Runner-up
The Moto G Power has a fast LCD screen with a high refresh rate, good performance, and great speakers. It also has a two-day battery and supports wireless charging. But it’s much more expensive than the A15 5G, its screen isn’t as good, and it will only get one major software update.
The Motorola Moto G Power (2024) is a great budget option, though it’s $100 more than our pick. It’s stylish, with a vegan leather backing, and it offers a large 6.7-inch LCD screen, a long-lasting battery, and better performance than most other phones in this price range. The Moto G Power adds NFC for wireless payments and wireless charging, which is a combination rarely seen in cheap phones. It also produces stellar sound thanks to its dual stereo speakers. However, like most budget Android phones, you’ll have to deal with a shorter window of software updates and a subpar camera.
The Moto G Power has a large, fast display. Its 6.7-inch LCD screen, framed by minimal top and bottom bezels, has a 120 Hz refresh rate. The large screen is great for watching videos, and its faster refresh rate means smoother scrolling and a more fluid gaming experience. Overall, the screen delivers sharp and bright output, though it lacks the rich colors that an OLED panel like the one on the Galaxy A15 offers.
It’s more stylish than most budget phones. The G Power has a plastic shell, like most cheap phones, but Motorola added a premium touch: a vegan leather back. It adds a grippable surface to the rear of the device, which feels good in hand, but it can attract hair and lint, which is especially obvious on the brighter, pale lilac color we tested. This helps the G Power stand out in the budget crowd of bland plastic rectangles.
It performs better than the competition. The Moto G Power runs on last year’s MediaTek Dimensity 7020 chip and is powered by 8 GB of RAM, which provides mildly better performance than our pick. Opening and closing apps is faster, and playing Call of Duty: Mobile is much smoother. The G Power isn’t going to beat a newer Galaxy or Pixel, but it gets a lot closer than other budget phones we’ve tested. The Moto G Power also has NFC for mobile payments, which is a first for a Moto G phone.
It supports wireless charging and can last nearly two days on a charge. The G Power’s massive 5,000 mAh battery outlasted all of the other budget phones we tested. On a moderate day of usage, with web browsing, messaging, 20 minutes of gaming, and 30 minutes of streaming YouTube and Disney+ content, we made it a day and a half before needing to plug in the G Power. Using it for longer periods of time to play games and stream videos, we still had 10% battery life left by the end of day. The G Power supports 15 W wireless charging and 30 W wired charging, so it takes just under two hours to fully charge with its included charging brick.
The camera takes just so-so pictures. Photos taken with the Moto G Power aren’t great, even in good lighting. The results from its 50-megapixel main sensor lack details and sharpness, even when capturing photos in broad daylight. The results are even worse when using its 8-megapixel ultrawide, and its low-light photos are plainly terrible.
It won’t get software updates for very long. The Moto G Power offers one software update and two years of security updates, which is unfortunately standard for budget phones. It will receive the Android 15 update and security updates until 2026, but that falls short of the software support offered by Samsung’s Galaxy A15.
Motorola pre-installs more bloatware than most phones. On top of the included folder of Google and Motorola apps, the G Power also pre-installs apps like Booking.com, GoodRX, Walmart, and 1Weather, to name a few of them. Then there are apps bundled within the phone’s Shopping, Discover, Entertainment, and GamesHub folders. You can uninstall these unnecessary apps one by one, but this adds an extra, annoying step in setting up your new phone.
It’s not waterproof. Motorola doesn’t offer an IP rating for the G Power. The phone has a water-repellent barrier to help against spills and light rain, but these won’t help if you drop it in water.
