Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Moto G Play (2023) serves up a smooth screen and big battery for just $170

Nadeem Sarwar
By

Motorola has a new ultra-affordable phone on offer, and this one serves up a few perks usually seen on higher-end phones. The latest budget warrior from the company is the Moto G Play (2023) — a phone that only costs $170 and will be sold unlocked by Amazon, Best Buy, and Motorola starting January 12. 

The most striking aspect of the phone is its screen. You get a modern-looking 6.5-inch display with palatable bezels and a small hole-punch cutout at the top that houses the selfie camera rather than an eyesore waterdrop notch. 

Rear profile of the Motorola Moto G Play 2023
Motorola

The resolution has been capped at HD+ (1600 x 720 pixels), which isn’t surprising for a phone in this price bracket. However, Motorola is adding some pizzazz courtesy of a smooth 90Hz panel, a convenience Apple doesn’t offer on the iPhone 14 despite asking $800 for it. 

Recommended Videos

Another notable aspect of the Moto G Play (2023) is the battery size. Motorola has armed it with a 5,000mAh battery that is claimed to last up to three days. Those are rather generous figures, but given the phone’s modest internals, it will easily go past a day. 

The phone is powered by MediaTek’s Helio G37 chip, paired with a modest 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. Thankfully, you can expand the storage by popping in a card of up to 512GB capacity. 

Front profile of the Motorola Moto G Play 2023
Motorola

The Moto G Play’s camera hardware screams budget. You get a single 16-megapixel camera at the back, assisted by a pair of 2MP cameras for macro photography and depth sensing. Selfie duties fall to a 5MP camera. 

The body is water-repellant, thanks to its IP52-certified frame, but you still might want to apply a case and screen protector because there is no advanced Corning Gorilla Glass protection to be found. Thankfully, the 3.5mm headphone jack is present, and a 10-watt charger is included in the retail package.

Motorola Moto G Play 2023 in the hands of a user.
Motorola

Another area where the Moto G Play (2023) shows its budget colors is the software, as it still runs Android 12. The saving grace here is that you get a near-stock Android experience without any preinstalled bloatware. You’ll get an update to Android 13, but that’s the only major OS update Motorola promises. The phone comes in a single navy blue color and actually looks quite neat despite its plastic build. 

A quick look at other options

If you’re exploring other options, the Nokia G50 5G offers a 48MP camera, more RAM, and four times more storage. It is currently going for $199 on Amazon. For $166, the Nokia G20 also offers more RAM and storage, a 48MP main camera, and a bigger battery. 

OnePlus Nord N300 5G back
Christine Romero-Chan / Digital Trends

If you can slightly increase your budget, the OnePlus Nord N300 is a great option at about $230. It throws 5G into the mix with 33W fast charging and an eye-catching design. OnePlus also offer more feature-rich software and longer-term update support.

TCL also offers a bunch of dirt-cheap phones that deliver a compelling mix of features. At $189, the TCL 30 XL offers better cameras at both the front and back, double the RAM, and more storage. Walmart is currently selling the TCL 30 V 5G for $199, and it eclipses the Moto G Play 2023 in almost every department. In other words, Motorola has its work cut out for it with this one.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Nadeem Sarwar
Nadeem Sarwar
Contributor
Nadeem is a tech journalist who started reading about cool smartphone tech out of curiosity and soon started writing…
Motorola’s Moto G200 is coming to China in January 2021
Motorola Moto G100 camera and screen.Credits: Motorola official.

Motorola officially launched the Moto G100 in March 2021 and released it in the United States in July. Now, the successor to the device -- the Moto G200 -- has been unveiled . The phone has been internally code-named "Yukon/Xpeng." The new smartphone is expected to be launched in China as the Moto Edge S30 and be available for sale in January 2021.

Motorola's upcoming device will have a plastic unibody, with a 6.8 inch LCD full HD+ display featuring an impressive refresh rate of 144Hz. This is much higher than the Moto G100's refresh rate of 90Hz. The Moto G100's Snapdragon 870 5G chipset will also receive a more powerful upgrade, with the G200 expected to be powered by a Snapdragon 888 processor. It will feature 8GB RAM and either 128 GB and 256 GB of storage. 

Read more
Motorola’s new Moto G Power (2022) keeps long battery life, adds better camera
Image of a picture being taken with a Moto G Power.

The Moto G Power (2022) is officially the newest part of Motorola's Moto G family, and the successor to the Moto G Power (2021) that we reviewed early this year. As our review of the earlier model noted, all the key selling points are here, like the long-lasting three-day battery life, huge display, and sturdy design. But on top of that, Motorola also appears to have addressed our complaints about the weak camera performance and mediocre panel, by significantly beefing up both, though it still hasn't brought 5G to the device likely to keep it under $200.

To start with, the new G Power features a 6.5-inch 1600 x 720 IPS display with a 90Hz refresh rate, meaning everything will be smoother than last year's 60Hz panel. It's still not really a bump up from 720p -- 1080p would have been nice given the big screen, but it'll still feel a lot better to use. In terms of weight and dimensions, it's about the same size and tips the scale at about 203 grams. The design is fairly sturdy and is IP52 water-repellent, however, it is not technically waterproof, so don't fully immerse it.

Read more
The Moto G Pure might be Motorola’s most affordable entry-level phone yet
Image of Moto G Pure.

Motorola is back with a new entry-level unlocked phone -- the Moto G Pure. Despite not having any particularly unique features to it, the $160 G Pure does excel at being a fantastic budget phone, as it falls in the same price range as the aging Moto E. According to Motorola, the G Pure is the new entry point for its budget lineup, though not technically a direct replacement of the Moto E.

The phone is only available in a Deep Indigo color option, which looks like a light black to our eyes. Sporting a 6.5-inch HD+ Max Vision 1600 x 720 display, the Moto G Pure has a resolution of 269 pixels per inch. It weighs about 188 grams. Its water-repellent design is accented with a subtle fingerprint scanner on the Motorola logo, though it's important to note that it's not waterproof.

Read more