Moto G5 Plus review: Still king of the budget phones

If you're looking for a new smartphone released this year for under $300 the Moto G 5 plus is now another option can it fill in daddy's big shoes or will it become a huge disappointment let's see what Motorola has brought to the table with its new Moto G smartphone right off

The bat the Moto G Phi plus looks nothing like its predecessors instead of plastic you now have an all-metal non removable back panel with a full glass front and some plastic on the sides it may not feel as premium as the Moto Z

Flagships but the use of aluminum gives it that reassuring half to one holding it in the palm of your hand the power and volume rocker aren't very tactile feel relatively soft when pressed upon and button placement is a bit too low

For my fingers since I'm already complaining about minor issues on the phone I might as well tell you that I wish the camera hump wasn't there either as you can't use tap on display while it's flat on a surface without having it

Wobble and it would have been better if the dimple wasn't replaced by the raised Moto logo I want my dimple back on a more positive note I do very much enjoy the texture on the power key it allows me to easily differentiate which button

I'm pressing the overall build feels much more durable and premium and holding this phone is a pleasant experience now the fastest way to unlock the phone is with the fingerprint sensor found on the front it performs extremely

Well even not shutting some of the top flagships on the market not only that but it can also replace your entire navigation bar with the one button nav feature found in the Moto app once enabled you can swipe left on the sensor

To go back swipe right to open the recent menu tap on it to go home tap and hold to lock the screen and press and hold even harder to open Google assist in the gesture recognition is reliable and secretive so if you decide to use

This you'll find it to be a great alternative with easy navigation while someone else who uses your phone or snatches it will have a hard time navigating throughout the interface if they've never used the g5 overall this

Is a great fingerprint scanner but it would have been better if they just put the back and recents key on the size like the 1 plus 3 T it gives you a better screen to body ratio without the buttons there's nothing there but poor

Use of space and it's much more practical than the all-in-one nav bar button the screen is actually smaller in size from the g4 at just 5.2 inches and it's still rocking a 1080p IPS LCD display but for a low budget smartphone

This is still a very good pan with accurate colors great viewing angles and works alright in outdoor lighting out-of-the-box the colors are set to vibrant to enhance the saturation and to make the colors pop but if you

Want a more accurate tone then you could set it to standard as for the software if this device is running Android 7.0 which unfortunately is not the latest version of new gift but at least it's not marshmallow the thing I like about

The UI on most moto phones is their non bloated stock like Android experience with a few extra moto or all the features on top you still have the regular chop twice for a flashlight twist for quick capture swipe to shrink

Screen and other less popular gestures but you do get some new bells and whistles such as the one button nav feature as discussed at the beginning of this video the Moto display has been tweaked – including a large battery /

Clock widget which is still a great way to check your notifications without waking the display a new way to enable split-screen mode in the recents menu and a launcher which looks a little like the pixels does a pull up app drawer the

Poor whole folders and the Google feed panel on the left the only thing that they may different is the dark transparent theme and the full search bar at the top it's still pretty snappy and navigating throughout this launcher

Is pretty easy just like the rest of the interface the g5 plus comes in two versions that vary in the amount of RAM and storage – 4 gigabytes of RAM and 64 gigabytes of internal capacity so if you got the model that has 2 gigabytes of

RAM then you might have slightly different results either way they both come packed with a Snapdragon 625 chipset which is more than capable of handling this device there was little to no lag application reload time was quick

And with the upgrade to the audrina 506 GPU gaming on this phone was not that bad it's obviously not going to compete with the big boys such as the 3t pixel or s7 but free low budget smartphone it's at the top of its game the g5 still

Has the single speaker at the top which doubles as the earpiece speaker its front-facing and gets decently loud but gets a little distorted its high points it's obviously not the best speaker out there it works just fine but for what

It's worth that's what we've come to expect on low bunch of smartphones nowadays same goes for the camera you do get a new hidden trick in the viewfinder allowing you to automatically detect QR codes and barcodes as well as 4k video

Recording however the 12 the pixel sensor with an aperture size of F 1.7 and do auto focus pixels provides a math experience it doesn't have optical image stabilization and now doesn't even have laser autofocus like

The g4 plus had and you'll experience this problem heavily when shooting at night it does however folk is pretty quick and good lighting it's even faster than his processor pictures come out looking solid and crisp in daylight

Shootings but there is a bit of softening and overexposure in the end results when you're shooting at night that's when the camera starts to act like a smartphone under $300 there are some random times that the pictures come

Out looking decent but no matter what you will always experience some kind of noise blown out highlights and washed out colors also unless you're extremely steady it's extremely hard to take a picture at night without having it

Become a blurry mess the lack of optical image stabilization is the reason behind this don't get me wrong it's not a horrible camera but it's not great either like I said before it's what we've come to expect on budget

Smartphones powering all this is still a 3000 milliamp hour battery getting me around 4 hours of screen on time and heavy usage with my Wi-Fi Bluetooth and GPS being enabled at all times for my google maps my psychic generation moto

360 and my snapchat spectacles on light usage this thing can easily last me around 5 to 6 hours obviously my better usage may not match yours but I can guarantee you'll be a satisfied customer especially since the phone can easily

Last you more than a day when it does run out of juice it uses a micro USB port I know I'm just as disappointed as you are but at least it charges pretty quick with Turbo Power which is just another version of quick

Charge another thing to know about the g5 is that it's still not waterproof has no NFC for the US models while international models will have NFC comes unlocked and works on all four major carriers and has a micro SD card slot

It's available for pre-order at a starting price of two hundred and thirty dollars with two colors to choose from the variant I got is the higher-end priced at $300 so I can only give my recommendation on that one in my opinion

I think Motorola is still the best way to go when choosing to go cheap it provides stellar performance great battery life and insanely fast fingerprint sensor unique software features and an acceptable camera that's

A huge bargain to be at this low of a price so I can't see myself recommending any other device near this tag that's my full review of the moto G 5 plus drop a like if you enjoyed then let me know in

The comments what you think is the best budget smartphone I'd love to hear your thoughts check out and release calm for your lease and Griest news on Android and I will catch you guys in the next one