Moto G6 review

Stock Android Oreo with some Moto twists

One of the long-standing staples of Motorola's smartphone business has always been a clean Android experience. The Moto G6 continues the fan-favored tradition as well. It boots an Android 8.0 Oreo ROM, that, for the most part, is almost identical to what you would find on a Google Pixel device.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • App drawer • Quick toggles/notifications • Task switcher

As we've seen on previous Motos, the Moto G6 fingerprint scanner can be used in several ways. The obvious one is to wake/unlock the phone - it is always-on, very fast and quite reliable. For unlocking, you can alternatively use face unlock - or 'trusted face' as it's called in stock Android.

Anyway, back to the fingerprint sensor. For navigation purposes, as part of Moto Actions, it can fully replace the on-screen nav bar - tap to go Home, swipe left to go Back or swipe right to switch between recent apps. Gestures get detected pretty accurately, though you may find the left-right mechanics a little counterintuitive if you switch hands often. You can reverse the swiping directions if you so wish.

Pressing-and-holding the sensor for a short time will lock the screen, while a longer press will summon the Google Assistant. These two overlap and mastering them does take some time, but it's ultimately a great way to do away with the on-screen navigation bar in case it's not your thing.

Moto Display is another long-standing proprietary feature that's being continuously refined. It's sort of like an always-on display, giving you notification at a glance, only it's not always on. It only lights up just when a new notification comes up or if you wave your hand in front of the phone's face. On this screen, you can act upon the notifications, ignore or straight-up dismiss them. There's not much in the way of customization the way you can change the Samsung Galaxy's always on display - the implementation is more like Pixel 2's.

Also part of Moto Display is Night Display - the phone will display warmer colors to filter out the blue light that's known to mess up your sleep according to research.

In the Moto actions category, you'll find gestures like 'pick up to stop ringing', which most phones have, but a couple that are unique to Moto include "chop twice for flashlight", and "twist for quick capture".

One button nav • Moto display • Moto display • Moto display • Moto actions

As for multimedia, it's all in the hands of Google and its default apps. Google Photos is in charge of gallery-related tasks and video playback, while Google Play Music is the audio player. There's an FM radio too, with RDS and recording capability.

Photos • FM radio • FM radio

What is custom is the system-wide Dolby Audio sound control with presets for movies, music, games, and voice, plus two custom slots. The Intelligent Equalizer will adapt to the content, and you can bias it in three different ways, plus you can also tweak a 10-band EQ yourself.

Dolby Audio

Performance and benchmarks

The Moto G6 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 chip. Despite its 4-series branding, this one is more of a reworked Snapdragon 625 and comes to replace the Snapdragon 435.

The 450's processor has eight 1.8GHz Cortex-A53 cores and promises a 25% boost in processing speed over the incumbent S435 chip. It also moves to the Adreno 506 GPU, which will offer a 25% boost in gaming performance.

Finally, Lenovo has granted the Moto G6 with either 3 or 4 gigs of RAM - depending on the storage model you buy.

And now - it's benchmark time. GeekBench is what we ran first, and the G6 did fine. As expected, its 1.8GHz processor is faster than the 1.4GHz (Moto G6 Play) but can't match the 2+ GHz ones. The Oppo F7 with its Helio P60 and Cortex-A73 cores is in a completely different league.

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Oppo F7
  1531
• Huawei P20 Lite
  938
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  882
• HTC U11 Life
  873
• Motorola Moto X4
  866
• Sony Xperia XA2
  865
• vivo V7+
  767
• Xiaomi Redmi 5
  766
• Motorola Moto G6
  754
• Motorola Moto G6 Play
  639

Whether it's single or multi-core tasks though, the Moto G6 will get the job done, smoothly at that thanks to the lightweight Android OS.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Oppo F7
  5901
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  4225
• Sony Xperia XA2
  4215
• HTC U11 Life
  4140
• Motorola Moto X4
  4136
• Xiaomi Redmi 5
  4018
• Motorola Moto G6
  3972
• vivo V7+
  3912
• Huawei P20 Lite
  3756
• Motorola Moto G6 Play
  2328

We've already seen the Adreno 506GPU perform on the Snapdragon 625, so this is a great addition for the 4xx generation. Just as expected, as far as raw power is concerned, the 450's Adreno 506 is doing alright for the budget class, but trails behind the new GPUs available in the Snapdragon 630 (Moto X4, U11 Life). The Vivo V7+ and Redmi 5 has lower-res screen, and that's why they score better than the Moto G6.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi 5
  18
• Oppo F7
  18
• vivo V7+
  17
• Sony Xperia XA2
  15
• Motorola Moto X4
  15
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  15
• Motorola Moto G6 Play
  13
• HTC U11 Life
  13
• Huawei P20 Lite
  8.1
• Motorola Moto G6
  5.8

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi 5
  13
• vivo V7+
  13
• Motorola Moto X4
  11
• Oppo F7
  11
• Motorola Moto G6 Play
  10
• Sony Xperia XA2
  10
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  10
• HTC U11 Life
  9.6
• Motorola Moto G6
  8.8
• Huawei P20 Lite
  4.9

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Motorola Moto X4
  14479
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  14365
• Sony Xperia XA2
  14312
• HTC U11 Life
  14286
• Oppo F7
  11873
• vivo V7+
  9955
• Xiaomi Redmi 5
  9953
• Motorola Moto G6
  9883
• Huawei P20 Lite
  9090
• Motorola Moto G6 Play
  7620

Finally, we ran some all-round benchmarks. BaseMark OS 2.0 puts the G6 on top of the G6 Play, and closely to the Redmi 5 and vivo v7+, which have the same chipset but less pixels to worry about.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Oppo F7
  1953
• Sony Xperia XA2
  1545
• Motorola Moto X4
  1532
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  1517
• Huawei P20 Lite
  1455
• HTC U11 Life
  1342
• vivo V7+
  1290
• Xiaomi Redmi 5
  1222
• Motorola Moto G6
  1136
• Motorola Moto G6 Play
  922

AnTuTu test shows the superiority of the Snapdragon 630 chipset within the new Nokia 6, but even the aging Kirin 659 is doing better than the Moto G6's S450 chip.

AnTuTu 7

Higher is better

• Oppo F7
  139414
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  90918
• Huawei P20 Lite
  87431
• Motorola Moto G6
  70845
• Motorola Moto G6 Play
  58757

Qualcomm's latest addition to the basic 4xx series has turned out to be a capable silicone, but Lenovo should have chosen better for the Moto G6.

Here is the deal - the Moto G6 does very well in handling highly intensive tasks and plays smoothly most of the available games in the Play Store. The tall screen with thin bezels helps for an immersive experience, while the more-than-adequate chipset boosts the positive impression.

Even better, the Moto G6 won't get hot and won't throttle the performance.

But the competition has turned out phones equipped with faster chips, especially if it's GPU performance that you are after. The Moto G6 is capable, yes, and has enough power punch for today, but future-proof is not the word to suit the G6 best. Don't get us wrong, the Snapdragon 450 is a well-rounded chipset, which we'd recommend gladly, it's just that in the Moto G6's price range, you could be getting faster hardware.