**A Hands-On Review of the Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G**

The Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G is a budget-friendly smartphone that offers a range of features, including a stylus, 5G connectivity, and a high-quality camera system. In this article, we'll take an in-depth look at the phone's design, performance, camera capabilities, and overall value.

**Design and Features**

The Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G has a distinctive design that sets it apart from other budget smartphones. The phone features a 6.8-inch display with a resolution of 1080 x 2244 pixels. On the back, there are three cameras: an ultra-wide-angle camera, a macro camera, and a depth camera. The front-facing camera is a 16-megapixel selfie camera that takes some pretty good photos. One of the phone's standout features is its stylus, which is designed for note-taking, drawing, and other creative activities.

The phone also has a few notable features, including dual capture, which allows you to film simultaneously with the front-facing camera and one of the back cameras. This feature is useful for capturing "you reaction" footage while still seeing what you're reacting to. The phone also shoots HD video, but not 4K. However, it's worth noting that the phone's battery life is quite good, even with 5G connectivity. I was able to make it through a day and a half without any issues.

**Camera Capabilities**

The Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G has a triple-camera system on the back, which includes an ultra-wide-angle camera, a macro camera, and a depth camera. While the phone's cameras are not as good as some of its more expensive competitors, they're still capable of taking some great photos, especially in bright lighting conditions.

The phone's selfie camera is also quite good, with a resolution of 16 megapixels. However, I would caution that it may not be as good as the front-facing cameras on some of Motorola's other phones. The macro camera, which is designed to capture close-up shots of small objects, feels more like a novelty than something you'll use often.

**Performance and Gaming**

The phone's performance is decent, but not quite up to par with its 5G-powered competitors. I ran benchmark tests on the phone, and it scored slightly lower than its non-5G counterparts. However, it still managed to score higher in gaming benchmarks, thanks to its more powerful processor and better GPU.

When playing games with intensive graphics, the phone handled pretty well. However, if you're looking for a phone that can handle demanding games without any issues, you may want to consider other options. The phone also has Android 11 out of the box, which should provide a smooth and secure user experience.

**5G Connectivity**

The Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G is available in a 5G model, but the phone's 5G connectivity was a bit of a letdown. I ran the phone on T-Mobile's 5G network in South Carolina, and while it did provide some speeds, they were not always consistent. The phone often dropped back down to LTE, which suggests that there may be issues with the carrier's coverage or the phone's own 5G capabilities.

Overall, the 5G model of the Moto G Stylus 5G is a bit of a mixed bag. While it provides some exciting features and capabilities, its 5G connectivity can be hit-or-miss. If you're not sure if your carrier has good 5G coverage in your area, it may be worth holding off on this model.

**Display**

The Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G's display is a key feature of the phone. However, I found that the screen can be quite difficult to see outside, especially when wearing sunglasses. The phone's screen also lacks some features that more expensive smartphones have, such as HDR support.

Overall, the display on the Moto G Stylus 5G is good, but it's not without its quirks. If you plan on using your phone in bright sunlight or outdoors often, you may want to consider a different option.

**Conclusion**

The Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G is a solid budget smartphone that offers a range of features and capabilities at an affordable price. While it has some notable strengths, such as its stylus and Android 11 out of the box, it also has some weaknesses, such as inconsistent 5G connectivity and a display that can be difficult to see outside.

If you're looking for a budget-friendly smartphone with a stylus, I would recommend considering the Moto G Stylus. It's available for $279, which is significantly cheaper than the Moto G Stylus 5G. However, if you don't care about a stylus and are looking for a 5G phone that won't break the bank, you may want to consider other options.

**Value**

The Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G is available for $499 at launch, which puts it in the same price bracket as some of its more expensive competitors. However, I would argue that it's still a good value given its features and capabilities. The phone offers a range of benefits, including Android 11 out of the box, a high-quality camera system, and a stylus.

Overall, the Moto G Stylus 5G is a solid budget smartphone that offers a lot of value for its price. While it may not be perfect, it's definitely worth considering if you're in the market for a new phone.

**Final Verdict**

The Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G is a solid budget smartphone that offers a range of features and capabilities at an affordable price. While it has some notable strengths, such as its stylus and Android 11 out of the box, it also has some weaknesses, such as inconsistent 5G connectivity and a display that can be difficult to see outside.

Overall, I would recommend considering the Moto G Stylus if you're looking for a budget-friendly smartphone with a stylus. It's available for $279, which is significantly cheaper than the Moto G Stylus 5G. However, if you don't care about a stylus and are looking for a 5G phone that won't break the bank, you may want to consider other options.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is the moto g stylus 5g and as the name suggests it has a stylus and well 5d i spent a week with the stylus 5g and here's my review it costs 400 in the us which makes it one of the most affordable 5g phones from motorola and is the same price as the motorola one 5g ace which does not have a stylus so if the moto g stylus 5g seems familiar it's because it's the follow-up to january's moto g stylus which did not have 5g but this new phone is much more than just adding 5g to the old phone in fact there are a number of significant and minor improvements which i'm gonna get into later but first let's go back to past me and see what my impressions were after a couple hours with the phone first it's it's green it's kind of like um i don't know not like uh emerald green actually the color is called cosmic emerald so yeah clearly i am off to a wonderful start with this review it's a little heavy not like burdensome heavy it's not the heaviest phone this year but uh compared to the one that came out earlier this year this is definitely heavier but this one has a bigger battery the new one does the phone's weight kept on creeping up on me all throughout this review and i think part of that comes from the fact that this new phone has a larger five thousand milliamp hour battery than the old non 5g version which only had a four thousand milliamp hour battery i think the idea behind it is by increasing the battery size on this new phone and then having that new 5g connection which is going to drain the battery you're going to get about the equivalent battery life on the new phone as you would with the non 5g version that's a lot of g's anyway at least that's one of the reasons it's heavier but let's check back in with me later in the week it's a big battery you are reminded of this battery every time you pick this phone up because it's a hefty hefty phone it's not the heaviest phone but if it's heavy without a case it's only going to get heavier when you put a case on it that's this is something to think about that's just math oh and the body is plastic motorola i think does plastic so well for these um quote unquote budget phones um it is fingerprinty that's one downside yep you know i could just hear you guys typing people are gonna put a case on it patrick let it go just like elsa all right let it go the same when you take it out of the case it's still gonna have your fingerprints from like a year ago you said you were gonna let it go hey look how many fingerprints this has you can see the camera bumps are a little bit different the stylus 5g has a square camera bump in the top left corner which is a little more like the motorola one 5g ace and now let's talk about the title character the stylus the stylus on this is completely a cylinder versus the one on the one that came out in january it's got like a cylinder bottom but the one in january has got like a flat top this new completely round stylus from top to bottom is so much easier to put back in the phone whereas when i go to put the one back in the non 5g model um depending on how i put it in it kind of gets stuck because it last parts flat yay innovation but all this leads to a deeper and more important question yeah still trying to figure out why i need a stylist i mean if you're gonna get a phone that has a stylus and has the word stylus in the name of the phone then yeah it's kind of important but here's me a few days into the review i guess here's a little am i having um what do i use this for yeah there's like notes app there's coloring book apps i guess um if you have a child you could give your phone with your stylist and they could color it in for kids this makes sense i mean it's not like there's a small part they could lose oh heck adults could color that's a thing now yeah i'm pretty pretty certain coloring book is a uh adult thing not like adult like you know adult but like you know adult yeah i feel bad if i don't use the stylus like is this like a convertible car and i just don't take the top down ever then why did i get a convertible car to help me with my existential stylus and convertible car crisis i called in the best there is my cnet colleague my friend former dj senior editor lexi savides she's gonna set me straight on the appeal of a phone stylist but i usually use the stylus and or the you know the pen i guess as an actual pen you know for note-taking for quick writing like jotting things down i like to take notes by typing so this could work usually it's something to do with food because it's usually something urgent like quick i need to write down our takeout order i don't have a pen or pencil anywhere i need to do this quickly note to self make sure lexi has enough food what would you recommend me as i'm not completely new to a stylist but i really want to live that stylist life hashtag me stylist life thing that i like to experience when i ever get started or people that are experiencing it the first time is the responsiveness and the accuracy when you are writing on the screen okay so lexi gave me a new outlook and i really wanted to try to live that hashtag stylist life stylists you and i we're gonna become friends but then my new friendship hit a rough patch i found my apple pencil and i got my old ipad out and i just wanted to kind of compare the experience and yeah let's just get it out of the way the price of this pencil alone is like a third of the cost of the moto g stylus 5g that said when i go to write words on the moto g stylus 5g it just it they don't look great and it's not an enjoyable experience for me maybe it's the latency like maybe i'm not feeling that responsiveness lexi was talking about i'm not giving up on it i want to be clear i'm going to try to live this hashtag stylus life that said when i use the apple pencil on the ipad it does it just feels like i'm writing on paper except i'm writing on glass the difference comes down to i actually feel like i'm writing on my ipad whereas on the moto g stylus 5g i feel like i'm learning how to write hopefully we're going to go out and take some photos today and not only live this hashtag stylus life but live the camera life hashtag looks talk cameras on the back are four cameras and they're the same ones found on the moto g stylus except the macro camera gets a slight bump in resolution the main 48 megapixel camera is pretty decent actually it's very similar to other moto cameras in the sense that it combines multiple pixels into one this makes for less image noise brighter photos and better detail in fact i've gotten some pretty great shots out of this camera there's also an ultra wide camera which is okay uh details aren't great in fact details are often soft and mushy and the image quality isn't anywhere near what the main camera can do a great example of this are these photos i took of these trees so here's a photo from the main camera of the trees you can see when we zoom in there is a lot of detail you can make out the individual leaves even in groupings here are the same trees taken with the ultrawide camera now the camera does offer a more dramatic perspective which you can see here however we take a close look at the leaves you can see the groupings are kind of just much together you can't make out individual leaves in those clusters also on the back is a depth camera now this doesn't take pictures on its own but combines with something like the main camera for portrait mode photos which are actually pretty good the final camera on the back is a macro camera which to me feels much more like a novelty than something that you're going to use a lot in fact if the ultra wide and macro camera had image quality that was on par with the main camera then that would be an entirely different story on the front is a 16 megapixel selfie camera which takes some pretty good photos the moto g stylus 5g shoots hd video so no 4k but that brings me to one of my favorite features on the camera and that's called dual capture and that allows you to film simultaneously with the front-facing camera and one of the back cameras so you could do a your reaction and also see what you're reacting to and there's different ways to lay it out but i like you could put the selfie camera on the top half and what you're reacting to on the bottom half let's talk about a couple other things here one is battery life the larger battery did pretty well even with 5g this phone has no problem making it through a day not a single problem it's made it through a day and a half very easily at the time i'm recording this video i'm still running battery test on the moto g stylus 5g so if you want to see what those results are check out my written review on cnet.com some other considerations in daily use the moto g stylus 5g handled pretty much anything i threw at it even when i was playing games with intensive graphics it has android 11 out of the box and when we ran benchmark testing for performance the processor scored a little lower than the non-5g version however the stylus 5g has more ram and a better gpu and it scored higher in gaming benchmarks so let's talk about the other title character and that would be the 5g because that's going to be the reason a lot of people want to get this phone i would caution you if you're buying a phone to get 5g check what your carrier coverage is like in your area check what the pricing is like if you have friends or neighbors who have 5g what their experiences are like because it's going to vary wildly and that was my experience with the moto g stylus 5g i ran it here on t-mobile's 5g network in south carolina and speeds weren't great oftentimes it actually jumped back down to lte but that speaks much more about t-mobile's coverage than it does the phone because other 5g phones from other phone companies have had similar results and let's talk about the display the display especially if you're outside well it's it's hard to see it's not very bright if you're wearing sunglasses you're gonna have trouble seeing it at all so after a week what do i think of the moto g stylus 5g well it's a good phone i mean first it cost 400 which is great uh second it has all the things you like about motorola like those moto shortcuts and it has this new security layer from motorola's parent company lenovo and can pretty much do everything you'd want a phone to do in fact at 400 it comes with features that more expensive phones lack it has a headphone jack it has expandable storage in the box you get both a cable for charging and a wall charger so yeah there's that but if you don't care about 5g whatsoever and you just want a stylus phone i'd recommend considering the moto g stylus it's a hundred dollars less in fact when i'm recording this video right now it only costs 279 dollars on the flip side if you don't care about a stylus and all you want is a 5g phone that's not going to break your budget i would recommend looking at the motorola one 5g ace and i just want to be clear that my recommendations don't mean that the moto g stylus 5g is bad it's just that motorola offers better options for some people and as far as my stylus conundrum well my pal lexi said it best i think i used to judge people for using technology in ways that i didn't do and that is a completely new guided way to look at technology because it's really what you get out of it what it provides for you a lot that's all i've got if you are interested in the moto g stylus 5g check out our link in the description but now i want to hear from you what do you think of the phone what do you think of how it compares to other budget phones for motorola throw your thoughts in the commentsthis is the moto g stylus 5g and as the name suggests it has a stylus and well 5d i spent a week with the stylus 5g and here's my review it costs 400 in the us which makes it one of the most affordable 5g phones from motorola and is the same price as the motorola one 5g ace which does not have a stylus so if the moto g stylus 5g seems familiar it's because it's the follow-up to january's moto g stylus which did not have 5g but this new phone is much more than just adding 5g to the old phone in fact there are a number of significant and minor improvements which i'm gonna get into later but first let's go back to past me and see what my impressions were after a couple hours with the phone first it's it's green it's kind of like um i don't know not like uh emerald green actually the color is called cosmic emerald so yeah clearly i am off to a wonderful start with this review it's a little heavy not like burdensome heavy it's not the heaviest phone this year but uh compared to the one that came out earlier this year this is definitely heavier but this one has a bigger battery the new one does the phone's weight kept on creeping up on me all throughout this review and i think part of that comes from the fact that this new phone has a larger five thousand milliamp hour battery than the old non 5g version which only had a four thousand milliamp hour battery i think the idea behind it is by increasing the battery size on this new phone and then having that new 5g connection which is going to drain the battery you're going to get about the equivalent battery life on the new phone as you would with the non 5g version that's a lot of g's anyway at least that's one of the reasons it's heavier but let's check back in with me later in the week it's a big battery you are reminded of this battery every time you pick this phone up because it's a hefty hefty phone it's not the heaviest phone but if it's heavy without a case it's only going to get heavier when you put a case on it that's this is something to think about that's just math oh and the body is plastic motorola i think does plastic so well for these um quote unquote budget phones um it is fingerprinty that's one downside yep you know i could just hear you guys typing people are gonna put a case on it patrick let it go just like elsa all right let it go the same when you take it out of the case it's still gonna have your fingerprints from like a year ago you said you were gonna let it go hey look how many fingerprints this has you can see the camera bumps are a little bit different the stylus 5g has a square camera bump in the top left corner which is a little more like the motorola one 5g ace and now let's talk about the title character the stylus the stylus on this is completely a cylinder versus the one on the one that came out in january it's got like a cylinder bottom but the one in january has got like a flat top this new completely round stylus from top to bottom is so much easier to put back in the phone whereas when i go to put the one back in the non 5g model um depending on how i put it in it kind of gets stuck because it last parts flat yay innovation but all this leads to a deeper and more important question yeah still trying to figure out why i need a stylist i mean if you're gonna get a phone that has a stylus and has the word stylus in the name of the phone then yeah it's kind of important but here's me a few days into the review i guess here's a little am i having um what do i use this for yeah there's like notes app there's coloring book apps i guess um if you have a child you could give your phone with your stylist and they could color it in for kids this makes sense i mean it's not like there's a small part they could lose oh heck adults could color that's a thing now yeah i'm pretty pretty certain coloring book is a uh adult thing not like adult like you know adult but like you know adult yeah i feel bad if i don't use the stylus like is this like a convertible car and i just don't take the top down ever then why did i get a convertible car to help me with my existential stylus and convertible car crisis i called in the best there is my cnet colleague my friend former dj senior editor lexi savides she's gonna set me straight on the appeal of a phone stylist but i usually use the stylus and or the you know the pen i guess as an actual pen you know for note-taking for quick writing like jotting things down i like to take notes by typing so this could work usually it's something to do with food because it's usually something urgent like quick i need to write down our takeout order i don't have a pen or pencil anywhere i need to do this quickly note to self make sure lexi has enough food what would you recommend me as i'm not completely new to a stylist but i really want to live that stylist life hashtag me stylist life thing that i like to experience when i ever get started or people that are experiencing it the first time is the responsiveness and the accuracy when you are writing on the screen okay so lexi gave me a new outlook and i really wanted to try to live that hashtag stylist life stylists you and i we're gonna become friends but then my new friendship hit a rough patch i found my apple pencil and i got my old ipad out and i just wanted to kind of compare the experience and yeah let's just get it out of the way the price of this pencil alone is like a third of the cost of the moto g stylus 5g that said when i go to write words on the moto g stylus 5g it just it they don't look great and it's not an enjoyable experience for me maybe it's the latency like maybe i'm not feeling that responsiveness lexi was talking about i'm not giving up on it i want to be clear i'm going to try to live this hashtag stylus life that said when i use the apple pencil on the ipad it does it just feels like i'm writing on paper except i'm writing on glass the difference comes down to i actually feel like i'm writing on my ipad whereas on the moto g stylus 5g i feel like i'm learning how to write hopefully we're going to go out and take some photos today and not only live this hashtag stylus life but live the camera life hashtag looks talk cameras on the back are four cameras and they're the same ones found on the moto g stylus except the macro camera gets a slight bump in resolution the main 48 megapixel camera is pretty decent actually it's very similar to other moto cameras in the sense that it combines multiple pixels into one this makes for less image noise brighter photos and better detail in fact i've gotten some pretty great shots out of this camera there's also an ultra wide camera which is okay uh details aren't great in fact details are often soft and mushy and the image quality isn't anywhere near what the main camera can do a great example of this are these photos i took of these trees so here's a photo from the main camera of the trees you can see when we zoom in there is a lot of detail you can make out the individual leaves even in groupings here are the same trees taken with the ultrawide camera now the camera does offer a more dramatic perspective which you can see here however we take a close look at the leaves you can see the groupings are kind of just much together you can't make out individual leaves in those clusters also on the back is a depth camera now this doesn't take pictures on its own but combines with something like the main camera for portrait mode photos which are actually pretty good the final camera on the back is a macro camera which to me feels much more like a novelty than something that you're going to use a lot in fact if the ultra wide and macro camera had image quality that was on par with the main camera then that would be an entirely different story on the front is a 16 megapixel selfie camera which takes some pretty good photos the moto g stylus 5g shoots hd video so no 4k but that brings me to one of my favorite features on the camera and that's called dual capture and that allows you to film simultaneously with the front-facing camera and one of the back cameras so you could do a your reaction and also see what you're reacting to and there's different ways to lay it out but i like you could put the selfie camera on the top half and what you're reacting to on the bottom half let's talk about a couple other things here one is battery life the larger battery did pretty well even with 5g this phone has no problem making it through a day not a single problem it's made it through a day and a half very easily at the time i'm recording this video i'm still running battery test on the moto g stylus 5g so if you want to see what those results are check out my written review on cnet.com some other considerations in daily use the moto g stylus 5g handled pretty much anything i threw at it even when i was playing games with intensive graphics it has android 11 out of the box and when we ran benchmark testing for performance the processor scored a little lower than the non-5g version however the stylus 5g has more ram and a better gpu and it scored higher in gaming benchmarks so let's talk about the other title character and that would be the 5g because that's going to be the reason a lot of people want to get this phone i would caution you if you're buying a phone to get 5g check what your carrier coverage is like in your area check what the pricing is like if you have friends or neighbors who have 5g what their experiences are like because it's going to vary wildly and that was my experience with the moto g stylus 5g i ran it here on t-mobile's 5g network in south carolina and speeds weren't great oftentimes it actually jumped back down to lte but that speaks much more about t-mobile's coverage than it does the phone because other 5g phones from other phone companies have had similar results and let's talk about the display the display especially if you're outside well it's it's hard to see it's not very bright if you're wearing sunglasses you're gonna have trouble seeing it at all so after a week what do i think of the moto g stylus 5g well it's a good phone i mean first it cost 400 which is great uh second it has all the things you like about motorola like those moto shortcuts and it has this new security layer from motorola's parent company lenovo and can pretty much do everything you'd want a phone to do in fact at 400 it comes with features that more expensive phones lack it has a headphone jack it has expandable storage in the box you get both a cable for charging and a wall charger so yeah there's that but if you don't care about 5g whatsoever and you just want a stylus phone i'd recommend considering the moto g stylus it's a hundred dollars less in fact when i'm recording this video right now it only costs 279 dollars on the flip side if you don't care about a stylus and all you want is a 5g phone that's not going to break your budget i would recommend looking at the motorola one 5g ace and i just want to be clear that my recommendations don't mean that the moto g stylus 5g is bad it's just that motorola offers better options for some people and as far as my stylus conundrum well my pal lexi said it best i think i used to judge people for using technology in ways that i didn't do and that is a completely new guided way to look at technology because it's really what you get out of it what it provides for you a lot that's all i've got if you are interested in the moto g stylus 5g check out our link in the description but now i want to hear from you what do you think of the phone what do you think of how it compares to other budget phones for motorola throw your thoughts in the comments\n"