adjusts levels, it may decide to make them black & white and so on.

All of these auto features can be triggered manually, of course. From the editing you can hit Auto to fix the colors and contrast, you can auto-level a photo or just add filters.

Doing the assistant's job manually

Video player

There's no video player as such, but you can use Google Photos to view videos. That's mostly for ones from your camera as if you want "advanced" features like subtitles you're out of luck.

Basic video player from Google Photos

Google Play Music merges streaming and offline

Play Music works as a generic music player, but it's also a streaming app. Google boasts 50,000 tracks and if you're worried about data usage, you can just make your favorite albums offline.

Google Play Now is built around music streaming

Still, if you prefer your own music library, then Play Music will assist you in loading tracks from your computer or a USB drive if you happen to have one.

Separate equalizers are available for wired headsets and the front-facing speaker. For headsets, you can also enable surround sound and other features.

It plays offline music too • You can cache streamed music • Setting up the equalizer

FM radio with RDS and recording

The FM radio app comes courtesy of Lenovo, as Google just doesn't care for non-Internet technologies. The app is full-featured. It has RDS, a sleep timer and record broadcasts (with an auto-off feature when storage runs low). The radio can play through the loudspeaker but still needs the headset connected.

FM radio with RDS • Sleep timer • Broadcast recording

Audio output is very solid

The Motorola Moto G4 delivered excellently clean output when used with an active external amplifier, getting top marks across the board. Its loudness was above average too, for an impressive showing by the mid-ranger.

The headphones test brought more good news - there’s virtually no degradation outside of the moderate stereo crosstalk hike. Volume remained above average too, so it’s one of the best performances in the price range we’ve seen.

And now here go the results so you can do your comparison.

Moto G4 frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.