Moto G5 Plus review: Everything the Moto G5 should have been (with an incredible camera)

Latest news: The G5 Plus hasn’t been out long, but Motorola is already getting ready to release a new version of it. The new Motorola Moto G5S Plus has a slightly different look to it, a larger 5.5in display and a shiny new 13-megapixel dual-camera system similar to that found on the Honor 6X and Honor 9 phones.

Other than that, the new Moto G5S Plus looks pretty similar to the previous model, with what looks to be an identical processor (a 2GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon) and battery lineup (3,000mAh) to the current Moto G5 Plus.

It’s not yet clear if Motorola will be replacing the current model with this new one, but it would make a lot of sense if it did, especially, as I suspect, current G5 models haven’t been selling quite as well as Motorola would like.

The Motorola Moto G5S Plus will go on sale in early August from the Motorola website and in John Lewis stores. You can read our full review of the original immediately below.

Motorola Moto G5 Plus review: In full

It had to happen at some point, but seeing Lenovo release a disappointing Moto G phone was kind of like finding out there’s no Santa Claus. Thankfully, the Moto G5 Plus is a big improvement.

That improvement comes at a price – £80 extra, to be precise. The Moto G5 Plus’s name suggests a phablet-style device, but it’s actually just 0.2in larger than the Moto G5, so where has the money gone? Everywhere it should have gone with the Moto G5, really, but the real prize is the camera, which is implausibly good for a £250 smartphone.

It’s been a while since we’ve written the words “£250 smartphone” (or for Americans $299 on Amazon US). You’ll notice that price point has been pretty much vacated by everyone, putting the Moto G5 Plus in a tricky position. It’s definitely a marked improvement on the Moto G5, but what about the £200 Lenovo P2, or the £225 Honor 6X? And, for that matter, how does it compare to the £320 Samsung Galaxy A5?

Let’s find out.

Moto G5 Plus review: Design

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The Moto G series has been on a diet since last year’s 5.5in phablet-pushing outing. The Moto G5 Plus has lost relatively little size-wise, though, coming in at 5.2in to the Moto G’s 5.0in. Put them side by side and they look pretty similar, with a little more curving on the top and bottom of the Plus model.

Both have had a makeover as well. Gone is the cheap and cheerful plastic, and in its place is a thin metal. The new style further blurs the already quite hazy lines between budget and flagship, even if the Moto G5 Plus has plastic caps at the top and the bottom of the device. It’s a good look, all the same. Micro USB charging is the order of the day, and both models sport a 3.5mm headphone jack, going against the trend in keeping the decades old, but extremely useful, port.

There are a couple of curious design differences between the Moto G5 and G5 Plus. The most obvious is that while you can remove the back and change the battery on the smaller Moto G5, that option isn’t available on the Moto G5 Plus. I can’t see any clear reason for that, but it has the small knock-on effect as to where you put your SIM card: the G5 Plus has a SIM tray accessible from the outside, rather than hidden away out of sight. On top of this, the G5 Plus has NFC, while the G5 doesn’t. If you don’t know what that is, the chances are you won’t need to, but in day-to-day practical terms, it means that the G5 Plus can make contactless payments with Android Pay, while the cheaper G5 can’t.[gallery:2]

Another difference is arguably even stranger. While the Moto G5 has the headphone jack on the top of the handset, the Moto G5 Plus keeps it on the bottom. It’s a matter of personal preference, ultimately, but it’s a weird discrepancy between the two models.

Other than that, the Moto G5 Plus looks every bit as good as the Moto G5. The difference is that with the Moto G5, that’s where the praise ended. With the G5 Plus, the best is still to come.

Moto G5 Plus review: Camera

Regular readers of my phone reviews will notice I’ve mixed up the order a bit here, as I usually come to the camera after exhausting everything else there is to say about a handset. This change in scheduled programming is for one simple reason: you won’t find a camera anywhere near this good for the price, and it’s the G5 Plus’s secret weapon.[gallery:7]

If we were ranking smartphones by their cameras, the Google Pixel is the top dog, followed by the Samsung Galaxy S7. At less than half the price, the Moto G5 Plus has no right to be alongside such distinguished company, but it manages it – albeit with a slight cheat. The camera module in the Moto G5 Plus is the same one that lives in the Samsung Galaxy S7, which if you don’t know is a 12-megapixel snapper with a bright f/1.7 aperture and phase-detect autofocus. That’s the same module that’s good enough to go in the £779 Galaxy S8 too, so it’s not to be sniffed at.

Now, a phone’s camera is more than just the hardware: it’s ultimately the software that performs the scene analysis and auto-exposure calculation, for example. Fortunately, the Moto G5 Plus holds up brilliantly.

In good lighting conditions, the Moto G5 Plus is almost a match for the best of the best. The colours aren’t quite as vibrant as the Pixel XL, and if you look really hard you might spot some smearing, but the pictures are still nothing short of excellent, especially given the price of entry.[gallery:11]

Like the Galaxy S7, the Moto G5 Plus’s camera performs well in low light. The camera maintains good control over image noise, and hardly any detail is lost to over-compression. If you were to be hyper-critical, you could complain that low-light photos can be a little dark, with some greys merging to black, but overall this is among the best you can buy.[gallery:12]

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Moto G5 Plus review: Screen

Unfortunately, to get the most out of these beautiful snaps, you’ll want to find another screen to enjoy them on. While the Moto G5’s display isn’t terrible, it’s not going to win any awards any time soon.

Let’s get the positive out of the way first. You’re looking at a 5.2in screen, which is 0.3in smaller than last year’s model with the same 1080p resolution. That means it’s ever so slightly sharper – but if you can tell the difference between 424ppi and 401ppi, then you likely have the kind of super-human eyes that could read this review from across a room.

The viewing angles are also decent, but sadly that’s where the positives end. The colours feel quite murky, and even with the display set to Vibrant, it never lives up to that description. These feelings were confirmed when we took our professional testing equipment to the screen. Not only did it reach a pretty low top brightness of just 401cd/m2 (last year’s model reached 486cd/m2), it also covered just 73.4% of the sRGB colour gamut – a big drop from last year’s 90.6%. At 1,149:1, the contrast is pretty good, but any IPS screen is facing an uphill battle to match AMOLED’s perfect contrast.[gallery:6]

Moto G5 Plus review: Performance

Things are significantly better when you get to the raw performance. Powering the Moto G5 Plus is a 2GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, backed by 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. If that’s not enough, the phone supports microSD cards of up to 256GB.

That means it feels suitably nippy in day-to-day use, and that performance level is backed up when compared directly to its nearest rivals:

Of course, while looking at those graphs it’s worth remembering that the Moto G5 Plus is kind of on its own in terms of price. At £250, there’s just nothing close at the moment in either direction. That works in its favour in some respects – it’s £80 cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy A5 despite similar performance – but it’s a double-edged sword. While it comfortably beats the Moto G5, Lenovo P2 and Honor 6X, it’s £80, £50 and £25 more expensive respectively. That means in terms of pound per performance, it’s actually a tiny bit behind in some cases.

The battery sealed away inside the Moto G5 Plus is a 3,000mAh affair, and it copes pretty well with the daily strains of smartphone usage. Our standard test for these things involves a looped 720p video on airplane mode, at a uniform screen brightness of 170cd/m2. In those conditions, the Moto G5 Plus lasted a respectable 13hrs 13mins.[gallery:9]

That’s good, but if battery is all important to you, the similarly specced Lenovo P2 managed a whopping 28hrs 50mins in the same test – and it’s £50 cheaper.

Moto G5 Plus review: Verdict

For years, the regular Moto G has been the one to go for, while the Moto G Plus version hasn’t been worth the extra cash. This year, the roles have flipped – and if you’re a keen photographer, nothing comes close in this price bracket. Or the one immediately above it, for that matter. I really can’t overstate how great the camera on this phone is, given most budget phones cut corners on the snapper.

If you’re not a keen photographer, though, there are better options out there. The Moto G5 Plus is a good phone, but its screen and (relative) price let it down. For £50 less you can get the Lenovo P2, and while its camera may not be as good, it’s a better all-rounder for my money. The Honor 6X also offers a better overall experience for £25 less than the Moto G5 Plus.[gallery:15]

That said, if Lenovo wants to reclaim the Moto G budget crown next year, it’s the Moto G5 Plus it should use as its starting point, not the Moto G5. It’s a good handset, but with a price that’s crept up year on year, the Moto G series has let itself be undercut by others. In other words, the Moto G series has been beaten at its own game – the game it wrote the rules for way back in 2013.