Motorola Moto G7 Play Review

The Moto G7 Play is the cheapest of Motorola’s new Moto G7 series, and it’s a solid option for those looking to get a more budget-friendly phone.

It’s got a decent screen, a good camera, and fast battery charging. It also has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a microSD card slot, which will let you add more storage as and when you need it.

Display

The Moto G7 Play’s display is one of the phone’s highlights. The 5.7-inch LCD IPS panel on the Moto G7 Play is very sharp and displays images with impressive color accuracy.

The screen’s max brightness and maximum contrast are also excellent. Motorola’s curved Gorilla Glass 3 covers the entire front and back of the phone, and it protects the screen from damage.

Despite this, the G7 Play’s screen does have some problems when it comes to glare. It can become a little hazy in direct sunlight, and its max brightness isn’t as bright as some other budget phones I’ve tested.

The G7 Play is the smallest of the three G7s in this year’s lineup, and it’s a bit different from the G7 Power in its design. Its textured plastic feels cheaper and unrefined than the other two, and its notch and smaller screen size make it feel less premium overall.

Camera

The Moto G7 Play is a great phone to buy if you are looking for a budget smartphone. It doesn’t have the newest processor or the best camera, but it delivers solid performance and good battery life.

You’ll get a single 13-megapixel rear camera with a bright f/2.0 aperture and a pixel size of 1.12-micron. The camera also features phase detection autofocus and an 8-megapixel front-facing selfie shooter with an f/2.2 aperture and a 1.12-micron pixel size.

One thing you have to remember about these cameras is that they are not great for low-light shots. Even in decent light, they’re slow to focus, and images are noisy and pixelated.

The camera also has several novelty features, including Portrait Mode and Spot Color, which allow you to create arty shots where certain frame areas are in colour and others in black and white. There are various manual settings to tweak the camera, and you can record 4K video.

Performance

The Motorola Moto G7 Play is a no-frills budget smartphone with a solid performance experience. The phone is easy to use, feels great, and will manage most of your everyday tasks without too much fuss.

The smartphone is powered by a new-gen Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 processor that is more capable than the Mediatek processors you tend to find in devices at this price point. It also has 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage.

While the G7 Play isn’t a gaming powerhouse, it does an excellent job keeping lag time to a minimum when running apps and streaming video. The 5.7-inch IPS display is crisp and colour-accurate, with images holding up well against even the best-quality budget phones.

It’s a shame the camera isn’t quite as impressive as the sensors on the other G7 phones, but it still does a decent job of taking photos in good light. The front 8-megapixel camera can take decent selfies, and the phone has a few helpful camera modes, too.

Battery

The Moto G7 Play is the cheapest phone in Motorola’s new G7 line. It’s $200 (PS149, AU$270) and has 32GB of storage and a microSD card slot for expansion.

The g7 Play uses a near-stock version of Android 9 Pie, and Motorola has kept the Moto UI simple enough to allow it to run with minimal fuss. There are also a few custom widgets and a streamlined app menu that makes it easy to use.

However, it’s worth noting that the g7 Play only comes with 2GB of RAM, so you may experience random app closures when switching back and forth between apps or snapping photos. This is a shame because the g7 Play should be able to handle most tasks well enough.

The g7 Play has good battery life, which is excellent news for those who want to spend less on a smartphone. It won’t be able to match the stamina of the g7 Power, but it’s more than capable of delivering a full day’s worth of usage on a single charge.