Motorola Moto G4 review

Can the fourth-generation Moto G assume the mantle as the king of budget smartphones for another year? Let's find out.

Design The Moto G line has never pretended to be anything other than affordable with their simple candybar aesthetics. If you're looking for a phone with a premium design you've come to the wrong place. That said, it's not an ugly device. Yes it's simple, but the smooth curves make it stylish too.

Motorola knows how to do austerity right and the Moto manages to avoid many of the usual traps that signify cost cutting. We're still not fans of the plasticky power and volume buttons, though.

The Moto G4 weighs 155g and measures 153x76.6x9.8mm, making it bigger than the HTC 10 and Galaxy S7.

Limited customisation options are the only slight downer here. Gone are the grippy and textured finishes, but you can tinker (to an extent) using the Moto Maker website.

The back panel is available in dark fig, foam, chalk white, raspberry, deep sea blue, pitch black, cobalt blue and lava red, and there are five 'accent' colours: metallic fine gold, metallic pink, metallic silver, metallic ocean and metallic dark grey.

It's water resistant, so not fully waterproof (i.e. IPX7 certified) like the Moto G3, which is a shame.

Display There's a generous 5.5in of screen real estate, the biggest in Moto G history. This is an IPS LCD panel with full HD and 401ppi.

Happily, Motorola has decided to leave the 720p screen back in 2015. There's a pleasing colour palette here, with a good sense of contrast and crisp lines. This could be the best screen we've seen on a Moto yet.

Motorola Moto G4 review

Performance and hardware The engine room consists of a moderately powerful octa-core Snapdragon 617, along with Adreno 405 GPU and 2GB of RAM (last year's Moto G came in 1GB and 2GB variants).

Our benchmark tests returned 713 in Geekbench 3 (single-core) and 2,947 (multi-core), which indicate that the Moto G4 is not built for speed. But that was never the idea.

The Moto G4 scored 44,968 in Antutu, putting it on a par with something like the Galaxy A5 (a phone that costs almost twice as much). In real-world performance it coped ably with the demanding Asphalt 8, even when the screen got dangerously close to special effects overload.

There are 16GB and 32GB storage options, both a welcome step up from the paralysing 8GB in the 2015 model. Even better is support for up to a further 256GB in expandable storage via microSD. A lot of Moto's competitors would've stuck with 128GB.

The Moto G4 relies on capacitive buttons, so there's no physical Home button or fingerprint scanner. NFC support is sadly lacking so the world of contactless payments will have to wait.

Camera Main photography duties are taken up by the rear 13MP snapper with its f/2.0 aperture and dual-tone flash.

There's not a lot to play with in terms of manual controls. This is very much a pick-up-and-shoot experience, and what you see is what you get. Well, mostly. The Moto G4 produces generally good results, but runs into serious trouble in low light and harsh fluorescent lighting. OIS is nowhere to be found, but we didn't expect it to be.

A perfectly capable 5MP selfie cam with f/2.2 aperture sits on the front.

Software
Long-time Moto users will already know what we're going to say next. With a Moto phone you can rest assured that you're getting a near stock Android experience. There's no extra skinning or app duplication, for instance.

But that's not to say Lenovo kept its hands completely clean, as there's some innovation here in the form of gestures. Whether you want to quickly silence incoming calls, turn on the torch, fire up the camera, or take more than a cursory glance at notifications, there's a gesture for it.

Take a look at our top 10 Moto G4 features list to learn more tricks.

Motorola Moto G4 review

Battery
The Moto G4 receives a nice little boost in the battery department, replacing the 2,470mAh of old with a generous 3,000mAh. That extra capacity sure comes in handy for a handset with a 5.5in Full HD display.

We were able comfortably to get through a day on a single charge, but you'll need to recharge before picking up your adventures the next day.

The Moto G4 also supports fast charging, providing six hours of life from a 15-minute charge. Frustratingly, you'll need to shell out an extra £24.99 for the privilege, as Motorola has not included the necessary charger in the box. You can, of course, plump for the Moto G4 Plus which has one as part of the bundle.

Price
The Moto G4 is £20 dearer than 2015's G3, but at £169 is still firmly positioned in the budget category. An upgrade to 32GB will set you back an additional £30.

At this juncture we mustn't forget that Motorola also introduced a bigger brother, the G4 Plus, which we'll review in the coming days. For £60 more you get a device that fills in some of the Moto G4's missing pieces, crucially the fingerprint scanner and fast charger.

Summary
Now in its fourth generation the new Moto G is just as essential as ever. But it has its work cut out if it wants to be heard above the cacophony of its competitors.

Luckily Lenovo knows how to marry build quality with value, so the G4 retains some of the magic that accounts for its popularity year on year. Quite simply it's a joy to behold.