Motorola Moto G4 Plus review
Can the Moto G4 Plus improve on an already winning formula?
We fawned over the attractively affordable Moto G4 in our review, but do camera upgrades and the additions of a fast charger and fingerprint scanner make the Moto G4 Plus a better phone?
Design If you liked the simple candybar aesthetic of the Moto G4 you'll know what you're getting with the Plus. Despite the hike in price, the design remains the same owing to the extra expense elsewhere.
The G4 Plus is simple and 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 Plus measures exactly the same as the G4. At 153x76.6x9.8mm it's bigger than the HTC 10 or Galaxy S7. It weighs 155g, which is the same again.
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 a choice of dark fig, foam, chalk white, raspberry, deep sea blue, pitch black, cobalt blue and lava red. Plus there are five 'accent' colours of metallic fine gold, metallic pink, metallic silver, metallic ocean and metallic dark grey.
The G4 Plus still lacks waterproofing (like the G4, it's not IPX7 certified). Seeing as the G3 included such protection as standard, this can only be considered a backwards step.
Display On the front you'll find the same generous 5.5in screen that graced the Moto G4. This is an IPS LCD panel with full HD resolution at 401ppi.
Happily Motorola has decided to leave the 720p screen of old back in 2015. There's a pleasing colour palette here, with a good sense of contrast and crisp lines.
We still maintain that this is the best screen found on a Moto yet.
Motorola Moto G4 Plus review
Can the Moto G4 Plus improve on an already winning formula?
Performance and hardware
The engine room in the G4 Plus doesn't differ from the G4. It consists of a moderately powerful octa-core Snapdragon 617, along with Adreno 405 GPU, and 2GB of RAM as standard.
Benchmark scores remain the same (at least on our 2GB test device), so that's 713 in Geekbench 3 (single-core) and 2,947 (multi-core). We'd expect the upgraded 4GB model to score moderately higher.
Again, when it came to the graphics-challenging Antutu test, the Moto G4 Plus scored the same as the G4. This puts it on a par with something like the Galaxy A5 (a phone that costs around £349). In real-world performance it coped ably with the demanding Asphalt 8, even when the screen got busy and dangerously close to special-effects overload.
Storage-wise the G4 Plus starts off at 32GB, but you can expand this by opting for the 64GB model. This also bumps up the RAM to 4GB.
There's support for a further 256GB via microSD, which is a welcome increase on the default 128GB offered by many of the Moto's contemporaries.
The Moto G4 Plus has a fingerprint scanner in that vast empty space below the screen. It's a good one, too, and we were impressed by its accuracy and speed. Despite this the G4 Plus still lacks NFC support, meaning you won't be able to jump on the contactless payment bandwagon just yet.
Camera
The Moto G4 Plus upgrades the competent 13MP snapper found on the G4 to a slightly improved 16MP model. The new camera has the same dual-tone flash but adds laser auto-focus.
There's not a lot to play with in terms of manual controls. Just like the G4, this is very much a pick-up and shoot experience. There's still no Pro mode, or OIS, and in testing (even with laser assist) unwanted blurriness still has a tendency to creep in. If you're after anything more than a simple point and shoot experience, you'd be better off elsewhere.
Here's the same scene taken on both devices:
Moto G4 camera
Moto G4 Plus camera
That slight bump in megapixels doesn't change things much. Despite the improved focusing skills it still managed to muddy the edges of the records and failed to pick out the lines.
Moto G4 Plus users are also granted free unlimited Google Photos storage for two years. Google Photos is a free service limited to 15GB if you want to upload the originals and preserve quality, so this is a nice perk.
As with the Moto G4, you'll find the same perfectly capable 5MP selfie cam with f/2.2 aperture on the front.
Motorola Moto G4 Plus review
Can the Moto G4 Plus improve on an already winning formula?
Software
It doesn't matter which model you go for, as you'll enjoy the same Android experience across both devices. You can always rely on Motorola to deliver a clean, near-stock Android, and you won't find any supplementary skinning or app duplication here.
But that's not to say Lenovo kept its hands completely clean, as there's some innovation on display 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.
Battery
A handset with a 5.5in Full HD display needs all the battery life it can get, and the Moto G4 Plus improves on the 2,470mAh of old with a 3,000mAh unit.
We were able to comfortably get through a day on a single charge, but you'll need to recharge before picking up your adventures the next day. Thankfully the Moto G4 Plus bundles a TurboPower charger into the box which will deliver six hours' extra juice in just 15 minutes.
Price
The Moto G4 Plus is at least £60 dearer than its sibling which makes it far less of an impulse buy.
A 32GB model with 2GB RAM costs £229, while doubling the memory and storage will cost £264.
Summary The Moto G4 Plus is a curious beast. It straddles the tricky middle ground between temptingly affordable and a little out of reach.
If you liked everything about the Moto G4 you'll find a lot to love here because the G4 Plus is essentially the same phone. But do those added extras justify the higher price? We're a bit on the fence here.