Moto G84 5G Review: A Premium-Looking Well-Rounded Midrange Smartphone

Oct 18, 2023

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The Motorola “Moto G” series of smartphones has always been popular in the budget smartphone segment. In fact, it is the first Motorola Moto G smartphone back in 2013 that paved the way for Motorola’s comeback. Soon after its release, the first Motorola Moto G became the best-selling smartphone in markets like India, Brazil, and Mexico.

Fast forward to 2023, a decade later, the Moto G series is still running strong, with the Moto G84 5G being the latest addition to the lineup.

Today, we’re here with a detailed review of the smartphone to help you understand if the latest Moto G84 5G smartphone is worth your money in 2023.

Moto G84 5G Detailed Review:

What’s in the Box?

Let’s begin by talking about the contents of the box. Below are all the items you receive in your Moto G84 5G retail packaging.

The Moto G84 5G handset
33W TurboPower charger
Sim ejector tool
USB Type-C charging cable
Printed documentation related to warranty and user guides
Protective Silicon backcase

Build and Design

The Moto G84 5G has a very traditional smartphone design, that is very much identical to the Motorola Edge 40 Neo that was recently announced.

The first thing you’re going to notice when you hold the phone is that it feels incredibly lightweight.

The front, as you can already guess, houses the 6.5-inch flat display. Whereas the side rails as well as the rear of the phone are built out of plastic. However, the rear does have a textured finish either made out of vegan leather or 3D premium PMMA (depending on the color variant you choose), which gives it a friendlier feel in hand.

The main highlight of the smartphone design would definitely be its colors. The phone is available in three color variants: Viva Magenta, Marshmallow Blue, and Midnight Blue. The color palette is designed in partnership with Pantone, thus giving it a unique and vibrant shade.

Talking about buttons and ports on the phone, the right side of the phone houses the power and volume buttons. On the left, you have the SIM tray, and the bottom of the phone has the USB Type-C charging port, the speaker array (the device has dual stereo speakers), and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Yes! You heard that right. Out of all phones in 2023, this one comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack. Feel nostalgic yet?

The device is also rated IP54 for being water and dust-repellant, and there is also an under-display fingerprint sensor positioned in the bottom center of the display.

Display

The Moto G84 5G features a vibrant 6.5-inch FHD+ pOLED display with a fixed 120Hz refresh rate, 360Hz touch sampling rate, and 10-bit color support, offering over one billion colors for excellent visual quality.

It boasts a peak brightness of 1300 nits, ensuring outstanding outdoor visibility. The viewing angles are also good. However, it lacks the ability to play Ultra-HD 4K content due to limitations associated with the Snapdragon 695 chipset. Overall, it stands out as one of the better displays in the under Rs. 20k range.

The device comes with saturated display settings by default, but I would advise switching to Natural colors to avoid excessive saturation in certain scenarios.

Performance, UI, Gaming

Powering the Moto G84 5G is the Snapdragon 695 chipset and 12GB LPDDR4x RAM along with 256GB of internal storage space. It is also worth noting that there aren’t any RAM/internal storage variants with the G84 5G like we see with every other phone out there. Additionally, the device also supports expandable memory of up to 1TB with microSD.

The Snapdragon 695, which was released way back in 2021, is not the best chipset that you can find in the price range.

I’ve run benchmark tests on the device, with AnTuTu scoring it at 428,067, and Geekbench 6 showing a single-core score of 910 and a multi-core score of 2,064. During a CPU throttling test lasting 15 minutes with 50 threads, the device’s performance dropped by 15% from its peak.

Benchmarks aside, on a real-life performance basis, you wouldn’t have a terrible experience.

Yes, you’re not getting the best and latest in terms of processing power, but what you get is very good enough to take you through the daily tasks of checking emails, social media, etc., and also in terms of gaming.

We did run games like PUBG, Call of Duty, Asphalt 9, and Asphalt 8, on the device, and all ran well. You may have to turn down the graphic settings from the extreme level for a smoother experience, but it is not unplayable by any means. The device gets hot though after a heavy gaming session.

On the software front, the Moto G84 5G comes with Android-13 out of the box, with an OS upgrade to Android-14 on the way. Motorola also promises 3-years of security updates for the device, but we would not bet on any Android version upgrades for the device.

What makes the Moto G84 5G sweeter, just like every other Motorola device, is the software experience. The UI feels very similar to stock Android with some Motorola features/apps that enhance the user experience. However, due to its mid-level processing power, you may occasionally experience frame drops and animation lags.

The device includes some cool features like gesture controls, Moto Spatial Sound, Games Control, and more, which are welcome additions.

Camera

The 50-MP primary camera on the Moto G84 5G takes photos that are binned to 12.5 MP by default. Given ample lighting such as in daytime scenarios, the primary camera can capture really good photos with life-like colors and great detail. Forcing the primary camera to take 50-MP shots improves the details in the image, reduces noise, and also reduces the artificial image sharpening that we see otherwise.

Even the 8-MP ultrawide camera can produce good shots in well-lit conditions. However, as the lighting conditions worsen, so does the overall picture quality of all the cameras. Nothing that would make you throw away the phone in pain, but not impressive considering the competition either. Images in low lighting lack detail, are way noisier, and aren’t generally good.

But the game changes with the 16-MP selfie shooter. The selfie camera captures stunning pictures and assesses conditions exceptionally well. Skin tones are perfect in nearly every situation, and low-light performance is also impressive. I would say this smartphone boasts one of the best selfie cameras available under Rs. 20k.

On the video front, the camera is really good considering that it is OIS and PDAF. You can capture Full-HD 30fps/60fps videos with the rear primary camera, 30fps Full-HD with the rear ultrawide camera, and either 30fps/60fps Full-HD video with the selfie camera.

Here are some of the camera samples in different conditions:

Sound

The Moto G84 features a stereo speaker setup with one dedicated bottom-firing speaker and an amplified earpiece. Despite this asymmetrical arrangement, it manages to produce surprisingly balanced and loud sound. The audio output has a clean frequency response, with clear mids, making voices sound good. The inclusion of Dolby Atmos enhances the audio experience.

Battery Life

With a 5,000mAh battery unit on board and a fairly power-efficient chipset, you can easily enjoy a whole day of battery backup with the Moto G84 5G. No matter if you’re always on WiFi, enjoying crisp content on the device’s display, or heavily gaming, battery life is never going to be a concern.

The battery deal is even sweeter considering that you get a 33W “TurboPower” quick charger in the box, which can easily get you cross the 50 percent battery mark within 30 minutes.

Should You Buy the Moto G84 5G?

Well, making a purchase decision on the Moto G84 5G is a simple deal.

Do you prefer an ordinary-looking device, that gives you an awesome stock Android experience (Note: No Ads!), pass-able camera quality, not-really-bad performance, amazing front cam, and a terrific battery life?

Then the Moto G84 5G will be the most affordable and yet the best option you have.

However, if you prefer what we all call a “bang-for-the-buck” device that packs your device up to the brim with features and hardware specs, then this is definitely not the best option you have out there.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this Moto G84 5G review are solely mine, reflecting my personal experiences. There has been no editorial input from Motorola.

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