Moto G45 5G review: is this the best phone under Rs 10,000?

Motorola has been on a launch spree this year with its Edge series and most of these phones look quite compelling, offering good value for money at their respective price points. With such momentum behind its back, the brand has now introduced its most affordable handset of the year – the Moto G45. Priced at Rs 9,999, the G45 5G brings some interesting features such as a vegan leather finish and a 16MP selfie camera to an extremely affordable price point.

While the handset looks promising on paper, does it outperform other handsets under Rs 10,000 in real-life usage as well? I spent more than a week with the handset to find the answer. Check out my detailed review below to determine if the Moto G45 is the best buy for you under Rs 10,000.

Verdict

The Moto G45 is all about value for money. The handset ticks many right boxes in this regard but it would have been better to get a full HD display at this price point. Having said that, the phone offers a butter-smooth 120Hz refresh rate, an impressive processor, and a clean software experience. These features enhance the overall appeal of the handset and make it a compelling buy. Interestingly, the G45 doesn’t have one standout feature that would completely sway your decision in its favour, but relies on its overall package for its appeal.

Design

moto G45 is one of the most affordable handsets with a vegan leather back design. If you’ve used other Motorola handsets with a vegan leather back, this might be a huge reason for you to consider this phone. However, I must inform you that all vegan leather backs are not built the same. While I would still prefer this phone’s back panel over a plastic one, it is a noticeable downgrade from the panels on the Edge series handsets. I’m only highlighting this so that you don’t expect a similar design standard as truth be told, the G45 is a well-designed phone. I hate phone designs that have excessively protruding camera sensors and in the case of the G45, the camera bump is negligible.

The phone measures 8.03mm in thickness and weighs 183 grams. With a sleek and lightweight design, the handset is easy to grip and use daily. The positioning of both the volume rocker and the power button on the right side means that some users will find it tricky to access the volume rocker when using the phone with one hand.

Display 

The G45 features a 6.5-inch HD+ (1,600 x 720 pixels) IPS LCD display, which is fairly standard in this price segment. While the chin is a bit thick for my liking, I didn’t find it to be distracting in regular usage. While watching videos on the display or playing games, I was fairly content but it would have been nice to have an FHD panel here.

The saving grace has to be the 120Hz refresh rate of the panel. While many brands are now shipping phones in this price range with a 90Hz panel, the 120Hz panel on the G45 feels smooth and ensures butter-smooth UI navigation and scrolling. The peak display brightness offered by the display is a concern, especially if you have to be outdoors often.

Cameras

The G45 packs a 50MP primary camera sensor with f/1.8 aperture and Quad Pixel technology. The primary shooter is assisted by a 2MP unit with PDAF and f/2.4 aperture. My camera experience with the G45 was a bit of a mixed bag as the handset did a good job of capturing details but it also boosted the colours unnaturally.

The phone struggled with capturing skin tones accurately and produced average low-light shots. The 16MP selfie camera with f/2.4 aperture offered surprisingly good edge detection but just like the primary camera setup, it also failed to capture skin tones accurately. I compared the handset’s camera performance against the Itel Color Pro (review) and Infinix Hot 40i (review), two of the popular options in this price range.

Daylight

In the daylight shots, the Moto G45 managed to capture the best shots out of the lot and while it boosted the colours and made them unnaturally vibrant, it still delivered better results than the Hot 40i and the itel Color Pro. The itel and Infinix handsets struggled with capturing details.

Now let’s have a look at the comparison between the Moto G45 and the Infinix Hot 40i.

Portrait

In this category, the Moto handset wins by a landslide. Whether you consider edge detection or the application of the depth effect to produce the best bokeh image, the G45 was miles clear of the Hot 40i and the Color Pro. These phones struggled particularly with edge detection and blurred the background aggressively. On the other hand, the G45 was accurate in identifying the subject and then applied the depth effect in a subtle manner.

Now let’s look at the portrait shot comparison between the Moto G45 and the Infinix Hot 40i.

Night shot

While all three phones performed rather poorly in night conditions, the G45 outperformed the other two phones easily. While the Hot 40i produced a washed-out image, the itel Color Pro produced a dark image with missing details. The G45 produced a brighter image with better colour accuracy than the other two handsets.

Let’s now look at the comparison between the G45 and the Hot 40i in the night shot.

Night mode

In the Night mode, the itel Color Pro showed the most improvement out of these three phones. However, despite the improvement, the phone still falls short of the G45 in terms of image quality. Even in the Night mode, the Infinix Hot 40i could not take shots without noticeable grain.

Let’s see the night mode shot comparison between the G45 and the Hot 40i now.

Selfie

As far as the selfie camera is concerned, the 16MP front-facing shooter on the G45 was second best to the Itel Color Pro. The Color Pro managed to capture skin tones particularly well. The Hot 40i was the worst performer out of the three as it could not reproduce the same details as the other two phones.

Let us now have a look at the comparison between the G45 and the Hot 40i.

Selfie Portrait

With superior edge detection and a better bokeh effect, the G45 turned out to be the best phone for selfie portraits. It was followed by Itel Color Pro, and Infinix Hot 40i quite clearly struggled with edge detection.

Let’s now see the comparison between the G45 and the Hot 40i.

Performance and software

Thanks to the Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 chipset, the G45 handles daily tasks with ease and even tackles multitasking really well for a phone from this price range. The phone offers up to 8GB of built-in RAM and 128GB of storage. While I initially had some concerns that the handset could present crashing issues, the RAM extension up to 16GB RAM ensured that I got a consistent and smooth performance out of the G45. One of the surprising aspects about using the G45 was that the phone warmed up a bit after using for around 15-20 minutes. I’ve used several phones with vegan leather back and never experienced this issue.

As far as Geekbench performance is concerned, the G45 outperformed the itel Color Pro and the Hot 40i by a considerable margin, especially in single-core score. This clearly shows that the phone can handle tasks that rely primarily on a single core, such as simple apps, web browsing, and basic system tasks, very efficiently. In the multi-core score, things were more competitive but again, the G45 was the best-performing handset out of the lot. This shows that the phone can better handle tasks that can be distributed across multiple cores, such as video editing, 3D rendering, gaming, multitasking, and running multiple applications at once.

Just like Geekbench, in the AnTuTu comparison, the G45 managed to grab the highest score. A higher AnTuTu score generally indicates better overall performance of a smartphone across a range of different tasks. This benchmarking tool evaluates various aspects of a device’s hardware and software, including CPU, GPU, RAM, and user experience. In my experience as well, the G45 was one of the best handsets under Rs 10,000.

In the Burnout test, the Infinix Hot 40i was the best-performing phone out of the lot and delivered 60.20 percent of its peak performance under heavy load. On the other hand, the G45 could manage 51.70 percent of its peak performance and the iTel Color Pro could only manage 41.20 percent of its peak performance under a similar load.

Coming to software, the phone boots Android 14-based Hello UI out of the box and comes pre-loaded with 45 apps out of the box. While you might think this is on the higher side, while using the handset, it doesn’t feel overloaded with unnecessary apps. In this price range, I would say the software experience offered by the G45 is pretty decent. You get access to useful Motorola features such as Smart Connect (to share content to a laptop), Moto Actions (gestures to perform certain functions), etc. Overall, I found the software experience on the phone to be uncluttered. 

Battery and charging

The G45 comes with a 5,000mAh battery with 20W fast-charging support. The handset took 94 minutes to charge from 20 to 100 percent, which is quite a respectable time in this price range.

In comparison, the itel Color Pro took 111 minutes while the Infinix Hot 40i took around 127 minutes to completely fuel up the phone from 20 percent charging level.

As far as battery backup is concerned, the G45 is on the lower end of the spectrum and in daily use, I found that I had to plug the phone in for charging by the end of the day after charging it fully in the morning. I expected better from the phone given its battery capacity this is something you will have to keep in mind if you’re a heavy user.

Final Verdict

The Moto G45 5G is an impressive phone, especially at the price point of Rs 9,999. The handset comes with one of the best chipsets in its price range and as a result, delivers solid performance. It also ships with capable cameras that outperform most other phones in this category.

While the phone’s battery life is a bit disappointing and its display’s peak brightness could have been better, it is without a doubt, one of the most compelling phones you can currently buy in its price bracket.

Editor’s rating: 7.5 / 10

Reasons to buy

• Capable chipset delivers impressive performance
• Good camera performance for the price range
• Responsive 120Hz display
• Vegan leather design makes the phone stand out

Reasons not to buy

• Battery life could have been better
• Peak display brightness feels underwhelming