The $300 Moto G Power is the lowest priced Motorola phone worth buying

this $300 Moto G Power Is it a Motorola phone I can confidently recommend to the company’s 2025 lineup. Even after several weeks of use, Moto g Power doesn’t frustrate me when performing any of my regular tasks. If you are already a Motorola fan, this phone is a great choice to handle the basics without breaking the bank.

This may not sound like a high praise, but the extra $100 is a long way to go compared to the sluggishness I felt when testing the $200 Moto G. Moto g Power offers plenty of extra features for smooth multitasking, video calls, gaming at low graphics settings, and can take good food photos in brightness settings and concerts in darker environments.

Charging speed is a particular highlight; in battery testing, the Moto G Power’s battery increased from 0 to 61% when powered with a 30W wired charger, which is actually faster than last year’s phone. Accompanied by 15W wireless charging QI2 charger.

Fast charging is especially useful considering the power has a large 6.8-inch 1,080p display running at a 120Hz refresh rate, which can drain the battery during more intensive use. The monitor makes streaming video, texting and light gaming easy, but it doesn’t offer particularly vivid HDR colors like I’ve seen on other 300 phones like the OnePlus Nord N30. But this is largely a good trade-off for a lower-priced phone.

The phone’s Mediatek Dimente 6300 processor performed just a little better than the $200 Moto G (with the same processor) from my benchmark, which included a stronger 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Test test, while the more focused GeekBench 6.0 in the calculations.

Outside of the game, I had no problems. I tend to watch YouTube, browse websites, and answer video calls without a doubt. However, the phone does have a hard time maintaining 60fps when running Marvel Snapshot Card games in a medium setup. The 8GB of RAM on the phone – twice as much as 4GB available on the Moto G – may help the phone run more efficiently in everyday use. This is in stark contrast to the Moto G, which I found to be almost unusable without the RAM Boost feature of Motorola, which converts a portion of the storage into virtual memory. Use the default “AI” mode to evaluate how much functionality is needed, and that power works well.

The rear camera setup (50 megapixel wide and 8 megapixel speeding) and the 16 megapixel selfie camera took photos both get the necessities of my photos, but lacking in detail to a large extent.

For example, a close-up dish of macaroni and cheese dishes taken outside shows your dish, but we didn’t get a lot of cheesy roux or crumb details. In fact, everything around the plate seemed to be blurred.

I took me to see Kylie Minogue at Madison Square Garden with the phone, and considering that I was sitting behind the arena, I did think the phone could capture some of the details of the singer with her dancers. This is a more expensive phone to encounter, so I’m glad it didn’t completely dissolve into a blurred mess.

The front camera also exceeded my expectations when taking pictures. I used a selfie light – it was painful in the glare of my glasses – but most of my face and shirt looked crisp in the photos. My hair does blend in with the darkness, with noticeable image noise around it. But even for phones in the $500 price range, these conditions are still challenging, so for $300, that’s good.

These cameras can also capture 1080p videos at 30fps, which is enough to capture the band’s video at another show I attended last week, but admittedly, the video wasn’t very detailed either. Enough to store memories quickly, but I don’t want to play them on TV.

While I didn’t flood the Moto G power during the test, I thank its IP68 and IP69 ratings for showing it’s easy to survive in a sink or pool. However, even a durable look cannot hide one of its biggest weaknesses. Motorola has a relatively short software and security support schedule. The phone will only receive two years of major Android updates and three years of security update support. While I haven’t tested Samsung’s new Galaxy A lineup, one of the Moto G’s biggest competitors, Samsung is expected to receive six years of software and security updates, by comparison. I hope this is a policy because the Moto G series could be a wider choice for phone buyers who are focusing on tariff news that could increase the cost of electronics.

As long as you can keep your expectations for the three-year lifespan of your phone, the Moto g Power may be a viable option for anyone who only needs a basic phone without any other decoration.

How do we test the phone

Each phone CNET’s review team test is used in the real world. We test the functions of our phones, play games and take photos. We check the display to see if it is bright, sharp and vibrant. We analyzed the IP ratings for design and build to see how it remains and whether it is waterproof. We use standardized benchmark tools such as Geekbench and 3Dmark to push processor performance to the extreme, as well as our own anecdotal observations navigate through the interface, record high-resolution videos and play at high refresh rates.

From bright sunlight to dark indoor scenes, all cameras are tested under various conditions. We tried special features like Night Mode and Portrait Mode and compared our findings to competing phones with similar prices. We also check battery life by using battery life every day as well as performing a series of battery drain tests.

We considered other features such as support for 5G, satellite connectivity, fingerprint and facial sensors, stylus support, fast charging speeds and a foldable display, among other features that might be useful. We balance all of this balance with the price, giving you a judgment about the phone (whatever it is priced) that actually represents good value. Although these tests may not always be reflected in the preliminary review of CNET, in most cases we conducted follow-up tests and long-term tests.

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