moto g9 power ( 6.8" Max Vision HD+, Qualcomm Snapdragon, 64MP triple camera system, 6000 mAH battery, Dual SIM, 4/128GB, Android 10), Metallic Sage

Product Information

Motorola makes sparing, judicious tweaks here and there, many of which are accumulated in the classy Moto app. Here you can learn about Moto Gesture, which lets you do things like activate the torch with two chop motions, or twist twice to open the camera app.

The Moto G9 Play has an entry-level camera overall then, but with a little know-how you can tease some pleasant photos from it.Battery life is certainly above average as the chart below shows, but as you might expect it’s not quite as impressive as the phenomenal stamina of the Moto G9 Power with its extra 1,000mAh of battery capacity and lower resolution screen.

The Moto G9 Play has a perfectly solid screen. However, we are now quite accustomed to 90Hz and 120Hz screens, and the switch down to a 60Hz one with clearly sub- OLED pixel response times did take a day or two to bed into. The two other display modes on offer – “Saturated” and “Boosted” – tinker with the vibrancy of certain colour tones but these are a bit too saturated and candy-coloured for my tastes. One saving grace, however, is that the Moto G9 Play’s contrast ratio is rather good, at a measured 1,999:1. Motorola Moto G9 Play review: Performance and battery life Its two supplementary cameras are a 2MP macro and a 2MP depth aid for the Portrait mode. As usual, the low-res macro is barely worth using. And the depth aid is so basic it cannot handle challenging scenes, resulting in weird patterns of blurred and non-blurred areas if your subject is complicated or too far away. As for my own testing, the Moto G9 Power lasted an astonishing 26hrs 51mins on a single charge while playing a looped video with data connections switched off and the screen set to our standard 170cd/m ² brightness level. At the time of writing this review, only two phones have ever lasted longer in this test: the now discontinued Lenovo P2 and the pricier Galaxy M31, which was the first phone to break the 30-hour mark. Supplemental sensors are often terrible in cheap phones, but last year’s effort did a decent job in providing a flexible budget shooting experience. What’s more, Motorola has fitted the G9 Power out with a way less useful 2MP Macro Vision camera instead.

Big battery, small price

Finally, the Moto G9 Play can only record video at up to 1080p (Full HD) resolution at 30fps. There’s no option to record at 60fps or higher resolutions but the footage is fully stabilised at least. Motorola Moto G9 Play review: Verdict Like the Moto G8, camera performance is a bit of a mixed bag. The Moto G9 Play’s main camera takes 12-megapixel still images (via a process called pixel binning) and, as far as I could tell, there’s no option to take a full 48MP image. Provided you’re graced with plenty of light, still images look quite lovely for the price, with a decent amount of detail and clean, neutral-looking colours. We’re looking at rough parity between the two generations, with an average Geekbench 5 score of 309 single-core and 1379 multi-core. The Moto G8 Power scored 312 and 1361 respectively. Motorola has mercifully ditched the glossy fingerprint-magnet design of the Moto G8 Power. Indeed, the Moto G9 Power might be even less concerned with turning heads than its predecessor.