Moto G9 Power Review: Great budget smartphone from Motorola with a greater battery life!!!

Moto G9 Power is a perfect budget smartphone from Motorola.

Last month, Motorola launched two of its smartphones in the G series that includes the Moto G 5G and the Moto G9 Power. The launch of the Moto G 5G (Review), clearly shows Motorola's focus back with the G series. Both are very good smartphones and we have recently seen that the Moto G 5G is a good mid-range smartphone that supports 5G, has a powerful Snapdragon 750G chipset, and much more.

The Moto G9 Power is another great offering in the budget smartphone segment which continues to be dominated by manufacturers like Xiaomi, Samsung, and Realme. As the word here Power does not mean that it has a powerful processor but sports a massive display, a 6000mAh battery, and a 64MP camera.

Can the Moto G9 Power make itself a good budget smartphone and is it worth buying? Let's find out in the full review.

Moto G9 Power Design:

The Moto G9 Power has a massive display at 6.8 inches and clearly, in terms of design, there is no glass back instead we have a polycarbonate back with a matte finish which is much better than the glossy finish on the Moto G 5G as it catches lesser fingerprints. The back has small ridges that also appeal to the look of the smartphone.

The back houses a square camera module that houses triple cameras with an LED flash and around the cameras, we see silver-colored metallic rings that enhance the look of the smartphone. Just at the center, we have a fingerprint scanner that has the Motorola logo embossed on it and is a capacitive one.

Moving to the sides, there is a plastic frame running all around and the right side houses the power button and the volume buttons. To the left, there is a dedicated Google Assistant key which when pressed opens the Google application and just on top of it, there is a hybrid slot for the SIM card. 

At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, and a speaker grill. The top of the smartphone houses a 3.5mm headphone jack and a secondary noise-canceling microphone. There is no official IP rating but has a P2i coating which makes it splash resistant.

The Moto G9 Power weighs in at 221 grams which makes it much heavier and hands with smaller sizes need good exercise to hold it. This higher weight accounts for the massive 6000mAh battery. To the front, there is a punch-hole to the top left corner, and just above the earpiece lies an LED notification light.

The smartphone is available in two color options - Metallic Sage and Electric Blue. Overall, since it is a budget smartphone, the build quality is quite good and the massive size will depend on how you handle it.

Moto G9 Power Display:

The Moto G9 Power has a massive 6.8-inches IPS LCD HD+ (720x1280 pixels) display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20.5:9. This is a sort of disappointment as with a huge display, you are only getting HD+ resolution and when you compare with the rest of the competition such as the Redmi 9 Power (Review) which has a Full HD+ display, it does feel a bit short.

The viewing angles and the brightness of the display are adequately good. Under direct sunlight, the display is adequately visible but there is a lot of reflection on the display. In low-light or night, you can use the reading mode and the lower brightness is not so good.

For watching videos and playing games, the display is quite good but when you look at the display from the front, there are slimmer bezels to the sides and a thicker bezel at the bottom and it does support Widevine L1 which is a bit strange as it only has HD+ resolution. There is no HDR10 support.

So for the consumption of media, it is just good and if you want a better display then this may not be the smartphone for you.

Moto G9 Power Performance:

From the word Power, many would mistake the Moto G9 Power for its sheer powerful performance as it packs a mediocre Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 chipset which is an octa-core chipset having 4x2.0 GHz Kryo 260 Cortex A76 cores and another 4x1.8 GHz Kryo 260 Cortex A55 cores coupled with Adreno 610 GPU.

The daily tasks that include scrolling through webpages, switching between applications, etc. felt smoother but there were some stutters here and there noticed. The camera application does take some time to respond. All heavy games like Call of Duty, Asphalt 9 ran fine at the highest graphics as there were many frame drops and the back also felt warmer with extended gaming.

With graphics set to medium, the gameplay was good enough and moving to benchmarks, in Antutu v8, the smartphone scored 178220 which is an average score for a budget smartphone and if you better performance, then you can go for the Redmi Note 9 which has the powerful Mediatek Helio G85 chipset.

The Moto G9 Power is available only in one variant which is the 4GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB eMMc storage which is ample enough and since you have a hybrid card slot where you can use a microSD card for storage expansion. So for daily tasks, it is a good smartphone but not meant for gaming.

Moto G9 Power Software:

Like all Motorola smartphones, the Moto G9 Power provides an experience near to Stock Android. This ensures a bloatware-free software experience as there are no third-party applications pre-installed and there are no ads in the interface which we have seen with many brands like Xiaomi, Realme, etc.

You get all the stock applications and some Motorola specific apps like Moto which provides different features like Personalize where you can change different looks to the icons and the layout, gestures which have been providing Motorola smartphones ease to use.

Doing a karate chop enables the flashlight, twists the smartphone to open up the camera, etc have been all-time favorites. Some other features include Moto Gametime which is Motorola's own gaming mode, Display where we have the Peek Display. Here you can interact with different notifications and provides all details on the lock screen.

Unfortunately, though being a Motorola smartphone and having almost Stock Android UI, the Moto G9 Power still has Android 10 and will be soon updated to Android 11. Motorola guarantees continuous two years of software and security updates. So if you want a great software experience, the Moto G9 Power is the perfect one to be considered.

Moto G9 Power Cameras:

The Moto G9 Power sports a triple camera setup that includes a 64MP f/ 1.8 main camera, a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera, and an additional 2MP depth sensor for portraits. However, it does miss out on an ultrawide camera. On the front, there is a 16MP f/2.2 camera.

The images from the main camera have good details that look sharper but the dynamic range is not so good. There is a lot of noise and some amount of over sharpness in the background. The focus is not so good but still the images, you can say, can be used for posting on social media. 

Similarly, at night, the images have good details but there is a lot of noise present and the images do tend to look a bit softer. The dynamic range is just average and when triggering the dedicated Night Mode, the noise gets improved to some margin and the light is well maintained in long exposure shots.

There is no ultrawide camera which may not be as useful but you do get digital zoom on the main camera and then zoom into the images, the noise is clearly present and the colors do look washed out. 

There is also a 2MP macro camera which has average details and the colors look washed out. The dynamic range is just average but still, there is autofocus which helps lock focus on a particular object in the image. Instead, you can take a macro shot by cropping from the image taken by the main camera.

The portraits come out with good details but there is a lot of noise in the background and the edge detection is not so good. The background blur is good but when you zoom into the images, there is some skin smoothening and the dynamic range is not so good.

On the front, the 16MP camera does a good job in terms of details and the dynamic range is also good. However, there is some bit of skin smoothening and you can turn that off. The portraits have good edge detection and the dynamic range is just average.

The rear camera is only limited to 1080p at 60fps and the video output is pretty good in terms of dynamic range and the colors look natural. The presence of EIS does ensure a stabilized video but still, the amount of noise does jar a bit. On the front, you are only restricted to 1080p at 30fps which has good details but an average dynamic range.

Moto G9 Power Battery Life:

The Moto G9 Power has a massive 6000mAh battery so the smartphone can easily last for two single days with heavy usage and also it may stretch to three days when used normally. The standard screen on time recorded was around 8-9 hours which is really good. 

With heavy usage that includes gaming with Call of Duty, streaming videos, and scrolling through webpages for around 2-3 hours, there was around 40 percent left and the lower resolution means it consumes lesser power and can last longer. The Moto G9 Power has also some battery optimizations which come with the Stock UI.

Moving to charge, the Moto G9 Power comes with a 20W fast charger inside the box that takes around one hour or slightly more than an hour to charge from 0 to 100 percent completely. It also supports USB PD charging and can charge other smartphones from the USB Type-C port. So if battery life is your highest priority, then the Moto G9 power is the perfect smartphone for you.

Moto G9 Power Audio Quality:

The Moto G9 Power has a single speaker at the bottom which is adequately loud and clear. The audio output from the 3.5mm headphone jack is good.

Verdict:

The Moto G9 Power is a good budget smartphone as it packs in some very good features like a massive display, a larger 6000mAh battery for those who are more power-hungry users, comes with a decent processor, and has the software almost close to Stock Android which is very rare to find in the budget segment.

The display has an IPS LCD panel instead of an OLED panel which may not be so worth considering, but a full HD+ panel would have hit the right spot and the cameras need a lot of improvement. The removal of an ultrawide camera may be a miss for some though.

To sum it up, Motorola has put up a good product which has a good display, quite powerful processor, a larger battery and has the best software experience in the budget smartphone segment. So Motorola has done the right homework and it will surely appeal to many in the market.