Moto G Power 5G Review: This $300 Phone Gets Just Enough Right

7.0/ 10
SCORE

Moto G Power 5G (2023)

$300 at Best Buy

Pros

• Great screen for its price
• 256GB of storage
• Works on all three US carriers

Cons

• Weak photography
• Slow charging
• No NFC for mobile payments

The release of the $300 Moto G Power 5G is a pivotal moment for Motorola's perennial value-priced phone. After years of highlighting battery life above all else -- sometimes lasting as long as three days -- the new phone's powers revolve around its screen, 5G compatibility and internal specs.

The Power 5G is the lowest priced phone I've seen that has a 6.5-inch 120Hz refresh rate screen, 256GB of internal storage and 6GB of memory. This makes it a media powerhouse that can easily be a home for your music library, downloaded Netflix movies and games. 

And even though it's no longer the star feature of the phone, the Moto G Power 5G's 5,000-mAh battery can still last about a day and a half with heavy use, or two days with lighter usage.

Unlike a lot of phones that cost $300 or less, the Moto G Power works on all three major carriers and runs a lightly skinned take on Android 13. However it's held back by a camera that struggles to capture much detail, and it lacks NFC for mobile payments. That latter omission is especially notable as contactless payment is a standard feature for this price range. And like other Moto G phones, the Power 5G gets one major software update and three years of security updates. The phone also includes a few bundled apps that are forcibly installed during setup like TikTok (read: bloatware), but they are easy enough to uninstall if you don't want them.

If you can deal with those compromises, the Moto G Power 5G is still a very capable phone for the price -- just as long as you don't need this to be your camera.

Moto G Power 5G design and specs

The Moto G Power 5G has a simple design that looks average. Its plastic body comes in two colors: Mineral Black and Pearl White. The 6.5-inch display has a 1080p resolution, the aforementioned 120Hz refresh rate and a screen cutout for the 16-megapixel front-facing camera.

The screen is quite nice for the price. The higher refresh rate makes articles easy to read, smooths out game animations and brings out details when I stream YouTube or Netflix videos.

There are stereo speakers on the top and bottom, which is a nice upgrade from the single speakers we usually see in this price range. A headphone jack sits next to the USB-C charging port, and there's a SIM/microSD card tray. A side fingerprint sensor is built into the phone's power button, which unlocks the phone quickly.

On the back is a Motorola logo and the phone's three cameras: a 50-megapixel main camera, a 2-megapixel macro camera and a 2-megapixel depth sensor for portrait mode.

Inside is a MediaTek Dimensity 930 processor, which performed fine launching in and out of games and apps. The phone did chug a bit when I had the Marvel Snap card game cranked up to its higher graphics settings, but when I moved those down to medium, the game ran at 60 frames per second with no problem. In benchmark tests, it compared favorably to the $258 TCL Stylus 5G and $228 OnePlus Nord N300 5G in terms of performance.

Even with the phone's screen set to its 120Hz refresh rate, the 5,000-mAh battery performed well even during heavy usage. I took the Moto G Power on a weekend trip to Philadelphia; fully charging it Friday afternoon before I left. It lasted on a single charge for over a day and a half and survived two-and-a-half hours of heavy use on a train ride, a photo-centric late night out and an entire day of touring. On Sunday morning it still had 35% of its charge from Friday.

While I have no complaints about the battery life, I do have issues with its charging speed. The phone comes with a 10W phone charger, which took about two-and-a-half hours to fully charge the battery from 5%. When I used an 18W charger, it took one hour and 47 minutes to go from 35% to 97%. In comparison, the OnePlus N300 and OnePlus N20 each ship with a 33W fast charger that can cover the same ground in under an hour. The TCL Stylus 5G comes with an 18W charger that takes about 90 minutes to fully charge.

Similarly, the Moto G Power's 5,000-mAh battery is not as unique as it once was and is a common feature among competing phones.

Moto G Power 5G cameras

The Moto G Power 5G cameras are not very good, even for the price range. Photos consistently looked blurry, especially in indoor settings. There's a Night mode, which activates automatically in a darker environment, but it really didn't help. I took photos on a dance floor and later of my friends' cats, and both looked like they had too much image noise.

I was particularly not happy with the food photos I took throughout the weekend. During a birthday mocktail celebration, I got blurry photos of our drinks and charcuterie, to the point where I asked my friend to send me a photo of a dish she took with a Pixel 7 Pro.

Outdoor photography was better. My photos and videos of Philadelphia murals had great color. I was even able to take a few good food snaps that had a nice pop to them outdoors in sunlight.

I took a few test shots with the Moto G Power 5G, the OnePlus Nord N300 5G and the TCL Stylus 5G using the CNET office's grass wall and bookshelf to further compare the three phones. The grass wall has lots of detail and is fairly well lit, with the Power 5G and the TCL Stylus 5G each emphasizing more of the darker shades of the wall. The OnePlus phone instead saturates much of the greens, creating a more neon-like effect.

A darker bookshelf in the office however proved to again be a challenge for the Power 5G. Both the TCL and the OnePlus were able to brighten up the bookshelf and get more detail.

Meanwhile the 16-megapixel front-facing camera does a serviceable job of taking selfies and for video chats, but it's also not particularly detailed. A photo I took in a well-lit environment, such as this photo in New York's Penn Station came out alright. It's not especially detailed, but I feel like it has balance and color.

On the other hand, a selfie I took once I arrived in Philadelphia at Franky Bradley's bar had the same issues as my pictures taken on the 50-megapixel main camera. Put simply, in that darker environment with some lighting and the phone's night mode, I really don't look good at all.

Moto G Power 5G: The bottom line

The Moto G Power 5G works very well if you mainly plan to use the phone for calls, texting, watching videos and playing games. You get a lot for $300, such as a 6.5-inch 120Hz refresh rate screen and a phone that comes unlocked. If you are using Verizon, the Power 5G might be your only option for a device under $300 without being on sale, and if that's the case, then it's a pretty decent one.

However if you are using AT&T or T-Mobile, I highly suggest looking into the OnePlus N20 5G or the OnePlus N300. Both phones have better cameras than the Power 5G, charge faster and include NFC. However Motorola beats OnePlus in security update support, which could be more appealing to someone that plans to use the phone until it breaks.

How we test phones

Every phone tested by CNET's reviews team was actually used in the real world. We test a phone's features, play games and take photos. We examine the display to see if it's bright, sharp and vibrant. We analyze the design and build to see how it is to hold and whether it has an IP-rating for water resistance. We push the processor's performance to the extremes using both standardized benchmark tools like GeekBench and 3DMark, along with our own anecdotal observations navigating the interface, recording high-resolution videos and playing graphically intense games at high refresh rates.

All the cameras are tested in a variety of conditions from bright sunlight to dark indoor scenes. We try out special features like night mode and portrait mode and compare our findings against similarly priced competing phones. We also check out the battery life by using it daily as well as running a series of battery drain tests.

We take into account additional features like support for 5G, satellite connectivity, fingerprint and face sensors, stylus support, fast charging speeds, foldable displays among others that can be useful. And we balance all of this against the price to give you the verdict on whether that phone, whatever price it is, actually represents good value.