40 OCTOBER2020|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE392
NOTEVERYONEHASthe cash tospend on a
flagship smartphone or even awell-appointed
mid-ranger.That’s why handsets like the
Motorola MotoE6S exist: it’s afull-blooded
Android phone forless than £100.
‘No frills’ is verymuch the order of theday,
especially whenitcomes to the all-plastic
bodywork,but it looks decent and thereare
no worrying build quality issues. On the front,
theselfie camera is housedinasmall
semi-circular notch at the topofthe display
andthe screenissurrounded by a2mm thick
blackborder at the sides and top, anda
thicker7mm border at the bottom.
On the rearyou getacentrallylocated
fingerprint reader, inlaid with aneatly
stencilledMotorola ‘M’logo.There’sa
solitary speaker grille in thebottom left
corner,and the camerasand single LEDflash
are located in thetop leftcorner. The
combined dual-SIM-and-microSD tray is on
the leftedge,and thevolumerocker and
power buttonsit on theright. There’salso a
3.5mmheadphone jack on the top.
The only major disappointment is that
the chargingportisMicroUSB,not themore
robust and capable USB Type-C.
DRIEDANDTRUE
However,the MotoE6S does feature water
repellency –not total waterproofing, but
better than nothing –and, as usual, Motorola’s
take on Android is cleanand minimal. There’s
no drastically different custom skin forthe
OS, with littleinthe wayofbloatware.
Forsuch little money, the displayisalso
prettygood. It’s not the sharpest, as it
stretches outa1,560x720
resolution over atall 6.1in
panel, but it performs well.
This IPSscreen looks bold
and vibrant, covering
85.6%ofthe colourgamut
with apeakbrightness of
423cd/m^2 and avery high
contrast ratio of 2,051:1.
Granted, it’smore
saturatedthan perfectly
balanced, butyou can’t
expect perfection for£99.
Likewise,the Moto
E6S’s internal combination
of aMediaTekHelio P22
processor and 2GB of RAM
was never going to setthe
worldablaze.That said, it’s
alittle quicker than many
MOTOROLA MotoE6S
★★★★★
£99•From http://www.amazon.co.uk
VERDICT
Acheap and cheerful Android handset that’s
remarkably close to the MotoE6Plus
ANDROID9SMARTPHONE
ofitsbudget competitors:
with 823 in theGeekbench
4single-core test and
3,625in themulticore
test, it outperformsthe
Xiaomi Redmi 7A (Shopper
383)and VodafoneSmart
V10 (Shopper380), both
of whichuse Qualcomm’s
Snapdragon 429 CPU.The
Moto E6S also has the
same processor as the
similarlypricedMotoE6
Plus (Shopper387),
resultinginnearlyidentical
benchmark scores.
Thesame goesfor
gaming performance,too,
as the MotoE6S averaged
16fps in theGFXBench
Manhattan 3onscreen
test and 10fps in the
offscreen –both exactly
the same as what the
MotoE6Plus managed.
This is clearly not aphone you’ll be using
to playthe latest, most demandingmobile
games on, but it willdoyou finefor social
networking, email andstreaming movies.
Evenbattery life is half-decent, although
thanks to afairlyunremarkable 3,000mAh
battery,itisn’t significantly betterorworse
than any of itsrivals.
RAN DOWN
In our video rundown test, it lasted14h 13m,
which is short of what theMotoE6Plusand
Vodafone Smart V10
achieved, but betterthan
the Xiaomi Redmi7A. This
is where it definitely pays
to spendalittle more on a
phonewithabigger
capacity battery.The £220
MotorolaMotoG8Power
(Shopper389), forexample,
lasted an immense22h
26m in this test, courtesy
of its5,000mAh battery.
Youdon’t get an awful
lotwhen it comes to the
cameras, either.There’s
only asingle 13-megapixel
unit on therear,
accompanied by adepth
sensorfor portrait images,
and asingle LEDflash.
On thefront, there’sa
fairly bog-standard
5-megapixel selfiecamera.
As you’d expect, neither
of these are brilliant,but
theytake acceptable
images in good light.
TheMotoE6S’s
camera softwareisnice
and simple,and isn’t
overladen with
complicated options.
It will automatically go
intonight mode, for
instance, when thelights
go down, and capture a
multi-frame image in
order to keep image
noise to aminimum.
As forvideo,you can
only shootat1080p or
720pat30fps,and
there’s no stabilisation in
either mode. Videos are
reasonably well exposed
and nice andcolourful, but understandably a
little shaky, and we found there wasquite abit
of focushunting, too. Quality-wiseyou’re
getting footage with an over-processedlook
that isn’t very sharp.
MIRROR MATCH
That’s not enough to stop theMotoE6S being
another good all-roundbudgetsmartphone
from Motorola; in fact, it’s almostasgoodas
the MotoE6Plus, battery life aside.
That does, however,raise the question
of why you’d buythe MotoE6S over its
near-identical twin.Bothcost around £100
and theyhavethe same dimensions, screen
specs and keyinternals,soinpractical terms
the longer-lastingMotoE6Plusedges it as
the better choice.
JonathanBray
Battery life
0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100
See page 82 forperformancedetails
PROCESSOROcta-core 2GHz MediaTekHelio P22•SCREEN
SIZE6.1in•SCREENRESOLUTION1,560x720•REAR
CAMERA13 megapixels•STORAGE32GB•WIRELESS
DATA4G•NFCNo•DIMENSIONS156x73x8.6mm•
WEIGHT160g•OPERATINGSYSTEMAndroid 9.0•
WARRANTYOneyear RTB•DETAILSwww.motorola.co.uk
SPECIFICATIONS
14h 13m
