Motorola Moto G6

VERDICT

Motorola is back on form with the Moto G6, a robust and affordable handset with a marvellous camera.

- Jonathan Bray

THE MOTO G6 is an Android smartphone with a lot of baggage. Five years ago, Motorola was a company struggling to find its identity, but it hit upon a golden strategy almost by accident with the original Moto G. Since then, the G-series has –for the most part –gone from strength to strength.

With last year’s Moto G5(Shopper 353), however, Motorola essentially stood still, offering no compelling reason –be it design, performance or battery life –to choose it over its excellent predecessor, the Moto G4 (Shopper 343). It followed up with the more accomplished Moto G5S (Shopper 360) in an attempt to paper over the cracks, but the damage was done. Can it get back to winning ways with its latest budget phone, the Motorola Moto G6?

DRESSED FOR SUCCESS 

Early signs are encouraging: this is one seriously good-looking smartphone, but the beauty is not just skin-deep. It’s clad in Gorilla Glass 3 at the front and back, so it’s easy to clean and will be resistant to scratches, scuffing and cracks, and the curved edges at the rear lend it an impressive sense of class. A colour-matched chrome-finish frame and a circular camera housing that gleams like an expensive watch finish off the high-class look.

It’s also good to see that Motorola has retained a little of the original Moto G’s design DNA. Instead of following the crowd and trying to copy a competitor’s design, the G6’s slightly bowed-out edges and softly rounded corners help to give the phone an identity all of its own.