The lesson of lenovo new moto g5 plus is simple cheap smartphones have no business feeling cheap anymore the below this price you get a lackluster device line that once existed has officially evaporated when you can buy a phone for as little as $229 with a metal build phenomenal display great performance and satisfactory battery life and best of all its a phone that you can take to any major carrier and it will just work. Very few other bargain phones can offer the same convenience The moto g series has always been a good value combining a great android software with decent enough hardware . But this is the first iteration of the series to feel truly premium. If other companies like oneplus, ZTE and huawei werent battling out this war to produce impressive inexpensive phones I am not convinced lenovo would have felt compelled to make the g5 what it is . Its nowhere near perfect with curious hardware ommisions and a camera that doesnt live up to its spec sheet But I cant think of a easier recommendation for some one who wants to spend between $200 and $300 on a phone that just works and that a prety nice position for lenovo to be in. In the market g5 plus comes in two configuration ( the standerd g5 its not being sold ) one is the $299 model I tested with 64 gb of storage and 4gb of ram When I say moto g5 plus is a ’metal’ phone thats only partially true the backplate taking up much of the phones rear is aluminium but the g5 core frame is actually plastic its plenty sturdy with tactile buttons a creak-free fame and an Nano coating that can save the phone from accidental spills my issue with the design are twofold fore one Lenovo made some aesthetic choice that makes the phone look a little cheap like the Moto logo plastered on the front end Shiny Chrome edges that surround the display 2 it’s just a little blend your opinion can differ and my unfavourable take might rest partly with the gold colour I reviewed and while the G5 Plus is comfortable to hold thanks to its 5.2 inch 1080 screen not a size considered plus by today’s standards it can feel a little slippery thanks to that metal backplate it’s not what I would call compact through since the largest top and bottom bezel on the left side is the volume toggle and a textured power button and up top is the sim tray which also holds micro SD card to supplement the 32 GB or 64 GB of built storage the display is one of the best thing about the G5 Plus its a 1080 p IPS LCD panel with flawless viewing angles no matter how or from where you look at the screen it’s excellent just be aware that colours are somewhat muted compared to the vivid O LED displays on the Moto Z line even in the vibrant display mode below the screen is a wide oblong fingerprint reader you can use it in one of two ways by default it’s just like Moto weather fingerprint scanner that will unlock your phone or lock it again when you hold your finger down a bit longer but there is also a neat trick that turns off Android on screen button back home and recent and lets you replicate them with swiping gesture. You swipe left to trigger Android back function or swipe right to enter multitasking view you can even swipe right twice quickly to do android naugats quick switching action between aps in this configuration the finger print reader acts as a home button and trigger google assistant this do everything finger print reader approach gives you just that extra little bit space on the screen for emails and facebook and alother content the swiping gesture worked as expected most of the time but as a long time user of android on screen buttons I could never fully adjust to this style of using the phoneday to day im probably just too hard wired to the virtual buttons people new to android might priffer it