Motorola New Moto G (Moto G2) review

When you think of budget smartphones, you might think of small, chunky devices with sub-par screens and low-powered specs. This all changed when the original Moto G launched last year, as it revolutionised what we came to expect from budget smartphone performance. It was still, by current standards, a compact phone, though, with a small 4.5in display. Now, the latest version of Motorola's best-ever-selling smartphone, also called the Moto G, has a large 5in display, giving you great value performance on a big screen.

It's rare to see a budget phone with a screen this size, so the fact that Motorola has kept the price down to £145 SIM-free is outstanding. It's a shame the new phone is only available in 3G; if you want a 4G Moto G, you'll have to buy the old version (currently around £160 SIM-free). The upside is that the new Moto G is available in both dual- and single-SIM varieties (in the dual SIM version you can use both SIM cards at the same time) and has a guaranteed prompt upgrade to Android L waiting in the wings when Google launches the new version of its operating system later this year.

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^ Interchangeable shell cases will also be available for the new Moto G in October

Motorola's outstanding build quality returns for the new Moto G. Its curved back, which measures 6mm at its thinnest point and 11mm at its thickest, is extremely comfortable to hold, and its feather-light weight of 149g is just 6g heavier than the old Moto G - an impressive feat for a considerably larger handset. The screen is also surrounded by the Moto G's new front-ported dual speakers, which deliver impressive-sounding audio for your films and music.

The 5in screen is beautiful. The resolution is still 1,280x720, so the new Moto G actually has a lower pixel density of 293 PPI (pixels-per-inch) compared to the old Moto G's PPI of 326, but the screen still looked perfectly crisp and sharp.

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The screen isn't quite as bright this time round, but our peak measurement of 350.7cd/m2 means the screen is still perfectly legible both in- and outdoors. Colour accuracy is also a little lower than the old Moto G as well; we measured the new handset as covering 87.2 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut, compared to the old model's 98.4 per cent. The trade-off is noticeably deeper black levels, which we measured at an impressive 0.36cd/m2.

Measured contrast was also excellent, at 960:1. This high contrast level helped the screen produce plenty of detail in our high-contrast test images, and the screen's viewing angles were equally superb. When we placed the new Moto G to our side, we could still see the screen clearly with hardly any discolouration present onscreen.

Motorola has also improved the Moto G's camera, which is great news as the camera was one of the old Moto G's weakest areas. The phone now comes with an 8-megapixel rear sensor with an f2.0 aperture, and you also have the option to change the aspect ratio from 16:9 to 4:3. The old Moto G, by comparison, was locked to 16:9. The new Moto G has all the same photo modes available, too, including HDR and Panorama modes.

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Outdoors, our photos looked rich and much more natural than the old Moto G's images, and there was much more detail on show. The brickwork in our test scene was crystal-clear and the sky didn't suffer from any signs of overexposure. Objects further away were a little fuzzy compared to those in the foreground, but it's still a huge step up from most other budget cameras from similarly priced phones.

We were pleased with the Moto G's HDR mode, too. The effect was sometimes a little strong, but it helped bring a lot more definition to our shots and helped brighten what was otherwise a very gloomy afternoon. The accuracy of the colours wasn't affected by HDR either, so images still looked great regardless of whether HDR was turned on or off.

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^ Colours still looked good even in overcast, cloudy weather

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^ HDR mode brightened our photo considerably, dispelling the non-HDR shot's gloomy shadows

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^ The 8-megapixel camera provides a lot more detail than the old Moto G's sensor

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^ To get an 8-megapixel camera with HDR on a sub-£150 phone is almost unheard of

Inside, the new Moto G is similar to the old one. Both phones use a quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, so the phone's performance has remained largely unchanged. The new Moto G scored 1,478ms in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, which is in line with the old Moto G's score of 1,410ms. While it's a little disappointing that Motorola hasn't updated the processor, this still provides the phone with plenty of speed, allowing it to outstrip many of its main competitors.

Loading up The Guardian's desktop home page posed no problem for the new Moto G, and we were able to scroll up and down the page with no stutter or hesitation whatsoever. The screen's resolution of 1,280x720 was also clear enough to read headlines, but we had to zoom in to read smaller pieces of text. Again, the touchscreen was very responsive and panning round zoomed in was very smooth and judder-free.

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Graphics performance was also similar to the old model, but again, this is no bad thing. In Epic Citadel, the Moto G's Adreno 305 GPU scored an admirable 34.4fps on Ultra High quality settings, and in 3DMark's Ice Storm Unlimited test, it scored 4,679, which roughly translates to 21.2fps. This should be more than enough to play most games in the Google Play Store, but the phone may struggle with more demanding apps. This is still very impressive for a sub-£150 handset, though, as it beats the £360 HTC One Mini 2 and is on par with HTC's excellent budget phablet, the £280 Desire 816.

The new Moto G will be available in both 8GB and 16GB models, but both come with the ability to expand the storage up to 32GB via microSD card slot, a feature we're pleased to see make the cut from the 4G version of the old Moto G. 

Battery life is excellent. In our continuous video playback test, the new Moto G's 2,070mAh battery lasted 9 hours and 39 minutes with the screen set the half brightness. This beats the original Moto G by about 30 minutes, so we were pleased to see the larger screen didn't take its toll on the phone's battery life. It doesn't quite match the 4G Moto G, which lasted another hour under the same conditions, but this is still an excellent result for a phone of this price and the new Moto G should be able to keep you going all day before you need to recharge it. 

The new Moto G isn't just an amazing bargain. It's a sub-£150 phone that gives a surprising number of £200-plus mid-range handsets a real run for their money, and in most cases actually beats them hands down in terms of overall value. We didn't think it was possible to create a better phone than the original Moto G, but the latest version of Motorola's unstoppable handset rightly claims its crown as the new king of budget smartphones. It wins a Best Buy award.