Short review Motorola Moto G75: packed with features, but flawed

In the shadow of Motorola’s higher-end Edge and Razr phones, it’s easy to forget that their Moto G and Moto E mobiles were where they were first established as a manufacturer of really good mid-range and budget phones.

But the Lenovo-owned company hasn’t stopped making them, with the Moto G75 among the picks for 2024. Here are my thoughts after testing the device.

Design and construction

Motorola has packed a lot of good hardware features into a relatively cheap phone. The list of features typically found on high-end handsets is long.

It has a large screen and elegant styling similar to the Motorola Edge 50 series, Motorola’s top phones of 2024, with two of the three colors you can choose in so-called vegan leather. My black model has a luscious matte black finish. It’s a chassis with plastic edges and back, but you still get a sense of quality.

The Moto G75 has support for wireless charging, great-sounding stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support and a triple camera on the back. It is completely water resistant with an IP68 rating and also exceptionally durable.

It meets MIL-STD-810H requirements for drops up to 1.2 meters and is said to be usable in extremely high and low temperatures.

Specifications and performance

The system is based on the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3, a fairly new (at the time of the phone’s launch) but not exactly powerful 8-core processor that works alongside surprisingly capable graphics.

With 8 GB of RAM, that’s enough for everyday use and even some multitasking. Avoid really heavy mobile games and the most demanding apps and you’ll get a pleasantly fast experience.

Mattias Inge

Battery life and charging

The newer the chipset, the more power efficient it becomes, and since maximum performance is limited here, it’s promising on paper. However, the 5,000 mAh battery doesn’t last as long as I hoped. With mixed use you need to make sure it lasts all day – if I take more photos or videos than normal I’m screwed. Video streaming is slightly better, provided the phone is set to a 60Hz refresh rate, but only a small improvement.

You get USB-C fast charging up to 30W and one of Motorola’s own 33W TurboPower chargers is included. That’s unusual these days. This means it is fully charged within an hour. With the Moto G75 you also have the option of wireless charging, although this is limited to 15W.

The charger isn’t the only thing you get in the box. It also comes with a protective transparent case and in-ear headphones with USB-C connection.

Headphones that come with your mobile phone? It almost feels a bit nostalgic. I can’t remember the last time I saw it. Are they good? Yes, they sound good for “free” headphones. Do I want to use them? Not in the least. A decent pair of true wireless devices don’t cost much and eliminate the clutter of cables.

Mattias Inge

Cameras

The triple camera on the back is a bit of an illusion.

There are actually only two cameras to choose from: a 50Mp main sensor and an 8Mp ultra-wide lens.

The main camera’s Sony Lytia sensor has good light sensitivity without causing too much noise, meaning I get a pleasant image with accurate colors and good dynamic range, even in dim December light.

Things don’t go as well at night, but that seems to have more to do with the Motorola software. The sensor is not that fast and the mobile phone has difficulty compensating for that.

The less said about the ultra-wide camera, the better. It only works in really good light, otherwise the dynamic range is limited and the colors are dark and muddy. However, it has autofocus rather than a fixed focus point, meaning it can be used as a macro camera – a better one than most budget phones.

So what is the third camera? Motorola calls it a ‘flicker sensor’ and… well… maybe that’s true? I can’t think of any situations where I can’t film interior lighting with otherwise flickering lights. But it’s nothing unique to this phone. Proper flicker compensation is usually just a software issue.

Mattias Inge

Screen and speakers

The screen promises more on paper than in reality. It’s a type of LCD panel – Motorola hasn’t specified that it’s an IPS panel, but it does behave like one.

It offers excellent wide viewing angles, reasonable contrast and deep blacks, plus acceptable brightness for most situations. However, the color gamut isn’t the best, so it lacks much power when displaying photos or streaming movies.

You can choose between a 60Hz and 120Hz refresh rate or an automatic mode that switches between them. Normally I would recommend auto or 120 Hz, but I’m not so sure about this. Since the image is unusually slow and becomes blurry when I quickly scroll through a long web page, you won’t get much enjoyment out of high refresh rates.

Like many budget phones, the Moto G75 combines a single downward-firing speaker with the earpiece for a sort of stereo setup. Audio is decent, but not demonstrably better or worse, and most similarly priced phones.

Software and apps

One major positive is that Motorola promises five years of Android updates from the Android 14 the phone ships with.

So far, though, there’s no upgrade to Android 15, and there’s no word on when it might arrive.

Motorola’s Android skin feels impressively light, with only a handful of extra apps that are easy to ignore. If you’ve recently used an Android phone, the move to the Moto G75 should be a relatively smooth transition.

Price and availability

At full price, the Motorola Moto G75 costs £269.99 in the UK. It is available directly from Motorola, or via AO and Amazon.

There are no UK networks that sell the phone on contract, so you’ll have to buy it outright and tie it to a SIM-only deal. Check out the best options below.

Unfortunately, the phone isn’t available in the US at the time of writing.

That means it’s just outside our usual budget phone territory, but with regular discounts you might be able to get it for a lot less.

Should you buy the Motorola Moto G75?

For this relatively affordable price, you shouldn’t ask too much from the Moto G75.

But too much is exactly what you get here. Too many different features, which is at the expense of the quality of the most important ones. In addition to acceptable performance, most basic functions such as screen, camera and battery leave much to be desired.

If Motorola had ditched the wireless charging and headphones and instead offered a better and more energy efficient OLED display, things would have been better. However, in its current form I cannot recommend it.