Motorola Moto G 2014 Review (after a week of daily use)

[Guest]

So, after the forum here helped me decide on a new "budget" phone I want to give something back in return. Mainly a short review of said phone from the perspective of a very casual smartphone user who was looking for a solid smartphone experience on a slim budget. I decided to go with the Motorola Moto G 2014, and here are my thoughts thus far:

 

Hardware:

 

1) Build quality and materials: Yes, the phone is made out of plastic, but that is to be expected for <200€. The back-cover, however, is actually completely rubberized, feels very nice and gives you a solid grip on the phone. I never felt that the phone seems slippery in any way, the only problem with the back of the phone is that it shows fingerprints and dust very easily. I got the black version of the phone and I have to say that I really like the look of it, completely black with just a small motorola logo on the back it looks very classy and elegant despite the low-end materials that are being used. Now for my main concern in regards to build quality: I doubt that the phone would survive it if it fell on the screen-side. It is pretty large and fairly heavy, so I ordered a proper leather case for the whole thing. Also, the volume and lock buttons feel very flimsy. I can easily wiggle them left and right without much force even though the phone is brand new.

 

2) The screen: a 720p IPS screen that just WOW-ed me when I first turned on the phone. I'm coming from a crappy 320x480 screen, so that's probably the main reason for my initial reaction. Now after over a week of daily use that wow-effect is basically gone, but I still have to say that the screen is incredibly nice. Comparing it to my main monitor (which is a bit unfair since that one had a retail price of ~600€) which has a PLS screen the viewing angles are not as good and the colours and contrast are also not quite there. But for my phone experience it is definitely more than enough, you're just not getting the really nice IPS screens you may be used to from your expensive monitor. The pixel density was not an issue for me at all, I couldn't see any individual pixels even though this is a 5 inch display, no matter how close I got to the screen (and I tried my best to get uncomortably close to it). Text was nice and sharp and browsing websites and reading text was actually really enjoyable. 16:9 (or rather 9:16) is not really ideal for anything but watching videos, however that gets mitigated by the fact that you only have onscreen buttons which brings down the aspect ratio to something more square in most applications. I can live with the onscreen buttons, especially since the touchscreen is really nice and responsive, and when you're watching videos you obviously benefit from a 16:9 display. For normal usage scenarios this screen is just amazing, I can't imagine a huge benefit by upping the resolution or size any further.

 

3) Size: I understand that for most people this will be a two-handed device, but for me with my massive hands I absolutely loved the fact that I can comfortably hold it and use it in one hand and that I don't press 5 buttons at once when I'm trying to type something. This will be a very subjective thing, but I find the size to be near perfect.

 

4) Speakers: I always laughed Linus off when he put such a large emphasis on front facing speakers, but HOLY BALLSTM does it make a difference! I don't have to put my phone face down when listening to something (which will definitely help with scratches in the long run), watching videos without IEMs is also very enjoyable now, etc. The speakers themselves are surprisingly decent as well (for a phone, of course. But they're the best phone speakers I've ever heard no matter if you're making a call or listening to music). They come with a preset sound setting that emphasizes the bass a bit and they sound suprisingly dynamic and not as "tinny" as most phone speakers. I also thought the whole stereo speaker thing was a gimmick at first, but it really does help the overall sound quality. They can also be pretty loud, but the sound quality suffers significantly if you crank them up to near max.

 

5) Camera: I'll be completely honest, I don't know a whole lot about cameras and I haven't even looked at the "selfie" camera. I'll just leave you a picture that I took with the phone here.

 

 

 

6) Battery and battery life: First of all, the battery is not removable which is just ridiculous. This should never be the case and there is no excuse for this IMO. However, battery life is just excellent. I have the screen at ~40% brightness, I didn't turn off WLAN even though I left the house and I used the phone for a busy day. When I came home after ~10 hours the battery sat there at 80%! I used my phone to read twitter, I watched a 12 minute video on my drive home, I was listening to music for roughly one and a half hours and the battery just took it like a champ. Really impressive in my opinion. When I came home I kept watching videos and browsing the web (at reduced brightness for the screen) for a few hours and then went to sleep without charging the phone, I woke up to >40% battery after 24 hours of fairly heavy use. I can just repeat myself, I'm pretty impressed. Charging the battery takes a bit longer than what I'm used to, but it's totally fine because I feel very confident leaving the house even if I have just 40% battery left.

 

7) Internet on wireless and 3G: W-LAN worked flawlessly at my home, my old phone and my fiancé's Galaxy S3 actually have a few problems if you are too far away from the router, but the Moto G had no issue here. Of course that is far from scientific so I'll just say that wireless works "fine" for me and that there are no issues. Now, when you're not on W-LAN you have to rely on your carrier, and the fact that the Moto G 2014 doesn't support 4G might be a bit of a pain for some users, but I had absolutely zero issues here. I get the promised 8 Mbit down and 4 Mbit up basically all the time and it is a very pleasant mobile experience.

 

8) Dual SIM slots: A really nice feature, especially if you live near a border or if you travel a lot. I personally don't use it but it is always nice to have and the people who need it probably appreciate that it's there.

 

9) Micro-SD card slot: The moto G 2014 has one and I love it. Why do so many phones not have this? Seriously? I have ~30GB of music with me all the time so I obviously bought a 32GB micro-SD card. The storage on the phone (8GB in theory but roughly 5GB are usable because android obviously needs to be on there somewhere) is enough for me personally since I don't need 50+ apps installed at any given time. There also is a 16GB model if I'm not mistaken, but it wasn't available when I purchased my phone.

 

 

Software:

(just putting this out there, I'm by no means an expert on android or smartphones in general, I might be talking out of my arse for the next few paragraphs and I'm sorry if I get anything wrong. Feel free to correct me if I say something stupid here)

 

1) The stock android experience: I really like it. There is no custom skin, there is no bloatware (the only exception would be 3 or 4 motorola apps) that gets in your way you just get the stock android experience (4.4.4 with a promised update to lollipop once it is available). When else is there to say? That's the way it's supposed to be IMO.

 

2) Responsiveness/overall feeling: The phone is not laggy at all, everything feels nice and smooth. I was a bit worried that the phone might start lagging or that I will run into issues because it has "just" 1GB of RAM, but it seems to be more than enough for what I'm doing with it. The only issues I found were when I was setting up my alarms, 12 of them to be exact, that the phone started glitching out on me a bit. It wouldn't show me the days that the alarm will ring at for some reason. Just swiping across the screen solved that issue though. Also, Google play music crashed on me once when I was setting up all my playlists, not a big deal and it has been 100% stable since.

 

3) Multitasking: Basic multitasking like listening to music while browsing the web works absolutely fine. And then there's the "recently opened Apps" thing, which is technically not multitasking but works really nice and launches apps incredibly fast because they basically keep running in the background (?). It doesn't really impact performance, it is easy to flush if you ever need to and it is really handy for pseudo-multitasking (switching between applications very quickly).

 

4) Apps: Well, it's android so you probably know what you're getting into. The stock camera app is fine, google play music was really confusing at first but it also works totally okay after I set up all my playlists, there are some motorola apps that you probably don't need, but I've not found them to be intrusive in any way (you know, like some apps that carriers like to put on phones that take up resources all the time and can't be properly shut down). Chrome is the standard web browser and it is incredibly nice to navigate on a touchscreen, you can also sync-up your bookmarks from your desktop (if you're using chrome) which is a neat feature. The google play store is obviously full of stuff that may or may not be useful to you, but I personally am fine with twitter, youtube, play music, a calendar, TED, twitch, my contacts, text messages, the camera and the web browser. I don't really need more than that.

 

 

Alright, I guess that's it. That is my experience with the Moto G 2014 so far. I really like it and it has actually changed my opinion on smartphones as a whole a bit. For a budget phone with basic functionality it is pretty amazing and it is more than enough for someone like me.

[Damikiller37]

Glad to hear that this phone is as good as you say since my mum will probably be picking it up soon and for the price it seems like a no-brainer to chose it. Very nice review thanks

[ShadowCaptain]

Great review, very well written and informative

[Bogica]

Read the whole review as I was interested in buying a Moto G 2014 so any info I can grab about it is useful to me. Well written mate!  
The reason I haven't bought it was due to lack of funds, I had to get new tires for my car and my GPU died so it kinda killed my phone budget.
While on the other hand I've been looking at the Xperia ZR (also guaranteed update to 5.0), in Serbia the price tag is slightly higher than the Moto G while the specs are slightly better, while it has a better camera and 2GB ram. So I'm still confused which one to get after Christmas. Any ideas?

[Guest]

Glad to hear that this phone is as good as you say since my mum will probably be picking it up soon and for the price it seems like a no-brainer to chose it. Very nice review thanks

 

That thought crossed my mind as well, "this would be the perfect mom or dad phone", since it is easy to use, large enough to type for most people and relatively inexpensive.

 

Read the whole review as I was interested in buying a Moto G 2014 so any info I can grab about it is useful to me. Well written mate!  

The reason I haven't bought it was due to lack of funds, I had to get new tires for my car and my GPU died so it kinda killed my phone budget.

While on the other hand I've been looking at the Xperia ZR (also guaranteed update to 5.0), in Serbia the price tag is slightly higher than the Moto G while the specs are slightly better, while it has a better camera and 2GB ram. So I'm still confused which one to get after Christmas. Any ideas?

 

Thanks, I hope it could help you a bit. I don't think that I can be useful to you with your decision though, I actually had to ask the forum here as well because I had very little knowledge about smartphones in general. I wouldn't feel comfortable telling you which one is worth your money when I can't compare them directly and when I don't even know that much on the matter. Sorry!

[STRMfrmXMN]

That thought crossed my mind as well, "this would be the perfect mom or dad phone", since it is easy to use, large enough to type for most people and relatively inexpensive.

 

 

Thanks, I hope it could help you a bit. I don't think that I can be useful to you with your decision though, I actually had to ask the forum here as well because I had very little knowledge about smartphones in general. I wouldn't feel comfortable telling you which one is worth your money when I can't compare them directly and when I don't even know that much on the matter. Sorry!

I had looked at the old Moto G for awhile. I have small hands so I feel like size would be a concern for me. Does it feel just obscenely huge in the hands?

[Guest]

I had looked at the old Moto G for awhile. I have small hands so I feel like size would be a concern for me. Does it feel just obscenely huge in the hands?

 

I have extremely large hands and I can comfortably use it in one hand, but that's just me. For someone with average hands it would definitely be a two handed phone, without a doubt. And if you have pretty small hands it might even be too big. If you can't actually see it before you purchase one I would say it's a good idea to get a cardboard box, the dimensions of the phone and a scissor and just make a dummy phone. It might sound silly, but you could at least see if the size is a problem for you and if it fits in your pockets.

[STRMfrmXMN]

I have extremely large hands and I can comfortably use it in one hand, but that's just me. For someone with average hands it would definitely be a two handed phone, without a doubt. And if you have pretty small hands it might even be too big. If you can't actually see it before you purchase one I would say it's a good idea to get a cardboard box, the dimensions of the phone and a scissor and just make a dummy phone. It might sound silly, but you could at least see if the size is a problem for you and if it fits in your pockets.

A Galaxy S5 is a tad too big for me - still a two handed phone. I imagine this is just about the same.

[Guest]

A Galaxy S5 is a tad too big for me - still a two handed phone. I imagine this is just about the same.

 

They're basically the exact same size, the galaxy S5 is just one or two millimeters longer and wider.

http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s5-6033.php

http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_moto_g_%282014%29-6647.php

[STRMfrmXMN]

They're basically the exact same size, the galaxy S5 is just a one or two millimeters longer and wider.

http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s5-6033.php

http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_moto_g_%282014%29-6647.php

Still eyeing the Xperia Z3 Compact I gotta say...

[Probenja]

Read the whole review as I was interested in buying a Moto G 2014 so any info I can grab about it is useful to me. Well written mate!

The reason I haven't bought it was due to lack of funds, I had to get new tires for my car and my GPU died so it kinda killed my phone budget.

While on the other hand I've been looking at the Xperia ZR (also guaranteed update to 5.0), in Serbia the price tag is slightly higher than the Moto G while the specs are slightly better, while it has a better camera and 2GB ram. So I'm still confused which one to get after Christmas. Any ideas?

Having held the zr and a 1st gen moto g, the zr screen is pretty crappy and you don't get front facing speakers, a good front camera or stock android but other than that it is better than the moto g 2014.

[xmx1024]

I have extremely large hands and I can comfortably use it in one hand, but that's just me. For someone with average hands it would definitely be a two handed phone, without a doubt. And if you have pretty small hands it might even be too big. If you can't actually see it before you purchase one I would say it's a good idea to get a cardboard box, the dimensions of the phone and a scissor and just make a dummy phone. It might sound silly, but you could at least see if the size is a problem for you and if it fits in your pockets.

I have the Moto X 1st gen and I can comfortably use it in one hand with average sized hands... but I can also use a 6+ comfortably in one hand as well

[Bogica]

Having held the zr and a 1st gen moto g, the zr screen is pretty crappy and you don't get front facing speakers, a good front camera or stock android but other than that it is better than the moto g 2014.

What is your opinion on the matter? I like the 4.55" screen on the ZR but if it's crappy then I might not want it, I can't judge as I haven't held the new moto G or ZR in my hands. However I have used the 1st gen moto g and the screen was amazing. So right now I'm not sure I want a 5" phone (I currently use a 4.5"). And I've heard that stock android runs much faster even on low end hardware.

[Nielips]

So, after the forum here helped me decide on a new "budget" phone I want to give something back in return. Mainly a short review of said phone from the perspective of a very casual smartphone user who was looking for a solid smartphone experience on a slim budget. I decided to go with the Motorola Moto G 2014, and here are my thoughts thus far:

 

Hardware:

 

1) Build quality and materials: Yes, the phone is made out of plastic, but that is to be expected for <200€. The back-cover, however, is actually completely rubberized, feels very nice and gives you a solid grip on the phone. I never felt that the phone seems slippery in any way, the only problem with the back of the phone is that it shows fingerprints and dust very easily. I got the black version of the phone and I have to say that I really like the look of it, completely black with just a small motorola logo on the back it looks very classy and elegant despite the low-end materials that are being used. Now for my main concern in regards to build quality: I doubt that the phone would survive it if it fell on the screen-side. It is pretty large and fairly heavy, so I ordered a proper leather case for the whole thing. Also, the volume and lock buttons feel very flimsy. I can easily wiggle them left and right without much force even though the phone is brand new.

 

2) The screen: a 720p IPS screen that just WOW-ed me when I first turned on the phone. I'm coming from a crappy 320x480 screen, so that's probably the main reason for my initial reaction. Now after over a week of daily use that wow-effect is basically gone, but I still have to say that the screen is incredibly nice. Comparing it to my main monitor (which is a bit unfair since that one had a retail price of ~600€) which has a PLS screen the viewing angles are not as good and the colours and contrast are also not quite there. But for my phone experience it is definitely more than enough, you're just not getting the really nice IPS screens you may be used to from your expensive monitor. The pixel density was not an issue for me at all, I couldn't see any individual pixels even though this is a 5 inch display, no matter how close I got to the screen (and I tried my best to get uncomortably close to it). Text was nice and sharp and browsing websites and reading text was actually really enjoyable. 16:9 (or rather 9:16) is not really ideal for anything but watching videos, however that gets mitigated by the fact that you only have onscreen buttons which brings down the aspect ratio to something more square in most applications. I can live with the onscreen buttons, especially since the touchscreen is really nice and responsive, and when you're watching videos you obviously benefit from a 16:9 display. For normal usage scenarios this screen is just amazing, I can't imagine a huge benefit by upping the resolution or size any further.

 

3) Size: I understand that for most people this will be a two-handed device, but for me with my massive hands I absolutely loved the fact that I can comfortably hold it and use it in one hand and that I don't press 5 buttons at once when I'm trying to type something. This will be a very subjective thing, but I find the size to be near perfect.

 

4) Speakers: I always laughed Linus off when he put such a large emphasis on front facing speakers, but HOLY BALLSTM does it make a difference! I don't have to put my phone face down when listening to something (which will definitely help with scratches in the long run), watching videos without IEMs is also very enjoyable now, etc. The speakers themselves are surprisingly decent as well (for a phone, of course. But they're the best phone speakers I've ever heard no matter if you're making a call or listening to music). They come with a preset sound setting that emphasizes the bass a bit and they sound suprisingly dynamic and not as "tinny" as most phone speakers. I also thought the whole stereo speaker thing was a gimmick at first, but it really does help the overall sound quality. They can also be pretty loud, but the sound quality suffers significantly if you crank them up to near max.

 

5) Camera: I'll be completely honest, I don't know a whole lot about cameras and I haven't even looked at the "selfie" camera. I'll just leave you a picture that I took with the phone here.

 

 

 

6) Battery and battery life: First of all, the battery is not removable which is just ridiculous. This should never be the case and there is no excuse for this IMO. However, battery life is just excellent. I have the screen at ~40% brightness, I didn't turn off WLAN even though I left the house and I used the phone for a busy day. When I came home after ~10 hours the battery sat there at 80%! I used my phone to read twitter, I watched a 12 minute video on my drive home, I was listening to music for roughly one and a half hours and the battery just took it like a champ. Really impressive in my opinion. When I came home I kept watching videos and browsing the web (at reduced brightness for the screen) for a few hours and then went to sleep without charging the phone, I woke up to >40% battery after 24 hours of fairly heavy use. I can just repeat myself, I'm pretty impressed. Charging the battery takes a bit longer than what I'm used to, but it's totally fine because I feel very confident leaving the house even if I have just 40% battery left.

 

7) Internet on wireless and 3G: W-LAN worked flawlessly at my home, my old phone and my fiancé's Galaxy S3 actually have a few problems if you are too far away from the router, but the Moto G had no issue here. Of course that is far from scientific so I'll just say that wireless works "fine" for me and that there are no issues. Now, when you're not on W-LAN you have to rely on your carrier, and the fact that the Moto G 2014 doesn't support 4G might be a bit of a pain for some users, but I had absolutely zero issues here. I get the promised 8 Mbit down and 4 Mbit up basically all the time and it is a very pleasant mobile experience.

 

8) Dual SIM slots: A really nice feature, especially if you live near a border or if you travel a lot. I personally don't use it but it is always nice to have and the people who need it probably appreciate that it's there.

 

9) Micro-SD card slot: The moto G 2014 has one and I love it. Why do so many phones not have this? Seriously? I have ~30GB of music with me all the time so I obviously bought a 32GB micro-SD card. The storage on the phone (8GB in theory but roughly 5GB are usable because android obviously needs to be on there somewhere) is enough for me personally since I don't need 50+ apps installed at any given time. There also is a 16GB model if I'm not mistaken, but it wasn't available when I purchased my phone.

 

 

Software:

(just putting this out there, I'm by no means an expert on android or smartphones in general, I might be talking out of my arse for the next few paragraphs and I'm sorry if I get anything wrong. Feel free to correct me if I say something stupid here)

 

1) The stock android experience: I really like it. There is no custom skin, there is no bloatware (the only exception would be 3 or 4 motorola apps) that gets in your way you just get the stock android experience (4.4.4 with a promised update to lollipop once it is available). When else is there to say? That's the way it's supposed to be IMO.

 

2) Responsiveness/overall feeling: The phone is not laggy at all, everything feels nice and smooth. I was a bit worried that the phone might start lagging or that I will run into issues because it has "just" 1GB of RAM, but it seems to be more than enough for what I'm doing with it. The only issues I found were when I was setting up my alarms, 12 of them to be exact, that the phone started glitching out on me a bit. It wouldn't show me the days that the alarm will ring at for some reason. Just swiping across the screen solved that issue though. Also, Google play music crashed on me once when I was setting up all my playlists, not a big deal and it has been 100% stable since.

 

3) Multitasking: Basic multitasking like listening to music while browsing the web works absolutely fine. And then there's the "recently opened Apps" thing, which is technically not multitasking but works really nice and launches apps incredibly fast because they basically keep running in the background (?). It doesn't really impact performance, it is easy to flush if you ever need to and it is really handy for pseudo-multitasking (switching between applications very quickly).

 

4) Apps: Well, it's android so you probably know what you're getting into. The stock camera app is fine, google play music was really confusing at first but it also works totally okay after I set up all my playlists, there are some motorola apps that you probably don't need, but I've not found them to be intrusive in any way (you know, like some apps that carriers like to put on phones that take up resources all the time and can't be properly shut down). Chrome is the standard web browser and it is incredibly nice to navigate on a touchscreen, you can also sync-up your bookmarks from your desktop (if you're using chrome) which is a neat feature. The google play store is obviously full of stuff that may or may not be useful to you, but I personally am fine with twitter, youtube, play music, a calendar, TED, twitch, my contacts, text messages, the camera and the web browser. I don't really need more than that.

 

 

Alright, I guess that's it. That is my experience with the Moto G 2014 so far. I really like it and it has actually changed my opinion on smartphones as a whole a bit. For a budget phone with basic functionality it is pretty amazing and it is more than enough for someone like me.

I have the first version of the moto g, the biggest problem i have with it is that the smooth back has no grip on it so it can side out of your hand so easily

[Probenja]

I have the first version of the moto g, the biggest problem i have with it is that the smooth back has no grip on it so it can side out of your hand so easily

Does it have the black or the silver motorola logo a the back? Because they have different materials, i believe the one with the black logo is smoother.

[Guest]

I have the first version of the moto g, the biggest problem i have with it is that the smooth back has no grip on it so it can side out of your hand so easily

 

This one has a completely rubberized back, it's nice and grippy. (Also, please don't quote the complete review, it looks a bit silly and makes this thread unnecessarily long)

[Nielips]

This one has a completely rubberized back, it's nice and grippy. (Also, please don't quote the complete review, it looks a bit silly and makes this thread unnecessarily long)

My bad

[Nielips]

Does it have the black or the silver motorola logo a the back? Because they have different materials, i believe the one with the black logo is smoother.

I have both, even the one with the silver is still really slipy.