Moto G71 Review: A capable mid-ranger that brings Stock Android with few compromises too!!

 

An ideal mid-range smartphone from Motorola that fits well.

Motorola G series of smartphones have been quite a mainstream lineup for the company as they have been present in the budget and the mid-range segment for a longer time and now we recently saw another two launches - Moto G31 (Review) and the Moto G51 (Review) both of which have some very good specifications and provide you the real ad and bloatware-free software experience that no others offer.

Now Motorola is back with another mid-ranger called the Moto G71 which is aiming to get a slice of the pie where the segment has been popular with Samsung, Realme, Xiaomi, etc. smartphones. The Moto G71 brings some very good specifications like an AMOLED display, a good set of cameras, a 5000mAh battery, and a powerful Snapdragon 695 chipset making it the first smartphone to have this.

But there are some areas Motorola has done some cost cuttings to price it aggressively. So how good is the Moto G71 when compared to other smartphones and is it worth buying? Let's find out in the full review.

Moto G71 Design:

The Moto G71 does not impress much in terms of build and design as, like the Moto G31 and the Moto G51, you are getting a polycarbonate back instead of a glass back which most of the smartphones in the mid-range do offer so as a result, it feels lightweight as it weighs around 179grams which is quite light and the back draws a lot of attention as the camera module looks that of the Moto G31.

The camera module here is also capsule-shaped and houses the triple camera setup with a LED flashlight and like the Moto G31, the Motorola logo is present at the back that doubles up as a fingerprint scanner which is a capacitive fingerprint scanner as many smartphones have been providing in-display or side-mounted fingerprint scanners. 

The back of the Moto G71 has an IP52 rating which makes it splashproof. The back has a matte finish and has a gradient pattern as the blue color changes hues when light strikes it and you are restricted to this Arctic Blue color only. On the front, there is a punch-hole display and there is no Gorilla Glass protection instead Motorola has used Panda Glass for protection. 

Around the sides of the display, the bezels do feel slightly thicker but this would not bother much. Around the side, the right side houses the volume buttons, a power button, and a dedicated button for the Google Assistant key that can be remapped to any other function. The left side houses the dual SIM card tray and there is no slot for microSD for storage expansion. 

The bottom has a USB Type-C port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a primary microphone, and a loudspeaker grille. The top only houses the secondary noise-canceling microphone. Overall, the build and design do feel slightly inferior as you do miss out on glass build.

Moto G71 Display:

The Moto G71 houses a smaller 6.4-inches Full HD+(1080x2400pixels) AMOLED display which is similar to that of the Moto G31 and as a result, you get deep inky blues and blacks with good color reproduction and viewing angles. However, the downside is that this is a standard 60Hz display and does have a high refresh rate which is a big disappointing factor as most smartphones do have this.

The similarly priced Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro Max (Review) though having an AMOLED display has a 120Hz refresh rate which makes things work faster like switching between applications, playing games, and many other tasks. There is support for Widevine L1 so streaming HD content from OTT platforms is a breeze but you do miss out on HDR support which maybe Motorola fixes in a future software update.

In terms of display brightness, the Moto G71 can achieve a peak brightness of 700nits which is good and you also get two modes for display calibration - Natural and Saturated where in Natural the display optimizes color based on the content and Saturated provides more vibrant colors on the display. Overall, the display is good for media consumption but the lack of high refresh rate and HDR support do let it down.

Moto G71 Performance:

The Moto G71 is powered by the Snapdragon 695 chipset which makes it the first smartphone to have this chipset. The Snapdragon 695 chipset is an octa-core chipset that has 2x2.2 GHz Kryo 660 Cortex-A76 cores and another 6x1.7GHz Kryo 660 Cortex-A55 cores coupled with an Adreno 619 GPU. This chipset is based on a 6nm process and is almost close to the Snapdragon 750G in terms of performance.

All tasks like multitasking between applications, playing games, and rendering videos were handled easily without breaking a sweat and in terms of gaming, all heavy games like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc. ran smoothly but there were a considerable amount of stutters noticed when played ta the highest graphics settings. In BGMI, we could achieve Smooth graphics with an Ultra frame rate.

After long hours, the back does not feel warmer which is good though there is no cooling system present and also in CPU throttling tests, the smartphone could easily maintain peak performance and throttled to 91 percent showing a perfect stable performance. In benchmarks, the scores are also good. When it comes to 5G, there is support for 13 bands of 5G and you get good carrier aggregation also.

However, one slight disappointment is that the smartphone is only available in one variant - 6GB LPDDR4X RAM with 128GB storage of UMCP speeds which sits just in between the UFS 2.1 and UFS 2.2 and as we all know like eMCP, the UMCP storage is also integrated with the RAM and chipset. Still, the performance is as good as the Snapdragon 750G which is found on the OnePlus Nord CE.

Moto G71 Software:

The Moto G71 runs on MyUX which is actually Stock Android with a few customizations from Motorola which includes Moto gestures which include karate chop to turn on/off the flashlight, twist to open the camera, etc. and some other features like the GameTime that blocks all incoming notifications and disables autobrightness during the gameplay, Peek Display, Attentive Display,etc. 

It provides a lot of customizations to icon shape size, color accent, fonts, etc under Styles. And the biggest advantage of MyUX is that there are no ads present in the UI and also no third-party applications except Facebook. This makes it stand out from many other custom skins like MIUI, RealmeUI, etc. that have quite a handful of bloatware present. 

Also here you do not have spammy notifications present. But the Moto G71 is still running on Android 11 out of the box which is slightly disappointing as in 2022 we have smartphones that come out with Android 12 out of the box. There is also the ThinkShield which acts as a security layer between both hardware as well as software.  

In terms of software updates, the Moto G71 is slated to get the Android 12 update only with two years of security patches. This is one area where Motorola needs some improvement as at least it should provide two years of OS updates. So if you want a clean and bloatware-free software experience, then the Moto G71 is far better compared to other smartphones.

Moto G71 Cameras:

The Moto G71 houses a triple camera setup which includes a 50MP f/1.8 main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 2MP macro camera. On the front, there is a 16MP f/2.2 camera for selfies. The images from the main camera come out with a good dynamic range and the colors look natural without any oversharpening. However, the details do look slightly softer as there is a considerable amount of noise present.

At night, the images come out with a decent dynamic range with a natural look with a large amount of noise and do suffer from underexposure. The images do look softer but with the dedicated night mode, things do restore as the dynamic range improves slightly, the noise gets reduced but still, the details look softer.

The images from the 8MP ultrawide camera come out with decent details and have a good dynamic range. There is a larger amount of noise though and around the edges, there is a lot of distortion but since you have a wider 119-degree field of view, all the subjects are captured in the image. Similarly, during the night, the dynamic range is average and there is a lot of noise with the images having softer details.

The 2MP macro camera is just for close-up images and since this is a fixed focus camera and lacks autofocus, the details look softer with a considerable amount of noise and average dynamic range. The colors look softer and it is better to use the main camera by applying the 2x digital zoom and this results in good dynamic range, less noise, and more natural colors.

In terms of portraits, the edge detection and dynamic range are good and the skin tones also look natural without any oversharpening. The background blur is also mapped perfectly and on the front, the selfies come out with good sharper looking details and skin tone color loos natural. There is quite some noise present and also in selfie portraits the edge detection and dynamic range are good.

In terms of videos, you can only record 1080p videos at 60fps which is a sort of a letdown as other smartphones in this price segm,ent have support for 4K videos at 30fps. Still the videos have goo dynamic range and details look slightly softer but colors look natural which seems to be good. The ultrawide camera videos come out with decent dynamic range but do suffer from large amount of noise. 

On the front, there is only 1080p videos at 30fps support so as a result, the dynamic range is good and the details look sharper but the videos come out slightly shaky due to lack of EIS but noise is not there so much. Overall, the cameras are good and will get the job done.

Moto G71 Battery Life:

The Moto G71 sports a larger 5000mAh battery that can easily last for two days with normal usage as the display is just a standard 60Hz one and with heavy usage which includes gaming for 3-4 hours continuously, multi-tasking between applications, browsing social media, etc. the smartphone can easily last for one and a half day with some charge left.

With the presence of Stock Android and the Snapdragon 695 being based on an efficient 6nm process yiedls very good battery life. There is also support for 33W fast charging and Motorola has provided a 33W fast charger inside the box which seems to be a good upgrade over the 18W fast charger as seen on other smartphones of Motorola. 

With the 33W fast charger, you can charge the smartphone from 0 to 50 percent in 30 minutes and a full charge to 100 percent takes around one hour 15 minutes. So battery life and charging is where the Moto G71 excels.

Moto G71 Audio Quality:

The Moto G71 sports a single speaker at the bottom which is a big letdown as most of the competitors do offer a dual stereo speaker setup. The sound is adequately loud and clear when compared to other single speakers but does does fall short when compared to dual stereo speakers. However, there is a 3.5mm headphone jack and the presence of Dolby Atmos provides further enhanced sound.

Verdict:

As an overall package, the Moto G71 is a much well rounded smartphone with some good things going for it and some things that do let it down. First of all, you are getting an AMOLED display which is great for media consumption, the Snapdragon 695 chipset provides good daily performance, the 5G support is good as it has 13 bands of 5G, the battery life is very good and now you get better faster charging also.

However, there are areas where Motorola has done some compromises to price it aggressively. Though having an AMOLED display, you are not getting any 90Hz or 120Hz high refresh rate, the software updates needs to be better atleast two OS updates, there is just a single speaker instead of stereo speakers, and the cameras are good but compared to other smartphones, they do feel average.

The biggest buying factor for the Moto G71 will be the Stock Android experience that it offers which means no ads or bloatware when compared to other smartphones. So if you are a person who wants a 5G smartphone which has a good display with Stock Android experience, then the Moto G71 is worth buying though having certain compromises.