Motorola is no stranger to 5G at this point, not putting a stylus in a budget-friendly phone. But this year we're getting the Moto G Stylus 5G that combines the midrange Moto G line with a stylus focused on productivity and lightning fast 5G connectivity.
It's a little more expensive than what we usually see in this group of phones, but the promise of those extra features might pay off.
Safe design
- Huge screen
- Can be hard to hold
- Has a headphone jack
- Built-in stylus
The Moto G Stylus 5G plays it pretty safe. If you've used a Moto G phone recently, you're going to be pretty familiar with the design used here.
It's squared off, and Motorola uses their classic glossy plastic that almost looks like glass. It's not glass, obviously, but it still feels alright. It's a gigantic fingerprint magnet, however.
This phone's large, housing a very sizable 6.8-inch screen. That's great when you're using it, but handling can be very tricky unless you've got large hands. I'm used to some of the more unwieldy phones on the market, and sometimes I even struggle to get my finger lined up for the fingerprint scanner. But hey, at least Netflix looks good.
The bottom of the phone houses a headphone jack, USB-C charging port, and the stylus in the bottom right. That's pretty fully featured, especially since you can get away with wired headphones. The power button and volume keys are on the right side, and the Moto logo on the back of the phone doubles as a biometric sensor. With the size I really wish Motorola would've used a power button that doubled as a fingerprint scanner, but sometimes you gotta hit a price point.
Display and audio
- Good screen
- Cheap speakers
At $399, expectations go up a bit for the Moto G Stylus 5G when you're looking at the display and speaker quality. Motorola did a pretty good job here, too, keeping the phone completely competitive with similar devices.
The screen is huge, but more importantly it's bright and colorful. Whether you're watching videos, checking out YouTube, or playing games, it's a pretty solid experience. At just a full HD resolution it's not the most crisp screen on the market considering its size, but it works well for media.
The speakers are fine, if a bit tinny. There's not a lot of focus here, but having a 3.5mm port will take a lot of criticism away from cheap speakers these days.
Gaming and productivity
- Gaming is just okay
- Cool software additions
- Motorola isn't good with updates
With a phone this big that's marketed with a built-in stylus, that Snapdragon 480 CPU has a lot to live up to.
Gaming performance is fine, but not quite as pleasant as regular media. Playing in landscape is frustrating because your hands tend to cover up exactly where the speaker grilles are, and some games run into some noticeable choppiness. I tested the Stylus pretty thoroughly with The Elder Scrolls: Blades, and while it was playable, it wasn't great.
Productivity is a little smoother, especially with the built-in stylus. The phone does a good job of holding apps in memory without shutting down your music in the background, and switching apps is generally fast enough. The stylus itself is fairly responsive, but writing in smaller font sometimes I'd have problems with it not properly registering certain letters. It'll probably take you a couple weeks of usage to figure out exactly what does and does not make the stylus work well.
There's some additional software included to take advantage of the extra hardware here, like a full notes app that supports the stylus, and taking it out of the phone opens up a customizable toolbar so you can quickly access your favorite stylus apps. This also works while the screen is unlocked so you can quickly launch into a notes app on the fly.
While these software additions are cool, it's probably worth mentioning Motorola is still fairly lackluster with their Android updates. You get Android 11 out of the box, with Android 12 probably coming at some point, but I'd be wary if you're planning on riding this one into Android 13 and beyond.
Decent camera
It's normally very easy to rag on cheaper cameras, but the Moto G Stylus 5G holds its own.
It's got a full four camera setup, giving you better zoom capabilities, macro shots, and low light performance. It won't quite live up to what you can get from a similarly priced Pixel, but it does a good enough job.
Outdoor and well-lit shots are fine, capturing a lot of detail and with a zippy shutter speed.
Low light is better and maybe the best it's ever been on a Moto G phone. The inclusion of a Night Mode helps take much, much better photos, although you'll notice the phone takes a while to focus on a subject if there's not much light.
Everything else
- Excellent battery life
- Fast charging
- Headphone jack
- 5G connectivity
- No IP resistance
Everything else about the Moto G Stylus 5G is pretty solid. You've got a massive 5000mAh battery with TurboPower charging that should juice it up in no time at all, and that headphone jack deserves an honorable mention. It also supports 5G connectivity in supported markets, but this is unfortunately pretty tough for me to test. AT&T does have 5G in my area, but it's regular 5G, not the 5G+ you actually want. The Stylus connects to it, but with middling 15mbps download speeds, it's nothing to focus on, and probably won't be for a few more years.
The phone does lack any IP resistance, so be careful taking it around a running sink or the beach.
But all in all, $399 gets you a small tablet sized screen with decent performance, a nifty stylus, and a well-rounded experience that makes Motorola look like a very solid choice. Just don't expect too many software updates.
