Motorola Moto G5 review: Plans | Pricing | Specs

The Moto G5 is the ute of phones, and that’s a good thing.

If you want excitement in a smartphone, you’re typically looking northwards of $1,000 to get it, because truly premium smartphones attract serious price points. It’s the equivalent of buying a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, in that a good part of the fun is in showing off your shiny new gadget.

The problem is that for many of us, premium smartphones are an aspirational ideal, but they’re not exactly a sensible buy, even if they’re not quite in supercar pricing territory yet. What you might want is a more practically priced, practically featured everyday phone.

If the Samsung Galaxy or Apple iPhone are Ferraris then budget phones are, logically speaking, utes.

Practical, hardworking, maybe not the fastest or the prettiest, but a good option at the right kind of price. In fact, that’s pretty much exactly what the Motorola Moto G5 is, excluding any ability to fit sheep in the back. There's an Android app for that, right?

Design

• Simple Motorola design
• Good fingerprint sensor

• Read more on the Motorola Moto G5 design

  
  Motorola’s design language tends towards the plain, as we already saw with the Moto G5’s bigger sibling, the Motorola Moto G5 Plus.

  The Moto G5 itself follows almost exactly the same design recipe, albeit with a little more plastic and a little less metal. Measuring in at 144.3x73x9.5mm and 144.5g, it’s an inoffensive but ultimately rather bland looking handset that at least fits well in the hand.

  There was a time when the inclusion of a fingerprint sensor on a phone was something that you only saw in the top-tier premium space. That was a number of years ago now, but they’re still not common in budget phone devices. The Motorola Moto G5’s fingerprint sensor is fast and accurate for unlocking, which is all you really need out of this kind of device. We’re still fans of front-mounted fingerprint sensors as found on the Moto G5, too.

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Camera

• Simple camera that shoots better than you'd expect

• Read more on the Motorola Moto G5 camera

  
  The Motorola Moto G5 is priced to sell, and that’s the clear consideration when it comes to every factor of its construction and delivery. It’s also the only sensible way to assess what it’s offering, because buying a phone like this and expecting iPhone-level performance is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

  The camera onboard the Motorola Moto G5 is a good example of this. It’s equipped with a 13MP f/2.0 rear camera and 5MP f/2.2 front selfie camera. By themselves that’s nothing to get all that excited about, and even the larger Moto G5 Plus can at least sport dual autofocus pixels to help it on its camera journey.

  Still, while we didn’t have huge expectations for the Motorola Moto G5’s camera, it actually managed to impress us with what it could make of what it’s got. Yes, it struggles in low light, or indeed with any kind of brightness balancing if you’re shooting from the hip. However, if you’ve got time to tap to focus, it’s entirely feasible to come out with some surprisingly decent shots from the Moto G5’s camera:

  Motorola G5 Sample Photos

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Performance

• Not notably powerful
• NFC onboard

• Read more on the Motorola Moto G5 performance

  
  We’re willing to give the Moto G5 a certain amount of leeway based on the asking price, but the very practical reality here is that you are fairly likely to hit a performance wall at some point. The Moto G5 runs off the very budget-centric 1.4GHz Snapdragon 430 octa-core processor with just 2GB of RAM. That’s not a recipe for great performance, and even the inclusion of Android 7.0 ("Nougat") can’t give the Moto G5 grunt it simply doesn’t have. That’s reflected in both anecdotal use, which was serviceable if a little slow, and in benchmark terms, where against a sea of other budget choices it didn’t do all that much to stand out. Here’s how it compared using Geekbench 4’s CPU test:

  Handset	Geekbench 4 CPU Single Core (higher is better)	Geekbench 4 CPU Multi Core (higher is better)
  Moto G5 Plus	842	4180
  Motorola Moto X Force	1352	3581
  Huawei Nova Plus	843	2985
  Motorola Moto Z Play	799	2648
  Sony Xperia X	1122	2626
  Moto G5	630	2605
  LG X Power	554	1482
  Motorola Moto G Play	522	1334

  And here’s its comparative performance running 3DMark’s Ice Storm Unlimited test:

  Huawei Nova Plus	13969
  Motorola Moto Z Play	13958
  Moto G5 Plus	13753
  Oppo R9s	13691
  Oppo R9	11053
  Motorola Moto G4 Plus	9757
  Moto G5	9532
  LG X Power	4953
  Motorola Moto G Play	4475
  LG Stylus DAB+	4321
  Alcatel Pop 4	3863
  Samsung Galaxy J2	3469

  Some budget phone makers (why yes, I am looking at you, Oppo) eschew NFC in their handsets, which means you’re cut off from the world of contactless phone payments via Android Pay. NFC is built into the Moto G5, which means that while it won’t cost you much to acquire, you can use it for any number of additional expensive purchases as long as your financial institution supports it.

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Battery life

• 2,800 mAh battery delivers ordinary battery performance

• Read more on the Motorola Moto G5 battery life

  
  We've seen some budget models with a huge battery focus, such as the LG X Power.

  The Moto G5 doesn’t play in those spaces, instead playing it conservative with its 2,800mAh battery. Motorola describes it as an "all day" battery, and for the kinds of users it’s designed for, that’s probably a fair description. Push the Moto G5 and you can send it flat in a day, as we found using Geekbench 3’s older battery test against the handsets of its day:

  Handset	Geekbench 3 Battery Test Duration	Geekbench 3 Battery Score
  LG X Power	14:50:30	5714
  Huawei Nova Plus	13:21:20	8013
  Motorola Moto G5 Plus	11:15:40	6756
  Samsung Galaxy J2	10:05:20	2689
  Motorola Moto X Force	9:46:50	3914
  Motorola Moto 4G Plus	9:44:10	3977
  Motorola Moto G Play	9:36:00	3840
  Alcatel Pop 4	9:20:30	2490
  Alcatel Idol 4S	8:14:20	4943
  LG Stylus DAB+	8:11:40	3278
  Alcatel Go Play	7:21:10	2941
  Motorola Moto G5	6:32:50	3833

  While it’s acceptable without being outstanding within its price range, we do feel compelled to point out that the Moto G5 Plus performed considerably better in this regard, and would be a better pick if your budget can stretch to it.

  One interesting design difference between the Moto G5 and Moto G5 Plus is that the Moto G5 supports a removable battery where the Moto G5 Plus is entirely sealed. There’s a slight design trick here, because the rear of the Moto G5 looks as though it should pop off around the camera lens. Instead, it’s the entire rear of the phone that comes off to pop the 2,800mAh battery into the Moto G5’s body.

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Verdict

• An older budget handset, and you may be better with something newer

• Read our Motorola Moto G5 verdict

  Motorola knows entirely well what it’s selling in the Moto G5, and that’s a cheap phone. It doesn’t try to dress it up in fancy marketing clothes, or for that matter useless software gimmicks. That’s a plus because it leaves you with a mostly blank slate Android device.

  Motorola has enjoyed a lot of success with the Moto G line, and it’s not hard to see why. The Moto G5 isn’t a stellar handset in performance terms, and we'd certainly advise seeking a bargain price for it given it's not even Motorola's latest G-series phone.

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Pricing and availability

Motorola Moto G5

Motorola's simple G5

The Motorola Moto G5 is an affordable everyday handset.

• The Motorola Moto G5 originally sold in Australia outright for $299.