Test much later

Bargain Review: Motorola Moto G85 - Now Really Good Value

If you find it for a cheap price, the Motorola Moto G85 can be a real bargain.

Published 2 May 2025 - 10:44

Motorola's mid-range phone Moto G85 arrived in Swedish stores just in time for midsummer 2024. Now, ten months later, they have sent us a test sample. Better late than never? Well, there's no point in pretending we're testing a new phone here, but it is a phone that is widely available in stores, so it's still interesting for those considering a purchase to know what you get for your money. The money is also not the same as it was at launch. Admittedly, there are still stores selling it at the original price of 4300 kronor, but we often see it at a reduced price for as little as 2500 kronor. If you find it at the lower price, it's a bargain.

The Motorola Moto G85 could just as well have been called the Motorola Edge 50 Lite. It was launched at the same time as several of the models in the Edge 50 family, had a price closer to the cheaper models in the Edge family than the price range we normally find the Moto G series in, and also looks like a phone in the Edge 50 series. This means that it is a phone with a rather elongated screen with very narrow edges around it that are also slightly curved, and a back in rubber plastic with a leather texture in unusual colours.

The curvature of the screen is a bit less than on the Motorola Edge phones, but it is still a phone that, thanks to being so narrow and light, feels more manageable than you might think from the screen size. The rubber back is something I really appreciate, both more durable and grippier than a glass back, but if you still want to give the phone extra protection, it comes with a transparent rubber case as well.

The screen is also really good for the price, bright and of OLED type with an increased refresh rate of 120 Hz. If you get hold of the phone for under 3000 kronor, you probably won't be able to get a better screen for the price. As always with thin edges and a curved screen, it looks nice but is also a bit impractical, you notice that the touch sensitivity is a bit worse near the edges.

Slow

The phone's most obvious disadvantage is that it is a bit slow. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 6s gen 3 chipset economises on performance, especially when it comes to graphics. In performance tests, the Moto G85 is one of the slowest phones we've tested this year. Now, it's not from this year, and Motorola is good at at least making the user interface feel fast, but inside apps like the browser, you can notice that the phone struggles a bit, and you should probably avoid graphics-heavy applications. For 4300 kronor, I would say the phone is too slow, but if you get it for under 3000 kronor, the performance is more reasonable.

When the phone was released, it came with Android 14 and a promise of two years of major system updates and three years of security updates. We have already received one of these major system updates; when I test the phone, it has Android 15. Motorola's user interface is in turn very close to Google's own, but whereas they were previously sparing with pre-installed apps, I now have to remove quite a few games and other things from the phone. Motorola also offers to install three of their selected new apps with each security update, something I firmly decline.

Motorola Moto G85 has two cameras on the back, and neither of them impresses on paper. The main camera is 50 megapixels but has a relatively small half-inch sensor. The wide-angle camera, on the other hand, is low resolution with its 8 megapixels. In practice, I still think I get quite okay pictures from the main camera, at least in daylight. In poorer light, it loses a bit against more expensive mobiles, but it's only in really dark conditions that it no longer keeps up. The wide-angle camera is, as expected, not particularly good. If I had paid 4300 kronor for this mobile, I would probably have thought that I could have demanded a better camera setup, while I would be more than satisfied for 2500 kronor.

So, one could summarise the Moto G85 as a phone that felt a bit overpriced when it was new, with a focus on design and screen at the expense of performance and cameras. However, if you bring the price down to budget level, you get performance and cameras according to expectations but a much better screen and unusually luxurious design.