Moto G Power (2021) review: The battery life champ
Our Verdict
The Moto G Power (2021) is a worthy successor to previous G Power models, as it however offers long battery life in an affordable, attractive parcel.
For
- All-day bombardment life
- Low price including a sub-$200 model
- Attractive design for a budget phone
- Helpful Moto gestures
Confronting
- But one Android software update
- Boring operation
- Lackluster display
Tom'due south Guide Verdict
The Moto Thou Power (2021) is a worthy successor to previous Grand Power models, as information technology still offers long battery life in an affordable, attractive parcel.
Pros
- +
All-day bombardment life
- +
Depression price including a sub-$200 model
- +
Bonny design for a upkeep phone
- +
Helpful Moto gestures
Cons
- -
Merely i Android software update
- -
Dull performance
- -
Lackluster display
With the Moto G Power, Motorola has latched onto a winning formula for upkeep phones. Since information technology'due south impossible for a phone that costs less than $300 to be all things to all people, the key is to notice a feature or two that truly matters to people and admittedly boom information technology. In the case of the Moto Grand Power, that characteristic is bombardment life.
The past two iterations of this phone — the Moto G7 Power and last twelvemonth'southward Moto K Ability — delivered on the hope of a long-lasting telephone. And this year'south version is merely as impressive.
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Moto Thou Power (2021) specs
Price: $199, $249
Screen size: half dozen.6 inches (1600 ten 720)
CPU: Snapdragon 662
RAM: 3GB, 4GB
Storage: 32GB, 64GB
Rear cameras: 48MP (f/i.seven) master; 2MP (f/2.4) macro; 2MP (f/2.four) depth
Front cameras: 8MP (f/2.0)
Battery size: 5,000 mAh
Bombardment life (Hrs:Mins): 14:04
Size: six.5 x 3 x 0.37 inches
Weight: seven.3 ounces
Our Moto G Power (2021) review finds a phone that continues to get a long-time on a charge and took home height honors in the Tom's Guide Awards 2021 for best phone bombardment life. Along the way, this attractively priced telephone has picked up a few other tricks that volition appeal to bargain hunters.
Editor's note: Nosotros crowned our picks in the Tom's Guide Awards 2021 for phones. The Moto G Power (2021) won the award for best phone battery life.
Moto Yard Power (2021) review: Price and availability
The 64GB Moto Thou Power (2021) costs $249 and is now on auction unlocked at Motorola.com; information technology's one of the best unlocked Android phones you tin can buy. Carriers offer the phone include Heave Mobile, Cricket, Consumer Cellular, Google Fi, Republic Wireless, U.s. Cellular and Xfinity Mobile.
In addition to that $249 version, which comes with 4GB of RAM, you'll be able to buy a 32GB Moto G Power (2021) with 3GB RAM for $199 at All-time Purchase. You lot can expand the storage on both new Moto Yard Power models via a microSD slot on the phones.
Moto Thou Ability (2021) review: The best features
Having spent some fourth dimension testing the latest version of the Moto Grand Power, there are several things I like about the telephone, including a couple of key areas where this version is a definite improvement over its predecessor. Here's why the Moto G Ability (2021) is the telephone to go if yous're looking for the best a budget handset tin offering.
Moto One thousand Power (2021) top feature: The price
Phone prices have a tendency to creep up, so it's good to see Motorola continue to agree the line on the Moto G Power's price. The 2021 costs the same as terminal year'due south model, which was one of the best cheap phones nosotros reviewed. We can say the aforementioned for the Moto 1000 Power (2021).
Even better, Motorola has found a way to cut the cost of the G Ability even lower, though you will have to settle for less retention and storage. Still, a phone that promises multi-mean solar day battery life for less than $200 is well worth those compromises, particularly if yous're watching your upkeep.
Moto Yard Power (2021) top feature: Long battery life
Let's not trounce around the bush. Y'all turn to the Moto Thou Power (2021) because you want a phone that goes a long time on a accuse, and with a five,000 mAh battery, this is a phone that can deliver on that hope.
How long does the Moto G Power (2021) final on a charge? So long that when nosotros originally published our Moto G Power (2021) review, the phone was still plugging away on our bombardment tests, in which we have a fully charged phone surf the web continuously over cellular until information technology runs out of power.
We run that enervating test several times and average out the upshot to come across just what kind of bombardment life yous can expect, and the Moto K Power (2021) doesn't disappoint. It lasted an boilerplate of xiv hours and 4 minutes, which means y'all can get through the day — and probably longer — without having to charge your phone.
Fans of last year'due south Moto G Power will call back that telephone lasted a tape-setting sixteen-plus hours. Merely the new Moto K Power outlasted all but one other phone we've looked at in the last year and a half, and information technology deserves a place on our list of the longest telephone battery life.
Don't wait a fast recharge time with the Moto G Power. After 30 minutes of recharging a tuckered telephone, we were back to 22% of the battery'south chapters. The iPhone SE, which is not exactly a recharging speed demon cheers to its 5W charger, got back to 29% in that time.
Moto G Power (2021) top feature: The phone'due south pattern
You don't expect a $249 phone to wait like a 1000000 bucks, only while the seven.three-ounce Moto One thousand Power feels, a petty mesomorphic, Motorola clearly put some effort into giving this phone a await that transcends its upkeep roots. The flash gray model I tested has a lovely spiral blueprint on its dorsum, and I similar the centered placement of the rear photographic camera array simply to a higher place the subtle Motorola batwing logo. (Retail versions of the phone will come in Polar Silver and Glowing Blue options.)
Bezels on the front of the phone are minimal thanks to a round camera cutout on the upper left corner of the brandish and the lack of a fingerprint sensor. Instead, the power button on the new Moto phone does double duty, with a congenital-in fingerprint reader that I found responsive in my testing. Motorola also added a Moto Action that lets you launch apps by borer the ability push button twice. (You will need to enable this feature first, though in the Moto Yard Power'southward Settings app.)
The Moto Grand Power (2021) as well retains a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top of the telephone, so you won't be forced to pick up a pair of wireless earbuds in addition to your new device.
Moto Grand Ability (2021) top characteristic: Camera functioning
The $349 Pixel 4a proves that you don't have to spend big bucks to get a phone that produces outstanding photos, which puts pressure on lower-cost devices like the Moto G series to up their camera game. Motorola responded by turning to a more powerful lens with this year'south version of the Moto G Power — you've got a 48MP photographic camera compared to the 16GB master shooter on last twelvemonth'south phone. A 2MP macro lens and 2MP depth sensor join that main camera.
The results are a mixed pocketbook, with the Moto G Power (2021) producing very good shots in some areas, while falling curt in others. The Pixel 4a produces much better shots, only it also costs $100 more than the Moto Chiliad Power. For what you're paying for Motorola's, the resulting photos are more than acceptable.
In some cases, the Moto G Power really shines, peculiarly when it comes to those extra rear lenses. I'1000 no fan of macro lenses — I'd adopt that budget phone makers scrap them entirely, really — but if every macro lens performed as well equally the Moto G Power'due south did, I'd rethink my position. This close-up of a camellia produces bright colors I find lacking from the OnePlus Nord N10 5G'southward much darker effort.
Similarly, the Moto M Power's depth sensor produces some nice portrait shots for a sub-$300 telephone. The Moto G Power did an fantabulous job making my daughter stand out from the orange tree backside her, making sure not to lose her hair in the background. The Nord N10 loses some detail just over her left shoulder, though I think the OnePlus photographic camera ameliorate captures her grayness beret. Overall, though, the Moto G Power has the more effective background blur.
Things are less impressive when yous rely on the Moto G Power'southward principal lens, which produced an accurate shot of this plate of lasagna, but i that pales side by side to the warmer colors that the Nord N10 5G reproduces. The table in the Moto shot is more washed out, and the glass of wine in the groundwork lacks any hint of red. I know which photo I'd be more probable to share, and information technology's non the i the Moto G Power took.
Even lower cost phones offer low-low-cal photograph features at present, and the Moto G Power is no exception with its Nighttime Vision mode. The results will practise in a pinch, though it falls well short of the standard set past Google's Dark Sight. (In this comparison, I used a Pixel 4a 5G, as it was the least expensive Google telephone I had on hand.) You lot can run into the pinkish stuffed animal and the basin of citrus fruit that might otherwise be lost in the shadow of this shot, but the focus of the photograph isn't exactly sharp. The over-processing on the photo also washes out some of the detail of the back wall, which is not a problem in the Pixel photograph.
Upwards front, yous get an 8MP selfie cam on the Moto K Ability (2021). Information technology takes decent self-portraits — I like the more colorful cast to the Moto shot — but Motorola gets overly aggressive with the face-smoothing. Every bit a result, my confront has an unnatural cast to it in the Moto Chiliad Power selfie, while the OnePlus Nord N10 provides a more than accurate view of my mug, flaws and all.
Moto K Power (2021) acme characteristic: Moto'south My UX Software
Motorola's well-deserved reputation for producing a make clean version of Android for its phones continues with this twelvemonth'southward Moto Yard series. And Motorola's gesture-based shortcuts are dorsum, letting you do things like plough on the phone'due south flashlight with a chopping motion.
A new Moto gesture is bound to print some Moto Chiliad Power users — dragging your finger dorsum and along across the telephone's display triggers a separate-screen upshot then you can run two apps at once. It should come in handy if yous want to watch a video while texting a friend, or tap out some notes while reading a spider web page.
Moto G Power (2021) review: Features that come up brusque
As impressive as Motorola'southward new telephone is in all those areas, I did run across a few flaws in testing for my Moto G Power (2021) review. The biggest areas of business are the phone'southward display — it'due south a fleck dim and the movie isn't always the almost colorful — and a processor that doesn't evangelize the all-time performance compared to other low-cost phones.
Moto G Ability (2021) flaw: A dim brandish
The 6.vi-inch LCD panel that Motorola uses for the G Power's display is certainly large plenty, but don't expect assuming colors or a vivid view. In our tests, the Moto G Power reproduced 96% of the sRGB color spectrum, and that was in saturated mode. The OnePlus N10 5G, in dissimilarity, has the more colorful screen with 124.8% of the aforementioned spectrum. OnePlus' display was more accurate, too, with a Delta-Due east rating of 0.22. The Moto G Ability (2021) turned in a 0.37 rating in saturated way, which improved to 0.25 when nosotros switched to natural mode. (Numbers closer to zero are ameliorate.)
The raw numbers were reflected by my viewing feel with the Moto G Power. The darker scenes in the No Time to Dice trailer looked especially dark, with Daniel Craig and Lashana Lynch nearly lost in shadow at times. Things were brighter when streaming The Simpsons on Disney Plus, cheers to that animated show's more cartoony color scheme — the Simpsons themselves were a recognizable shade of yellow while Krusty the Clown's hair was its usual shade of bluish-light-green.
I've seen brighter displays than what the Moto G Power offers, as it topped out at 438 nits when we measured with a low-cal meter. Last yr's Moto 1000 Power hit 500 nits, so this is a step dorsum, peculiarly when you compare it to phones like the iPhone SE (653 nits) and Pixel 4a (638 nits). At least the Moto G Power outshines the OnePlus Nord N10 5G (405.7) and TCL 10 5G UW (385 nits), and maxing out the display brightness helped me see the screen outdoors.
Moto G Ability (2021) flaw: Overall operation
Yous're not going to choice up the Moto 1000 Power if you want the latest and greatest processor, and the Snapdragon 662 chipset powering the phone is certainly adequate for most tasks. I never had a problem jumping between apps, streaming videos and even playing demanding games, though I've seen sharper graphics in PUBG Mobile sessions on other phones.
That said, the Moto G Ability's benchmark scores are a little bloodless when compared to phones that are merely slightly more than expensive. On Geekbench v, the Moto G Power'south multicore score of i,437 trailed the Nord N10's consequence of one,843. In graphics testing with 3DMark'south Wild Life benchmark, the Moto 1000 Power recorded 367 frames, or 2.2 frames per second. The OnePlus Nord N10 managed to more than double that consequence.
Moto K Power (2021) flaw: No 5G
The Snapdragon 662 chipset in the Moto 1000 Power too means that the phone tops out with LTE connectivity — there's no 5G to be constitute here. I don't think this is a show-stopping omission by any means, given that 5G is still an emerging engineering and not yet ubiquitous. But prices of 5G phones are falling — the OnePlus Nord N10 5G is just $l more than the Moto G Ability — so the "you have to pay up for 5G" excuse doesn't hold as much water as it did a year ago.
Yous're probably safety on skipping 5G compatibility if you're upgrading phones this twelvemonth. But networks are going to keep evolving, and if y'all're the sort who holds onto a device for two years or longer, you'll be giving up that improving performance. (That said, LTE speeds are likely to better as 5G becomes widespread, every bit the faster network will help ease congested 4G traffic.)
Moto Chiliad Power (2021) flaw: Limited upgrades
One merchandise-off you make by buying a lower toll Android is that the phone maker will merely offer a limited number of software updates. That'due south also the case with the Moto One thousand Power (2021), as Motorola is committing to supporting just 1 Android update, along with two years of security patches.
The alone Android update stings a lot more than it unremarkably would, as the Moto G Ability ships with Android 10 installed, and non Android eleven, which came out in September. That means once your telephone gets the Android 11 update, that's it — even with Android 12 coming downward the pike later this year.
Moto G Power (2021) review: Verdict
Any sub-$300 phone is going to involve some compromises, and fortunately, the ones that the latest version of the Moto One thousand Power makes aren't going to put many budget shoppers off. Yes, there are more powerful phones with meliorate displays that don't cost that much more than the Moto Chiliad Power (2021). Just the long-battery life of Motorola's telephone continues to carry the day, especially for a phone that you lot can detect for $250 or less.
The cameras on the Moto G Power aren't earth-beaters, but information technology'll produce proficient shots. And I actually like the wait and experience of this phone — a surprise given the Grand Power's upkeep roots. Nevertheless, the reason to consider past Moto G Power models was its epic battery life, and I'm happy to report that continues with the 2021 edition of this pop upkeep phone.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/moto-g-power-2021-review-the-long-lasting-battery-champ-is-back
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