- [Alex] A good, cheap smartphone.
That's been the MO of the Moto G-series
since the very beginning.
A phone that doesn't cost the Earth,
but also doesn't come with a bunch of nasty compromises.
This year, the line is led by the Moto G5 Plus,
and it might just be
the best, inexpensive Android phone you can buy.
After years of going back and forth
with various plastic designs,
the Moto G5 Plus steps up with a metal back chassis.
Sure, the sides are still plastic,
despite their metallic appearance,
however, it's much more stylish and eye-catching
than anything we've seen in the Moto G before.
I'm not a huge fan of the bulbous camera bunch
Motorola's been working to its designs lately,
but overall, I think this design works.
It's not as aggressively flat
as some contemporary Moto phones,
and the softer corners mean
it won't dig into your hands quite as much.
And, even though the joints between
the metal and plastic sections aren't perfectly clean,
there are some nice little design touches,
like the raised, polished module or logo,
and chamfers, both real and fake,
around the body of the phone.
Once again, after jumping around at various screen sizes,
the Moto G5 Plus lands at a 5.2-inch diagonal,
which for a lot of people,
is still the sweet spot for easy one-handed use.
The screen itself offers a 1080p LCD,
which just about gets the job done.
Colours aren't over-the-top punchy, but it looks nice enough,
and you may notice a little bit of ghosting
if you've used higher-end LCDs.
My biggest criticism of the display
is it's daylight performance.
It's not horrible by any means, but in direct sunlight,
you can pretty much forget it.
Down below the screen is your fingerprint scanner,
which is just about as fast and accurate
as anything I've used elsewhere.
It can also double as a power key with a long press,
or replace Android soft keys if you're into gestures.
When it comes to audio,
there's a single front-facing speaker behind the earpiece,
it's actually very loud,
and also prone to distortion at higher levels.
Actually, prepare yourself
when you turn this thing on for the first time.
That loudspeaker is leveraged to blast you
with some early 2000's nostalgia.
- [Voiceover] Hello Moto.
- [Alex] There's nothing retro about
the G5 Plus's specs, though.
It's powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625,
an excellent mid-range chip with a well-earned reputation
for performance and power efficiency.
In the vast number of things that you'd be doing on a phone,
you simply won't notice the difference
compared to higher-end CPUs,
and that includes a bit of light gaming.
RAM and storage is all over the map,
depending on where you buy the G5 Plus.
Here in Europe, I've been using the model
with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage,
which is the middle-of-the-road spec.
In other regions, though, there are models
with 2 GB and 4 GB of RAM or 16 GB and 64 GB of storage.
In any case, the version I've been using
handled my multitasking needs with ease,
and I didn't run into any problems
with app reloads or anything like that.
I should also mention,
this is the Moto G5 Plus I'm talking about.
There is also a regular Moto G5,
which is smaller, built out of plastic,
and a tier below in terms of both price and specs.
Moto's minimalist software has been one of its strengths
over the past few years,
and the G5 Plus continues this trend.
You've got a very barebones Android 7.0 installation
with one or two useful software features from Moto.
The new home screen launcher is almost a carbon copy
of Google's Pixel launcher, and just about everything else
is in line with a clean, uncluttered look of stock Android.
A couple of important software features
from Moto in this phone.
Moto Display, which is a more functional version
of the ambient display,
or always-on display from other phones,
letting you see and act upon notifications
without powering on.
And Moto Actions has been expanded
to include not only favourites
like the wrist twist camera shortcut,
but acts just like a swipe-up to enable one-handed mode.
And, really, that's it,
there's not a whole lot of extra software craft here,
just as we've come to expect from the Moto G-series.
That's part of why the G5 Plus has excellent battery life.
Also, helped along with the efficient hardware
and an ample 3,000 mAh battery.
I often got to the end of the day
with well over 50% in the tank,
and even with heavier use on LTE,
I never ran out of power before the end of the day.
For extra-fast refills, there's turbo charging built in.
That's Motorola's re-badged version of Quick Charge 2.0,
though you'll be charging over the older MicroUSB standard,
not the new reversible Type-C
used by many newer Android phones.
So far, so good.
These are things that a lot of affordable phones
do well these days.
But, the camera is where many of them trip up,
which is why it's great to see a rear camera
that's surprisingly good in the Moto G5 Plus.
It's a 12-MP sensor with 1.4-micron pixels
behind a f/1.7 lens, which means, on paper,
it's basically the same as the Galaxy S7's camera,
only without optical stabilisation.
While you're certainly not gonna get flagship quality shots
out of it all the time, especially in lower light,
I've been really impressed by what I've been able to eke out
with the G5 Plus' camera, especially the rich bokeh you get
in close-up shots thanks to that bright lens.
You can easily criticise the lack of consistency
in the Moto G-line over the years,
but I think in the Moto G5 Plus,
Motorola has finally arrived
an almost perfect balance of features and price.
For £250 in the UK, and $229 US,
you're getting a phone that nails the fundamentals
and exceeds expectations in other areas,
like battery and camera.
As for reasons not to buy,
you've got Moto's shaky track record with software updates.
My review unit was still running
the January security patch in late April,
and don't count on a timely update to Android O
when that lands if Moto's track record is anything to go by.
Still, for a priced tier
replete with compromised, imperfect devices,
the Moto G5 Plus stands out as an excellent handset,
and certainly the best, cheap
Android phone-of-the-year so far.
That's it for now, be sure to subscribe
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Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.
(bright, bouncy electronic music)