Motorola’s yearly addition to its successful range of affordable phones, the Moto G Stylus (2022), joins the Moto G Power (2022). This is an LTE-only device, not to be mistaken with the Moto G Stylus 5G, a more costly model with a 5G connection. Motorola’s practice of giving every phone the same name and asking you to figure out the difference is to blame.
Nonetheless, I wish this low-cost phone was more like the 5G variant. Sadly, the Moto G Stylus (2022) is challenging to operate. It’s slow, lags on almost every duty I assign it, and it’s clumsy and inexpensive. The phone’s one redeeming grace is its excellent battery life, especially when left in its default variable refresh rate setting. In our Moto G Stylus (2022) review, I’ll explain why I can’t wait to stop using this phone.
What will you see here?
Price and availability: Moto G Stylus (2022)
Motorola,
Design
The Moto G Stylus is a simple, tall gadget that may be too big for little hands. That might not be a massive problem because you’ll likely be using the stylus with this phone, which requires a two-handed operation.
The Moto G Stylus (2022) Motorola phone has just one word to describe how it feels: cheap. When looking at phones under $400, I’m used to seeing plastic handsets. Still, where devices like the Pixel 5a (and the Pixel 4a before it) employ a higher-quality, inoffensive content, it appears as if Motorola opted for the cheapest, shiny plastic for this phone. At the very least, it does not creak when you grasp it.
Furthermore, we find the contrast between the phone’s cheap look and the surprisingly robust stylus quite perplexing. The stylus is housed in its compartment within the phone. Unlike the Moto G Stylus 5G, which requires looping your nail over a lip to remove it, the stylus is secured within the telephone by a Samsung-style plunger.
This is a welcome improvement, and I found the pen on the Moto G Stylus to be simpler to detach than the S Pen on the Galaxy S22 Ultra — maybe the one comparison with Samsung’s top phone that the cheap Moto G Stylus can win. Motorola’s stylus is solid metal and has a soft tip that glides easily over the screen. It feels pretty fantastic to me.
Display: Moto G Stylus (2022)
The Moto G Stylus (2022) has a large 6.8-inch LCD with lots of area for watching content on its 720p screen. That also means more room for stylus use, whether for taking notes, making art, or whatever people use styli for.
The Moto G Stylus (2022) boasts an adaptive 90Hz refresh rate at this pricing range, which is lovely to see. This implies much smoother web page scrolling and slicker animation. 90Hz isn’t the fastest available, but it’s a lot better than a 60Hz monitor. Here are the findings of our display testing, which included comparing the newest Moto G Stylus to similar cheap phones.
The Moto G Stylus (2022) large display pays off, with the default color calibration producing excellent results throughout the sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts. The Delta-E score, which ranges from 0 to 1, is likewise reasonable and represents a big advance over Moto G Stylus from two years ago.
The 2022 Stylus is also noticeably lighter than the OnePlus Nord N200 5G; however, outside visibility is still an issue. However, 560 nits are sufficient for inside and low-light conditions, so locate some shadows or shield your phone if you need to view the screen while out in the sun.
Cameras of the Moto G Stylus
The Moto G Stylus features a triple camera array. A 16MP selfie camera is located on the front of the device. The 50MP primary sensor handles the bulk of the work, while the 8MP ultrawide sensor handles photos that need zooming out. Then there’s the 2MP depth sensor, which is useless, mildly.
The Moto G Stylus (2022) photo is muted, but the colors aren’t horrible overall.
The Moto instantly shines out with greater exposure control, albeit it is still blown out. Although faint in real life, the yellow appears sickening in both shots, but the Moto wins. The Nord N200 overexposes the image — or rather, fails to prepare for the strong afternoon sunshine. The Moto G Stylus (2022) comes out on top by a hair.
This phone however fails indoors. You get a flat, dull image with fading colors from the Moto G Stylus (2022). It doesn’t look good. Neither of these photos has any redeeming quality.
Performance and battery life
The Moto G Stylus (2022) completely fails in terms of performance. The MediaTek Helio G88 system-on-chip inside is barely capable of performing basic tasks. Almost every app you run slows substantially when started and occasionally even when executing activities – a problem we’ve seen with previous MediaTek-powered Moto phones, including the Moto G Power (2022) and Moto G Pure. The note app experiences some issues at times, particularly while Google Play was upgrading in the background.
It came to the point where you will not want to pick up the phone to use it. It’s pretty aggravating when it can’t even manage a single front job, let alone something in the background.
As you can see, the new Moto G Stylus operates similarly to its two-year-old predecessor while falling short of the OnePlus Nord N200 5G. The 2020 Moto G LTE Stylus is powered by a Snapdragon 665, whereas a Snapdragon 480 5G powers the Nord N200. That’s quite damning for the new Stylus’ Helio G88 processor. Motorola phone appears to have begun migrating to MediaTek CPUs for the 2022 Moto G phones, and we remain unsatisfied. Even in videos, when a phone converts a 4K clip to 1080p, the Moto G Stylus (2022) stallss at 2 and 16 seconds.
However, one area where the Moto G Stylus (2022) excels is battery life. This is a standard feature of Motorola’s low-cost phones.
Software and unique features: Moto G Stylus (2022)
The Moto G Stylus (2022) Motorola phone ships with Android 11 pre-installed, a letdown. Google launched Android 12 with developer previews and betas available far earlier. That makes it inexcusable for Motorola to launch a phone in 2022 without the most up-to-date software.
Moto phones are cheap; however, they are not long-lasting in terms of software. It doesn’t help that Motorola’s update policy is typically terrible, particularly for low-cost smartphones. In this scenario, the smartphone maker is only offering one platform upgrade, which is, you guessed it, Android 12. If you care about keeping your phone up to date and safe (you should), I do not advocate buying the Moto G Stylus (2022).
There are a few exciting features regarding what the phone can achieve. The most obvious is the stylus applications. The most obvious thing to remember is to take notes, but there are other artistic things you may do as well. Except for the preloaded applications like TikTok and Facebook, Motorola’s software, MyUX, is relatively unobtrusive.
Overall, I believe the stylus feel is acceptable. I don’t mind penning some notes or coloring a picture, mainly because the stylus is so lovely. This isn’t the S Pen, but it’s a lot better than I thought.
Conclusion
We haven’t had this much unhappiness with a phone in a long time. The Moto G Stylus (2022) Motorola phone is a terrible letdown and excessively pricey. Even though the hardware was adequate, the phone’s lousy update schedule would make it challenging for me to suggest. As it is, I like virtually little about this smartphone, owing to its terrible cameras and bad performance. While far from flawless, the OnePlus Nord N200 5G offers a far superior experience in almost every way. If you’re on a small budget, I suggest going with OnePlus. The stylus isn’t worth the money.
