LG K8 review - a middling Moto G rival

At just under £130, the LG K8 is primed and ready to take on the 3rd Gen Moto G, which has also dropped in price to around £130 SIM-free in the wake of its brand-new successor, the £169 Moto G4. The G4 is an incredible bargain and most people should buy one without a second thought. However, it does have one weakness, in that its 5.5in display is a bit monstrous compared to most phones and can make it hard to use one-handed on the go.

Those after something that sits more comfortably in your palm will need to turn their attention back to the rest of the budget competition, and the LG K8 actually puts up a pretty good fight against its lauded 3rd Gen Moto G rival.

Performance

With a quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6735 processor and 1.5GB of RAM it managed almost identical results to the 3rd Gen Moto G in our Geekbench 3 benchmarks. Whereas the Moto G scored 531 and 1,625 respectively in Geekbench 3's single and multicore tests, the LG K8 finished with results of 536 and 1,602. Indeed, it certainly felt pretty nippy and responsive during day-to-day use, and LG's version of Android 6.0.1 never felt like it was struggling to keep up with our swipes and taps.

Even the K8's GPU performance was good, as graphics tends to be an area where MediaTek chips have struggled in the past compared to their Qualcomm-based counterparts. In GFX Bench GL's offscreen Manhattan 3.0 test, for example, the LG K8 scores a very reasonable 188 frames (around 3.0fps), putting it ahead of the 3rd Gen Moto G which only produced 103 frames (or 1.7fps).

I wasn't able to see how it handled Hearthstone, as the game kept crashing on launch, but other 3D games like Beach Buggy Racing worked absolutely fine, providing a smooth frame rate that rarely stuttered or made it a hassle to play. Simpler games like Threes! also felt silky smooth on the LG K8, so it should be more than capable of keeping you entertained when you need a bit of a distraction.

Web browsing was a little more stop-and-start while pages were loading, which is no doubt a result of its rather underwhelming score of 497 in the Peacekeeper web browsing test. However, as long as you're prepared to wait a few seconds, even media-heavy pages like the Guardian homepage can become perfectly manageable when scrolling up and down at speed.

Design

I'm a big fan of the LG K8's design as well, as its plastic, cross-hatch patterned back feels great in the hand and provides an excellent level of grip. You can prise it off to reveal the phone's battery and microSD slot, but overall it feels well built for a budget handset and it's very comfy to hold and use one-handed. It will take some time to get used to LG's rear-facing buttons, but the power button is positioned at just the right height for your forefinger, and its ridged surface makes it easy to pick out in between the two volume keys.

Battery Life

The K8's battery life is also promising, as its 2,125mAh battery lasted 10h 16m in our continuous video playback test. It's still an hour behind the 3rd Gen Moto G, but it's still pretty respectable for a budget smartphone.

Display

Where the K8 falls down is its 5in, 1280x720 display. Yes, its 2.5D glass panel looks lovely, It's reasonably bright with a peak white level of 384.27cd/m2, but you might struggle to see it clearly in direct sunlight. Likewise, with an sRGB colour gamut coverage of just 71.4%, the K8 is rather lacking in colour depth and overall vibrancy. I was very pleased to see a contrast ratio of 1,738:1, but images definitely didn't look as good as they did on the 3rd Gen Moto G.

Storage

It's also worth noting that the LG K8 only has 8GB of internal storage, just 3.4GB of which is available to the user. This seems rather stingy in this day and age, especially when the 3rd Gen Moto G is available in a 16GB variant as well. As a result, you'll probably find you'll need to pick up a microSD card (it supports cards up to 32GB, costing £5-10), especially if you like downloading lots of games and media files.

Camera

The LG K8's 8-megapixel camera is also rather underwhelming. Not only does it have a smaller resolution than the 3rd Gen Moto G, but it's also lacking in detail, as even our outdoor shots in bright sunshine were very soft and hazy. Fine details such as paving stones and brickwork were completely lost in LG's noise reduction processing, and there was a noticeable amount of noise present in the plain blue sky as well.

^ The K8's colour reproduction was fine, but it was very short on fine detail

Indoor shots looked rather soft with the K8 only managing a shutter speed 1/25 of a second - any motion in the frame and you'll get a very blurred photo in these kind of conditions. Its colour reproduction was admittedly quite good, but it's a small consolation when everything else is blurred. Admittedly, turning on our studio lights produced better, sharper looking results, and unless you're taking pictures with a lot of natural light present, you'll almost definitely want to use the flash when taking photos indoors, as this produced much clearer and more detailed photos.

^ Indoor shots were very soft as well, so we'd recommend using the flash or finding more natural light

Conclusion

The LG K8 does a pretty decent job of matching the 3rd Gen Moto G's speed, but when both phones are now exactly the same price, the Moto G leaps ahead with its superior display and camera and longer-lasting battery.

In truth, the newer Moto G4 is technically the better buy compared to the 3rd Gen model, as the G4 not only offers even faster performance, but its battery, camera display are all significantly better than its now year-old predecessor. However, if you're adamant that a 5.5in phone is just one step too far, then the 3rd Gen model is still the phone to get. Buy Now from Amazon