The Motorola Moto G series has proven one of the most popular series of Android phones since Android became a thing.

That’s in no small part due to the price point, but it’s also due to Motorola’s determination to squeeze a lot of bang for your buck into this low-price range of handsets.

It’s a strategy that’s seen several generations of Moto G become Motorola’s best-selling devices of all-time, even outpacing the feature phones from Motorola’s heydey as the leader of the pre-smartphone market.

And now the Moto G series is back for its sixth outing, understandably dubbed the Moto G6.

As with the last few generations, the Moto G6 isn’t flying solo this time either.

It’s accompanied by a slightly more expensive (and slightly larger) Moto G6 Plus, with a few more premium tweaks and upgrades. On top of that there’s the Moto G6 Play, which is even cheaper than the regular Moto G6.

With Motorola belonging to Lenovo, it’s been a while since we saw the Motorola branding on the Moto G series, but with the Moto G6 generation it has made a welcome return.

Moto G6 Review: Hands On

Moto G6 Design & Display

Anyone familiar with earlier editions of the Moto G series will see some similarities with the latest models, but there are enough notable differences too.

Essentially they follow the same round-cornered “candy bar” design we see on a lot of phones these days, but in particular the design language of previous Moto G and even Moto X and Moto Z handsets from the firm’s premium category.

From earlier Moto G models, however, the Moto G6 has been updated with a plastic unibody design with thinner edges and a curved back panel that tapers gently into them.

Visually the Moto G6 looks nice and premium, but although the plastic build is not of a low quality, it doesn’t quite match up to the visuals when you get it in your hand.

For the price point, however, it is very good with a solid build.

I did notice a bit of wobble and a hollow click to the power key, though the ridged texture is a nice touch.

The phone is nice and light, and a good size which sits comfortably in the palm of your hand.

The finish is a high-sheen gloss, and frankly I would have preferred matte, as the gloss loves fingerprints, smudges, dust, reflections, and sliding off surfaces.

It’s also somewhat slippery in the hand.

I do like Moto’s choice of colours, which includes gold, silver, black, and a deep indigo blue, once again bringing a bit of that high-end flavour to the budget bracket.

On the front panel is where you’ll find the first of several features where Motorola is really aiming to live up to the Moto G’s ethos of bringing higher-end style features to the lower cost sector and more bang for your buck.

I’m talking about the 5.7in “Max Vision” IPS LCD display, which is one of those on-trend 18:9 aspect ratio widescreen affairs that are very on-trend with high-spec flagships at the moment,

The resolution is a 1080 x 2160 pixel Full HD+ setup at 424ppi.

I’m not sure what kind of infernal pact Motorola has in place but for the last few generations it has consistently, in my view, managed to turn out IPS screens which could convincingly pass for AMOLED.

The Moto G6 is no different, not only is it sharp, but the colour, contrast, white purity, black depth, and brightness are all very impressive, offering an overall very high image quality for a sub-£300 phone.

Moto G6 Specs & Features

The other major high-end style features the Moto G6 aims to bring to the lower-price bracket is the dual-sensor primary camera and a large battery cell.

Let’s start with the battery.

As I mentioned earlier, the Moto G6 series uses a sealed unibody design so you can no longer remove the battery as you could with earlier models.

The standard Moto G6 has a 3,000mAh cell while the Moto G6 Plus packs a 3,200mAh version.

The Moto G6 Play has the biggest cell of the trio rated at 4,000mAh, which a Moto rep told us is due to it using a slightly less efficient processor, so it needs a bigger juice reservoir than the other two.

All three handsets come with a TurboCharger for fast battery charging.

Of course, the battery life will require proper testing before any sensible verdict can be given, but from a pure specs point of view this is looking quite healthy.

Likewise, we can’t really comment on the camera performance as yet, but for the Moto G6 and Moto G6 Plus you’re looking at a dual-sensor with both 12MP and 5MP lenses, the former lens rated with an f/1.8 aperture. Both Moto G6 and Moto G6 Plus feature dual-LED dual-tone flash arrays, as well as phase detection autofocus, however, the Plus model upgrades this with dual-pixel phase detection for faster focus speeds. The Plus also has 4K video support while the regular model has 1080p.

Further testing will be needed, but my initial impression of the performance is that it’s quite snappy and smooth in the regular Moto G6, which uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 octa-core processor clocked at  1.8GHz - our test model is the one with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, so you can expect it to be as good if not better on the 64GB storage model with 4GB RAM.

It is helped that as with older Moto G models the Moto G6 series is running stock, neat, and clean Android with no messy UI layer on top, specifically version 8.0 Oreo so it’s nice and up-to-date and has been well-optimised.

There are also some nice sleep status notification and intelligence features, for example, the phone will detect when you pick it up or move and  will power on at a low brightness to show you the time, date, and notifications - it’s a bit like Samsung’s Always On display but a halfway house as the phone uses LCD rather than OLED.

Moto G6 Initial Assessment, Price & Availability

The Moto G6 is showing a lot of promise, and has the potential to really pick up and run with its heritage of offering a ton of bang for your buck. More than most previous Moto G handsets, the Moto G6 appears to be an enticing prospect for a mass audience with a highly competitive and affordable price point, while also offering features that until now have largely been the territory of flagship-class smartphones.

At only £219, the Moto G6 is sure to please a lot of consumers wanting to save money.

It’ll be available via Amazon and other retailers.

The Moto G6 Play is cheaper still at only £169 and will be found with EE, Argos, Carphone Warehouse, O2, Amazon, Tesco, and John Lewis, amongst others. The Moto G6 Plus is priced at £269 and begins as a Carphone Warehouse exclusive in the UK.