Motorola Moto G7 review

12MP main snapper with a 5MP helper

The Moto G7 is equipped with a rather standard midrange camera setup - a primary 'real' camera plus a second, lesser module for depth effects. The main cam in this case consists of a 12MP sensor (1/2.9", 1.25µm) and an f/2.0 aperture lens. There's no optical stabilization - it's one of the features that add up to make the Plus part of the Moto G7 Plus. The depth-only module is 5MP.

The Moto G7's software may be mostly stock Android, but the camera app is entirely Motorola's own. 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 and it's one extra step, but let's not make a huge deal out of it.

The Manual mode is accessed from a toggle in the viewfinder - not the extra modes. It lets you dial in your own ISO (100-3200), shutter speed (1/6000s-1/4s), or exposure compensation (-2EV to +2EV in 1/6EV increments), as well as pick a white balance preset (or light temperature) and manually adjust focus - all pretty standard. There's also a tiny live histogram.

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. The novelty of either quickly wears off.

Camera UI

Image quality

In day light, the Moto G7 delivers sharp and detailed photos. There's some noise, but it's not the first thing you notice, so it's not an issue. You won't, however, fail to notice the pretty narrow dynamic range - this is one of the most severely blown out renditions of the snail, and it's not like the photo is overexposed.

Camera samples

We do particularly like the Moto G7's colors which give the images just the right amount of pop, while staying close to reality.

Camera samples

To combat the limited dynamic range, you can choose to engage the HDR mode, and since it's not too trigger-happy in Auto, forcing it On could be the wiser move.

HDR: Off • Auto • On • Off • Auto • On

Night-time shots out of the Moto G7 aren't amazing with the already limited dynamic range becoming even more apparent and colors get washed out too. For what it's worth, there's decent amount of detail.

Low-light samples

Once you're done examining the real-life samples you can have a look at our Photo compare tool for some studio shots. We've pre-selected the Redmi Note 7 and the Galaxy A7 (2018) but you can pick any other set of phones to compare once you're there.

Motorola Moto G7 against the Redmi Note 7 and the Galaxy A7 (2018) in our Photo compare tool

The Moto G7 takes okay portraits though it does sometimes fail with the subject separation in difficult combinations of subject and background - so pretty much like most phones.

Portrait samples

Portrait samples, non-human subjects

8MP selfies

The Moto G7 is equipped with an 8MP selfie camera with an f/2.2 aperture lens - nothing out of the ordinary. While the Moto G6 had a flash, this year it's only the Play that has an LED on the front.

In well-lit, but also balanced scenes, you can get some respectable selfies out of the Moto G7, with good detail and pleasing skin tones. However, in even slightly lower light images quickly turn soft, while harshly-lit high-contrast scenarios will leave you with blown highlights.

Selfie samples

Selife portraits have good subject separation and convincing out-of-focus area rendition. There's no escaping the limited dynamic range, of course.

Selife portraits

Video recording

The Moto G7 records video up to 4K at 30fps - in fact, even the most affordable Play version does UltraHD recording. Oddly enough, regardless of resolution or frame rate the video bit rate on the Moto G7 us the same 17Mbps for 4K, and 1080p at 30 and 60fps. Audio is always encoded at 128kbps in stereo.

Predictably, it's not the best 4K footage we've seen, with compression artefacts clearly visible, and even distracting from the video. As with photos, dynamic range is unimpressive and you can count on blown out highlights. On a positive note, the colors are nice.

1080p at 30fps is comparatively better in terms of detail - 17Mbps is practically the standard bit rate for that mode across phones. 1080p at 60fps brings the expected trade-off of extra smoothness vs. absolute detail. Our words on dynamic range and colors stand.

Electronic stabilization is only available in 1080p/30fps and it does a very good job of smoothing out motion. The pans will look jerky while you're shooting them, but will actually be fluid in the video file.

Here's how the Moto G7 stacks up against the competition in our Video compare tool.

Motorola Moto G7 against the Redmi Note 7 and the Galaxy A7 (2018) in our Photo compare tool