Mid-range smartphones often mean mediocrity – not just in terms of price, but also in terms of features. Seeing a mid-range smartphone that offers much more than this mediocrity is always refreshing and shows that no one has to spend large amounts of money to get a smartphone that is good. A clear example of this is the Moto G84. It scores in all possible areas: the design is attractive, as is the screen, and the smartphone is already convincing in terms of performance and battery life. What more do you want? We try to answer this question in our test report.
Design & workmanship
When designing the Moto G84, Motorola rightly noticed that the simple, yet high-quality look of the predecessor and sister models has proven itself. In the dark blue version, in which our test device comes, the smartphone offers a harmonious overall package.
The 167 g that the device weighs makes it a real lightweight, and this impression is reinforced by the really low thickness of just 7.6 mm. The device sits really well in the hand – making it fun to use. The smartphone comes in the color “Viva Magenta” with the back made of vegan leather, which impressed us with the Motorola Edge 40 Neo (test report). It is protected against splash water and dust according to IP54.
Display
A highlight of the Moto G84 is the display. The manufacturer has installed a 6.5-inch OLED panel in this model that has a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels – this results in a pixel density of around 405 pixels – and supports a refresh rate of 120 Hertz. The best conditions for a high-quality display. The high refresh rate was particularly noticeable in the test.
The display is simply a feast for the eyes, the color reproduction is impeccable, as is the viewing angle stability and the black and contrast values. The cherry on top of this big icing on the cake is the brightness – at around 730 cd/m², the display is quite bright for its price range and therefore remains easy to read even in direct sunlight. Great!
Camera
But the Moto G84 is not a camera smartphone. A Samsung Isocell S5KGN9 is used as the main camera, which has a resolution of 50 megapixels. The wide-angle lens has a resolution of 8 megapixels. The photos produced by the main camera are good, especially in good lighting conditions. There is a surprising amount of detail, the dynamic range is satisfyingly large and colors are mostly represented accurately. The recordings of outdoor scenes are particularly impressive. As expected, in darker lighting conditions, the main camera has a difficult time depicting everything in detail. Nevertheless, we are satisfied with the overall performance here.
The shots from the wide-angle camera, on the other hand, were hardly usable – washed out, lacking detail even in good light and distorted at the edges, they usually ended up straight back in the trash. This is a shame and severely limits the flexibility of the camera array. The front camera, on the other hand, takes attractive photos and has a resolution of 16 megapixels. It’s a shame, 4K video recording is not possible with the main camera. At least 4K at 30fps would have been possible even in this price range.
Motorola Moto G84 5G – Originalaufnahmen
Motorola Moto G84 5G – Originalaufnahmen
Furnishing
The clock in the Moto G84 is a Snapdragon 695 – the Qualcomm chip is already two years old, but is still a solid choice for mid-range smartphones. Its eight cores clock at up to 2.2 GHz. In PCmark Work 3.0, the device with this processor achieved a score of around 11,000 points – that’s really good. Things get a little weaker in the graphics benchmark 3Dmark: 1200 points in Wild Life are okay, but not remarkable.
In everyday life, the smartphone confidently handles most of the tasks you throw at it. Multitasking is not a problem. However, when playing graphics-intensive 3D games, the device does not achieve very high frame rates and eventually breaks down. We did not observe any excessive heat development.
The processor is accompanied by an impressive 12 gigabytes of RAM and 256 GB of internal storage; However, the latter is “only” UFS 2.2 storage and therefore somewhat slower. In the communications area, users get access to Wi-Fi 5 (IEEE 802.11ac), Bluetooth version 5.1 with support for LE, GPS with GLONASS and 5G mobile communications. The Type-C port only uses the slow USB 2.0 standard.
The fingerprint scanner, which is located below the display, works quickly and reliably; However, it is positioned a little too low for our taste. The disadvantage in the test was that there is neither support for eSIM cards nor a proper always-on display. Instead of the latter, users have to be content with a sometimes-on display, which, depending on the settings, appears after tapping or lifting the cell phone, for example. Unfortunately, the built-in speaker only delivers below-average, tinny and empty sound, but the voice quality via the earphones is good. The fairly pure version of Android 13 installed as the operating system comes with only a few Motorola-specific apps and settings – we’re happy about that.
Motorola Moto G84 5G – photo gallery
Motorola Moto G84 5G – photo gallery
battery pack
The lithium-ion cell installed in the Moto G84 has a capacity of 5000 mAh. In the PCmark Battery Test, the device manages a simulated playback time of an impressive 13 hours! It is therefore almost impossible for the battery to run out after a day of use. If you only use the device moderately, you can easily expect a runtime of two days thanks to the low standby consumption. It can be recharged from 20 to 100 percent in just under 45 minutes using the included 33-watt power adapter. That’s neat!
Price & alternatives
The Moto G84 is available in the color variants dark blue, silver white or red in the memory combination 12/256 GB for an RRP of 300 euros. The device currently costs around 250 euros on Amazon, which adds a whole lot more value to the already good price-performance ratio.
Conclusion
So what more could you want than what the Moto G84 brings for the price of just under 250 euros? An always-on display, eSIM card support, a faster USB port and 4K video recording. However, anyone who has ever had a smartphone in their hand will notice that these are rather unimportant little things. Everything that has to be right in a smartphone is also right in this Motorola device. Lots of power, an ingenious screen, an above-average battery life and a great design make this device a true all-rounder that doesn’t have to be afraid of the competition like Xiaomi and Co. Nobody can go wrong with this device.