The Motorola One 5G Ace is truly a phone that won't break the bank.
Sarah Tew/CNETMotorola is no stranger to creating compelling feature-packed phones that won't empty your wallet. The new Motorola One 5G Ace is the most recent example. The Ace is the company's second take on the Motorola One 5G phone released last summer on AT&T and Verizon. At $400 (which converts roughly to £285 or AU$500) the Ace is $45 cheaper than last year's phone which you can still buy.
When I set out to review the Ace I immediately ran into a problem: The price. At the time I'm writing this review, you can buy the Ace for $20. That's not a typo. And that led to the question: Was I reviewing a $400 phone, a $300 phone or a $20 phone?
The Ace is listed on the Metro by T-Mobile site for a discounted price of $280. But for a limited time, you can get the Motorola One 5G Ace for $20 when you port an existing number to Metro. For less than the cost of dinner, you can get a brand new 5G phone. The catch? Well, there really isn't one. The $20 version is locked to T-Mobile but for only six months.
The Metro promotion isn't likely the only deal you'll get on the Ace. Motorola has a solid track record discounting its phones throughout the year. Right now, you can get last year's Motorola One 5G for $300. If you're already on AT&T or Verizon and aren't planning to switch carriers, that's the way I'd go -- as long as you can handle all the carrier branding and bloatware.
Motorola One 5G Ace
Like
- Battery life is outstanding
- Available for $20
- Better performance than other 5G budget phones
Don't Like
- Regular $400 price is higher than competitors
- Screen isn't bright in sunlight
- Ultrawide and macro cameras feel like an add-ons
The Ace isn't the only 5G budget phone to consider. The $300 OnePlus Nord N10 5G represents an incredible value. It has a smaller screen, a smaller battery and a slower processor than the Ace, but comes with a 90Hz high refresh rate display and a fast-charging wall adapter (Warp charge), which the Ace doesn't.
The Motorola One 5G Ace is a good $400 phone, a great $300 phone and an absolutely fantastic $20 phone. Aside from a few absent features, which I'll discuss later, the Ace is similar to last year's Motorola One 5G. I encourage you to read my Motorola One 5G review.
The Motorola One 5G Ace is chonky
At 212 grams, the Ace is a heavy phone. To give you some perspective the Galaxy S21 Ultra weighs 229 grams and the iPhone 12 Pro Max is 228 grams. The Ace isn't the heaviest phone I tested, but it's not the lightest either. That heft makes the Ace feel solid and well-made for its $400 price. Also, I like the plastic back and finish. It looks attractive and contemporary.
The Ace gets incredible battery life
A lot of the weight comes from the battery. Motorola deserves praise for including large capacity batteries in their budget phones over the past few years. The Ace has a 5,000-mAh battery, which in my testing got through a day and a half no problem and often made it through two days on a single charge. There are phones that cost two or three times as much as the Ace and don't last anywhere near as long.
In battery tests on the Ace for continuous video playback on Airplane mode it lasted 25 hours and 8 minutes. That is the second longest battery life on any phone we tested in the past few years. Only the LG V60 ThinQ 5G beats it with a whopping time of 31 hours, 14 minutes on a single charge.
The screen could be brighter
The Ace has a 6.7-inch LCD screen with a punch out for a single selfie camera. Gone is the vampire bite from the 2020 One 5G that housed its two front-facing cameras. The display and bezels on the Ace look sleek as a package. The screen has FHD plus resolution and support for HDR10. In everyday use, it looked good, but I wish the screen got brighter. When I was outside on a sunny day, it was difficult to make out what was on the display.
The Ace lacks the 90Hz high refresh rate screen found on the 2020 One 5G. As much as I enjoy high refresh rate screens, I don't miss it here and think it was a wise compromise on Motorola's part.
The screen is good, but can be hard to see when it's sunny out. For a cloudy day like in this picture, it does well.
Sarah Tew/CNETMore cameras are not better
The Ace has a main wide-angle camera, an ultrawide-angle camera, a macro camera and a single selfie camera. The main 48-megapixel camera uses pixel binning to combine multiple pixels into one. This helps reduce image noise and increase brightness.
I'm impressed with many of the photos the Ace captured, especially with the main camera. But nearly all of these photos were taken in bright lighting. In dimmer situations, the quality of photos becomes more hit-or-miss, and noise reduction makes the details in photos too soft.
The Ace nails the exposure and the reflection in the water.
Patrick Holland/CNET
In this photo, it did a good job handling the mix of highlights, shadows and textures
Patrick Holland/CNET
This picture shows off the natural bokeh qualities of the main camera on the phone.
Patrick Holland/CNET
The phone went into HDR mode here and the results are good.
Patrick Holland/CNET
Here's another HDR photo that captured the sunset.
Patrick Holland/CNET
Photos taken in low and medium light start to fall apart. Details are soft. There's image noise. The Ace has a night mode called Night Vision, which didn't impress me.
Patrick Holland/CNET
Here is the same scene as above taken with Night Vision. The photo is definitely brighter. But it's not as drastic an improvement as you'd find on the Google Pixel 4A or iPhone SE.
Patrick Holland/CNET
A selfie taken with the Ace. Skin tones look good but dynamic range is limited. Notice the highlights in the sky going to white.
Patrick Holland/CNETThe ultrawide camera performs just OK. Even its good photos aren't anywhere near the image quality of the main camera. Unless you're in good lighting, you're going to get mediocre ultrawide photos.
I like this photo taken with the ultrawide camera. The lighting is good, details are good and it's not over sharpened.
Patrick Holland/CNET
This photo captured with the ultrawide-angle camera is more typical of the results I got. Details are soft, the sky is noisy and there's a lot of noise reduction. Look closely at the white building on the right.
Patrick Holland/CNETI don't get the appeal of a macro camera on a phone. If you're into ridiculously close-up shots then it's there for you. I wish Motorola would remove the macro camera, take the money spent on it and use it to improve the ultrawide camera.
A few times while framing a photo, a prompt would appear urging me to change to the macro camera. I would. Then, when I was framing with the macro camera, a prompt would appear suggesting I use the 1x (main) camera. Also, autofocus with the macro camera isn't great. Frequently when I took a photo, the camera would struggle to grab focus.
I tried taking this macro photo five times. Four of them were out of focus. Even this photo is a little soft
Patrick Holland/CNETIn terms of video, image quality isn't great and the focus tends to hunt. Good lighting offers good results. And the image stabilization in video is surprisingly good. Check out the video below to see footage shot at both 4K and 1080p resolutions with the Ace.
If the Ace were a $700-plus phone I'd be disappointed with its camera system. But it's solid for a $400 phone. You'd have to pay $99 more to jump up to the stellar cameras on the Google Pixel 4A 5G. As long as you know what the trade-offs are, you're going to be able to take some good photos with the Ace's main camera.
The Ace has a new processor but last year's software
The Ace runs Android 10. For a $300 or $20 phone Android 10 is just fine. But for a $400 phone, I wished it shipped with Android 11. Motorola promises an update to Android 11, but there's no details yet on when that will happen.
The Ace has a Snapdragon 750G 5G chip and 6GB of RAM which is two more gigabytes than last year's One 5G. In my time with the Ace, it worked well. I didn't experience any hiccups or lag time throughout day-to-day tasks. In benchmark testing, it was on par with last year's One 5G sometimes scoring better and sometimes scoring lower. The Ace performed much better than the OnePlus Nord N10 5G and last year's Pixel 4A 5G. See the results below.
3DMark Slingshot Unlimited
Note:
Longer bars indicate better performanceGeekbench v.5.0 single-core
Note:
Longer bars indicate better performanceGeekbench v.5.0 multicore
Note:
Longer bars indicate better performanceMotorola One 5G Ace specs vs. Motorola One 5G, OnePlus Nord N10 5G, Google Pixel 4A 5G
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Motorola One 5G Ace | Motorola One 5G | OnePlus Nord N10 5G | Google Pixel 4A 5G |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Display size, resolution | 6.7-inch LCD, 2,400x1,080 pixels | 6.7-inch FHD; 2,520x1,080 pixels | 6.49-inch LCD; 2,400x1,080 pixels | 6.2-inch OLED; 2,340x1,080 pixels |
| Pixel density | 393 ppi | 409 ppi | 405 ppi | 413 ppi |
| Dimensions (Inches) | 6.54x3x0.39 | 6.61x2.91x0.35 in | 6.4x2.94x0.35 in | 6.1x2.9x0.3 in |
| Dimensions (Millimeters) | 166.1x76.1x9.9mm | 168x74x9mm | 163x74.7x8.95 mm | 153.9 x 74 x 8.2 mm (Sub-6 only); 153.9x74x8.5 mm (mmWave + Sub-6) |
| Weight (Ounces, Grams) | 7.49 oz; 212g | 7.3 oz; 207g | 6.7 oz; 190g | 5.93 oz; 168g (Sub-6 only); 6.03 oz; 171g (mmWave + Sub-6) |
| Mobile software | Android 10 | Android 10 | Android 10 | Android 11 |
| Camera | 48-megapixel wide-angle, 2-megapixel macro, 8-megapixel ultra-wide angle | 48-megapixel (standard), 8-megapixel (ultra-wide), 5-megapixel (macro), 2-megapixel (depth) | 64-megapixel (standard), 8-megapixel (ultra-wide), 2-megapixel (macro), 2-megapixel (monochrome) | 12.2-megapixel (standard), 16-megapixel (ultra-wide) |
| Front-facing camera | 16-megapixel | 16-megapixel, 8-megapixel | 16-megapixel | 8-megapixel |
| Video capture | 4K | 4K | 4K | 4K |
| Processor | Snapdragon 750G 5G | Snapdragon 765G | Snapdragon 690 | Snapdragon 765G |
| Storage | 128GB | 128GB | 128GB | 128GB |
| RAM | 6GB | 4GB | 6GB | 6GB |
| Expandable storage | Up to 1TB | Up to 1TB | Up to 512GB | No |
| Battery | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 4,300 mAh | 3,800 mAh |
| Fingerprint sensor | Rear | Side | Rear | Rear |
| Connector | USB-C | USB-C | USB-C | USB-C |
| Headphone jack | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Special features | 5G enabled, IP52 water and dust resistence, IP54 for T-Mobile | 5G enabled, 90Hz refresh rate, 15W Turbo Power charging | 5G enabled, 90Hz display, Warp Charge | 5G enabled; dual-SIM capabilities (nano-SIM and e-SIM); fast charging |
| Price off-contract (USD) | $400 | $445 (AT&T), $550 (Verizon) | $300 | $499 |
| Price (GBP) | Converts to £285 | Converts to £315 | £329 | £499 |
| Price (AUD) | Converts to AU$500 | Converts to AU$560 | Converted from UK: AU$600 | AU$799 |