All Sections

Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus: Which is better?

Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus: Honor is known for its affordable smartphones, so we pit its newest flagship, the Honor 8, against one of the best affordable handsets on the market right now, the Moto G4 Plus.

Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus: Design

Honor’s latest flagship feels like a notable step up from its predecessors, with a new aesthetic language, most prominently signposted by the eye-catching glass finish on the phone’s back. Honor says it’s created by way of a 15-layer process, which gives it its distinctive reflective finish, whilst the Moto G4 Plus offers the convenience of removability (making for easy access to the SIM and microSD slots), but sports a more sedate, lightly textured plastic back plate.

Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus: Design

The Honor ticks other flagship hallmark boxes, like a metal frame detailed with a diamond chamfer, an impeccably thin profile (with no camera bump) and a fingerprint sensor that includes gesture support. Ignoring the fact that it sports a larger display, the G4 is bigger and bulkier with larger bezels and a thicker overall profile, however, it’s only two grams heavier.

Despite being over £100 cheaper, the G4 Plus also offers the added convenience a fingerprint sensor too.

Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus: Screens

Both phones offer Full HD LCD panels, with the Honor 8’s 5.2-inch screen packing sharper imagery as a result of its higher pixel density, along with greater overall brightness and punchier colours. The company’s also added a blue light filter, to block out harmful wavelengths of light from the screen in dark environments or during late evenings.

Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus: Screens

Meanwhile the 5.5-inch display on the Moto G4 Plus might be better suited to media consumption, especially when you consider the phone also boasts a front-facing speaker. Both phones appear evenly matched when comparing colour distortion and viewing angles, which is to say, both cope well with such factors.

Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus: OS

The most obvious difference beyond design is these phones’ take on the Android 6.0 Marshmallow experience. Lenovo/Motorola have opted for a clean and mostly stock Android interface, with the addition of a couple of own-brand widgets, quick-launch gestures and specialised on-screen notifications when the phone is locked, which are lightweight considered additions.

Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus: OS

On the flip side, Honor (and Huawei) dress their devices with a skin called Emotion UI and the Honor 8 boasts the latest iteration of this overlay in EMUI 4.1. That means a redesigned lock screen, redesigned two-pane notifications drawer and a home screen setup devoid of an app tray. It’s closer to iOS in some ways and a heavy reworking of the Android experience that won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it does offer a nice level of customisation if that’s something you’re after. Honor also loads more of its own-brand apps onto the phone than Motorola, so the experience is unquestionably heavier as a result.

Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus: Performance

Honor’s new flagship packs the beefiest specs of any smartphone in the company’s portfolio, with an octa-core Kirin 950 chipset backed up by an impressive 4GB of RAM. The phone’s hybrid SIM tray also gives the 8 dual-SIM functionality, but you can swap out one of those SIM cards for a microSD card up 256GB if you want to bolster the 32GB of internal space.

Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus: Performance

No matter which skew of the Moto G4 Plus you pick the Snapdragon 617-powered phone comes with 2GB of RAM, so performance is unsurprisingly less impressive than the Honor 8’s. You also get microSD expandability up to 256GB on top of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of internal space, but the phone lacks NFC, which the Honor retains.

Both phones boast similar battery life of around a day and a half from their 3000mAh batteries, with the Honor 8’s Smart Power 4.0 fast-charging abilities resulting in 47% charge after 30 minutes at the wall plug and the Moto G4 Plus’ TurboPower technology giving you 6 hours of use from just 15 minutes charge time.

Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus: Cameras

More megapixels aren’t everything when it comes to cameras and despite the Moto G4 Plus’ larger 16-megapixel sensor, the dual-lens 12-megapixel camera on the Honor 8 is a serious contender. We’ve already had plenty of time with the Honor 8’s camera by way of the Huawei P9, which uses a similar setup, but offers a slightly different interface.

Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus: Cameras

Honor has thrown on manual controls for still and video (recording goes up to Full HD at 60fps), as well as advanced beauty modes when shooting using the front-facing 8-megapixel snapper. The G4 Plus enjoys a much cleaner, easier to use interface, but also loses out on some of the more interesting modes found on the Honor as a result. You still get auto HDR, slow motion video recording (standard recording tops out at Full HD at 30fps) and a decent 5-megapixel front-facer, but no beauty mode.

Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus: Verdict

The new Honor 8 looks and feels like a more premium phone, and comes with a price tag to match, but the heavy UI and similarly priced rivals make it a potential purchase worth considering before laying down actual cash.

Watch the full Honor 8 vs Moto G4 Plus comparison here:

The Moto G4 Plus isn’t as pretty or as powerful, but for less money you get a well-rounded handset with a clean user experience and some nice premium touches like a fingerprint sensor and a customisable design.

Comments

3 Comments

WordPress › Error

There has been a critical error on this website.

Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.