Moto G50 review

Everyone Motorola is a champion at

producing budget phones with stock

android

and their latest release the moto g50 is

no different.

But is facing some pretty tough

competition from its siblings so how

does this phone stack up

I'm Angie for gs marina and this is our

review of the moto g50 5g.

The moto g50 has a solid build it's

entirely made of plastic but it feels

sturdy and it has a water repellent

the coating on its internals

so it'll be fine in the rain the phone

comes in aqua green or steel gray

coloring like ours here

the glossy paint job collects

fingerprints and it's a bit slippery

there's the fingerprint reader on the

back that is a bit higher than is

comfortable but it works quickly and

reliably

on the front, you'll see some thick

bezels and a water droplet notch

in contrast to the punctual cutouts that

we've been seeing a lot of lately

the phone comes with 64 gigabytes or 128

gigabytes of base storage

and you'll find a hybrid sim and MicroSD

slot

the 6.5-inch IPS LCD has a 720p

resolution this means the pixel density

is pretty low especially for a phone

released in 2021

it has a 90-hertz refresh rate though

perhaps to make up for the lack of

sharpness

but the slow response time means that

you'll see a smearing effect at times

like when you're scrolling quickly

through photos at least the refresh rate

control is well done

and with the auto mode the software

automatically turns the screen down to

60hz

when you're not touching the display and

then back up to 90hz when you interact

with it again

it's hardly the brightest screen around

with a max of 362 nits

which is rather low for an LCD this

means it'll be difficult to use on a

sunny day.

The g50 has a single bottom-firing

the speaker that has good loudness

quality-wise it wasn't particularly

impressive and you'll get rather flat

sound.

with its huge 5 000 milliamp-hour

battery and a frugal chipset it was no

surprise that the handset got an

excellent 133-hour rating on our battery

endurance tests

on the flip side the charging speed

wasn't great.

Though the phone supports up to 15 watt

charging it ships with a 10-watt charger

that got it from zero to 23

in half an hour and a painfully slow 2

hours and 35 minutes to get it to 100

the strength of Motorola devices is

their super clean stock android

experience and the moto g50 is no

different in this aspect

for the most part, you'll be using

android as google intended in this case

android 11.

this means you'll get chat bubbles and

better notification handling

you will see a couple of custom moto

features but you can find pretty much

all of them in the moto app which lets

you turn them on or off or adjust them

overall they're pretty useful and don't

interfere with the stockish experience

the g50 has a snapdragon 480 5g chipset

a budget-friendly 5g chipset it'll be

fine to use for most everyday tasks

especially with the clean software but

it's competing with phones that have

much more powerful chipsets in the same

price bracket

the moto g50 has a 48 megapixel main

snapper

a 5-megapixel macro cam and a 2

megapixel depth sensor

there's no ultrawide camera here which

puts it at a disadvantage compared to

its competition

still considering this is the budget

segment the ultrawide you'll see at

this price

aren't particularly high quality to

begin with during the day

shots are tack sharp with natural colors

and good dynamic range

noise is visible if you zoom in but it's

nothing too bad

Moto G50 review

you can see over-sharpening of the finer

details but it don't get in the way

and we like the overall result even if

the colors are not as saturated

as on other phones, the moto g50 has one

of the better macro cameras in this

class

colors are vivid noise is minimal and

photos are sharp

there's no autofocus and no indication

to tell you whether a subject is in

focus

so sometimes you'll have to reshoot a

subject multiple times to get it right

but the results are worth it in low

light images were soft and some

highlights were clipped in more

challenging scenes

still, there's a lot of detail and the

hdr does a good job overall

if you switch on night mode shots look

clearer shadows are brighter and the

photos get some much-needed sharpness

you will spot some more noise but

overall shots are brighter and clearer

with this mode on

and the processing doesn't take much

extra time portraits were sharp and had

convincing bokeh even with complex

backgrounds

skin tones were less consistent though

oftentimes we looked paler or

reddish than in reality

with the 13 megapixel sensor the moto

g50 captures selfies that are far from

great

they have good dynamic range and are

well exposed but they are generally soft

with low contrast

skin tones never look quite right the

phone records video up to 1080p

at 30fps with the main cam, the video is

a bit too contrasty which limits the

dynamic range

but at least there is very good

sharpness for full HD video

so that's the moto g50 it's a nice phone

but it's left us wanting more

and this is a recurring theme with these

budget 5g phones

manufacturers are making a lot of

compromises to get these phones to these

price points

and still, have them have 5g we are not

fans of these trade-offs

and at this stage the addition of 5g

brings little benefit to end-users and

it's meant to bolster carrier portfolios

and promote their budding 5g networks

rather than meet the practical needs of

consumers

and we can hardly recommend this new

crop of affordable

5g phones at least in 2021

4g enabled phones like the Poco x3 pro

can provide

much more value in a segment that is

incredibly price sensitive

and if a 5g phone is a must-have you'd

be better off with last year's moto g5g

plus which offers a better display a

better chipset and better cameras

and it's already gone down in pricing

so yeah the moto g50 has a long battery

life and good camera performance but

everything else makes this phone pretty

hard to recommend

even if you're looking for a Motorola

device