The Moto G (2026) is Motorola’s latest affordable phone that isn’t the very cheap G Play or the slightly beefier G Power variant. The humble Moto G is a down-the-center handset with acceptable performance and admirable style. It doesn’t innovate too much from last year’s Moto G (2025), but it’s a nice-looking phone, even if it’s less powerful.
Motorola has refined its budget phones over the years, gradually incorporating features from premium handsets while making strategic compromises to keep the price low. However, at $200, this year’s Moto G is a decent value that, fortunately, doesn’t resemble a cheap device. It’s nice to bring out an affordable phone that doesn’t look like it’s sheathed in thin plastic that could break at the slightest drop.
Three things I like about the Moto G (2026)
1. Colorful rubber design
I’ve already spoiled it, but the Moto G’s design sets it apart from other $200 phones and is the first thing I like about it. The shiny metal sides are too reflective for my taste, but they blend well with the textured rubber material layered over the back of the phone. With a tasteful curve around the camera block and a subtle pattern, the material has a nice look and feel. Plus — and this is rare for a bold color — I actually like the fuchsia color and would pick it over the simpler black hue that the phone also comes in.
2. One decent camera
I also like the cameras. Although there’s essentially just the main 50-megapixel shooter, augmented by a 2-megapixel depth camera and an ambient light sensor, these components combine to produce good daylight photos and respectable low-light performance. I took some shots of an outdoor market as the sun set and a hotel lobby as daylight filtered in through the windows, both of which captured foreground detail and background sky. While I’d love the utility of an ultrawide camera, it’s far more important for the main camera to be refined to take good shots with decent light balance. The 32-megapixel front-facing camera is a nice upgrade on last year’s model, capturing selfies with light and a lot of detail.
3. OK software support for a $200 phone
Motorola has continued to support the Moto G with two years of Android updates and three years of security updates. While longer is always better, at least it gives owners a slightly longer runway to keep their phones for a few years until they need to upgrade to another safe option. It is, however, much shorter than Samsung’s six-year commitment on its comparably priced Galaxy A series. But then again, this phone costs $200 before discounts.
Two things I don’t like about the Moto G (2026)
1. An out-of-date-looking display
Some of the compromises that Motorola made to hit that $200 price genuinely inhibit the phone’s quality. First is the 6.7-inch display, which is actually respectably bright and shows good color, but the HD Plus resolution (1,604×720 pixels) is too low for modern phones. While nothing is blurry, the 720p maximum means text on apps and games can be noticeably pixelated. It’s rough to play a game like Dead Cells, which already has a pixelated visual style, when the low-resolution screen results in blocky on-screen text.
2. Not enough power
The second thing I dislike is the Moto G’s specs — specifically, the underpowered Dimensity 6300 chip and 4GB of RAM. Even doing something as simple as scrolling posts on X becomes choppy, ruining the smooth 120Hz maximum screen refresh rate. This can be mitigated somewhat by using the RAM boost option (Settings > System > Performance > RAM Boost), which borrows some of the included 128GB of storage to use as temporary memory — while it’s automatically on by default, it’s worth toggling it to manually use its maximum setting of 8GB. Even so, there’s still some choppiness in scrolling through content.
While there isn’t too much new in this year’s Moto G, camera upgrades and a svelte new exterior make it a phone that you won’t be embarrassed to pull out around company — nor to snap a pic of a friendly get-together. There’s always room for Motorola to improve on the basics, but for a $200 phone, the Moto G has a lot to offer budget-minded buyers.
