Motorola Moto G8 Plus initial review: Specced-up and priced down

Moto has introduced the G8 series, launching the G8 Plus in select markets and the G8 Play in some others. It follows swiftly on from the Moto G7 devices that were announced in February 2019, as Motorola appears to be expanding its offering.

The Moto G7 Plus is a great phone, but there's now been a shift-up on design, the addition of a new camera, larger battery, more powerful hardware and a lower price. A recipe, then, for success.

Slick new design

• 158.35 x 75.83 x 9.09mm, 188g
• Cosmic Blue or Crystal Pink colours
• Water repellence

Motorola has been slowly moving its Moto G family up in quality over the past few iterations. Glance at the Moto G8 Plus and there's little to differentiate this from phones like the Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro or even Huawei's flagships. The addition of a graduated colour finish hops on that trend and it's certainly a nice result.

It's also a departure in style for the Moto G: there's no central camera assembly here and everything sits in the corner, with just a central rear fingerprint scanner sitting in place and carrying the Moto logo. It looks a lot like the Moto One Macro that launched alongside it, giving the impression that Motorola has settled on a design that it likes.

From the front it's pretty much business as usual, with a waterdrop notch keeping that Max Vision display free from clutter. Motorola retains convenience features like the 3.5mm headphone socket - although on this phone that joins stereo speakers, powered by Dolby.

There's a Dolby toggle in the quick settings, but you can't turn it off for the loud speakers, it's always on. We quickly had a listen via headphones and couldn't really hear a substantial difference - but we'll assess the audio performance in more detail when we review the phone fully.

Display and hardware 

• 6.3-inch Full HD+ (400ppi) 19:9 display
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 665, 4GB RAM, 64GB + microSD
• 4000mAh battery, 15W TurboPower charging

There's a nice 6.3-inch LCD display on the Moto G8 Plus and first impression are that it's bright, vibrant and perfectly detailed. This is where the Moto G8 Plus has an advantage over the Moto One Macro which only has a 720p display. We've not spent a huge amount of time with the Moto G8 Plus, but given solid previous performance, we can't envisage any problems with this display.

The Moto G8 Plus sits on one of the recent mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon platforms, SD665. We've been impressed recently with how well this hardware performs, while bringing with it the advantage of not demanding flagship-level prices. There's 4GB of RAM, which is generally enough for smooth running of apps and services.

The storage is 64GB which is a little low these days, but it's easily expandable thanks to the microSD card slot.

What's more impressive - and a big jump over the Moto G7 Plus - is the 4000mAh battery. Motorola has obviously been listening to users, as this battery is more capacious than many flagship phones. We'd expect this phone to easily last you through the day and into the next.

We've not had the time to fully assess the performance and endurance of this phone, but we'll update with a full review as soon as we've had the chance.

Camera updates

• Main: 48-megapixel, f/1.7, 1.6µm
• Depth: 5-megapixel, f/2.2, 1.12µm
• Action cam: 16-megapixel, f/2.2, 2.0µm

The main camera on the rear of the Moto G8 Plus moves to a 48-megapixel sensor. This has been a common move from smartphone manufacturers recently and while the big numbers might impress, it uses a pixel combining solution to give you a 12-megapixel final result. 

This is supported by a second lens offering depth information that should feed into the portrait mode that this camera offers to give you a greater sense of depth or bokeh. 

The arrangement of these cameras is actually pretty similar to the Moto One Action that launched earlier in the year, and mostly because of the addition of a 16-megapixel camera dedicated to video. 

This is a little more special. Motorola says that it's a wide-angle camera and talks about it in terms of being an "action cam", but one of the things that it will do is shoot landscape video while you're holding the phone in portrait.

This serves to address one of the biggest pain points in smartphone capture - vertical video. Vertical video is a bit of a hot potato. When it appears in a conventional environment - on the TV for example - it doesn't fill the screen and the result is poor. But many people capture vertical video because they only plan to view and share on the their phone, vertically, or they just don't think about it.

The Moto G8 Plus actually gives you both options, so you can tap the button and hold your phone vertically and capture a horizontal video from that. It's both clever and convenient - but whether those people who religiously capture vertical video want to have that shift in aspect is a different question. 

We were impressed with the camera performance on the Moto One Zoom recently and we expect that the Moto G8 Plus will be close to that in terms of the main camera - and for a phone at this price, that's a compelling proposition.

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