Gadgetory

hey guys and welcome back to hardware box it's your boy Tim here and we'll be taking a look today as you can probably tell from what's in my hands some more smartphones and on the agenda today the best budget devices so I've been recommending Motorola MOTO G phones for a number of years now and this year they've come up with the Moto G 5 line so in this end I lock the motorola moto G 5 plus and over here the Moto G 5 so the plus variant is slightly more expensive it comes with a few extra features but both phones still sit in the u.s. 200 to 250 or market making them really affordable options for those who don't want to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on the top-tier devices like the Galaxy s8 motorola has made a number of improvements to the Moto G line with the g5 and one of the key upgrades is the design in past devices we've gotten a pretty cheap and crappy feeling plastic construction with the Moto G 5 and G 5 plus Motorola has introduced metal for the first time not just in the premium possible but also in the more affordable g5 so we're getting a much nicer design across the board it feels a lot better in your hands though it's still not a premium chassis it still got a bit of plastic around the edges where some Chinese OMS ago with a more metal unibody feel and the bezels on the front of both devices are still very large so Motorola is still positioning this device towards more of the budget end of the spectrum but I still appreciate the upgrades that they've made here to introduce things like metal and a more premium feel the Moto G 5 plus is the slimmer of the two devices and it's also slightly larger with a 5.2 inch display on the front the Moto G 5 has a 5-inch display on the front same 1080p resolution but it is also thicker at more like 10 millimeters thick as opposed to seven point seven millimeters in the Moto G 5 plus and the reason for this is to accommodate the removable battery this is the only of the two Moto G 5 devices that comes with the removable battery and what this means is that the phone to be sicker to accommodate some of the extra housing for that removable battery assembly taking off the back of this phone is pretty tough I will have to say that but underneath the hood you get that 2800 milliamp hour battery to my two SIM card slots I should say nano Sims here and also that micro SD card slot on the Moto G 5 plus both of those features are included in a tray that you'll find on the top edge motorola hasn't introduced USB type C to the G line just yet so we're still getting micro USB on the bottom of both devices here that does make it a bit cheaper to purchase accessories and cables but you know it's the USB type-c revolution at the moment I hope that a future iteration of these devices includes that feature and Motorola isn't a dumb smartphone company there's a 3.5 mm headphone jack on the top pretty much exactly what you want to see here another good thing about the moto G 5 in particular is that this is the first G Series phone that includes a fingerprint sensor on the front last year's model the g4 I just the Plus model had a fingerprint sensor but they've added that to the cheaper model this time around it's got a much nicer look and feel to it as well makes it a bit easier to operate and of course fingerprint sensor is still included on the g5 plus if you wanted to spend a bit more money another similarity between both devices is the speaker setup just the single speaker here included above the display for both your in court audio and also your loudspeaker it does go pretty loud which come can come in handy when you're on a phone call but the quality isn't great no stereo audio experiences here and to be honest you can't really expect much more from such an affordable handset both of these budget handsets pack 1080p IPS LCD s 5.2 inches in the g5 + and 5 inches in the g5 what surprised me here is that the display in the g5 is actually superior to the display in the g5 plus not only is it brighter 517 it's and the g5 compared to 500 nits in the g5 plus it also has a better contrast ratio and better color accuracy out of the box both of these phones are configured to use the vibrant display mode out of the box and on the g5 plus it's surprisingly inaccurate relative to the g5 the g5 is much closer to the ideal color temperature accuracy as you can see here in some of our spectracal charts and also it pulls away in grayscale color checker and saturation accuracy whereas on the g5 plus none of these features are particularly accurate in fact the g5 compared to some of the other phones on the market has a pretty decent display in terms of its color accuracy also another interesting thing about these phones is that on the g5 if you switch from the vibrant to the standard display mode you will get a more accurate display on this particular device but switching over to the g5 plus making that same change actually makes the display worse so it's been interesting that on the more affordable of the two handsets they've included a better display it's only a marginal improvement I will have to say both phones have very decent displays for a budget handset but I would like to see for those that purchase it's been a bit more money on the g5 plus then they do get a slightly superior display experience let's take a look at the hardware in these devices now starting with the cheap of the two the Moto G fives now in last year's model the Moto G four we saw a Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 1 7 SOC clocked it up to 1.5 gigahertz across eight CPU cores however in the Moto G 5 we're seeing a Snapdragon 430 SOC so a downgrade in SOC tear it's a pretty similar configuration here we're still getting eight arm cortex a53 CPU cores there now clocked at 1.4 gigahertz so a slight downgrade here and we're seeing an audrina of 505 GPU so again a very minor downgrade and in my opinion Motorola has basically done a sideways move here moving from the 607 to the 430 and that leads to very similar CPU performance as we'll take a look at in a moment there are two configurations of the Moto G 5 one comes with 16 gigabytes of internal storage and 2 gigabytes of RAM and a slight upgrade with 32gb of storage and 3 gigabytes of RAM you get LTE category for Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and answer no AC including this device and bluetooth 4.2 no NFC either in the cheaper of the two phones looking at the Moto G 5 Plus this device comes with an upgraded SOC compared to last year's model 2g plus again used the Snapdragon 600 700 g5 plus we're seeing a Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 to 5 SOC and again this is the same octa-core home cortex a53 CPU design so Motorola loves that octa-core design but it's now clocked at 2.0 gigahertz all over the GFI plus a pretty significant clock speed improvement we also see an adrenal 506 GPU and that does provide a fairly decent bump in GPU performance compared to last year's model there are a range of g5 plus configuration options available you can choose between 32 and 64 gigs of internal storage there's also either 2 3 or 4 gigabytes of RAM the configurations there depend highly on your region that storage whatever so definitely check what's available for you my reviewing it was 32 gig and 4 gigabytes of RAM so a pretty decent configuration there and it's great to see that you get 32 gig in the entry-level model for a phone that only cost 230 bucks pretty decent you'll also get NFC in some regions definitely check what's available for you again LTE category 6 a slight upgrade from the g5 but you still only are limited to Wi-Fi ABG and enter no AC and bluetooth 4.2 as well for those of you interested in smart phone benchmarks we will be breathing through a number of them for you here today of course is hardware box what were we doing if we didn't show some benchmarks let's get straight into it and taking a look at the Moto G 5 plus relative to the g5 we are seeing that 43% higher clock speed on the g5 plus and this translates into 37% more performance in CPU limited workloads on average so that does lead to a more snappy experience in general compared to last year's more the g5 plus is 38% faster on average than the g4 plus and compared to some devices with the oldest Snapdragon 410 SOC like the G moto g3 the Snapdragon 65 provides 71% more performance so if you're using a two-year old budget device which is snapdragon 410 or 400 inside you see a pretty significant performance improvement moving to the g5 plus for those more interesting the g5 as I mentioned earlier it's more of a sideways move here it's 1% slower than the Moto G 4 in our cpu workload so that's within the margin of error and compared to the Snapdragon 410 again if you're moving from an older budget device 24% more performance in the g5 so decent-enough upgrade there move into our GPU benchmarks here and the Moto G 5 plus is 42% faster than the Moto G 5 here thanks to that fast Adrina at 5:06 GPU it also holds a decent 46 percent lead on the Moto G 4 plus which was another 1080p handset while it obliterates all the Snapdragon 410 SOC s that SOC is more designed for 720p display so not a big surprise here moto g5 buyers shouldn't despair because the Snapdragon 430 SOC is a capable associate of 1080p displays unlike some of the older 400 series chips the g5 is more than three times as fast as Snapdragon 410 handsets however it loses to the Moto G for last year's model by approximately 6% on average not a big deal here and both of these hazards are still capable of playing to those popular smartphone games in terms of NAND performance this is another area where it was surprising to see the Moto G 5 have a performance edge on the g5 plus the 16 gigabytes of NAND in my reviewing it was around 28% faster than the g5 plusses 32 gigabytes of man though both phones perform pretty well in this regard for an entry-level handset in terms of battery life the Moto G 5 has a 2800 milliamp hour removable battery the g5 plus it's a bit slimmer but packs a 3000 milliamp hour non removable battery so it's 7 percent larger than the g5 it also uses a more efficient manufacturing node for the SOC inside 14 nanometers for the g5 + 28 nanometers on the g5 and that produces a more efficient SOC that can last a bit longer in our battery tests as we will care through some of our tests the g5 plus is a fantastic performer across the board producing very solid results for a mid-range phone and despite the fact that it packs the same battery capacity as last year's g4 plus it actually outperforms the g4 plus by significant margin thanks to that more efficient SOC the g5 does fall a bit behind the g5 plus although that's not surprising considering it has a smaller battery the less efficient SOC there's still very solid results for the g5 across our tests here and it does outperform some of the previous models from motor rollers G series if you've managed to get through this far into the review you'll probably notice I've been pretty positive so far but there is one area from both devices that has unfortunately regrets compared to last year you might have guessed it it is the camera the one area I haven't talked about just yet motorola has been talking up the camera in the g5 plus in particular because they're very proud of how they've included a 12 megapixel sensor with dual pixel technology the same sensor used in the Samsung Galaxy s7 so you should be expecting pretty good photos from this camera right well unfortunately Motorola hasn't put a lot of time and effort into the processing and that leads to pretty disappointing results here when you take a look at some photos things like contrast dynamic range color saturation metering and so forth all for behind the galaxy s7 because the s7 uses superior processing there are some areas where the g5 plus is superior to last year's g4 plus such as in his low-light performance this camera has larger internal pixels so you get a brighter experience there and the focusing times thanks to which dual pixel face detection autofocus is significantly faster than last year's model but I actually think the g4 plus delivers better photos across the board and that's disappointing because this camera does have a better sensor in it the g5 plus should produce better fires but it simply doesn't and that's a bit disappointing that said its detail is one area where it does take the edge over the galaxy s7 you get pretty decent detail from an entry-level phone here in terms of the Moto g5 we're seeing another regression this time compared to the Moto G for play the ultra cheap phone from last year it's a 13 megapixel sensor in this camera but again Motorola hasn't focused too deeply on the cameras processing and this leads to pretty mediocre results across the board and is prone a little bit to washing out and it's inside results when you're indoors on artificial life and it's low-light performance is nothing special whatsoever so again disappointing because the Moto G for play was a very capable camera for such a cheap price and I wish that Motorola would have spent a bit more time optimizing some of the processing in these two phones you get a very similar camera app in both the g5 and the g5 plus not particularly great not a whole ton of features there the Moto G 5 plus is the only phone of the two that supports 4k capture I get this is actually a pretty decent feature consumer we haven't seen that before in the Moto G line you're restricted to just 1080p capture in the murder of g5 and in terms of their selfie cameras both are five megapixel units with an F 2.2 lens decent results here nothing too amazing and again it leads to a pretty average camera experience for both of these entry-level phones I'm not going to talk too much about the software on these handsets because both run stock Android 7.0 out of the box got familiar with stock Android you'll love the experience provided here there are a few minor tweaks here and there there's nothing that significantly impacts the experience when I asked Motorola about the software updates for these handsets they did say they're planning on producing quarterly upgrades this is mostly due to carrier and regulator restrictions in some regions they simply can't push it out faster than that so be disappointed not seeing monthly upgrades and both of these devices only come with this January security upgrades out of the box it's May now I'd really like to see a more updated handset here so I'll have to wait and see what Motorola's track record is in delivering those promised quarterly upgrades the main selling point for the Moto G 5 1 if that brings all this great hardware and features and performance into such an affordable price point for those of you in the United States the Moto G 5 plus retails for just 230 US dollars which is an absolute bargain for what you get in my opinion is also $20 cheaper than last year's Moto G 4 plus and you can save even more money if you're willing to put up with Amazon lockscreen ads for what you get in this phone even considering that regressed camera compared to the g4 plus I still think it's a really solid buy added price point unfortunately the Moto g5 isn't available in the United States but you will find it in other regions like Europe for 200 euros or in Australia for just $300 u.s. at that price book you get such a great experience in terms of its performance and battery life it's really hard to pass up at that price however if you are willing to spend a bit more money in Australia $400 use for the Moto G 5 plus you get a bit better performance a bit better camera and a bit better battery life at that price point it can make it a bit of a compelling option if you have a bit more money to spend but at 300 bucks really it's hard to pass up the Moto G 5 and Motorola has really hit the nail on the head once again with their budget smartphone offerings for 2017 anyway that's it for this review of murrells budget handsets you can check out all the analysis and benchmark apps whatever on textbook comm so head over there and check that stuff out don't forget we've got links to our patreon below thanks to all the supporters out there have been supporting us in our patreon so far and we'll catch you in the next one