Gadget Review: Is Moto G4 Plus a value-for-money buy?

Over the last three years Moto G series has continuously been expanding and improving But the first three generations seem like baby steps in front of the giant leap that Motorola has taken with the fourth generation offering three variants mdash Moto G4 Moto G4 Play and Moto G4 Plus with different tech specs but the same body Heres how the Moto G4 Plus fared in our test driveDisplay 910Motorola offers a 55inch Full HD 1920x1080 display with a pixel density of 401ppi in the Moto G4 Plus which is a bonus in the price range The touch is good display is vibrant and comes with a Gorilla Glass 3 protection ImpressiveDesign 510The Full HD display seems to have occurred at the cost of aesthetics Available in black and white the Moto G4 Plus is not the best designed phone We love Motorolas plastic feel and how the the back camera and the Motorola logo gels into the back panel But to give up its trademark curvaceous back for a flatter back panel doesnt go well with the device making it look fatter and bulkier The front face gets a speaker grill front camera and proximity sensor at the top whereas a fingerprint sensor at the bottom and a mic on the left While we like the placement of the fingerprint sensor it appears out of place mdash the metallic ring around it doesnt help either it looks good in the black though we would have preferred if it also doubled up as the home buttonConnectivity 910The Moto G4 Plus is a dual SIM smartphone with support for 4GLTE active in only one sim at a time and VoLTE as well as 2G and 3G cellular networks The sim slots are placed at the back accessible after removing the back panel and come with nanosim adapters It also gets Bluetooth 42LE and dual band WiFi 80211 abgn The device however cant support offline navigation as it comes with AGPSBattery 910Motorola has been generous with the battery capacity packing a 3000 mAh battery in the G4 Plus The battery lasts a fullday on standard usage without including video playback or using navigation systems and WiFi on throughout the period It also gets TurboCharger supported only on the native charger that gives six hours back up in just 15 minutesHardware amp Performance 810The G4 Plus is powered by Qualcomm S617 SoC with 64bit 15 GHz quad core CPU and 550 MHz Adreno 405 GPU The system gives a decent performance for daily tasks without any hangups However we are yet to test its gaming performance The fingerprint sensor is fast We also like how the device is intergrated to use fingerprint scanner with some of the builtin apps including to authroise purchases on Google Play Store The internal storage is 32GB and the RAM stands at 3GB It also gets a separate micro SD slot that expands its memory to 128GB which is an added advantage over the hybrid slots The Moto G4 Plus is also available in 16GB internal storage with 2GB RAMCamera amp Audio 810One of the most impressive features of the G4 Plus is its camera Both the 16MP rear 13MP in Moto G and 5MP front cameras are absolute charmers and are able to take decent pictures in closeups for both night and day conditions The laser focus is quick with the action and supports AEAF lock However we arent impressed with landscape shots as the images look distorted The device also supports slow motion videos but the quality is terrible As for audio the device gets only one speaker at the top and works well in quieter locationsOS 810The Moto G4 Plus runs Android Marshmallow 601 which is more secure than the previous generations of Android We faced no hangups during our testdrive However we arent happy with icon sizes on the device and the lack of options to customise it On a 55inch device these appear too bulky The next question on our mind would be mdash Will it get Android N