Moto G 5G is the cheapest 5G smartphone with great software.
Motorola has stepped into the market with some of the good smartphones in the mid-range segment where there are many competitors from brands like Samsung, Xiaomi, Realme, etc. These brands have provided some of the best mid-range smartphones and just recently Motorola entered this segment with the One Fusion Plus (Review).
Now Motorola is back with another great mid-range smartphone called the Moto G 5G so you are getting the cheapest 5G smartphone and it is the first smartphone to be powered by the Snapdragon 750G chipset. If you see the market for a 5G smartphone in the mid-range segment, you are only left with the OnePlus Nord (Review)?
Can this good all-rounder smartphone deliver the best experience in the mid-range segment and is this worth buying in the market?
Moto G 5G Design:
In terms of build and design, the Moto G 5G has a polycarbonate back compared to many mid-range smartphones which have a glass design. Compared to the Moto One Fusion Plus which has a vertical arrangement of cameras, the Moto G 5G has a square module for the cameras and there is a back-mounted fingerprint scanner with the Motorola logo on it at the center.
The polycarbonate back has a glass finish to it and has a reflective design when holding at different angles. The sides of the smartphone are also made up of plastic and do feel a bit cheap. The right side of the Moto G 5G houses a power button with volume controls and to the left, there is a single button for Google Assistant.
On the top, it is clean with a secondary noise-canceling microphone and at the bottom, there is a primary microphone, a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, and a loudspeaker vent. And it also provides a 3.5mm headphone jack which most of the manufacturers are omitting.
On the front, there is a punch-hole display with minimum bezels to the sides. The lower part of the display has a slightly thicker bezel. There is a LED notification light just below the earpiece. The Moto G 5G weighs around 212 grams which makes it slightly heavier as it packs in a larger 5000mAh battery.
There is an IP52 rating on the smartphones which means there is a coating at the back where it can handle accidental spills of water and can survive splashes of rain also. The Moto G 5G comes only in one color- Volcanic Grey. The design just feels right, and nothing so exciting.
See here: Realme 7 Pro Review
Moto G 5G Display:
On the front, the Moto G 5G has a larger 6.7inches Full HD+ Max Vision display with Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. This is an IPS LCD panel, not an AMOLED. The brightness on the display is good but not as good as AMOLED.
There is no high refresh rate, so you are stuck only with a standard 60Hz display. Taking the display under direct sunlight, the viewing angles are good and the color reproduction is just average. For getting a true punchier display, you can turn on the Boosted mode instead of the Natural where colors look a bit toned down.
It may lack a high refresh rate and an in-display fingerprint scanner, but what it gets is support for HDR10 and has Widevine L1 to stream contents from Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. The touch sampling rate is also 120Hz which is quite lower compared to other smartphones.
The display is not the strength of the Moto G 5G, but if you watch a lot of content, then it will get the work done as it supports HDR10.
Moto G 5G Performance:
The Moto G 5G is powered by the newer Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G chipset which is a mid-range chipset almost close to the Snapdragon 765G chipset found on the OnePlus Nord. This chipset has: 2x2.2 GHz Kryo 570 Gold cores (Cortex A77) and another 6x1.8 GHz Kryo 570 Silver cores (Cortex A55) and is coupled with Adreno 619 GPU.
On a daily basis, the smartphone feels good to use as all applications running smoothly without any hiccups. All heavy games like Call of Duty, Asphalt 9, etc. played smoothly at the highest graphics settings without any frame drops. However, with prolonged gaming, the back does become warm a bit.
In Asphalt 9, there were some frame drops at the highest graphics settings, but still, it was minor. There is no liquid cooling technology that is present on the POCO X3. The Moto G 5G is available only in one variant - 6GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB storage. Here storage speeds are of UFS 2.1.
For storage expansion, the Moto G 5G has a hybrid slot where you can use two dual SIM cards or one SIM card as well as a microSD card. In terms of benchmarks, the scores on the Snapdragon 750G chipset are almost close to Snapdragon 765G.
In Antutu v8, the Moto G 5G scored 289345 and in Geekbench 5.1, the single-core and multi-core scores are 657 and 1982 which is pretty good for a mid-range smartphone. The biggest talking point about this chipset is the support for 5G as it supports almost all the 5G bands.
Overall, performance and gaming make the smartphone really good.
See also: POCO X3 Review
Moto G 5G Software:
Like all Motorola smartphones, the Moto G 5G runs on Stock Android with Android 10 out of the box. It is not based on the Android One program, but what you are getting is a cleaner and slick user interface to use.
There are some Motorola applications and only Facebook is pre-installed. This makes it stand apart from the crowds like Xiaomi, Realme, etc which have a lot of bloatware and have a lot of ads. There are all the Android 10 features like a system-wide dark mode, navigation gestures, and Digital Wellbeing.
The Moto gestures are present like karate chop for turning on and off the flashlight, twist motion to turn on the camera, and swiping three fingers on the display takes a screenshot. The Personalization feature also provides customization to the icons and also the size.
Like the Always-On display on Samsung smartphones, Motorola has provided a Peek Display where you can interact on the lock screen whenever any notification comes. GameTime enables smoother gameplay by blocking the incoming calls and also improves GPU performance.
Moto Display works well too. Though you get a 60Hz display, the software experience does not let you down as Stock Android feels slick and much easier to use compared to other custom skins on Android.
Moto G 5G Cameras:
In terms of cameras, the Moto G 5G comes with triple cameras at the rear which includes a 48MP f/1.7 main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera. This camera setup may not excite so much as this is the same camera found on the Motorola G9 Power.
The images from the main camera come out with good details and the colors look punchier. There is no over-saturation and the dynamic range is good. However, there is some amount of noise present and when you zoom into the images, the details look a tad softer and the colors do look washed out.
At night, the images have a good dynamic range with sharper details but there is a lot of noise present and turning on the Night Mode, does reduce the noise and also improves the exposure in shots.
The images from the ultrawide camera have a good dynamic range but the colors do not look natural. The 118-degree field of view helps to capture images with a wider aperture but compared to the 13MP ultrawide camera on the POCO X3, this feels a bit let down.
Similarly, at night, the images from the ultrawide camera have an average dynamic range and there is a lot of noise present. However, the ultrawide camera lacks a Night Mode and the images have slightly washed-out colors.
The 2MP macro camera does a fine job in terms of close-up images. The images have good color reproduction but there is a lot of noise and the dynamic range is not so good. Simply, you can say the macro camera is just for adding the numbers.
The Moto G 5G does not have a depth sensor, but using the main camera, the portraits come out good with proper edge detection and have a good dynamic range. But when you zoom into the portraits, their skin tones look a tad softer.
On the front, there is a 16MP camera which results in 4MP images by default. The selfies from the front camera have good details and the skin tones look natural. The dynamic range is good but overexposure is noticed sometimes.
The portraits from the front camera come out with good background blur and have natural skin tones. The same applies to selfies during the night, but it has more noise.
Moving to videos, the Moto G 5G supports 4K video recording at 30fps. The 4K videos have good color reproduction but there is a lot of noise present and the video results in a lot of distortion. At 1080p at 30 or 60fps, the videos come out much more stabilized with good dynamic range and the colors look punchier also.
For the ultrawide camera, the videos have an average dynamic range and there is a lot of noise present. The videos from the macro camera are just good.
The videos from the front camera are restricted to 1080p at 30fps which is a big let down as the OnePlus Nord has support for 4K videos at 60fps from the front camera. Overall, the cameras are not the biggest strong points for the Moto G 5G, but still good on their own.
Moto G 5G Battery Life:
Since the Snapdragon 750G chipset brings along the support for 5G, Motorola has packed in a 5000mAh battery. The smartphone can easily last for one and a half days with normal usage as there is no higher refresh rate here.
With heavy usages, such as gaming or heavy multitasking, the smartphone needs a quick charge before the night with some battery left. Compared to other smartphones like the OnePlus Nord and the Realme 7 Pro which have a 4500mAh battery, the battery life is better on the Moto G 5G.
Since there is Stock Android on board, there are battery optimizations with a power-saving mode. The standard screen on time on the Moto G 5G was around 5-6 hours which is impressive considering its massive display.
To charge up the 5000mAh battery, the Moto G 5G is equipped with a 20W fast charger inside the box.
This particular fast charger charges the smartphone from 0 to 100 percent in 1hour 30minutes considering the larger battery inside it.
These charging speeds are slower compared to other smartphones like 33W fast charging on the POCO X3 and 65W fast charging on the Realme 7 Pro. However, not a big deal as you are getting pretty good battery life overall.
Moto G 5G Audio Quality:
The Moto G 5G has support for a single speaker at the bottom and the sound is adequately loud. The sound output through the 3.5mm headphone jack is also good.
Verdict:
On an overall basis, the Moto G 5G is a good smartphone as brings along the support for 5G with the newer Snapdragon 750G chipset, a larger display, a larger battery, and best of all is the software experience which is Stock Android.
There are some shortcomings like the lack of a higher refresh rate display, there is only one variant with only 6GB RAM, and the cameras when compared to many of its rivals like the POCO X3 are not so good. The battery life is good but the charger provided inside the box is only a 20W fast charger.
There are other brands that offer 30W or 65W fast charging but still, this may not a bigger concern.
Compared to its competitors like the OnePlus Nord that is priced slightly higher, the ease it brings along with 5G is well-considered and makes it a much more affordable option.
The lack of an AMOLED display is also a miss but if you leave all the shortcomings, what you are getting is a future-proof smartphone with great performance and the best in software that Android has to offer.
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