Review: Motorola G4 and G4 Plus -- Unlocked
The Moto G4 and G4 Plus are a bit of a curiosity in that I'm having trouble understanding why they exist. These two phones, while "decent" in just about every way, feel like the result of Lenovo going through the motions. It's as if Lenovo woke up one day and, with cold, dead eyes staring off into space, said to itself like a robot, "Time to make the $200 mid-range phone."
The Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus are the result of that unemotional, business-driven reflex. They are soulless phones that have been stripped of the heart Motorola put into the first three generations of G-branded handsets.
At $200, the G4 falls in step with the company's strategy of offering low-end, mid-market, and high-end phones. The G4 — the mid-market phone in this lineup — works well as a $200 handset and can compete with similar offerings from LG, Samsung, and ZTE. Consumers will certainly find the big screen, excellent battery life, and stock Android UI appealing.
The $250 G4 Plus makes no sense to me at all. Lenovo clearly used a bargain-bin fingerprint reader, and the denser camera sensor doesn't deliver an appreciable improvement in photo quality to justify the price increase.
Don't buy the G4 Plus; you'd be wasting $50. If you really want a Moto-branded device, with its customizable rear shells, go for the less expensive G4 instead. And please, for Pete's sake, give it some personality via Moto Maker.
Our Ratings
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Motorola Moto G4
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