Moto G7

The Moto G name has become synonymous with quality on a budget. Time and again, Motorola has got this price point right with relatively high spec handsets when compared to the competition at the same price.

This time, the company has taken a lot of what made the Moto G6 a solid handset and gently refined it into an even more premium feeling product.

We liked the Moto G6 a lot when it came out in 2018 – TechRadar gave it a 4.5 star review – so there isn’t much that needed improving on this new handset, but that’s not such a huge issue either. 

While you may not want to instantly upgrade your Moto G6 to this phone, the G7 still stands out as one of the best budget phones on the market.

The Moto G7 isn’t alone either – it launched alongside three other phones that are well worth your attention. The cheapest is the Moto G7 Play, while the best battery life comes from the Moto G7 Power.

Then there’s also the Moto G7 Plus that comes with an improved camera and better performance than the standard Moto G7.

• Meet the rest of the family: Moto G7 Plus | Moto G7 Power | Moto G7 Play

Moto G7 price and release date

• Costs £239 in the UK, $299 in the US and AU$399 in Australia
• Available from March 1 in the UK and April 2019 in Australia
• Those in the US will have to wait a bit longer

You’ve been able to buy the Moto G7 in the UK since March 1, 2019 where it’s exclusive to Amazon if you want to buy it SIM-Free. 

The Moto G7 price is set at $299, £239. That’s more than the starting price of 2018’s G6, but that’s a lot more fair when you realize this handset comes with double the storage of the last generation.

Design and display

• Features a 6.2-inch display with a Full HD+ resolution
• It’s a 19:9 aspect ratio that makes it longer than other phones
• Glass front and back with metal edges

If you’ve seen the G6 in the flesh, you’ll know a lot of the design language here in the Moto G7. It’s a similar style, but with some wildly differing dimensions and a couple of changes you should know about.

The most important thing to know is this feels like a more premium phone than you may expect at this price. Early Moto G handsets were built from materials that felt cheap, but the company now uses glasses on both sides of the phone with a metal body that feels more high end than it actually is.

That’s not to say the design is perfect – tapping on the rear of the handset will show it’s not the most premium material. The rear of the Moto G7 is curved on either side so it sits comfortably in the palm of your hand.

We did find the design could be particularly slippery when on some surfaces though, so be warned this may gently slip off the arm of your sofa.

On the rear is the camera, which sticks out from the handset a few millimeters. It’s not dramatic enough to become a nuisance when your phone is in your pocket though.

Below that sits the fingerprint scanner, which is an easy to reach position. Previous Moto G handsets have had the fingerprint scanner below the display, but that’s not the case for this generation.

Battery life

• Battery lasts for a whole day but won’t last for more
• Fast-charging means it can go from 0 to over 80% in an hour

An important part of any phone is strong battery life, and the Moto G7 is unlikely to disappoint you. You’ll only get a day’s use out of this handset, but we never found the phone would die before we got to charging it at night.

In our week of testing, we almost always found the phone would drop to around 10% left in the tank or so before we got into bed. 

On one occasion the handset died at around 9PM, but that was after a day with lots of intensive usage including watching two hours of video with the screen on full brightness and lots of other app uses.

If you’re using your phone minimally, you may find you can stretch that to a day and a half, but it’s unlikely with average usage you’ll be able to get this phone to last for two days. If you’re looking for that, you may be more interested in the Moto G7 Power.

Camera

• Rear camera is a combination of a 12MP and a 5MP for depth sensing
• Front camera is a single 8MP shooter

The G7 brings 12MP of camera resolution to the table, coupled with an f1.8 lens and a lot of shooting modes.

Picture quality is very comparable to that of the G7 Power – unsurprising given how similar the imaging specs of both are. The G7’s camera does, however, pack a slightly wider, f/1.8 aperture, and it shoots slightly brighter than the G7 Power as a result.

In good light, shots taken on it pack plenty of detail and they’re respectable, though not Google Pixel 3 levels of dynamic range. 

White balance is generally fair, but the one issue is 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.

Lower the lights, and results gets a bit grainier and processing becomes visible.

Motorola lets things get a little dark, and a little grainy, and that actually makes for a more natural looking, pleasing shot, though there are times when it just leans towards exposing a little brighter than necessary, so once again, the exposure slider will be your best friend come night or day.

The G7 edges way ahead of the power when shooting shots with artificial background blur though thanks to that secondary camera. The 5MP secondary sensor is coupled with an f/2.2 lens and is exclusively there to sense depth – and it does this incredibly well for the price. Whether it’s a face of a coffee cup, the cut-out foreground is clean nine times out of ten.

When shooting video at up to 4K video, there’s electronic image stabilization to compensate for the lack of OIS, and it does a great job, despite applies a heavy crop factor. What’s excellent about the G7 range is the fact Motorola lets you turn stabilization off, getting rid of the crop – perfect for tripod shooting when you want the full view in frame.

Low light proved to be a challenge for video, which isn’t surprising for a phone at this price, so if you can, keep it locked to daylight and well lit conditions. It’s a similar story for selfies, though you can use the screen as a fill flash to brighten things up and even things out. 

Generally though – sterling effort for the price, especially when you factor in the shooting modes, ranging from a spot color picker (which worked well 70% of the time), full manual mode, AR Stickers and more.

Software

• Comes running Android 9 Pie software
• Some features are easy to get to through Moto Actions
• Only one storage version with 64GB of storage

Straight out of the box you’ll find the phone is running Android 9 Pie software, and it runs well on this handset. Motorola doesn’t do much to its software before uploading to the phone, so if you’ve previously used an Android handset you’ll likely be able to settle in easily here.

You’ll have access to all of Google’s services right away, and in terms of bloatware there are a couple of Motorola apps but it won’t overtake your experience of the phone.

The company has also included its Moto Actions feature that allows you to quickly get to certain useful features on the phone. For example, if you karate chop the phone you can turn on the flashlight quickly.

This can be useful when you’re searching for your keys in your bag at night and you don’t want to have to fiddle with your phone to be able to get to your flashlight. 

Performance

• Features Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 chipset with 4GB of RAM
• Performs particularly well considering its price

Another big improvement here for the Moto G7 is Motorola has packed in a next-gen processor to up the power. 

It features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 chipset, and while that won’t compete with flagship phones we’ve found this to be powerful enough to do pretty much anything you need it to. That’s paired with 4GB of RAM, which is the only version of this phone.

You may have to wait a touch longer than on flagship phones, but the Moto G7 is capable of running all the apps and games we wanted it to.

Testing in Geekbench 4, we found the phone had an average multi-core score of 4,661, which is a great result. To put that in perspective, the Moto G6 scored 3,807 while the phone before that – the Moto G5S – scored 2,294.

If you want something slightly more powerful, the Moto G7 Plus scored 4,877 in the same test while the G7 Power scored slightly less at 4,440

In day to day use, we found the Moto G7 to work surprisingly well. It’s unlikely to blow you away with how quickly it can load up apps and other services, but everything we tried to do with the phone worked efficiently.

Verdict

Motorola has done it again with the Moto G7. It’s difficult to think of other handsets at this price that stun us as much as this handset does.

The rest of the Moto G7 family impresses as well, but the standard G7 is good enough for most who want a more affordable handset than the flagship devices out there but don’t want to compromise much on spec.

Don’t know where to sell your phone in sydney? Have a similar Moto G7 to sell? Want to sell your phone for cash?