{"id":429140,"date":"2026-01-24T00:34:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T00:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/429140\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T00:34:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T00:34:16","slug":"almost-perfect-for-the-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/429140\/","title":{"rendered":"Almost perfect for the price"},"content":{"rendered":"

Motorola unveiled its latest mid-range smartphone, the Moto G Power 5G, late last year<\/a>. I got my hands on the phone and put it through its paces. After using it casually for a month, I took it to downtown Toronto to a Raptors game to really test it out in a busy, real-world environment, and honestly, I was thoroughly impressed with the G Power.<\/p>\n

Sleek design<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

To kick things off, let\u2019s talk about the design of the Moto G Power 5G. From the front, the phone looks pretty standard, though it is a bit more rectangular than other devices, which have taken on a more rounded shape. It also has a standard hole-punch camera and decently thin bezels. The screen is also a pretty nice size for my standards, sporting a 6.8\u2033 FHD+ display<\/p>\n

The right side of the frame has two separate volume rockers on the top, which I personally love, and a longer power button on the bottom, which also supports the fingerprint scanner. My only problem with that is that I way too often accidentally unlock the phone instead of quickly checking a notification. This is an extremely minor annoyance, but it is still an extra half-second I\u2019d rather not spend locking the device. The left side, however, only sports the SIM card slot. This slot not only supports the SIM, but also a micro SD card slot that can expand storage up to 1TB, which is a huge plus I will definitely be taking advantage of.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Moving onto the back of the device, it has a textured design that honestly looks good in both the dark blue and the sandy-white colours the device comes in. The Moto G Power 5G also has the cameras and flashlight set up in a quad-camera formation in the upper-left-hand corner, which I honestly really like the look of.<\/p>\n

Also, as a small note, there is a headphone jack which I have used a fair bit and really appreciate. Thanks, Motorola!<\/p>\n

Not always the best performer<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One downside I noticed is the device\u2019s horsepower, which is honestly kind of lacking at times. I noticed it mainly when using picture-in-picture mode: the phone would stutter and slow down a fair bit, which became a nuisance.<\/p>\n

Speaking of power, I ran a Geekbench 6 benchmark on the G Power. It managed a single-core score of 783 and a multi-core score of 2,093, which is surprisingly way lower than I expected. The day-to-day performance feels pretty good to me, aside from the occasional slowdown.<\/p>\n

The Moto G Power sports the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 processor with a 2.4GHz octa-core CPU and an Arm Mali-G57 MC2 GPU. It also comes with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, which is expandable up to 24GB with RAM boost, which I might consider down the road if I decide to expand the device\u2019s storage.<\/p>\n

One thing I do have to give this phone credit for, though, is that it never got hot once while I used it. Even when running video calls for hours with my partner at college, which usually will overheat my Pixel 9 if I\u2019m not careful, the G Power stayed cool.<\/p>\n

Picture perfect<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

To test the cameras, I took the phone to a Toronto Raptors and Philadelphia 76ers basketball game to really test the system out in real-world settings with constantly changing light and sound \u2014 and honestly, it performed better than I expected.<\/p>\n

The early \u2018point and shoot\u2019 photos I took with the phone during the pregame came out way better than I thought. One thing about the device that I noticed from the start, which actually benefited in this scenario, was the automatic colour adjustment. My daily driver (Google Pixel 9) has a similar auto-adjust feature, but the Moto G Power 5G really takes it up a notch. When I first got the device back in December, I really struggled with this and ended up with a lot of oversaturated photos of my cat \u2014 although my apartment has a lot of tan in it, so that might have played into it.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tNormal shot<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tLowlight shot
\n\t\t\t\t
<\/p>\n

After a while, I put my photography skills to the test and was really pleased with what I could achieve in both \u2018Normal\u2019 and \u2018Pro\u2019 camera settings. For starters, I got a very \u2018ambient\u2019 vibe from the photos I took, along with much more detail from the crowd than I expected.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t use the front camera much, but it was tolerable when I did. Obviously, there are \u2018better\u2019 selfie cameras on the market, but for the average user who doesn\u2019t need \u2018studio quality\u2019 selfie shots, it\u2019ll do perfectly fine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The one place where I found the camera setup really struggled was the zoom. When I really tested the camera setup at the Raptors game, I found that the zoom lens was pretty much unusable for photos when I tried to zoom in on the players on the court to get a closer shot. And I wasn\u2019t in the nosebleeds either; I was in the lower bowl, and I still had problems. If I were sitting any higher, it\u2019d be more difficult getting a clear shot.<\/p>\n

To show an example, I took a shot of 76ers centre Joel Embiid (above).<\/p>\n

Battery life for the ages<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

My main praise for this phone is the battery life.<\/p>\n

During the time I have spent with the Moto G Power 5G, I have mainly used it as my streaming device for work and video calls, as previously mentioned. During all of that usage, the phone\u2019s battery has been absolutely stellar. One day, I was running YouTube for my entire 8-hour workday, and even kept it streaming while I got dinner ready; it never dropped below 70 per cent once.<\/p>\n

The device sports a 5,200 mAh battery that I don\u2019t think I have even completely depleted yet. It has been nothing short of great and has been a reliable backup while I have been busy or away from a charger for most of the day.<\/p>\n

Worth your money?<\/p>\n

I feel like, for $449.99, this is a great budget option for anyone who needs a device for modern-day use, such as scrolling through socials, browsing the internet, and streaming content, without having to stress about battery life.<\/p>\n

I have definitely enjoyed my time with the Moto G Power 5G, and I look forward to turning to this device whenever I need a dependable, long-lasting phone.<\/p>\n

Canadians can purchase the G Power direct from Motorola for $449.99<\/a>. At the time of writing, no Canadian carriers had the 2026 G Power available. However, Freedom Mobile still sells the 2025 variant, so it may eventually pick up the 2026 version.<\/p>\n

MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Motorola unveiled its latest mid-range smartphone, the Moto G Power 5G, late last year. I got my hands…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[49,48,190,178876,5892,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-429140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mobile","11":"tag-moto-g-power-5g","12":"tag-motorola","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}