Motorola Moto G84 5G Review

Verdict

Motorola has turned out an elegant cheap phone in the Moto G84 5G, though middling performance, only one guaranteed major software update, and its close proximity to the outstanding Motorola Edge 40 Neo make it feel like a good buy rather than a great one.

Introduction

Motorola makes excellent budget phones. This is an established fact. In recent years, however, it’s also made an awful lot of budget phones, to the point where it’s a struggle to keep track of them all.

The Moto G84 5G is the company’s new flagship budget phone, if that isn’t too much of a contradiction in terms. For £249.99 you’re getting the best G-series phone that Motorola makes before you start getting into swankier territory with the Motorola Edge 40 Neo.

For this money you’re getting a 120Hz OLED display, a relatively large OIS-backed 50MP main camera sensor, and a fetching vegan leather finish. But is that enough?

Design and screen

• Appealing vegan leather back
• Slim and light
• IP54 dust and water resistance

The Moto G84 5G is one of the most striking phones I’ve handled this year – at least from the back. My model comes in a brilliant ‘Viva Magenta’ shade that manifests as the deepest pink imaginable, contrasted with a scarlet metallic frame and camera module.

As part of Motorola’s ongoing partnership with Pantone, you can also specify the G84 in Marshmallow Blue or Midnight Blue. Whatever shade you choose, all come with a vegan leather-covered rear panel. This gives the G84 a nice grippiness, and it generally feels more premium than the usual greasy plastic. It also seems to fend off fingerprints quite well.

The Pantone logo (which includes the name of the custom shade) and the shiny Motorola logo finish things off nicely. For a cheap phone, the Moto G84 5G is one classy customer.

From every other angle, the Moto G84 5G is much like previous phones in the range. You have a flat rim and a flat front, with a relatively thick bezel running around the latter. It’s all very functional and inoffensive, which is all you can ask for this far south of £300.

That extends to the Moto G84’s dimensions. At just 7.6mm thick, and with a weight of 167g, it passes the jeans pocket test with flying colours. This is one easy-to-live-with phone.

You only get an IP54 rating here, though. You’ll need to pay £50 more for the aforementioned Motorola Edge 40 Neo if you want full IP68 water and dust resistance. This is one of several occasions where I was forced to consider just how much more phone get for an extra £50.

Screen

• Decent 6.5-inch FHD+ pOLED
• 120Hz refresh rate
• 1300nits peak brightness

Motorola has fitted its top-budget model with a decent display. It’s a nicely sized 6.5-inch FHD+ pOLED screen with a fluid 120Hz refresh rate. Brightness tops out at a solid 1300 nits in HDR scenarios. Once I had dropped the colour mode down from Saturated to Natural, it produced a nice balanced output.

The Moto G84 5G’s screen is also flanked by stereo speakers, which get nice and clear and loud, though they predictably lack a little low-end oomph. Still, they’re here, which is far from a given at this end of the market.

Camera

• Large 50MP 1/1.5″ main sensor
• 8MP ultra-wide
• 16MP selfie cam

Motorola has kept things blissfully simple in the camera department, with a straightforward dual-lens set-up and no pointless depth or macro sensors in sight.

Most of the focus here is on a 50MP 1/1.5″ main sensor, which would appear to be the OmniVision OV50E. That’s the same sensor as you’ll find in much more expensive phones like the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion and the Moto Razr 2022, which is impressive stuff.

With this relatively large sensor, backed by OIS, the Moto G84 takes good shots for the money. No, it’s not a match for those aforementioned premium siblings – the Moto G84 packs a much more limited image processor – but I was still pleased with most of the shots I took with it.

Snaps tend to have good detail and a nice natural warmth to them, without looking garish or overprocessed. I was also impressed at how well the main camera stood up to tricky HDR scenarios.

There’s quite a large drop in quality for the ultra-wide camera, with its measly 8MP sensor. I noticed a sizeable dip in detail and contrast and some blown-out highlights, but it’s still acceptable in good lighting.

Night shots aren’t quite so impressive, with the Moto G84’s limited processor seemingly unable to get on top of all that noise. They’re perfectly passable, but don’t expect the presence of OIS to automatically result in super-sharp low light results.

The 16MP selfie camera seems quite limited too, producing, slightly soft, washed out fixed-focus shots. Motorola provides two focal lengths for regular and wide shots, though given that the former is merely a crop of the latter, I’d recommend sticking with the natural wider angle to maximise sharpness.

Video is pretty limited at 1080p 30/60fps, which is again a result of that somewhat limited processor at the heart of the Moto G84.

Performance

• Snapdragon 695 SoC
• 12GB of RAM, 256GB storage
• Clean Android 13 but only one major update

As I just alluded to, the Moto G84 5G runs on a relatively limited Snapdragon 695 SoC. This is perhaps the most disappointing component of the whole package, if only because it’s the exact same chip that drove last year’s Moto G82 5G.

Motorola isn’t the only manufacturer to return to this ageing chip for its latest budget phone – Sony has done the same with the Xperia 10 V, to name one other recent example. But what was a fairly uninspiring provision with the class of 2022 proves even less impressive in late 2023. The Poco M5 5G is another sub-£300 2023 phone to use this chip, but that arrived right near the start of the year, and it hardly wowed us in performance terms back then.

On the plus side, it’s quite impressive to see the Moto G84 coming with 12GB of RAM as standard. On the other hand, I can’t imagine the Snapdragon 695 is best placed to put all that memory to good use.

Maybe knocking that RAM allotment down to 8GB and lopping £20 or so off the final price would have been a smarter move here. It would have put more daylight between the Moto G84 and the uncomfortably close (and really quite fabulous) Motorola Edge 40 Neo, at the very least.

Still, the Moto G84 is a capable enough runner for the money. I ran the phone’s display at a forced 120Hz all the time, and while it lacks the snappiness of a genuine flagship (or even a mid-ranger), it felt acceptably fluid throughout my time with the phone.

Another positive spec here is the provision of 256GB of internal storage as standard, at least on the UK model. That’s double the capacity that Apple, Google, and Samsung start their respective flagship phones at.

Software

• Android 13
• Clean approach to Android
• Some bloatware

Motorola’s take on Android 13 is one of the best on the market, mainly because it leaves well alone for the most part. This is broadly as Google intended, which means a nice clean UI and tasteful app icons. Going back to the Poco M5 5G by way of a comparison, while the two phones have similar specs, the Moto G84 feels much more fluid.

The manufacturer has made a few additions, most notably through the pre-installed Moto app, which gives you access to smart gesture shortcuts, bolstered security options, and bespoke personalisation features. Motorola has its own distinct style with this, but crucially, it seems to harmonise well with Google’s UI.

I did observe a small bug when trying to apply one of Motorola’s dynamic wallpapers. Having downloaded this animated background, I was presented with a preview, but was offered no means to apply it.

There is also a little more bloatware than I’d like to see from Motorola, with a couple of dodgy games, TikTok, Booking.com, Facebook, and a superfluous mobile game loyalty program called Mistplay. They’re easily ignored or uninstalled, but I hope it doesn’t turn into a trend for the manufacturer’s clean and crisp phones.

Perhaps the biggest drawback here is that Motorola has only promised one OS upgrade. Once Android 14 arrives – which shouldn’t be too long – that’s your lot. Motorola has promised three years of security updates, at least.

Battery life

• 5000mAh battery
• Two-day potential
• 33W charger bundled in

The Moto G84 comes packed with a 5000mAh battery, which is a decent size, if quite normal for a phone of this price. Together with that known quantity of a processor, it results in very good stamina indeed.

Even with the display forced to a 120Hz refresh rate rather than the default Auto smart optimisation mode, which switches between 60 and 120Hz as necessary, I was able to get through a full day of moderate usage (almost four hours of screen-on time), and was left with well over 50% of a charge. There’s the very real potential for two days of battery life here.

Heavy media usage will drain the battery faster, of course. An hour of Netflix streaming sapped 9% of a charge, which isn’t the strongest result we’ve seen – rivals such as the Poco M5 5G managed 6%. Meanwhile, 30 minutes of light gaming sapped 5%.

Recharging isn’t a super-speedy process, but at least you get a reasonable 33W charger bundled into the box, which is far from a given these days. It’ll get you to 59% in 30 minutes, while a full charge takes a little over 75 minutes.