In the past week, I borrowed my fiancee’s phone about four times. The first few were when we visited the Met Cloisters museum in New York City. I love taking pictures so I borrowed her Pixel phone to capture some beautiful scenes. The next time was when we decided to order some delicious buffalo chicken tenders in the middle of a dog walk. I don’t carry my wallet when I walk my dog and I often pay with my phone, and I couldn’t do that with the $170 Moto G Play (that also meant she paid, heh).
The last time was yesterday when we both went to a Joe Hisaishi Candlelight concert and heard the wonderful Highline String Quartet recreate the beautiful Studio Ghibli soundtracks (yes, even the classic “Merry Go Round of Life” from Howl’s Moving Castle). I got her to give me her phone so I could record a short clip of the last song—the only one everyone was allowed to record.
It’s understandable that a sub-$200 smartphone will make compromises, especially with its camera. The Moto G Play is horrendously slow, but it’s not the worst option on the market, and I could manage otherwise. But I feel compelled to say that after switching to another cheap phone from Samsung, it’s hard to recommend.
Play Safe
Photo: Motorola
The Moto G Play is a plastic phone that looks dull, like most other budget handsets. At least the plastic means the back won’t break if you drop it. This phone doesn’t support 5G networks, so you’re moved to 4G LTE, but it will work with any major US network.
Motorola is powering the Play with MediaTek’s Helio G37 chipset with 3 gigabytes of RAM, which is the same processor it used in last year’s Moto G Power 2022. I hated it when I tried it because it was noticeably slower than the previous model, so it’s not much of a surprise to see the new Play performing in a similarly frustrating manner.
It has its moments where it can work well, but more often than not, you’ll be waiting a few seconds for the keyboard to appear when you want to type something in the search bar. (It also likes to skip over the first word I type, prompting me to start over.) Switch apps and you’ll wonder if the pause means the phone froze, so you’ll swipe back, only for it to suddenly record two separate slides and now you’re in an app you didn’t mean to open.
In my benchmark test, it delivered one of the lowest scores I’ve seen in recent memory. Yes, I’ve been able to read my emails, reply to messages, and browse Reddit in my downtime; just add a dose of lag between most of those tasks and that’s the experience.
If you can handle that slowness, then you might not find much fault with the rest of the hardware. The 6.5-inch 720p display doesn’t look too pixelated and was good to look at in most tasks, though it can be hard to read when it’s bright. It has a 90Hz display refresh rate, but I wouldn’t even bother counting that as a positive – the phone isn’t powerful enough to consistently deliver the “smooth” experience you’re supposed to get with a high refresh rate.
The 5,000mAh battery is the standout feature, as I was able to get roughly two days on a single charge with average use (likely a bit more if you’re even more conservative). It’s really nice not having to plug in every night. There’s a reliable fingerprint sensor on the back and even a headphone jack. It only comes with 32GB of internal storage, so you’ll want to take advantage of the microSD card slot—after just a week of use, I’m seeing “low storage” alerts, and that’s just over 100 apps (including pre-installed ones).
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