pros and cons
Pros
- Solid, stylish build
- Long battery life and fast charging
- Good camera features
- Moto extras are well organised and easy to access
Cons
- Only 64GB of internal storage
- No IP rating for dust/water resistance
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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.
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However, Motorola includes a protective soft touch plastic case in the Moto G7 Plus box, which does provide grip and protection, and it’s nice to see a simple accessory like this bundled with the phone.
There’s good news for audiophiles, as the G7 Plus has a headphone jack on its base, along with a speaker and a centralized USB-C port.
On the rear, just below the dual camera bump lies a fingerprint scanner inset within the Motorola logo, which is easy to find with your forefinger.
Motorola says the body of the G7 Plus is “water repellent”, but strictly not waterproof, so don’t go submerging the handset in water. It should be fine in the rain though.
Switching attention to the Moto G7 Plus display and you’ll find a sizable 6.2-inch, 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 minimize the bezel to near-nonexistence.
Still, the overall look is impressive, with text and images appearing crisp, bright and colorful.
Moto G7 Plus : camera
Motorola is pushing photography as one of the key selling points of the Moto G7 Plus, and we have to say we were impressed with that the phone had to offer in the camera department. Generally speaking, the cameras on this phone will serve you well.
The built-in optical image stabilisation (OIS) is very welcome, and should reduce camera shake and image blur as much as possible. We didn’t notice it too much in our testing, but it’s nice to have. The Moto G7 also throws in a number of neat shooting modes and filters which are fun to play around with, including a cool spot colour one that works well.
Around the front, the 12MP selfie camera is unspectacular but completely adequate, and the Moto G7 Plus can even do that neat trick of lighting up the whole front of the screen so you can use it as a flash, if needed.
Recorded video looks great, with 4K recording possible – and that integrated OIS comes in handy here as well. And that’s really all you can ask for.
Moto G7 Plus : software and features
Thankfully, Motorola doesn’t mess too much with the stock Android experience. A single swipe up gets you to the app drawer, for example, and preinstalled apps are limited to a couple of utilities for tech support and teaching you how to use the phone.
The bundled Moto Actions (for controlling apps with gestures) and Moto Voice (for reading out your texts while you’re driving) aren’t going to change your life, but they’re fun to play around with if you want to do a bit more with your handset. We like the way Motorola stays out of the way of Android though, and all the key Google apps are available on the phone right out of the box.
The Moto G7 Plus does have its own custom time and date widget, which is inoffensive enough and doubles up as a battery meter. This widget also appears on the lock screen when you lift up the phone to look at it, so checking the time of day is easy enough.
The latest Android 9 Pie is on board here, as you would expect, but how quickly you’ll get Android Q, dark mode and all, remains to be seen – the Moto G6 phones got their Android 9 Pie updates a month or so ago, so it looks like you could be waiting a few months at least. Still, with most of the OS updates now behind-the-scenes tweaks and under-the-hood improvements, it’s not as big of an issue as it once was.
You don’t get waterproofing on the Moto G7 Plus, but you do get a thin water repelling layer, which is about as good as you’re going to get at this price level. It won’t survive a dunking in the washing up bowl, but it should survive a little bit of rain.
Dolby Audio is included, for apps that support it, and we were impressed with the audio performance of the phone overall: dialogue and background music is loud and clear when watching videos for example, and at a push you could even use the Moto G7 Plus as a makeshift boombox to fill a small room with music.
You do get 27W fast charging that Motorola says can juice up your phone with 12 hours of power in just 15 minutes – and that seems about right in our tests. We did the usual T3 test of watching Netflix for an hour at maximum brightness and a reasonable volume level, and the 3,000mAh battery went down from 100 percent to 83 percent: that’s a little below par, but equals all-day battery life.
In our time with the Moto G7 Plus we very rarely had less than 20 percent battery left at the end of the day, though admittedly we weren’t hammering it with use either. For a huge 5,000mAh battery the Moto G7 Power is one alternative to consider.
Conclusions
The Moto G7 Plus is a well-featured phone with plenty of highlights, including good battery life and fast charging. The camera features seem very good too, and the 6.2-inch screen is a pleasure to use. Add in dual SIM support and good build quality, and it’s clear Motorola has focused its development effort in the right areas.