Review: Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G and Moto G Stylus 2023

It was a Sunday evening and my wife, dog, and I were lounging in our home after a long stroll. My pup looked particularly photogenic in the warm rays of the sunset filtering through my dusty windows, so I took my phone's stylus out for a quick sketch. I showed my results to my wife and she started cackling. I blame the pen.

I don't mind having access to a built-in stylus on a smartphone. I don't use them much, but they can be fun for doodling and helpful for signing documents. I particularly enjoy using the stylus in Samsung's smartphones as a remote shutter for the camera, but this isn't a function available on Motorola's phones. Alas, the styli remained inside their housing for much of my time with the new Moto G Stylus ($200) and Moto G Stylus 5G ($400). Still, if it's something you know you want, these are just about the only cheap phones with one.

Moto G Stylus

Photograph: Motorola

The new Stylus models are perfectly fine Android phones, but they are far from my first choice if you're just after a cheap phone. They're a part of Motorola's 2023 Moto G lineup, which also includes the Moto G Play ($170), Moto G 5G ($250), and Moto G Power 5G ($300). Whew. Design-wise, they look like the dictionary's definition of “smartphone” and aren't too unwieldy to hold, though they are slippery. Thank goodness there's no glass on the back—one less area to crack.

It's cheaper, but the Moto G Stylus is harder to recommend than its sibling. It doesn't have any 5G connectivity, which is the least you can expect from a phone these days—yes, even on a tight budget. If Samsung's $200 Galaxy A14 5G has it, there's no reason Motorola can't include it. The slower speeds of 4G LTE were noticeable when downloading away from Wi-Fi.

This phone is powered by a MediaTek Helio G85 chipset with 4 GB of RAM. My benchmark tests show a tiny improvement over last year's Moto G Stylus, but my results were still slightly down from the 2021 model. I have no idea why a budget phone from two years ago has better performance, but it did. Day to day, I was able to manage just fine. Games like Pako Forever ran well enough, and I was able to send emails, browse Instagram, and reply to messages. Daily, some apps would take a while to launch, and things would stutter a lot when switching between apps. Launching the camera is especially slow—don't ever expect to snap a photo quickly.

The Moto G Stylus 5G steps things up several notches. As the name suggests, there's 5G support, so it's generally more responsive as you browse and use the phone on a cellular connection. It also has a superior Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 processor with 4 GB of RAM, which puts its performance slightly lower than Samsung's Galaxy A54 5G. There are still a few stutters and hangups, but everything feels much snappier, and it's not anywhere near as frustrating to use.

Motorola added a 90-Hz refresh rate to the Moto G Stylus to make the screen feel more fluid and responsive, but much of this is lost on me because scrolling through apps like Twitter already feels choppy. The Moto G Stylus 5G upgrades this to a 120-Hz refresh rate, which is impactful thanks to the smoother performance.

Moto G Stylus 5G

Photograph: Motorola

Speaking of the screens, it's a 6.5-inch LCD panel with a 720p resolution on the $200 phone and a 6.6-inch LCD screen with a 1080p resolution on the $400 one. They're both OK. Look closely and you can see the text isn't as sharp on the Moto G Stylus, but it's only noticeable when you put both phones side by side. In broad daylight, they get decently bright, though you'll still have to squint a little on extra-sunny days.

Battery life has always been the hallmark of Motorola's phones, and that's true here. I got close to two days of use on both devices on a single charge with average use. If you're on your phone a lot (no judgment), this will drop, but the 5,000-mAh cells in both should get you through a full day with ease. Neither feature wireless charging, so you'll have to plug in a USB-C cable the old-fashioned way (a cable and charger are included).

Both phones include a microSD card slot to expand on the built-in 128 and 256 GB of storage, respectively. There's no official IP water-resistance rating, so they might be fine in the rain, but keep them away from the pool. They do have headphone jacks, so you can plug in if that's what you prefer, along with stereo speakers for some surprisingly decent sound quality.

One of the most annoying things about Motorola phones in the US is that the company refuses to add near-field communication (NFC) sensors in much of the Moto G lineup. This is what allows the phone to utilize tap-to-pay, which I frequently use on New York subway turnstiles and even at my neighborhood deli when I'm getting a sandwich at midnight and left my wallet at home. This isn't the case on any other budget phone, and the omission is just frustrating. Thankfully, the pricier Moto G Stylus 5G is the only phone in the Moto G lineup to feature NFC.

The primary camera on both these phones is a 50-megapixel sensor. The Moto G Stylus is joined by a 2-MP macro camera, and the Moto G Stylus 5G has an 8-megapixel ultrawide. Let's just say these aren't what you'll want to use to capture any meaningful moment, particularly the cheaper phone. Photos are often over-brightened, over-sharpened, and over-saturated, and with Motorola's Night Vision mode, nighttime photos look muddy and slightly blurry.

The Moto G Stylus 5G produces significantly better shots, especially in good lighting. At night it can overdo it with the colors, and you still need to stay very still to get a photo that's not blurry, but at least it gives you something more to work with. The results from the ultrawide camera are quite poor, and I didn't care much for the selfie camera on these phones.

Motorola has slapped Android 13 on these devices, which is the current version. The company never tweaks the software too much, so you get a simple and easy-to-use interface. There is a lot of installed bloatware, but it's all removable.

Sadly, the worst part about these phones is that Motorola is promising only one Android OS update (updatable to Android 14), though they will get three years of security updates. It means in just a little more than one year, this phone will feel out-of-date. Compare this with the aforementioned Galaxy A14 5G, which will get two OS updates and four years of security updates, stretching your hard-earned dollars even further, so you won't feel the need to upgrade so quickly.

If you're after a $200 phone, then I suggest you stick with the Galaxy A14 5G. If your budget can stretch, then go for the Google Pixel 6A, which frequently goes for less than $300 these days. Or better yet, the new Pixel 7A, which adds wireless charging to the mix. They don't have headphone jacks, though. Samsung's Galaxy A54 5G is another great alternative, and it regularly dips to $400. Unless you want a phone with a stylus—then these Motorolas are your cheapest options.

My parting advice, having tracked the pricing of Motorola phones for years, is to never buy one at MSRP. Motorola almost always has a sale going on, whether on its own storefront or another retailer like Amazon. Hell, the Moto G Stylus 2023 is already on sale for $180. You can bet the Moto G Stylus 5G will see a similar drop within weeks. At those cheaper prices, they're better buys and perfectly adequate smartphones.