The Moto G6 Play ($215 at Amazon.com) has a secret weapon that its pricier Moto G-siblings don't: A big ol' honking battery. For many people including myself, an affordable phone with a seemingly endless battery is the smartphone dream paradox. The iPhone X ($1,000 at Cricket Wireless) and Pixel 2 ($649 at Google Store) cost much more than the Moto G6 Play but still get less battery life.

The Moto G6 Play -- without discounts -- costs $199, £169, AU$329. To put it another way, for the price of one iPhone X, I could buy five Moto G6 Play phones.

But what's great about Motorola's budget friendly, feature-rich G family is that it has not one or two, but three different models: The Moto G6 ($259 at Amazon.com), Moto G6 Plus and the Moto G6 Play.

Moto G family prices

	Moto G6 Play	Moto G6	Moto G6 Plus
US price	$199	$249	not sold in US
UK price	£169	£219	£269
Australia price	AU$329	AU$399	AU$499

Moto G6 Play design

In terms of design, the Moto G6 Play gets all the hand-me-downs from the Moto G6 family and the G5 family before it. The Moto G6 Play doesn't have the slick-looking Gorilla Glass 3 back of the Moto G6 and G6 Plus. It uses a micro-USB port instead of the more fashionable USB-C one and it lacks dual-cameras. Again, it's $50 less than the Moto G6, so I didn't exactly expect the works here.

In hand, the G6 Play feels dense and solid. It's not water-resistant, but Motorola says that it's splash proof aka don't spill your coffee on it or at least more than a few drops. On the back, is a fingerprint reader that's cleverly incorporated into the Motorola logo. Out of all the rear fingerprint readers I've used, the belly button-shaped reader on the G6 Play is the absolute easiest to find and use without looking.

The Moto G6 Play software isn't flashy. It runs a fairly stock version of Android 8.0 Oreo and has minimal extra apps. The things Motorola does add are thoughtful and fun. Who doesn't love to make a karate chop motion twice while holding the phone to turn on the flashlight?

Like the Moto G6, the Moto G6 Play sports a 5.7-inch 18x9 ratio display. However, the resolution is only 720 HD instead of the 1,080 HD displays found on the Moto G6 and G6 Plus. In use, this isn't as horrible as it sounds. Images, websites and videos look good on the display. The only times I ran into trouble was in direct sunlight when I tried to take photos. The display was nearly impossible to use as a viewfinder.

The Moto G6 Play has a big friendly battery

The Moto G6 Play's low-resolution screen combined with its large battery gives the phone a terrific battery life on a single charge. In our looped video battery tests (in airplane mode), the G6 Play's battery lasted an average of 15 hours and 16 minutes. That's five and a half hours longer than the Moto G6, which lasted 9 hours and 41 minutes.