Moto G8 Power review

Near vanilla Android 10

The Moto G8 Power is not part of the Android One program - that's an exclusive treat for the Moto One series. Still, the phone boots a near-stock version of Android 10, spiced up with a bunch of Moto software tricks.

The G8 Power relies on gesture navigation via a single elongated button in the center. Swiping upwards takes you to the home screen, a swipe up with a pause brings out the recent apps menu, swiping on the pill (left or right) switches between the last used apps. If you want Back, then just swipe anywhere from the edge of the screen. If, on the other hand, you want to have the classic three-button navigation, you switch to it from Settings.

System navigation

The Moto app offers a variety of clever Moto actions for interacting with the phone - including a karate chop for toggling the flashlight on or off, twist motion to launch the camera app, three-finger screenshot gesture, accelerometer-based ringtone silencing.

Moto Actions

Moto Display consists of just two options and the more important one is Peek Display - the not-always-on display. It will display notifications and let you interact with them right there on the lock screen plus it will wake up when you pick up your phone. Another feature, Attentive display, will keep the screen on as long as you are looking at it.

All of these aside, the rest is pretty much Android 10 as Google intended it to be - well, there's also the greenish hue of the quick toggles.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Folder view • App drawer • Task switcher • Quick toggles

Everything else that comes pre-installed on the Moto G8 Power are all Google apps.

Performance and benchmarks

The Moto G8 Power is powered by the Snapdragon 665 - a midrange Qualcomm chip, made on an 11nm manufacturing process. It packs an octa-core CPU in a 4x2.0GHz Kryo 260 Gold (A73 derivative) & 4x1.8GHz Kryo 260 Silver (A53 derivative) arrangement and an Adreno 610 GPU. A single RAM and storage configuration is offered - 4GB and 64GB.

We ran some benchmarks and the scores are about average. The CPU performance isn't bad, but the competition offers better performance in the same price segment.

GeekBench 5.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Honor 9X Pro
  1911
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S
  1785
• Realme 6
  1726
• Realme 6 Pro
  1666
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  1394
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  1385
• Realme 6i
  1349
• Samsung Galaxy A51
  1294

GeekBench 5.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Honor 9X Pro
  594
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S
  570
• Realme 6 Pro
  565
• Realme 6
  548
• Realme 6i
  388
• Samsung Galaxy A51
  347
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  311
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  310

Same goes for the gaming performance - it's behind the curve - many of the competitors have already switched to the upper-tier Snapdragon 700 or Helio G series and the tests show their GPUs are much better.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme 6i
  31
• Honor 9X Pro
  30
• Realme 6 Pro
  27
• Realme 6
  27
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S
  26
• Huawei P30 Lite (perf. mode)
  13
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  12
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  12
• Honor 9X
  12
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
  11
• Samsung Galaxy A51
  8.9

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Honor 9X Pro
  18
• Realme 6i
  17
• Realme 6 Pro
  16
• Realme 6
  16
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S
  15
• Huawei P30 Lite (perf. mode)
  6.9
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  6.6
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  6.5
• Honor 9X
  6.5
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
  5.9
• Samsung Galaxy A51
  5.6

The AnTuTu score also shows the Moto G8 Power isn't as powerful as the current crop of similarly priced mid-rangers.

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• Honor 9X Pro
  312668
• Realme 6
  288931
• Realme 6 Pro
  268785
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S
  254000
• Realme 6i
  202275
• Honor 9X
  187528
• Samsung Galaxy A51
  175363
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  173607
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  168699
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
  167395

The Moto G8 Power has a capable chip, but it's not as fast as the gear available to some of its competitors. What's even worse is that it's not only the dry benchmark scores that suffer, Android OS does not feel that fast either. We had system hiccups here and there when interacting with our review unit - which doesn't even have that much app content on it. Surely, these are no deal-breakers, but knowing what a Realme can do, they are a bit disappointing.