Review: Moto G Stylus 5G and Moto G 5G (2022)

I forgot that I reviewed a flagship Motorola phone this past March. Heck, I forgot Motorola had even announced it. That might be because it feels like I've gone through a raft of forgettable Moto phones in a short span of time. Last December I tried the Moto G Power and Moto G Pure, then earlier this year I tested the Moto G Stylus 2022 and Motorola Edge+, and here we are now with the Moto G 5G and Moto G Stylus 5G, two new midrange phones. That's just too many phones from one company.

Aside from the recent Power and Pure phones, which are frustratingly sluggish, I always reach the same consensus with Motorola devices: They're fine. If I had to use a single word, it would be middling. These Android smartphones usually perform well and have good battery life, but competitors like Samsung and Google always offer better cameras, more features, and longer software support, so you don't need to buy a new phone every year or two. 

But if I had to recommend a Motorola phone right now, it would be the new Moto G Stylus 5G. At $500, it strikes a decent balance between features and price. The cheaper Moto G 5G at $400 just makes a few too many sacrifices. 

Photograph: Motorola

Both the Moto G Stylus 5G and the Moto G 5G are snappy performers that deliver roughly a day and a half of battery life, thanks to their 5,000-mAh battery cells. It's really nice not having to worry about recharging a phone every night. 

The Stylus 5G is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 695 processor with 8 gigabytes of RAM, and the Moto G 5G uses MediaTek's Dimensity 700 chip with 6 GB of RAM. You'll notice the latter stuttering here and there, with apps not launching as quickly, but neither gave me trouble running my usual slate of apps and games day to day. 

Uniquely, Motorola has bumped the storage for these devices to 256 GB. The Moto G Stylus 5G goes a step further and includes a preinstalled 256-GB MicroSD card, so you're effectively getting 512 GB of storage. (The Moto G 5G has a MicroSD card slot, but the card isn't included.) This is just about the only area where Motorola has pushed the needle, as most phones in this price bracket come with 128 GB of storage. 

I like that each has a capacitive fingerprint sensor embedded in the power button on the right edge, and a headphone jack for corded earbuds. I just wish these phones weren't so huge. The Stylus 5G is the biggest with its 6.8-inch screen, but the Moto G 5G's 6.5-inch screen isn't much smaller. The size combined with the fact that both have slippery plastic backs makes them annoyingly difficult to wield one-handed. 

If you couldn't tell by the name, these phones have 5G support. Par for the course, it's the basic sub-6 kind, which isn't much faster than 4G LTE. It's weird that Motorola is one of the few budget phone makers that can't seem to bring 5G into its sub-$300 phones when OnePlus, Samsung, and Nokia have managed to do it just fine. Alas, that's why these two new Moto G phones exist. 

Also in the name is the word stylus, and yes, the Moto G Stylus 5G indeed has one embedded inside; you pull it out from the bottom of the phone. It's handy for doodling and signing documents, and for other things too, I guess, if you like using a stylus as an input device. (I don't.) 

The Stylus 5G also has a leg up on the Moto G 5G with its camera system. Both have a 50-megapixel main camera, but they're not quite the same. You'll get sharper details, brighter colors, and better low-light images on the Stylus 5G. The results are passable, but compare them with the Pixel 5A and you'll see that Google's $450 phone delivers more natural colors, better detail, and significantly nicer nighttime shots. (The selfie cameras on Motorola's phones are especially not great.)

The screens on these phones are LCD, which doesn't offer the wonderfully rich blacks, rich contrast, and vivid colors you get from OLED screens—Samsung's $450 Galaxy A53 5G and the Pixel 5A both have OLED panels, so I'm not sure why Motorola can't do the same. 

You also might be annoyed to hear that the Moto G 5G has a 720p screen. It's fine, even if you can see some pixels, but it's just puzzling when the $282 OnePlus Nord N20 5G has a higher-res 1080p panel. On both new Motos, the screens don't get very bright, so they can be tough to see in broad daylight. The saving grace is that these panels support high refresh rates of 120 Hz on the Stylus 5G and 90 Hz on the Moto G 5G, which makes them feel more responsive and smoother when you scroll.  

The most frustrating omission for me, however, is the lack of a near-field communication (NFC) sensor in the Moto G 5G. The Stylus 5G has it, which means you can make contactless payments via Google Pay. In the past few years, I've stopped carrying my wallet when I walk my dog with my partner, so when we want to stop by a deli or coffee shop, I use my phone to pay. I've done this with $1,000 phones and devices as cheap as $200. Yet Motorola bafflingly and consistently omits this feature in most of its Moto G lineup. It's annoying. 

These phones also don't have decent waterproofing. They'll be fine in the rain, but they can't handle a dip in the pool, unlike similarly priced offerings from Samsung and Google. That's not great for phones that cost $400 and $500.

Some good news: These devices will now get three years of security updates, so they'll stay patched for longer. Unfortunately, Motorola is still only promising one OS update, so they'll receive Android 13 in 2023, and that's it. Samsung offers four OS upgrades and five years of security updates, which adds new features, security upgrades, and privacy improvements, so Motorola is coming up quite short here. 

If you need a good cheap phone, I'd recommend the Google Pixel 5A or the upcoming Pixel 6A instead. Samsung's Galaxy A53 5G is another great option. I even like last year's Nokia XR20 more than either of these Motorola phones; it's available for around $500 these days, and it includes wireless charging. If you must have a Motorola, then go with the Moto G Stylus 5G. It'll serve you just fine. Just know that Motorola phones often go on sale, so you should wait for a deal.