It is is the moto G 5 plus lenovo’s test attempt at a well-balanced muscle tremely affordable brand-name smartphone option compared to last year’s Moto G 4 we’re looking at it overhauls much more substantial feeling design performance and storage upgrades and a new dual pixel camera like Samsung s on its own flagship models as all that combined with a budget-friendly price tag make the Moto G 5 plus of Steel I’m Stephen shank with roan arena looking into that right now with my Moto plus review if there was one word that best described last year’s moto G for phones it would be easy they were affordable to buy straightforward to use there were all sorts of willing to work just fine whatever mobile carrier you chose like we said easy now with the new Moto G 5 plus Lenovo’s streamlining things even further for starters we’re only seeing this one Plus model in the States not a regular g5 as well and while some shoppers will lament the lack of choice having a single moto g5 handset really es simplify sales and promotions you ill have some decisions to make and’ll get to those just a little later ut no matter which way you go you’re oking at a handset that tastefully nvents the look of Motorola’s mid-range offerings with some really premium feeling materials we liked the g4 lineup but those phones felt a bit cheap with their snap-on plastic back els this year with the g5 plus we’re looking at a phone that instead blends glass chromed out plastics and a nice amount of actual metal to give us a handsome looks and feels right up there at the top of the mid-range spectrum the move from a linear camera stripe to a new circular puck style camera also helps reinforce the idea that we’re looking at a whole new chapter in the o G design story but well Innova may have felt empowered to embrace this attractive new look we’re still dealing with a phone that makes some of the same smart decisions we’re familiar with from past G models in terms of balancing price and performance concerns while both of last year’s g4 phones were on the larger side with 5.5 inch screens we’re reigning that in for the g5 plus despite that Plus moniker this ndset has a pocket-friendly 5.2 inch splay the 1192olution is st what we hoped to see you on a reen this size and it looks very sharp here color accuracy is decent with only minor hiccups in a software configurable vibrant mode can live an extra boost of dazzling saturation screen brightness is o really good but you’re going to have to leave it in the phone’s auto mode for access to its full range of output with the new g5 plus Lenovo upgrades from the snapdragon six seven teams of the g4s to a 625 this is still an older chip sure but it’s also one that’s been at the heart of some of our favorite mid ranges over the course of the past year phones like the Moto Z y giving handset good performance while also keeping power needs low it’s built on a more modern 14 nanometer process than those 617 chips and the added performance really shows compared to the g4 s we also see lenovo drop the 16 gigabyte storage option for this model a sign of the changing expectations users have for mid-range errs instead you can choose a 32 gabyte Moto G 5 plus that’s also uipped with 2 gigs of ram or a 64 byte model that similarly doubles mp to 4 gigabytes that 64 for option is the Moto G 5 plus you see here the one we reviewed and if you’ve got the cash we highly suggest going in this direction that will run you just about$3pared to 23 the 32 gigabyte edition while we’re talking about money either of these variants are also available as an Amazon exclusive for Prime members that includes lockscreen ads but slashes prices at the same time from 23$3 32 and 64 gigs to just 185 and$24pectively no matter how you buy the Moto G 5 plus you won’t have an issue operating in the network of your choice the unmarked handset supports all the big four US carriers freeing it accuse your handset ependently of service once you decide on one your sim goes in a new hybrid pop out tray shared but an optional microSD card we tried to handset out on t-mobile and found voice quality very solid no mplaints there whether you’re stening to calls or viewing media all e Moto G 5 pluses audio comes out of e earpiece above the screen which ubles as a phone’s main speaker now stereo would have been nice but even a mono front face there is a step in the right direction the units nice and loud well it could use better bass reproduction it’s perfectly suitable for t uses on the other side of the screen we’ve got the moto G 5 plusses fingerprint scanner and just authenticating you this year picks up a few very nice new tricks if you so ose you can disable the on-screen virtual Android navigation buttons and instead use the scanner as a gesture driven capacitive trackpad that way you tap once for home swipe to the left for back or swipe right for recent apps you can even swap the direction of those last two if you so choose while we’ve balked at similar schemes in the past this one works really really well and we’re already wishing more phones offer the same thing the g5 pluses main camera is a 12 megapixel dual pixel sensor not unlike what we saw on the galaxy s7 and new s8 now that sounds good and it but you can also keep your pectations realistic for a mid-range ike this well we saw a lot of tential in the shots the g5 plus aged to grab and when things worked well they worked really well we also ran into more than a few poorly focused pics suggesting to us that there’s still some software tweaking needed video recording er some decent options for a mid range including filming up to 4k and some nice slo-mo bones but we weren’t particularly wowed by any of the cameras output and found footage shot with some the higher-end recording options to be a little jerky at times in the end it was all decent but felt like it overshot a bit finally there’s battery life and here lenovo nailed it by combining a snapdragon 625 with a good size 3 milliamp hour battery the Moto t5 plus can enjoy over 1rs of continuous screen on time go easy on your phone and ti day use on a single charge is very much possible recharging is nice and quick - going from full and well under 2 hours Lenovo’s clearly learned a lot since last year’s g4 phones and while the Moto G 5 plus makes a misstep here and there it’s still a really well put together ry satisfying mid-range option even the camera which let us down a little bit works pretty well most of the time but our expectations were just a little high really though it’s the small touches with this phone like have a fingerprint scanner which is a swipe gesture interface helped elevate it above the rest of this mid-range competition and that’s available as an ad-supported model even if it’s one only available to Amazon Prime users is still a choice we very much like to have thanks for watching I’m Steven shank with phone arena and if you enjoyed this review but sure subscribe so you don’t miss 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