Moto G6 review

12MP main snapper with a 5MP helper

The Moto G6 comes with a 12MP+5MP camera combo on its back. Only the 12MP one can be used on its own, while the 5MP module is used for depth detection (read: portrait shots with defocused backgrounds).

The 12MP sensor sits behind a bright f/1.8 lens, but it lacks OIS. There is regular autofocus, not dual-pixel as it is on the Moto G6 Plus. A single LED flash keeps the camera a company in the dark.

Anyway, the camera app is one of the software bits that are Motorola's own instead of Google's. You get a swipe action for switching between stills, video, and assorted modes (tapping on the icons works too). To get access to the settings, you need to go to those extra modes, which is a little counter-intuitive, but not a huge deal.

Camera app • HDR options • Manual • Manual

The Manual mode is accessed from a toggle in the viewfinder - not the extra modes. It lets you dial in your own ISO, shutter speed (1/4s max), or exposure compensation, as well as pick a white balance preset and manually adjust focus - all pretty standard.

Spot color is one of the proprietary modes - it lets you capture only a certain color from the spectrum, leaving the rest of the photo black and white. A slider allows you to select how close the colors in the frame need to be to the one you picked, so they don't turn monochrome.

Cutout mode can isolate a subject based on the depth detection and superimpose it on a different photo, while Text scanner should be able to recognize text from a picture and present it to you in a text editor.

Available modes • Portrait mode • Settings

There's also a couple of recognition features, one for objects, and another one - for landmarks. Point the camera at something, and the Moto G6 will try to recognize it and pull relevant info off the internet showing it to you in the form of cards. As you can imagine, it's far from infallible, and it's not really gotten much better since the last time we played with this feature on a previous Moto phone.

Daylight image quality

The regular (non-HDR) daylight images from the Moto G6 turn out quite alright - with a very decent amount of resolved detail, little noise, and accurate and lively colors. The contrast seems pretty great, but the dynamic range is rather narrow.

Moto G6 12MP camera samples

The camera app has the Auto HDR mode enabled by default. And we'd suggest leaving it this way - it's a bit trigger-happy for that HDR shooting, but the snapped pictures are always better than the regular ones. The dynamic range improves where necessary, though not spectacularly, and the noise levels are even lower.

Sometimes the HDR shots aren't as sharp as the regular ones, but this could be noticed only by hardcore pixel-peepers.

If you are viewing this page on a computer (as opposed to on your phone), you can use our embedded compare tool to inspect both the regular and HDR shots - click on the small compare icon next to those thumbnails below.

Moto G6 12MP HDR camera samples

Low-light image quality

The Moto G6 takes some nice shots after dark, helped by the bright f/1.8 lens. The auto HDR works for some magic to lower the noise levels, while the pictures came out with good contrast and enjoyable colors. The resolved detail is nothing to rave about, but it's not bad either.

Moto G6 12MP low-light samples

Turning the HDR mode off will get you noisier pictures, but slightly sharper. The noise-reduction algorithm usually smears some excellent detail, and that's to be expected. We prefer the HDR night shots, but in case you need more detail - just disable the Auto HDR, and you might get it.

Regular photo • HDR photo

Picture Compare Tool

You can head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the Moto G6 handles the controlled environment of our studio. We've pre-selected the Moto G6 Plus and Moto X4, but you can replace those with any other two phones you feel like.

Moto G6 vs. Moto G6 Plus vs. Moto X4 in our Photo compare tool

Panorama

The Moto G6 captures decent panoramas. The alignment and stitching algorithm is good, the captured detail is more than enough, and the samples are sharp and with even exposure.

Moto G6 panorama

Portrait mode

The Moto G6 need to justify its second camera somehow, and that's where portraits come into play. It does a pretty good job separating the person from the background, with the usual caveat that hairstyles better have a clear outline. The amount of background blur can be adjusted, but we just pushed that slider all the way to the max, and the results are quite convincing.

Moto G6 12MP Portrait samples

The samples with Angie were taken with different blur strength - 50% and 100%.

Moto G6 12MP Portrait samples

Selfies

For selfies, the Moto G6 - relies on an 8MP f/2.2 camera, that sadly lacks autofocus. But it does have a LED flash for those rare occasions in the dark.

The G6 selfie camera captures decent detail and appears to apply selective sharpening around facial hair, making things look crisper. Skin tones are pretty pleasing too.

Moto G6 8MP selfie samples

There is auto HDR for the selfie snapper, too. Sometimes the auto HDR may overexpose the images, so for the selfies, we are on the fence about leaving it on.

Moto G6 8MP HDR selfies

Video recording

The Snapdragon 450 chipset means that the Moto G6 is limited to 1080p video capture. There is 1080p at 60fps mode though, and EIS is available for the 1080p at 30 fps recording. The latter is controlled by the stabilization toggle on the very clean camera UI.

While on the subject, not only does the stabilization work surprisingly well, but it even comes with a real-time preview during capture.

Just like the stills, the 1080p clips, themselves, came with enough detail, great contrast, lively colors, and narrow dynamic range. The noise levels are low, and the frame-rate is steady through the whole time.

These clips are recorded in a standard AVC, plus AAC stream, inside an MP4 file, with a bit rate of about 17 Mbps and stereo audio.

The 60fps samples have the same video bitrate, and thus they lack in quality compared to the 30fps. They have less detail and are over-sharpened in attempt to mask that but keep the same good colors and contrast. Those seem to have a bit wider dynamic range than the regular videos, go figure!

For those of you who want to pixel peep on your own computers, we've uploaded short samples straight out of the phone - 1080p@30(10s, 22MB) and 1080p@60(10s, 22MB).

Video Compare Tool

Finally, for some extra pixel peeping head over to our Video compare tool, where you can examine the Moto G6 1080p output against any phone we've tested before. We've pre-selected the Moto G6 Play and the Oppo F7, but you can, of course, pick your own set of phones.

1080p: Moto G6 against the Moto G6 Play and the Oppo F7 in our Video compare tool