Motorola’s success over the past few years has stemmed from the lower end of the smartphone market. It’s captured the attention of consumers and reviewers alike with devices that can be well-rounded while delivering on just the fundamentals, making for some of the best budget phones. The standard Moto G series specifically has been a contender in this part of the market, and the latest model for 2023 is no exception.

At $250, you get a solid set of features, including a 6.5-inch 120Hz display, a Snapdragon 480+ processor, dual rear cameras, and a massive 5,000mAh battery. Is it the best cheap phone I’ve ever reviewed? Not really. But with its clean software, excellent battery life, and decent performance, it can be a good choice for those on a budget.

Just know that you’ll have to live with some serious downsides, like poor camera quality and no NFC for mobile payments.

About this review: Motorola sent us a Moto G 5G (2023) for this review, and it did not have any input into its contents.

Moto G 5G (2023): Pricing and availability

The Moto G 5G (2023) is available now from Best Buy, Amazon, and directly from Motorola unlocked for $250. It’s also making its way to various carriers including T-Mobile, Metro by T-Mobile, AT&T, Boost Infinite, Boost Mobile, Cricket, Google Fi Wireless, US Cellular, and Consumer Cellular. It’s available in two colors: Ink Blue and Harbor Gray.

Design and build quality: Well-crafted, but it still feels cheap

Over its lifespan, the Moto G has taken on many shapes and sizes. For 2023, it’s a lot flatter than what we’re used to, with almost no curves save for the corners. The sides are almost as flat as the iPhone 14’s, while the front and back panels opt for chamfered edges. Externally, it’s practically identical to this year’s Moto G Power. I personally dig it, but some folks may prefer a phone that conforms to the shape of their hand more naturally.

Despite the flatness of the Moto G 5G, it’s still an easy device to hold. The narrow 20:9 aspect ratio is helpful when holding the phone with one hand, while the 6.5-inch screen manages to maintain a good middle ground between large and reasonable.

The phone is also nice and light at 189 grams. Of course, the combination of the primarily plastic build and light weight make the Moto G feel pretty cheap, but its solid construction and sturdy button placement help mitigate that impression marginally.

There’s a combo SIM card/microSD card slot on the left of the Moto G, volume and power buttons on the right, a microphone on the top, and a Dolby Atmos-tuned speaker on the bottom. That’s also where you’ll find the USB-C port, in addition to a headphone jack. I’m not sure how many people are still using headphone jacks, but if you’re one of them, you’ll be happy to know the jack is still alive.

The camera housing on the back of the phone is pretty large, but it's by no means as large as some flagships. It packs two rear camera sensors, an LED flash, and some text reminding you that your phone is equipped with a 48MP Quad Pixel camera.

The Harbor Gray color of my review unit has a reflective sheen on the backplate that gives it a little character, but it’s by no means as nice as the Ink Blue. If you want your phone to have a little pizzazz, that’s the color to get. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck with a pretty bland-looking slab.

Motorola says the phone has a “water-repellent design,” which basically means you can splash it with liquids but not submerge it. There’s no official IP rating here, so I would avoid taking it to the beach or pool unless it’s in a protective phone pouch.

The power button on the Moto G doubles as a fingerprint reader, and it works pretty well. I wasn’t impressed with its reliability (it can misread my thumb as an invalid print once in a while), but it’s not bad. It’s quick to read your fingerprint and unlock your phone, and it’s positioned well on the side of the device.

Display and speakers: Perfectly average for the price

The 6.5-inch LCD on the Moto G is pretty unimpressive. It has a low 1600x720 resolution (good for 269ppi) that makes some text and photos seem a bit blurry. I’ve seen plenty of 720p panels in my day, and this isn’t a very good one.

It also can’t get very bright, maxing out at 500 nits. It’s virtually impossible to see in direct sunlight (especially through sunglasses), and you have to look at it straight-on. Otherwise, the contents of the display will be lost by the shadowing caused by its poor viewing angles. Colors are also very washed out and, frankly, unappealing to look at.

The Moto G feels so much smoother than other sub-$300 phones

If there’s one redeeming feature of the display, it’s the refresh rate. Motorola packed in a 120Hz refresh rate that makes using it feel so much smoother than other sub-$300 phones. It’s enabled out of the box and can slow itself down to 60Hz when you aren’t directly interacting with it. It’s a small addition, sure, but it’s one that made using the Moto G’s display tolerable during my review process.

Above and below the display are stereo speakers. They work with Dolby Atmos for better sound quality, but in my testing, they just sounded like any other $250 phone’s speakers. That's to say they sound far from good but still decent enough for when I want to fire up a song or two. Anything involving a lot of talking like podcasts and YouTube videos sounds tinny on these speakers, and there isn’t much bass.

But hey, at least there’s a headphone jack for when you decide they're intolerable.

Performance: Y’know, I really don’t mind it

I’ll be totally honest, I didn’t have high expectations for the Moto G’s performance. I’m not a fan of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 400 series processors due to their unimpressive performance chops and spotty efficiency, but the octa-core Snapdragon 480+ inside this device did enough to leave a good impression.

I was able to use this phone like any other flagship, and it was able to keep up pretty well. No, you won’t experience the same blazing-fast performance as some higher-end Snapdragon chips, but the 480+ was solid at opening apps in a reasonable amount of time, avoiding any major slowdowns, and minimizing dropped frames while gaming. (Note that I wasn’t playing anything crazy like PUBG Mobile, but the lighter titles I tried all seemed to work well.)

Geekbench 6 churned out a 734 score on its single-core test and 1,698 on the multi-core, which isn’t too shabby for a $250 phone. Here are the results compared to a few other phones in the Moto G’s price range.

The processor is paired with 4GB of RAM. If you know anything about modern versions of Android, you know that they don’t take kindly to low amounts of RAM, and that’s the situation here. I’ve noticed that apps tend to crash pretty often if you have a lot going on. For example, say I'm playing music on Spotify while scrolling Twitter, then quickly double-tap the power button to take a picture. Sometimes Spotify crashes, sometimes Twitter crashes, and sometimes the camera app crashes. This phone is definitely not built for multitasking.

I was able to use this phone like any other flagship, and it was able to keep up pretty well.

You also might want to pick up a microSD card if you buy this phone. With either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage (depending on the model you get), chances are you’ll run out quicker than you think. Luckily, that microSD card slot supports cards up to 1TB.

For connectivity, Motorola includes 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.1, and sub-6GHz 5G (hence the name). This all works as you'd expect, although I do wish Wi-Fi 6E were here. I guess we'll have to wait another year or two for it to trickle down to more budget phones.

Oh, and there's one more thing: this phone is missing NFC, so you can't use it to make payments at retailers. It's just one of those sacrifices Motorola was willing to make to drive the Moto G's price down, even though it presents a major inconvenience.

Cameras: Slow to use, disappointing results

There’s nothing impressive about the Moto G’s cameras… at all. The company packs the device with two sensors on the back: a 48MP f/1.7 main lens that bins each photo to 12MP, and a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera.

The main sensor is the only one you should shoot with, and I’d be lying if I said that’s because it’s a good camera. On the contrary, it’s the only camera you can get away with using. In broad daylight, photos are often overexposed and not very balanced, but it’s not terrible. Each picture I took would be suitable for Instagram with a couple of edits, and at the end of the day, how much more can you ask from a $250 phone?

At night and in darker settings, it’s extremely hit or miss. Sometimes the photos look alright, but otherwise, they look like total garbage. The Moto G struggles with focus, to begin with, and when you drastically drop the camera’s light intake, it gets a lot worse.

The macro camera shouldn’t be used by anyone ever. Not only is it incredibly low in resolution, but it’s also microscopic and can’t let light in whatsoever (unless it’s the middle of a sunny day). I snapped a few photos with the macro shooter under the warm sun and well after that sun had set, and the results sucked.

I’m getting pretty tired of companies strapping pointless cameras to their phones just so they can brag about having multi-camera setups. I know that macro cameras are relatively cheap (especially at this resolution), but I question how much Motorola would have to spend on a 2MP ultrawide. At the very least, you’d be able to fit more of a scene in a single photo, then use a little software magic to emulate a macro lens as many other smartphones do.

Am I nitpicking? Yes, but this is a longstanding issue. Smart companies: Just include useful cameras on your smartphones. No one expects them to be the best quality at under $300, but at least make them more of a convenience than a hindrance.

Anyhow, video quality is capped at 1080p 30FPS, and it’s as good as you’d expect from a $250 Android phone: not good by any means, but good enough if you need to record something quickly. The 8MP f/2.0 selfie camera works as advertised (read: it can take selfies), and Motorola’s bonus camera features like RAW Photo Output and Spot Color are nice to see.

The camera app itself is a bit of a mixed bag. It’s not hard to change any of your settings or switch between modes, but the app itself is slow and can even become unresponsive if you have a lot going on in the background. There were a handful of times when I tried to snap a photo quickly while listening to music, and I had to wait for the viewfinder to catch up with whatever I was pointing the camera at. Not that you’d expect it from a phone of this class, but the Moto G is not a great phone for snapping pictures or videos quickly.

Software: A delightfully clean experience, with some exceptions

Speaking of software, Motorola’s take on Android 13 is one of the strongest highlights of the Moto G. The company’s skin is virtually nonexistent, save for a few customizations to the Settings app, a couple of tweaks in the notification shade, a custom launcher, and its signature Moto app.

The Moto app is where you’ll find Motorola’s custom features like Peek Display (an ambient version of an always-on display), Sidebar (a side menu of your favorite apps, not unlike Samsung’s Edge panel), and Fast Flashlight (a double-chopping motion to trigger the flashlight). These features paired with the rest of the experience make this version of Android one of the best you can get. It’s lightweight, clean, and void of any unnecessary clutter.

Motorola also includes its Moto Secure app, which bundles a suite of security features like Secure folder, extra network protection, and a neat PIN Pad scramble that hides the numbers you type to unlock your phone from prying eyes. You also get quick access to Android’s built-in security settings like privacy controls, Permission manager, and your Privacy dashboard. Overall, I found this app very helpful, especially for a $250 phone.

I've seen $250 phones with far worse bloatware situations.

However, Motorola doesn’t get a complete pass here. It’s a budget phone, so there’s bound to be bloatware, and boy is that truer than ever. On the home screen and in the app drawer, Motorola literally includes fake app folders with advertisements for apps it wants you to install. There’s also a good amount of apps you simply won’t want like Booking.com, CallApp Contacts, PCH+, and — everybody's favorite — Solitaire. But I've seen $250 phones with far worse bloatware situations.

It’s also worth pointing out that Motorola is promising three years of software updates for the Moto G, with one major OS upgrade to Android 14. If you can live with simple security patches during your time with the device, you’ll be fine. Everyone else might want to shop for something that’ll get at least two major OS updates.

Battery life: Longer than its Power-ful sibling

When I first learned about the Moto G for 2023, I was surprised to find out its battery was the same size as the one in the Moto G Power, which is supposed to boast the best endurance out of any G-branded phone in its lineup. The battery sits at 5,000mAh which, with the regular Moto G’s more efficient Snapdragon chip and 720p screen, means the phone can last longer than the G Power on a full charge.

In my own usage, I wasn’t able to get past two days on the G Power. In XDA's Timi Cantisano’s review, we found you could stretch it to three days if you tried, but I was never able to do that. Plus, I found the device had poor standby time, which doesn’t help if you want to survive a weekend without a charger.

The standard Moto G can easily last two to three days on a charge with my usage.

The standard Moto G, meanwhile, is another story. It can easily last two to three days on a charge with my usage, which consists of a lot of Slack messages, Twitter scrolling, email-firing, Spotify streaming, and picture taking. That’s with the 120Hz refresh rate enabled, mind you, as well as the brightness cranked up to about 75%. Standby time was also much better; I found that the device would only drop around 5% overnight, whereas the G Power could easily drop 15 percent before I pick it back up.

When it’s time to juice back up, Motorola includes 15W wired charging which, by today’s standards, is far from fast. There’s no wireless charging, although that doesn’t come as a shock. You won’t find a charging brick in the box, unfortunately, so you’ll have to rely on whatever you have lying around.

Should you buy the Moto G 5G (2023)?

You should buy the Moto G 5G (2023) if:

• You prefer a cleaner software experience
• You need excellent battery life
• You want a 120Hz screen

You shouldn’t buy the Moto G 5G (2023) if:

• You want to take good photos
• You use your phone for mobile payments
• You want good water resistance

I felt lukewarm about the Moto G during my review period. I was neither impressed nor disappointed by it, and at $250, those are the expectations everyone should have.

Its sturdy build quality, decent performance, clean software, and long battery life make it a nice phone to use for everyday tasks like social media, checking your email, and messaging your friends. But with a list of drawbacks that include poor camera quality, no NFC, and a low-resolution display, any one of its shortcomings could be a dealbreaker.

However, if what you need is a decent phone for under $250, the Moto G is a solid choice. It’s faster than the Galaxy A14 and lasts much longer on a charge, while the rest of the experience is generally found in phones priced at $300 and up. By no means is this one of the best phones of all time, but it’s a solid contender for one of the best budget entries of the year.