Review Summary
Expert Rating
Motorola has dished out some really good smartphones in the last few years and while the brand has worthy option in the premium segment, it seems to have developed a stronghold in the affordable segment. The latest in line is the Moto G34 5G, which comes with some neat tricks up its sleeves that make it different from previous affordable segment offerings from the brand. Having spent more than a week with the phone, I’m ready to share my experience with you guys. If you’re looking forward to buying a new phone under Rs 12,000 anytime soon, you would want to read this before you make your decision. Without further ado, let’s jump right into it.
Verdict
The Moto G34 5G is a phone that ticks many of the right boxes and still comes at a pocket-friendly price. As capable phones have been scarce in the budget segment lately, this phone comes like a breath of fresh air. You’d be glad to know that the Moto G34 5G runs Android 14 out of the box, which means you’ll get access to the latest Android features right away. The handset also comes with a decent processor and an impressive design.
Design and display
Moto G34 5G comes with a vegan leather back that ensures that the phone doesn’t slip out of your hand or on a flat surface. The textured back has a good in-hand feel and there is a Motorola logo right in the middle that gives the phone a distinct look. While several other phones in this price bracket are now coming with large and protruding camera modules, Motorola has opted for a rather subtle look, which I liked. The volume buttons and the power button (with an embedded fingerprint sensor) are conveniently located on the right spine of the phone and are easily accessible even when you hold the phone with one hand. The USB Type-C charging port, speaker grille, and a 3.5mm audio jack are present on the bottom of the phone.
Moving on to the display, the G34 5G comes with a 6.5-inch display with a hole-punch design and thick bezels around the whole panel. While everything seems standard at first, the unique aspect of this display is that it offers HD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. If I’m not wrong, this is the only handset in the market that offers this combination. Most phones either ship with HD+ resolution and 90Hz refresh rate or FHD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. Now, I’m not sure why Motorola went for this particular combination but I can share that the display panel holds up well both in terms of quality and responsiveness.
While watching videos or playing games, I never found the display resolution to be a major issue. That’s not to say I wouldn’t have preferred it, but those of you who are not obsessed with the pixel count won’t really be bothered by the display quality on offer here. However, I must point out that the 120Hz refresh rate does make a difference as navigating through the UI and playing games on this phone was a butter-smooth experience (more on this in the performance section!).
As we have an IPS LCD panel here, the viewing angles and the peak display brightness aren’t particularly impressive and you’ll notice this as soon as you step outdoors.
Cameras
The 50MP quad-pixel primary camera on the phone manages to click some decent pictures with good colour accuracy and details. The phone’s default camera app comes with a Google Auto Enhance feature that applies certain adjustments on its own to make your images look better. I found this feature to be useful but its impact is limited and noticeable only in certain situations. One of the issues I faced with the phone’s primary camera setup was in Portrait mode. In certain cases, object detection wasn’t up to the mark, which isn’t a common issue with most phones these days.
The phone’s 2MP Macro Vision camera, which lets you zoom in on your subject to capture it up close also turned out to be a disappointment. The lack of details in the pictures clicked from this lens was evident and focussing on the subject turned out to be a chore as well. The night shots clicked with the phone were grainy and lacked detail. The selfie camera on the phone struggles to capture details unless presented with ample light. Also, the edge detection issues are present here too.
Overall, Moto G34 5G isn’t the best camera phone you can buy at its price, but if you just need a phone for point-and-shoot purposes and don’t care too much about the delicate aspects of photography, you will be just fine with this phone.
Performance and software
The G34 5G ships with the reliable but slightly old Snapdragon 695 SoC and comes with 4GB RAM/128GB storage and 8GB RAM/128GB storage variants. Having spent some time with the phone, I found that it handled most tasks with ease. I played Battlegrounds Mobile India and even NBA 2K Mobile (which crashes even on some premium phones due to lack of optimisation) on the phone and found that it never presented stutter issues or frame drops. I didn’t face any heating issues with the phone despite reasonably long gaming sessions either.
The phone runs Android 14-based MyUX custom skin out of the box and comes with a minimalistic and fluid user experience. Whether it is the notification shade that gives you instant access to all the useful toggles, or the lack of ads, the phone’s UI feels unobtrusive. The animations are smooth and the list of pre-installed Moto apps includes the usual ones such as Moto Secure, Moto Unplugged, and Moto Connect.
One of the features that gamers would find useful is the game mode. This game mode allows you to block calls and notifications, switch on acoustic lights, switch between ‘Turbo, Balanced, and Battery Saving’ modes, check RAM usage, the core temperature of the phone, the clock speeds, and easily record videos or take screenshots. This mode can be accessed through a floating bubble on the screen while playing any game.
Notably, there is a ‘Live Captions’ option that pops up below the volume bar when you increase or decrease the volume on the phone. On being enabled, this option gives you the live transcription of any video that is being played. The transcription works with local video files as well. In my usage, the transcription was fairly accurate but the punctuation was a bit off.
As far as the benchmarks are considered, the G34 managed to get a score of 433104 points on AnTuTu, while it got a multi-core test score of 2040 on Geekbench. In the CPU throttle test where the phone was running 50 threads for 30 minutes, it’s performance throttled to 91 percent of its max performance, which is pretty impressive.
Battery and charging speeds
The phone comes with a 5,000mAh battery, which has almost become a standard capacity in most phones across price ranges. As we all know by now, the actual battery backup offered by the phone is less dependent on the battery capacity and more on the optimisation. So, instead of judging the phone’s battery backup by the capacity, let me tell you how it performed in our standard test and actual real-world usage. In the battery test, the phone managed to last for 12 hours and 26 minutes before it was fully drained out from 100 to 0 percent.
In my usage, which included light gaming sessions and watching a few videos, the phone lasted just beyond a day before I had to recharge it again. The phone with 20W fast-charging support and it took me around 1 hour and 21 minutes to fuel it back up from 0 to 100 percent.
Final Verdict
The Moto G34 5G is a good option for anyone who wants a clutter-free and smooth user experience. On top of the software advantages, the phone also comes with a distinct look and a capable processor that can handle day-to-day tasks with relative ease. The phone comes with a decent display and can take good shots with the primary camera as well, but the points I mentioned earlier are its strongest points that can tilt your decision in its favour. Some other handsets in the same price range that you can also consider instead are Redmi 12 5G and POCO M6 Pro 5G. If you’re more into photography than the performance of the phone and its software, you can choose to go for these handsets.
Editor’s rating: 8 / 10
Reasons to buy
- The vegan leather back gives the phone a good in-hand feel
- The display feels extremely responsive, thanks to the 120Hz refresh rate
- UI and animations feel smooth
- The primary camera is capable of clicking some good shots
Reasons not to buy
- The selfie camera could have been better
- Edge detection issues in portrait mode
 | Rs. 11,716.00 | Go To Store |
