Motorola G7 Plus
A TOP PERFORMER ON A BUDGET.
THE G7 PLUS HAS A STRONG SET OF FEATURES, INCLUDING A LARGE 6.2INCH DISPLAY, 4GB OF RAM AND DUAL REAR FACING CAMERAS, BUT THERE ARE A COUPLE OF SPOTS WHERE IT CUTS CORNERS TO KEEP THE COST DOWN.
THE MOTO G7 Plus is the most premium offering in Motorola’s new, affordable G7 quartet, offering up more power, better cameras and faster charging tech than its cheaper siblings.
The budget end of the mobile market continues to go from strength to strength, which means there’s some serious competition for the Moto G7 Plus and family – and that’s great for you, the consumer, as it means there’s a range of great low cost handsets available.
The G7 Plus has a strong set of features, including a large 6.2-inch display, 4GB of RAM and dual rear facing cameras, but there are a couple of spots where it cuts corners to keep the cost down.
That’s no surprise, and in the past the G-series has made cuts in the right areas, minimising any negative user experience and delivering an excellent value device.
DESIGN AND DISPLAY
If you didn’t see the price tag before picking up the Moto G7 Plus, you’d be forgiven for assuming it costs almost double what Motorola is actually asking for the handset.
Its front and rear are glass, sandwiching a metal frame which feels secure and relatively premium in the hand. Tap the rear glass and it does sound a little hollow — giving away its affordable credentials – but it’s not something you’ll be doing often.
The power and volume keys are located on the right of the handset and fall nicely under your thumb or finger, with the power button offering a textured finished providing obvious tactile feedback on the key your finger is on. While the G7 Plus does have a large display, it’s not overly cumbersome to handle. It measures 157 x 75.3 x 8.3mm, weighs 176g and sits well in the hand, but the glass finish means there’s little grip on offer.
Switching attention to the Moto G7 Plus display and you’ll find a sizable 6.2inch, Full HD (2270 x 1080) screen. There’s minimal bezel at the top of the display, with the front-facing camera housed in a teardrop notch which cuts into the display.
At the bottom of the screen there’s a thicker bezel which houses the Motorola brand name, which is another signal that the Moto G7 Plus isn’t quite as premium as some of its more expensive rivals that minimise the bezel to near-nonexistence.
BATTERY LIFE
In terms of battery, the Moto G7 Plus comes with a reasonably-sized 3,000mAh power pack, but it’s nowhere near as big as the monstrous 5,000mAh offering in the Moto G7 Power.
Crucially, it’s also smaller than the 3,200mAh battery in the G6 Plus, but don’t let that put you off, the Moto G7 Plus still puts in a decent showing.
We comfortably got a full day of use (off charge at 7am, back on charge at 11pm) with
THE MOTO G7 PLUS CAMERA IS THE BEST SPECCED OF ALL THE G7 SNAPPERS, WITH A PRIMARY 16MP CAMERA BOASTING AN F/1.7 LENS, OPTICAL IMAGE STABILIZATION AND A LOT OF SHOOTING MODES.
double digits still left in the tank. Our usage usually consisted of a couple of hours of Netflix, another hour or two of Spotify streaming, an hour of gaming and a mix of calls, texts and social media usage throughout the day.
It’s unlikely to see you much into a second day, a nightly charge is still required, but you shouldn’t worry about your phone dying as you dip into the evening.
CAMERA
The Moto G7 Plus camera is the best specced of all the G7 snappers, with a primary 16MP camera boasting an f/1.7 lens, optical image stabilization and a lot of shooting modes.
Picture quality is very impressive for the price. The higher pixel-count, when compared to the G7 and G7 Power’s 12MP cameras, means results visibly showcase more detail in good light, while the optical image stabilization delivers impressive low light performance and video quality at up to 4K.
It also delivers better dynamic range than the rest of the G7 series, and indeed most if not all phones at the price, though naturally, it isn’t Google Pixel 3 good, with no long exposure night mode, for example.
White balance is generally fair, but the phone sports very aggressive tap-to-expose metering, so you may have to dial up or down the exposure using the slider once you lock focus to get the best out of it.
Lower the lights, and results get a bit grainier and processing becomes visible, but it’s significantly better than we expected.
INTERFACE & PERFORMANCE
The Motorola Moto G7 Plus runs Android 9 Pie out of the box, the latest version of the mobile operating system from Google – which is great news as we’re still seeing handsets launched on the previous generation software.
Motorola has applied a soft interface onto the G7 Plus, but it very much keeps pure Android at its core with the additional of a few additional features and customisation, accessed via the settings menu.
These additions include long screenshots (press and hold power and volume down and then hit the long screenshot icon to scroll down the screen) which is great for capturing a web page, lift to unlock (which wakes the screen and uses face recognition to unlock the phone) and one button nav (allowing you to ditch the traditional nav keys in favor of a single gesture bar).
At its heart the Moto G7 Plus has a Snapdragon 636 chipset, which is a step up over the 632 chip found in the other G7 handsets, giving the G7 Plus a power advantage and cementing its place at the top of the tree in the series.
Motorola bills the G7 Plus as the most powerful G series handset ever, and it also has 4GB of RAM, which is plenty to ensure Android 9 Pie – the latest version of Google’s mobile OS – runs smoothly.
VERDICT
The most powerful G series smartphone to date is packed with features and with a large screen, solid cameras and enough performance it’s a great device for those unable to afford a fully-fledged flagship.