Motorola's Moto G series usually delivers affordable phones in the price range of 2000 - 3500 kronor, but the Moto G75 with its price of 4500 kronor is closer to what we expect from Motorola's cheaper phones in the Edge series. We can also compare it with Samsung's Galaxy A35 and the various models in the Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 series. What stands out about these other phones is that they have good screens for their price range. Here, Motorola has prioritized differently. Instead of an OLED screen with a 120 Hz refresh rate, we get an LCD display, admittedly also with 120 Hz, but the lag of the liquid crystals means you don't get the same feel of the high refresh rate. Apart from that, it is still an unusually good LCD screen with bright colors and quite high maximum brightness. It is flanked by stereo speakers with clear and loud but slightly tinny sound.
The screen has fairly thin bezels, and the sides and back are made of rather simple matte plastic on our test unit. The Moto G75 is also available with a faux leather back, which is recommended as it is both more attractive and makes the phone more comfortable to hold. The package also includes a transparent silicone case, a 33-watt charger, and, surprisingly, a wired headset with a USB-C connector. The Moto G75 lacks a standard headphone jack. In terms of accessories, Motorola has really gone above and beyond. Another unusual feature for this price range is that the phone is equipped with wireless charging. It is also waterproof with an IP68 rating, which means it can generally withstand a dip in water and not just a little rain.
Decent mid-range performance
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The phone is well-equipped with memory, 8 gigabytes of RAM, and 256 gigabytes of storage. A variant with 128 gigabytes is sold by some retailers for a couple of hundred less. Regardless of which one you choose, there is also space for a memory card. The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 platform, a relatively new mid-range chipset with performance similar to what you get from the Samsung Galaxy A35 and Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro 5G. I find that the phone mostly feels fast and responsive.
Motorola's user interface is simple and tidy, and easy to recognize if you have used any other Android phone. The custom features are gathered in a couple of apps and settings where the Moto app guides you on what you can do. One of the new features is, for example, that you can configure the lock screen to have live wallpapers and show links to content that Motorola thinks might be of interest. On the downside, Motorola has started including a lot of pre-installed apps and games that you need to spend some energy cleaning out if you don't want them.
Motorola promises five years of system updates and five years of security updates for the Moto G75, which is unusually long for a mid-range phone; for comparison, Samsung promises four years of updates for the A35.
Three cameras, one good
On the back, there are three cameras. According to Motorola, one of them is a sensor that is supposed to reduce flicker in the images. I categorize it under hood ornaments, where we usually find depth sensors or macro cameras. One of them is a rather low-resolution wide-angle camera without autofocus. Even if you disregard the low resolution, the images from it are not particularly sharp.
But the main 50-megapixel camera is actually quite good. The images usually have nice color reproduction and sharpness, although, for example, bare branches against the sky become blurred in post-processing. Even pictures taken at dusk turn out nice, but if it gets darker than that and the night mode is activated, the images are not particularly sharp. There is no telephoto camera for zoom photography, and the phone also does not utilize the sensor's high resolution to create zoomed-in images, so if you choose two times zoom, the image will not be better than if you had zoomed in digitally afterwards.
The battery life in our screen test, where we play streamed video on the phone until it dies and check how long it took, is above average. This is impressive considering that LCD screens consume more power than OLED screens and therefore usually have shorter battery life in this test. Even in practical use, I think the battery life is above average.
The advantages compared to the alternatives, five years of system updates, included accessories, and wireless charging, feel a bit narrow compared to the disadvantages of opting out of an OLED screen and a somewhat weak camera setup. But at the same time, the screen and cameras are not so bad that it feels like Motorola is overpricing the phone. They have simply made slightly different priorities, for better or worse.
Questions and Answers
Does the phone have a 3.5-millimeter jack for a headset? No, but they include a headset that fits the USB port.
Is the phone fast charging? The included charger is 33 watts, which is enough to charge the phone from empty to full in about an hour.
Is the screen dim? No, on the contrary, unusually bright for an LCD screen, I would say.
An alternative
Samsung Galaxy A35 has one year fewer updates promised but a better screen and camera setup.
Sample image
Nice colors, good details. It's only when you zoom in on the tree branches that the image can feel a bit over-processed.