Motorola Moto G34

Price: £149 from fave.co/3TrOZts

2024-03-27 -

Motorola has always been a great brand for those looking to pick up an inexpensive but quality smartphone. Now, the company is offering a new model that costs less than most of its rivals but boasts some decent specifications.

Can anything this cheap, just £149, be any good? I take the Moto G34 5G for a field test to find out.

DESIGN

When you first pick up the Moto G34 5G it’s surprising how light and comfortable it feels in the hand.

The 162.7x74.6x8mm dimensions make it compact rather than small, with the power button on the right flank sitting just under the thumb as you hold it in your hand. This is good as it also houses the fingerprint sensor to

unlock the phone, which worked well throughout my time with the device.

In fact, the construction is similar to the great Moto G13 that I reviewed a little while back, and which is remarkably even cheaper than this device.

A metal chassis and plastic rear panel reduces the heft, while also giving a reasonable level of grip. This can be increased if you leave the matt finish version (Charcoal Black or Ice Blue) and plump for the vegan leather edition that comes in Ocean Green.

There’s no case in the box, unlike the Moto G13 and some of the Chinese models in this price range, but you do get a charger and cable, which is something of a novelty these days.

As I’ve said, it’s a lightweight device, weighing in at 179g (or 181g for the vegan leather version), but that doesn’t mean Moto has skimped on features.

You get a 6.5-inch LCD display, twin rear cameras, USB-C charging port, nano-SIM tray with space for a microSD card, all packed into a slimline case that looks modern and smart.

Controls include volume up and down, which are situated above the power button on the right flank, and at the top and bottom edges you’ll find the single dedicated speaker, 3.5mm headphone jack and microphone. Pretty much everything you need.

Motorola states that the G34 5G is water-repellent rather than waterproof. This means that you can’t submerge the device, but it should survive the odd spill or rainy downpour. We don’t expect IP68 or even IP54 ratings on phones this cheap, so this is a decent level of protection in this price bracket.

DISPLAY

A 6.5-inch LCD IPS display is the panel of choice on the G34 5G. Surprisingly it runs with a 120Hz refresh rate (even 90Hz would be impressive at this price), keeping things smooth most of the time. There are some juddering

moments when moving through menus and websites with plenty of graphics or images, but for the majority of activities it’s a nice screen to use.

The refresh rate is actually variable, between 60- or 120Hz, and I found it best to go into the settings and set it permanently to 120Hz if you want the optimum performance. This does cost battery life though.

The resolution tops out at 720p, which may seem a little underwhelming in these days of Full HD+ or Quad HD panels, but again you need to consider the price. That being said, this doesn’t feel like a budget panel that you need to make excuses for, as the rendering is bright, colourful and sharp. I measured the maximum brightness at around 500 nits, which is plenty to make things visible when outside, although it can struggle in extreme sunlight.

Motorola has Dolby Atmos marked on the top edge of the G34 5G, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. The audio can get loud, but the stereo soundscape comes from the dedicated speaker on the bottom edge and the phone speaker at the top.

This delivers a mixed bag of tones, with music sounding thin and with distorted edges when you push the volume. It’s passable, but not impressive.

Thankfully there is a 3.5mm headphone jack you can use to up the quality by plugging into a pair of decent cans, plus the 5.1 Bluetooth capabilities will happily connect the G34 5G to any number of external speakers.

PERFORMANCE

As an everyday device, the G34 5G performs competently. The interface is clean, apps work well, and you only notice the limitations of the Snapdragon 695G 5G chipset when launching apps or using more demanding applications. There can be a few stutters and pauses here and there, which can be off putting if you’re used to faster phones, but you soon adjust.

Motorola includes 4GB of RAM as standard, with a further 4GB of virtual RAM available if you’re willing to surrender that amount from your onboard storage. I’d recommend you do, as 4GB is low even for a budget smartphone in 2024.

Even with the boost, I did run into a few glitches here and there.

The most persistent was with the camera app. Several times I found that taking a quick look at the image I’d just captured within the app, then going back to the live camera would often cause the app to either blank out the display or crash entirely. It’s hard to know whether this is a specific glitch in the software, which can be cured by an update, or the inability of the device to deal with demands of the application.

I tested out the gaming prowess of the device by a session in Asphalt 9 Legends, all of which ran smoothly and with an acceptable amount of heat in the rear of the chassis.

I’m not convinced it would handle more involved 3D games, such as Genshin Impact, but for a quick bit of entertainment while waiting for the bus or a mate to turn up, the Moto G34

seems up to the job.

There’s plenty of storage on offer if you want to play games, with 128GB of internal capacity that can be expanded by a further 1TB if you fit a microSD card. You also get NFC, Wi-Fi 5, GPS, and Bluetooth 5.1 capabilities, making the Moto a good all rounder.

Perhaps one of the biggest draws here, especially at under £150, is the inclusion of 5G support.

For the most part, the G34 5G was reliable and solid, if a little ponderous when asked to switch between apps, but the camera issue was disappointing.

Here’s how it fared in our standard set of benchmarks so you can see how it holds up against its closest rivals.

Geekbench 6 (multi-core)

Motorola G34 5G: 2,010 Motorola G13: 1,442

Motorola Moto G54 5G: 2,335 Samsung Galaxy A14 5G: 1,855 Samsung Galaxy A14 (4G): 1,313 Motorola Moto G84 5G: 2,049

GFX Manhattan 3.1

Motorola G34 5G: 63fps Motorola G13: 31fps

Motorola Moto G54 5G: 31fps Samsung Galaxy A14 5G: 25fps Samsung Galaxy A14 (4G): 13fps Motorola Moto G84 5G: 30fps

Battery life

Motorola G34 5G: 12 hours, 43 minutes Motorola G13: 9 hours, 19 minutes Motorola Moto G54 5G: 12 hours, 24 minutes

Samsung Galaxy A14 5G: 14 hours, 11 minutes

Samsung Galaxy A14 (4G): 13 hours, 28 minutes

Motorola Moto G84 5G: 14 hours, 30 minutes

Charge in 30 minutes

Motorola G34 5G: 37% Motorola G13: 22%

Motorola Moto G54 5G: 29% Samsung Galaxy A14 5G: 30% Samsung Galaxy A14 (4G): 21% Motorola Moto G84 5G: 55%

Cameras can often be where cheaper phones fall down. It’s an interesting approach then from Motorola, as it avoids the overkill factor that so many budget models have adopted recently, with triple or quadruple lenses, and instead keeps things nice and simple.

In the rear module, you’ll find the main 50Mp f/1.8 camera, accompanied by the 2Mp f/2.4 macro. Now, admittedly, the latter is usually not worth bothering with on most phones, but it does allow for depth perception

when using the portrait mode, so its inclusion is justified.

The main sensor uses pixelbinning to create images, wherein 4 pixels are blended into 1, making the final image 12.5Mp rather than 50Mp. Again, all perfectly acceptable and a technique employed on most modern devices now.

Technical jargon aside, the Moto G34 5G can take nice pictures.

Give it some decent light and it will return solid images that would be more than fine for social media. Colours can appear somewhat oversaturated at times, but this can be solved by editing or applying a filter. There can be a slight delay when it’s darker, and night shots (with or without Night Mode) are a little less impressive, as digital noise creeps in. That being said, it’s still very decent overall for a phone that costs as little as the G34 5G.

Portrait modes make a respectable fist of blurring the background and picking out foreground subjects, although the camera can have trouble differentiating soft edges (such as hair) if the background is busy. This can result in soft edges that don’t look real.

Selfies are taken by the 16Mp f/2.4 front facing camera and are crisp, clear and fine for posting on Facebook, Snapchat or your other social platform of choice

Video tops out at 1080p/30fps, so it’s not the highest quality, but again the theme with the Moto G34 5G is that everything is good enough and in terms of video this remains true. Focusing is accurate and tracking, so long as there is a healthy amount of light available, keeps up with moving subjects.

BATTERY LIFE

As I found with the Moto G13, the battery life on the G34 5G is great. In the two weeks of testing, I regularly

ended the day with 30 percent of charge still available and more on several occasions. This included using the Moto as a navigation device in my car, with the screen on for a couple of hours, as well as listening to podcasts, checking social media and a bit of web surfing.

Obviously, if you lock the refresh rate at 120Hz and spend all day in bright sunlight where the auto brightness maxes out, then these numbers will decrease. But across several typical days, the Moto never left me worrying about where the charger was.

In the standard PCMark battery test we run on all phones (with brightness set to 200 nits), the G34 5G scored 12 hours and 42mins, which is impressive.

It should be noted that where companies like Apple have long since stopped supplying charger in the boxes with its stupidly expensive devices, Motorola has more compassion for its customers. The package includes a 20-watt charger and USB-C cable in the box so you’re good to go without needing anything else.

Putting the charger to use returns the fully discharged battery to 100 percent in around 1 hour and 50 minutes, which is pretty poor these days. This is despite Motorola calling it ‘TurboPower charging’. The phone actually draws 18 watts of power, not the full 20 watts of the supplied adapter.

For a quick top-up, the device reached 19 percent after 15 minutes and 37 percent at 30 minutes. At this price it’s hardly any surprise that there’s no wireless or fast charging, so you’ll want to remember to charge this overnight.

SOFTWARE

Motorola has always been one of the best brands for clean versions of Android. That’s the case with the G34 5G, which features an almost untouched version of the operating system, with a few tools that let you customize themes, icons and stuff like that. There are a suite of Moto apps that

range from security-based ones to digital detox, but they don’t take up much room and will be useful.

The interface itself is simple and easy to get to grips with, and you can decide whether to have software navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen or use gestures instead. Bloatware is kept to a minimum, with only a few third-party apps pre-installed, all of which can be deleted.

You get Android 14 with the Moto, and you’re guaranteed an upgrade to Android 15 when it launches. There’s also three years of security updates, so it will be usable until at least 2027.

VERDICT

Budget phones can often be an exercise in compromise and, to a certain extent, that’s true with the Motorola G34 5G.

For a very affordable price, you get a nice design, generous storage (which is expandable), mostly solid performance, and decent cameras. There’s also a bit of lag in the response times, stuttering performance, and the cameras aren’t really up to much when the lights drop. However, the aim here seems to be ‘good enough’, and the Moto is definitely that.

Need a cheap phone for WhatsApp, social media, listening to podcasts or music, plus some web browsing? It’s all here. Want a device to give to the kids or an elderly relative who wants a phone but doesn’t need bells and whistles? The Moto has you covered. Is it the best phone around? No, clearly not. Is it one of the best bargain? Well, now, that’s a different story. Martyn Casserly