Moto G Pure review: 4 reasons to buy and 5 reasons to skip (2023)

Motorola's G series has proven over the years that a budget smartphone doesn't have to sacrifice features. The Moto G Pure is a stark reminder that cheap smartphones still occasionally do this.

With the Moto G Pure, Motorola is offering a very affordable smartphone that could appeal to people who want to pay as little as possible for their next phone. But the compromises are very high, even nullifying areas in which the Moto G Pure delivers.

Our Moto G Pure review finds a few areas where Motorola's G-series newcomer can stand out from the rest. But they're outnumbered by the compromises made to keep the cost of this phone so low.

Moto G Pure review: Reasons to buy this phone

Moto G pure price:The Moto G Pure's biggest selling point comes straight from your wallet. The phone costs $159, hundreds of dollars less than mid-range models and a fraction of what you'd pay for a flagship device.

The Moto G Pure outperforms other affordable Moto G series phones as well. It costs $90 less than the 64GB version of the Moto G Pure.Moto G Power (2021)and up to $40 cheaper than the 32 GB version of this phone. You can save $140 by opting for the Moto G Pure over the Moto G Stylus (2021).

Even better, the Moto G Pure isn't tied to a carrier. Yes, both Verizon and T-Mobile offer the device, but you can buy it unlocked at Motorola, as well as at retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, and B&H Photo.

Moto G Pure battery life:Apart from the low price, the battery life of the Moto G Pure is undoubtedly the highlight of this phone. Motorola knows how to make its devices last, especially its cheaper phones, and the Moto G Pure will soon join a number of other Motorola offerings in ours.best cell phone battery lifeList.

Motorola has packed 4,000mAh into the Moto G Pure, which isn't quite as beefy as power packs in other G-series phones. But the Pure still lasted a long time in our battery test, which involved continuously surfing the cellular network until The phone ran out of battery. The Moto G Pure's 11 hours and 52 minutes on LTE isn't quite as long as the epic 14 hours the Moto G Power can manage, but it's well above the smartphone average. It even outperforms flagships like that.iphone 13, which lasted an impressive 11 hours and 42 minutes in our test.

In everyday use, I took a fully charged Moto G Pure to shoot photos at a soccer game on Saturday afternoon, and still had battery left on Sunday and Monday for more photo, gaming, and video testing. When Motorola says it expects the Moto G Pure's battery to last several days, they're not kidding.

Moto G Pure Design:The Moto G Pure may be cheap, but that doesn't mean it feels cheap. Ah, when you hold the phone, you can't miss the plastic body of the device. But the deep indigo color is quite noticeable and the textured back, which looks a bit grainy, makes the Moto G Pure grippy.

Motorola has also retained a feature that's becoming increasingly rare in smartphones: there's a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top of the phone. More people may be trying to get the best wireless headphones these days, but not everyone is ready to take that leap, and the ability to use a pair of wired headphones that allow you to charge your phone at the same time is an option. . welcome design.

Moto G Pure screen size:Motorola announces the screen size and resolution of the Moto G Pure's 6.5-inch LCD panel. And granted, it's a large screen size with a decent 1600 x 720 resolution for this price. I certainly didn't have to strain to see the details of Luca's sunny Portorosso village or the spooky Easter eggs in Muppet Haunted Mansion while streaming both videos on Disney Plus. (As for screen color accuracy, more on that in a bit.)

The screen is also quite bright, measuring 555 nits with adaptive brightness turned on. This equates to 415 nits for theOnePlus Nord N200 5G.

If I have a criticism of the Moto G Pure's screen, it's that Motorola left too much bezel. The top of the screen is decent, with a teardrop-sized camera cutout that dips into the screen. But the chin at the bottom of the screen is large, so 6.5-inches feels less expansive than it should.

• which are thebest cheap cell phones?
• The best cheap cell phone plansfor less than $40 a month

Moto G Pure review: Reasons to avoid this phone

Pure Moto G performance:The MediaTek Helio G25 that powers the Moto G Pure just isn't up to the task. Even budget phones should be able to launch apps relatively easily, but when you tap an app on the Moto G Pure's screen, there's a noticeable delay before it's ready to go. This is particularly noticeable when it came time to launch the camera app, where I noticed a long pause before the G Pure's camera was ready to shoot. You can miss unique moments in these delays and I really think it is unacceptable, low price or not.

The results of our benchmark tests for the Moto G Pure confirm this mediocre performance. In Geekbench 5, which measures overall performance, the Moto G Pure earned single-core and multi-core scores of 133 and 481 respectively. with corresponding scores of 508 and 1,602.

I was able to play demanding games on the Moto G Pure, but just barely. PUBG Mobile showed a few glitches here and there, and graphical flourishes like still-rendered trees and terrain when I tackled them in this first-person shooter. This would explain the difference in 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme OpenGL ES 3.1 test scores, where the Moto G Pure's score of 438 is well below the Nord N200's 2416.

Moto G Pure Camera:Dual-lens cameras are pretty common now, even on cheaper phones. But the Moto G Pure's second lens isn't what you might think. Instead of an ultra-wide angle lens for the main camera, Motorola opted for a depth sensor to improve portraits. That means a 2MP sensor is joined by the 13MP wide-angle lens on the back of the Moto G Pure.

If your photographic needs are more conventional, photos taken with the Moto G Pure are good enough. The main camera took a fairly balanced photo of this bowl of apples, accurately capturing the greens and reds, while also capturing some detail in the wrinkled skin of an older apple. You don't really get the same balance in a similar photo taken byOnePlus Nord N10 5G, the cheapest smartphone I have in my hands. Light streaming in from a nearby window overexposed the photo and washed out the colors of the apples on the left.

But that was the only case where the Moto G Pure managed to excel in the camera test. When I was photographing a college football game, my Motorola phone couldn't handle the shadows from the setting sun, losing all detail in the crowd around me. The Nord N10 didn't have the same problem, maintaining a consistent hue while still reflecting shadows as they slid across the field.

By the way, one would expect the Moto G Pure to only need to be photographed in bright light. There is no night mode on this phone, and the lower the lighting, the more noise can appear in the image.

What about the depth sensor that's supposed to help the Moto G Pure take better portrait photos? It's a mixed bag in my test. My friend Jason looks pretty sharp in this photo, but the Moto G Pure decided that his wife was part of the background and blurred her. The Nord N10 doesn't make that mistake (although, to be honest, the Nord N10 takes a minimal hand when it comes to background blur). Perhaps asking for a two-person portrait was too much for a budget phone, but it speaks to the Pure's limitations.

Up front, the Moto G Pure packs a 5-megapixel camera, and again, results are decent when the lighting is favourable. This selfie of mine is quite detailed, although the Moto G Pure has favored a warmer skin tone which seems to smooth out the wrinkles around my eyes. I prefer the lighter touch of the Nord N10 here, where it feels like I've spent less time in a tanning bed.

Moto G Pure screen colors:I like the size of the Moto G Pure's screen, but I wish it had better color representation. The particularly bright colors look a bit odd on the G Pure's 6.5-inch panel: that much-coveted red Vespa in Luca turned out tinted orange when I streamed the movie on the Motorola phone.

Our test numbers confirm this. In default saturation mode, the Moto G Pure's display captures 103.8% of the sRGB color spectrum. This compares to 160.7% for the Nord N200. The Moto G Pure's screen isn't quite as accurate, either, with a Delta-E rating of 0.33 versus 0.26 on the Nord N200. (The closer the number is to zero, the more accurate the colors will be.)

Moto G Pure Charge Speed:It's a good thing the Moto G Pure's battery lasts so long, because charging takes time, too. The phone supports 10W wired charging, which is pretty standard on Motorola's G-series devices, but it's still pretty slow.

Half an hour of charging brought a depleted Moto G Pure back to 24% performance. That's well below the 32% we got with the Nord N200's 18W charger. Even theiPhone SE, which comes with a 5W charger, beats the Moto G Pure by getting 29% in 30 minutes.

Moto G Pure connectivity and support:The Moto G Pure only works with LTE; no 5G modem here. For many bargain hunters, this absence doesn't matter much: 5G networks are still in their early stages, and you probably won't see a huge increase in download speeds depending on where you live.

But it will not always be so. 5G networks will improve. App creators will find ways to take advantage of better performance and lower latency. And the Moto G Pure will not be able to reap the rewards of these advances.

Then again, it's not like this phone is built to last. The Moto G Pure comes with Android 11 and only gets a guaranteed Android update plus two years of security updates. The only update will beandroid 12, which is already available on Google Pixel phones and will roll out to other Android devices soon. Unboxing a Moto G Pure is no different than opening a fortune cookie with a note reading "You're about to buy a new phone."

Moto G Pure Verdict

The phone's good value isn't just a lower price. It also means giving you enough features so you can keep your phone longer and save even more.

That's just not possible with the Moto G Pure. In addition to the lack of 5G, the phone's minimal Android support and low-end performance mean you'll be optimistic about an upgrade in a few years. Why not spend a little more up front for a full-featured phone that you can use longer?

Yes, the Moto G Pure lasts a long time on a charge, but so do other Moto G series phones, which cost a bit more and remove some of the Pure's limitations. Motorola makes plenty of devices that appeal to bargain hunters – the Moto G Pure isn't one of them.

• Further:best unlocked phones