Motorola Moto G34 5G review: Decent budget phone

Motorola earlier in the month launched the new budget phone Moto G34 series in India.

The company is offering the device with prices starting at Rs 10,999. I have used the device for over a week and here are my thoughts on the latest Moto phone.

Design, build quality, and display

The Moto G34 5G is a pretty pretty-looking phone, particularly the ocean-green variant. It flaunts a premium vegan leather on the back and looks lovely outdoors.

As noted in my first impression story, the rear panel's matte finish beautifully blends with the sturdy polycarbonate frame, which is a shade darker.

The device also comes in two other colours-- ice blue and charcoal black--, and they come with a 3D acrylic glass finish. They are pretty too, but to me, the ocean green model is the best.

. Thanks to the thoughtfully designed textured matte finish, the device repels sweaty fingerprint smudges and also offers a good grip to hold on to it. Add to that, the device comes with an IP52 rating, meaning it can survive accidental water splashes.

The device comes with a hybrid dual-SIM tray (nano + nano or microSD card), a rate 3.5mm audio jack, stereo speakers (with Dolby Atmos system), and a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. The latter does an amazing job of unlocking the phone quickly with low false rejection cases.

. On the front, Moto G34 5G flaunts a 6.5-inch HD+ (1600 x 720p) IPS LCD panel with 90 per cent screen-to-body ratio and is protected panda glass shield. It supports a 120Hz refresh rate and up to 500 nits peak brightness. The display is good to binge-watch movies and TV series on multimedia apps and doom scroll on social media platforms.

Performance

The new Moto G34 5G is powered by 6nm class Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 octa-core with Adreno 619 GPU, 4GB/8GB LPDDR4X RAM, 128GB UFS 2.2 to expandable memory up to 1TB with microSD.

The device works smoothly under normal day-to-day usage such as web browsing. It can even perform while playing Candy Crush, puzzles, and other regular games that need more power, without any pressing issue to complain. It is not made for extreme gaming.

It runs on pure Android 14 OS with My UX. There are barely any unwanted third-party apps. The rest of them are core Google and Motorola apps that add value to the user experience. It is also guaranteed to the Android 15 OS in the future. And, is assured to get three years of software security support (up to 2026).

. As far as the battery life is concerned, the device (with 5,000mAh capacity) is well optimised to last long even with active usage. It can easily last two days with a Wi-Fi connection. If the internet is dependent on the cellular network at all times, the device will be able to offer a full day without any anxiety of dying out before you can reach home at night from the office. And, on standby mode, it battery barely drops.

The device comes with just a Type-C data cable and customers have to rely on older device's charging brick or buy it separately. Moto G34 5G supports 20W charging speed.

Photography

. Moto G34 5G features a simple dual-camera module--main 50MP (f/1.8) with a 2MP (f/2.4) macro camera with LED flash.

. It takes pretty decent photos in all light conditions. But, there is noticeable lag-ness while taking photos. It gets even more slow to process the images at night.

. But, having said that, the Moto G34 5G takes good photos compared to other rivals in its class. All you need is a little patience and a steady hand.

. As you can see the sample photos, the device manages to good amount of finer details of the subject pretty well. Also, the colour look warm and rich worthy to be shared on social media platforms.

. The close-up macro shots and portrait mode images are decent too.

. Also, even at night, the colourful lights in the garden (at Bengaluru's MG Road Boulevard under the elevated metro line) are captured well.

. Even the front 16MP (f/2.2) camera does a fine job of capturing selfies with good details of the face, particularly under sunlight.

. It can record full HD 1080p videos at 60 frames per second. The video quality and stability are decent for its asking price.

. Final thoughts

Motorola's latest Moto G34 is a decent-budget phone. It is good for day-to-day normal tasks and the battery is amazingly optimised to last long. When not in use, the battery capacity barely drops.

As far as the camera is concerned, it takes pretty photos in almost all light conditions. But, as noted earlier in the article, autofocus tends to become slow in the night and needs a steady hand to get a decent shot.

. But, this phone is not made for extreme usage, particularly gaming. It is best suited to senior citizens who mainly use the phone for audio/video calling and consume content on YouTube and other OTT platforms.

It is available in two configurations-- 4GB RAM + 128GB storage and 6GB RAM + 128GB storage-- for Rs 10,999, and Rs 11,999, respectively. For a limited time, Motorola will be offering Rs 1,000 extra discount to prospective buyers who wish to trade in their old device for the new Moto handset.

Motorola Moto G34 5G review: Decent budget phone

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