Today I have the Motorola Moto G84 5G smartphone for review. The model went on sale in August this year, has good specifications and cool design with ergonomics. Among the main features: 6.5-inch pOLED display with a refresh rate of 120 Hz, productive SoC Snapdragon 695 5G, 12 GB of RAM, modern 256 GB UFS 2.2 storage, pretty good cameras and, of course, Motorola’s proprietary features. After getting acquainted with the device there were only positive impressions, which I would like to share with you and at the same time tell you in detail about this model. Therefore, let’s proceed directly to the review itself, which we will start with brief technical specifications.
The Moto G84 5G model can be safely attributed to the middle class of devices. The device will be of interest to those who are looking for a relatively inexpensive smartphone with a good level of performance, autonomy and photo quality. It is also worth noting compactness, original stylish design and 5G support. All this makes Moto G84 5G a great smartphone that can easily cope with most of the tasks set before it. The average price of Moto G84 5G at the time of writing the review is $273.
The smartphone is delivered in the branded eco-friendly “plastic-free packaging”. The box is made of sturdy cardboard in a pleasant kraft colour. On the front side there is the brand logo and the model name of the smartphone. On the back of the box there is brief information about the camera, display and sound features (I won’t go into details now and will tell you about it later). On the sides of the box you can see stickers with barcodes and brief information about the model.
Actually, there is nothing more to say about the box, except that the manufacturer continues to adhere to the stylish eco-friendly design for the packaging of its devices. But let’s move on to the contents of the box. Inside there is:
This is the whole package and, as always, it is exhaustive: nothing superfluous, only the most necessary things that can be useful to the user.
Moto G84 5G is available in 3 colours: Marshmallow Blue, Midnight Blue and Viva Magenta. Depending on the colour, the body material of the smartphone also differs. In Marshmallow Blue and Viva Magenta, the back panel is covered with vegan leather – an artificial leather that mimics natural leather without the use of animal products. The Midnight Blue variant has a back panel made of PMMA. It’s also worth noting that Viva Magenta has been named the colour of the year 2023 by PANTONE.
I received the Midnight Blue variant for review – a smartphone with PMMA body in dark blue colour. Although it is impossible to say that it is dark blue, because the colour changes depending on the angle from which you look at it. From one angle it is dark blue, from another angle it looks graphite-black, from a third angle you can clearly see how the colour changes from one to another. The solution is successful and it looks very stylish.
As for the Moto G84 5G design itself, it can be characterised as sleek and concise at the same time. The smartphone itself is compact, slim and lightweight. The dimensions of the smartphone are 160.0×74.4×7.6 mm and the weight is 166.8 g. All this gives positive emotions from just one physical interaction with the device.
On the back panel we can see 2 camera modules (main and wide angle), a flash and a small Motorola logo located in the centre of the panel. The whole back panel is covered with PMMA. The material itself is matte to the touch, slightly rough. This makes the smartphone not very slippery, especially when compared to most modern devices. It doesn’t slip out of your hands and practically doesn’t slip when placed at an incline on a fabric surface (for example, on your knee).
The side edges of the Moto G84 5G are straight, with slightly rounded corners. The smartphone can easily stand on a flat surface in a horizontal position. But not in vertical position, it is too thin.
The SIM card tray is located on the left edge. The tray itself, unfortunately, is ordinary, not triple or double-sided. It can hold either 2 Nano-SIM cards or 1 SIM card and 1 microSD card. On the right edge is the volume control and the power off/lock button. The buttons themselves are small, neat, but not deeply recessed. They can be blindly felt and pressed without any problems. On the top edge you can notice the Dolby Atmos logo in small font. The bottom edge has a standard 3.5mm headset jack, USB Type-C port version 2.0 and speaker holes.
The build quality of Moto G84 5G is excellent and so are the materials used to make it. In terms of ergonomics, the smartphone is very comfortable and pleasant to use. Speaking of assembly and materials, this model has protection against splashes and liquids spilled on the smartphone. Protection class IP54.
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The Motorola Moto G84 5G sports a 6.5-inch pOLED display. It has Full HD+ (2400×1080) resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. You can adjust the refresh rate in the settings if needed. The options available are 60Hz, 120Hz and Auto (dynamic frequency). The refresh rate will be automatically set to 60 Hz in the battery saver mode.
If necessary, you can adjust the colours to your preferences – there is a separate section in the display menu for this purpose. However, there are not very many settings in it. There are 2 colour reproduction modes available: natural and bright. As you can guess from the names, natural – for more natural colour reproduction, bright – to increase the saturation of colours. And there are also colour temperature settings from cool to warm.
The pixel density is 402 ppi. There are no problems with image clarity, any content on the Moto G84 5G display looks great.
The maximum brightness of the display is 1300 nits, which allows you to use the smartphone outdoors in bright sunlight without any problems. For viewing content, the brightness of Moto G84 5G display is more than enough. For me personally, the optimal level of brightness on this display is reached when setting it at 70 – 75%.
The touchscreen of the display recognises 10 simultaneous touches, which means it’s enough for gaming. The response of the display is excellent. It responds quickly and clearly to all gestures, taps and swipes.
All in all, we can say that the display of the Moto G84 5G is without exaggeration excellent, especially considering the price of the smartphone itself.
The smartphone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G processor, has 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.2 type storage. Let’s go through each component in more detail and run some performance tests.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G is an 8-core chipset that was announced in October 2021. It is manufactured using 6nm process technology. Core architecture: 2 Kryo 660 Gold (Cortex-A78) cores clocked at 2.2 GHz and 6 Kryo 660 Silver (Cortex-A55) cores clocked at 1.8 GHz. The maximum clock speed of the processor is 2.2 GHz. The Adreno 619 video chip is responsible for graphics.
What can I say, not a bad mid-range chipset designed for 5G-enabled devices.
Moto G84 5G has 12GB of LPDDR4X type RAM. Additionally, you can add another 3 GB of virtual memory. The virtual memory is taken from the device drive. You can enable this feature in the menu: System – Performance – RAM Acceleration.
A 256GB UFS 2.2 type drive is installed. It is also possible to install an additional microSD card up to 1TB.
As for the speed of the drive – it is not bad, which is confirmed by AnTuTu and PCMark tests.
To determine the performance level of Moto G84 5G and to be able to compare it with other devices, let’s run some synthetic tests. For testing we will use the following set: Geekbench 6, PCMark, 3DMark, AnTuTu Benchmark, AiTuTu Benchmark and CPU Throttling Test.
In general, we have indicators typical for mid-range devices. As we can see, the performance of Motorola Moto G84 5G is quite at a good level.
Well, for those for whom the figures from benchmarks do not say anything, I will say the following: according to my personal feelings, the performance of the smartphone is excellent. OS, applications, web surfing, video watching, photo/video shooting, mobile games – there are no problems with all this in terms of performance at all. Everything works quickly, smoothly and with good response. Suspensions and retardation in the work of the smartphone for all time did not notice. Well, except that short-term frees and drop in performance can occur in mobile games. But mostly it’s either in resource-intensive games or if you overdo it with graphics settings and set everything to maximum.
It’s worth going through the games too. And at the same time to complete the picture in terms of performance tests. By the way, for mobile games Moto G84 5G has a special game mode “Game Time with Moto”. With its help you can switch off calls and notifications, block gestures on the smartphone, improve sound quality with Dolby Atmos technology and much more. But the most interesting feature, in my opinion, is the high performance mode during gaming. Actually, all the games from the list were tested in this mode.
Asphalt 9: Legends
At maximum graphics settings “High Quality” the game runs perfectly. It feels like we have stable 30 FPS without performance drops. Playing comfortably.
Genshin Impact
At maximum graphics settings “Highest” we have about 20-30 FPS. Frequent frame drops, and in general the performance is low. At the “High” settings the game is a bit more comfortable. According to feelings, FPS is higher, less sags, but, all the same, to a comfortable level of gameplay still does not reach. Approximately the same picture is observed at medium settings “Medium”. Still, the optimal settings for playing Genshin Impact on Moto G84 can be considered as low graphics settings “Low”. At these settings the game runs more or less smoothly. We have about 30 stable FPS with rare minor sags. In general, you can already play comfortably at low settings.
Diablo Immortal
Frame limit 30 FPS, resolution on “Medium”, the game does not allow to set anything higher. Graphics quality is at the level of “Very High”. At these settings the game is comfortable. By feelings, we have about 30 FPS. From the unpleasant – sometimes there are brief freezes. By the way, there are freezes at any graphics quality settings. Therefore, I can assume that the problem is in the servers, not in the device.
Arena Breakout
At high graphics settings “HD” the game runs quite well, we feel that we have 30 FPS. At high graphics settings, the FPS limit cannot be set higher than medium “Medium” – the game simply does not allow you to do it. That’s why we can safely lower the graphics quality to the average level “Balanced”, and raise the FPS limit to “High”. We won’t lose much in picture quality, but the frame rate will increase and the game will be much more pleasant to play.
Real Racing 3
There are no graphics settings in the game, but in general the picture looks pretty good. The game itself runs just perfectly. We feel that we have stable 60 FPS without performance drops. By the way, you can appreciate Moto G84 5G gyroscope in this game.
Wreckfest
Graphics and effects settings are set to “Low”. FPS Limit” is set to “Max”. Anti-aliasing and blurring effects are turned off. At these settings the game gives out about 30 FPS with minor sags on ring tracks. In modes like derby the game can produce even more than 30 FPS. In general, it is comfortable to play. This game is quite resource-intensive and demanding to the iron, so when increasing the quality of graphics we lose a lot in performance.
Black Desert Mobile
Graphics settings are set to “Quality” (high), frame limit is set to “Max Settings”. At these settings the game runs perfectly. By feelings, we have 50-60 FPS. No performance drops have been noticed, it is comfortable to play the game.
Free Fire
Graphics quality is set to “Standard”. FPS settings are set to “High”. At these settings the game is also perfect. By feelings, we have 50-60 FPS. The game plays smoothly, comfortably, control sensitivity is good. No freezes and critical drops in performance have been noticed. You can try to raise the quality to “Ultra”. Settings “High Res” set to “High” and Shadow to “On”. Everything else is left as it was. At these settings, which can be considered the maximum, the game also works well. I didn’t notice any drops in terms of performance at maximum settings, but the picture in general became a little better.
As we can see, Motorola Moto G84 5G copes with modern mobile games quite well. And most often it is possible to play comfortably at high settings. The exception may be especially demanding games. But even in them you can play a little, sacrificing the quality of graphics.
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Moto G84 5G rear camera is made by 2 modules: main and wide-angle. The main lens has a resolution of 50MP. There is a fast autofocus Super PDAF. There is support for Ultra Pixel technology to combine into a 2.0µm pixel and optical image stabilisation (OIS). The wide-angle lens has a resolution of 8MP and an angle of coverage of 118°. The wide-angle lens is also used for macro photography as well.
The main camera shoots video in Full HD (1920×1080) at 60 and 30 frames per second. Video stabilisation is only available at 30 frames per second. If we want to shoot at 60 frames, we’ll have to do without it. Wide-angle video shooting, like macro, is only available at 30fps.
The front camera on the Moto G84 5G has a resolution of 16 megapixels. The video is recorded in Full HD resolution at 30 frames per second. You can also enable image stabilisation while recording video on the front camera.
The camera application in Moto G84 5G is simple in itself. But its various modes and settings are more than enough for modern photo and video shooting. For photos, there is an ultra-high-resolution 50MP mode, professional mode with long exposure, 360° panorama, portrait, night photo, dual-camera shooting, slate colour, macro, wide-angle photo, dynamic photo filters. For video, apart from the normal mode, there are dual-camera video shooting, clad colour, slow motion, accelerated shooting with Hyperlapse technology.
Additional features include audio zoom, burst shooting, timer, auxiliary grid, watermarking, alignment, HDR, active photos, RAW photo capture, photo mirror for selfies, selfie animation, face retouching, video stabilisation, freeze frame during video shooting. There’s also AI that can recognise gestures in the frame, start shooting when a smile is detected and optimise shots.
The application is user-friendly and intuitive. I did not experience any discomfort when using it. Actually, I can say the same about its operation in general. It works quickly, clearly, without freezes, crashes or any bugs.
In proper lighting conditions, the photos taken with the main camera turn out well, in my opinion. We have quite good detail of objects and colour reproduction. Yes, if you are very picky and look closely, you can always find flaws. But on the whole, the photos look pretty decent.
By default, photos are taken in 12.5MP resolution, in the app you can quickly switch to the ultra-high resolution 50MP mode. There is a difference, you can clearly see it when looking at small details or zooming in on a photo.
Here’s a clear example: when zoomed in, you can see the tiles more clearly in a photo taken at 50MP.
I personally liked the portrait mode on the Moto G84 5G. For the most part, the photos turn out well. Yes, there is a problem with contours on some shots, but this point depends on the lighting. Shot in sufficient light, portrait photos look decent to me. By the way, shooting in portrait mode has one peculiarity. At the moment of shooting the quality of the photo on preview looks, to put it mildly, not very good. But when saving the photo, it is additionally processed and you get a completely different picture.
But macro shooting on Moto G84 5G is disappointing. Photos taken in macro mode lack detail and clarity. And it is often difficult for the camera to focus properly during the shooting itself.
Moto G84 5G camera supports HDR shooting. By default, HDR is set to “Auto” mode – the camera’s AI decides when it’s best to activate it. I’ve selected a few photos with HDR activated to give you an example. Looks good to me.
In low light, you can shoot on the Moto G84 5G without any problems, and the photos turn out pretty well as well. I especially liked the way artificial light and its sources look in the photos.
In the evening and night time the camera shoots, as far as I am concerned, perfectly. I was especially pleased with the special night shooting mode.
This is a good example of how Night mode works. Images are much brighter, and sometimes there is even more detail in your subjects.
Panoramic photos look generally good too. Although some of the shots are over-lit. Again, it all depends on the light and how you shoot. I’m sure, if you try hard enough, you can shoot good panoramas on Moto G84 5G without any problems.
The video quality of the Moto G84 5G is, frankly speaking, poor. The camera can only shoot in Full HD. This limitation is caused by the processor, Snapdragon 695 does not support shooting in higher resolution. Stabilisation is available only when shooting at 30 FPS. But here it should be noted that stabilisation is really useful, it is noticeable on the filmed videos.
1080P@60FPS stabilisation off
1080P@30FPS stabilisation on
1080P@60FPS stabilisation off
1080P@30FPS stabilisation on
1080P@30FPS stabilisation off
1080P@30FPS stabilisation on
The Moto G84 5G front-facing Moto G84 5G’s shooting quality is generally not bad. Selfies with portraits are mostly good. The quality of captured videos can be considered acceptable.
Moto G84 5G has stereo speakers and support for Dolby Atmos technology. The sound quality from the smartphone speakers is good. The sound is not flat, you can feel a little bit of bass. In short, with such sound quality you can comfortably watch a film, YouTube video or play games. The volume reserve is more than enough.
The sound settings are generally standard. The only interesting things to note are the ability to set different volume for different applications, the option to enable spatial sound, and Dolby Atmos, of course. In Dolby Atmos settings the default mode is the intelligent audio mode – the content being played is analysed and the optimal sound settings are automatically selected for it. If necessary, you can change the sound mode by selecting one of 4 pre-defined modes or set up your own custom mode.
The smartphone can accommodate 2 Nano-SIM cards or 1 SIM card and 1 microSD card at the same time. The Moto G84 5G has a conventional tray, so you have to choose between the following.
Supported networks and bands:
While the Moto G84 was under review, I used it as my primary smartphone for calls. At the same time I checked the simultaneous work of two different operators. I didn’t notice any problems with connection or mobile internet during the whole time of using the smartphone. The signal level is usually good or within the normal range, the mobile internet speed showed the usual results.
By the way, the quality of the conversation microphone and speakers is at a good level. The volume is more than enough, the interlocutor and me were always well heard.
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For wireless connectivity, the Moto G84 5G has Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5. There is NFC module for contactless payment. There were no problems with wireless connections during the whole testing period. The smartphone quickly finds Wi-Fi networks, connects to them, and shows the usual speed of Internet connection.
There are also no problems with connecting Bluetooth devices: it quickly finds and establishes connection with them. By the way, Moto G84 5G has LDAC support, so a quality headset or headphones will be a great addition to the smartphone.
As for geolocation, no problems have been noticed either.
Motorola Moto G84 5G is powered by Android 13. Most of the applications are implemented by standard applications from Google. There are also its own branded apps like Moto hub, Family Space, Moto Secure, Moto Connect, Ready For. I recently did in-depth reviews on Ready For and branded apps with chips from Motorola. Nothing has changed in the Moto G84 5G in terms of software, so I don’t see the point in repeating myself. I’d rather leave links to those reviews.
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The system can be navigated using both 3 buttons and gestures. In addition to the standard gestures that are performed on the display, the Moto G84 5G also has kinetic gestures. These are gestures that are performed with the smartphone itself. For example, to quickly switch the torch on and off, we need to perform 2 sharp gestures, as if we were chopping something with the smartphone. Or, to quickly switch on the camera, you need to twist your wrist 2 times sharply, while holding the smartphone in this hand. Or we can switch on the “do not disturb” mode simply by putting the smartphone with the display down. In fact, there are many more kinetic gestures. I’ve given you an example of the ones I’ve used often myself.
Moto G84 5G unlock methods are standard: graphic key, pin code, password, face control, fingerprint. Face and fingerprint unlocking works without any problems – clearly and quickly. By the way, the fingerprint scanner is built right into the display.
Overall the OS on Moto G84 5G works perfectly in my opinion. No slowdowns in operation. The menu sections are competently and clearly structured. Everything looks pretty nice. I can only praise Moto G84 5G for its software component.
The Moto G84 5G packs a 5000 mAh Li-Ion battery. A 30W TurboPower charger is included in the package.
It takes an average of 1 hour 10 minutes to charge your smartphone to 50%. A full charge, from 5% to 100%, takes 2 hours 48 minutes.
Motorola continues to delight with affordable, modern and quality devices. And Moto G84 5G is no exception. This is a wonderful mid-level smartphone. Excellent design, ergonomics, materials and the quality of workmanship itself. Light, thin, compact – it is pleasant not only to use, but also to hold in your hands. Performance level is at a good level, even mobile games can be played without any problems. Good autonomy, excellent software part. In general, not bad cameras, if we do not take into account video shooting. Well and most importantly – an adequate price. From the obvious disadvantages – low quality of video shooting. Otherwise, Moto G84 5G is a decent smartphone that left good impressions.
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