Moto G8 Plus Review | Worth the upgrade?
Reviewing Motorola’s new Moto G8 Plus, one of the best budget smartphones of 2019, after a week of personal use. Here’s how it stacks up against other cheap phones for speed, battery life, camera smarts, features and everyday shenanigans.
While the Moto G8 Plus isn’t a massive upgrade over the older G7 handset, it’s still easy to recommend at £239 UK. Motorola has upgraded the camera tech to make it even better for everyday photography, although the video chops could use some love (despite that Action Cam mode). Gaming on the likes of PubG Mobile is also perfectly possible thanks to the speedy Snapdragon 665 chipset, although only on low detail.
Battery life is one of the biggest assets of the Moto G8 Plus, thanks to the mighty 4000mAh cell and efficient stock Android OS. I also like the new design, despite the lack of iconic circular camera sensor.
After using the Motorola G8 Plus for a full week, I’d heartily recommend is as one of the best cheap mobiles right now. Check out my unboxing and full camera review for more on this budget blower.
Ive had this phone for 2 months and its ok overall but some annoying things about it
Camera user interface is poor
The camera has No wide angle lens
and No Macro lens
(baffling how its a "plus" version when it has fewer camera features than cheaper models of the same brand)
Doesnt have a music player
Doesnt have a gallery for photos
I know u can download a gallery and music player but how hard is it to develop a built in gallery app?
Why would you use one handed mode…..?
Thanks for your great reviews – no nonsense – some reviewers whinge about the most trivial of items to not be included on a phone which i find annoying. I bought this one today (in Australia) to replace my old Huawei GR5 2017, which I've decided to retire after just over 3 years
(although it still runs amazingly well, just stuck on Android 7).
If you had £200 right now to spend on a new phone what would it be?
Thanks for your great reviews! 🙂 Can you tell me please.. with a dual sim phone, if someone rings either number, does the phone ring? or do you have it have it switched onto one simm or the other? (sorry for the dumbass question)
Its very good phone I have it for 1month and I really satisfy…
Annoyingly keeps turning itself off and turning on again and that's on a regular basis. Gave up on the fingerprint recognition as well.
Even now I'm still waiting for the Android 10 update to this phone. Lost all respect for Moto now, such a shame.
It's now October (again), and I'm still optimistically hoping to see Android 10 before Christmas. You meant Christmas 2020, yeah?
Looking to get a pretty decent spec phone to a max of £150. What would you recommend? Just use it normally for YouTube, texting and a few basic games and internet browsing.
What is a randy rabbit convention?
Just smashed my pixel 3a xl (for the second time) and got one of these as a stop gap before the pixel 5. Seems okay for the money, only criticisms are the single button mode navigation sucks compared to pixel and the camera isn't the best. That said for £230 sim free its a bloody bargain and makes an excellent back up phone.
3:24 so I just found this video cuz i was looking for G8 plus reviews, that line had me LOLing enough to subscribe!
Are you able to upgrade to the latest Android 10 settings now? I have a G6 but recently, the battery has been dodgy. It keeps turning off (especially after charging it) and to turn it on, it takes me a few attempts of holding down the power button or having to hold down the power+vol buttong. Also the charging port seems a little wobbly so i'm needing to go out and buy a new phone today. The G8 plus here in ireland is €300 in Argos (not many phone shops stock moto's here) I expected it to be cheaper than this given its been nearly a year since you made this video and its was £240 then (which is around €270)
Got through about 2 and a half minutes and had to turn off due to your incredibility irritating attempt at humour.
Me watching this on the g8 plus: 👁️👄👁️
This phone is terrible I had it for only one month before having to take it back because it slowly starts to fail. It seems great at first with a nice big screen a great battery and awesome speaker sound. However it soon starts to completely fall to pieces. I couldn't leave a page and then come back to it without it resetting that page and having to do everything all over again. If you're on a certain page with 10000 lines for example and you go down 1000 Lines and click on the link read what you want to read then when you come back out of it you're back at the top again and have to Flick down 1000 lines again. The keyboard input is terrible and the voice recognition is just as bad. It started randomly freezing. And then the final straw on the 30th day of owning it, it started resetting itself. After owning this I couldnt even give it one star it is a pathetic phone.
A bob is 5p not £1 : )
Does the G8 Plus run Pokémon Masters at all? I'm upgrading and I'm wondering about whether it's able to run the game as none of my devices can.
Had this phone…
It was a nice camera and media streamer but sometimes I would not recive calls or text.
I saw a similar issue on someone's review about this phone. No solution to this problem though.
I have t-mobile but and didnt have this issue with my old phone. :/
The gps sometimes didnt work which cuased me to get lost a few times. Im not even talking about rural areas.
It had fancy bells and wistles but it failed for what i really needed it for… You know for reciving calls.
Almost perfect phone.
Also this thing is almost undistuctable.
It has sliped out of my pockets and hands and it never cracked or scratched with the clear case provided.
Worst company ever, I'm using this phone but it's not getting software updates it's still on Android 9 and seems like it will get Android version 10 when 11 will be released, I believed him but now I'm ashamed of that.
condom case FTW!
Ive been looking for a new phone to replace my Axon 7. Could not resist this bargain!! £129!!
https://shop.ee.co.uk/mobile-phones/pay-as-you-go/motorola-g8-plus-payg/details
Still struggling between deciding between the power or the plus. Updates important, and speed of the apps. is the battery life that much better?
i was so happy with g7 power… until android 10 update… the phone seems to have slowed down significantly… any ideas how to fix it?
Bought a M G8 +. Using it now. Well, its been almost 8 h and I'm down to 89 % batt. No gaming or videos b/c its my phone and message centre
Thus, 4 000mah is for real.
does the international model work on 4g networks here in the states?
How do you use NFC on this in a shop? I have enabled NFC in settings on my Moto g8 plus.
Do I need to do anything else or is it just a case of putting my phone against the card reader whenever I want to use contactless?
Hi Chris, addicted to your channel right now due to the need for a new phone, I hear there is a Moto G9 on the horizon so hopefully you can give it the once over soon, by the way I totally agree with your comments about lack of colour options in the UK, so much so I gave Nokia a piece of your mind.
NFC?
Has it got the android 10 update?
I feel that overall Moto has lost its way with the G8 series compared with previously released phones. Price has crept up and the G8 Power seems the better buy, but the real problem is that the G7 series is as good or better relatively. The Samsung A series has better screens and processors. The G8 Plus launched at £199 and has increased in price!? Various Chinese budget blowers are now better speced for the money. Perhaps the G9 series will be better?
Has this got Android 10 yet?
What about call quality, wifi connectivity, cell signal reception or
bluetooth connectivity. Those are the important features of any phone.
If you want a camera, buy a camera.
I have a moto G5 and its meh. The screen has almost gone so I will have to replace it. I am very doubtful going to get another Moto though. They are just too basic and so-so and too expensive for a very budget phone. Nothing really special about them. I will probably go with Oppo or Xiaomi. Xiaomi Redmi NOTE 9 10X 6GB RAM 128GB ROM 4G £185.99. A Lot cheaper than the MOTO 8 and much better specs. Or even the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Black 5.9" 64GB 4GB RAM for 80 quid! I could get 3 of them for the price of the MOTO G8, and it's got much better specs!
Avoid Motos due to poor upgrade path.. (Ive had 3 motos in past that moto has lied about).. But Great Review Chris ! now have a oneplus
Loving your work Chris. Bit of a quandry. Do I go for this or the Redmi note 8t? Dont fancy any dodgy UI, just need a good camera and decent storage.
Its not glass its plastic
I read in specs that the moto g8 plus uses emmc5 storage!! That’s slow stuff. Who uses emmc any more lol besides old tablets. Will the emmc5 not cause bottle necks?
This phone is amazing I paid 230 on eBay with free delivery. The camera is brilliant the build quality is fantastic and after a bit of research and watching this guy I decided to replace my Sony xz premium with the g8 plus anyone thinking buying a 230 quid phone will be rubbish think again this is a fabulous phone iam very picky buying stuff and always demand value for money and this is excellent value for money buy 1 you won't regret it
Still waiting patiently for an Android 10 update for this phone. Moto has definitely dropped in my loyalty rankings 🙁
Bought this as an upgrade of the G4 and I'm really happy with it. My battery had weakened after 3.5 years of service and I noticed that it stopped upgrading it's security. Very good specs for the price. Only annoyance is that you can't replace the battery, and I'm not a fan of fingerprint scanners and face recognition but all phones have that now. All that said, I'm really glad I moved over to Motorola from Samsung back in 2016.