Motorola G84 Review — A Budget Android I Finally Like

I’ve always found it really difficult to enjoy using, or even recommend, budget Android phones to people. Going back ten years or so when Windows Phone was an option it was extremely easy to recommend one of those over Android for casual phone users, because the experience was just so much nicer. We don’t have that option these days of course and even the budget Android phones I tried in the last couple of years really weren’t a great experience. After trying the Motorola G84 though I have finally found that budget Android experience I was looking for.

GroundedTech is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Quickly going over the specs of the phone, it has a 6.5inch 120Hz P-OLED display, a Snapdragon 695 coupled with 8GB RAM and 256GB of storage. It has a plastic build but with a nice frosted looking finish on the back and is lightweight at 167g. In terms of cameras there’s a 50MP f/1.9 main camera alongside an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide. This is all topped off and topped up with a 5000mAh battery and 30W charging.

Motorola does things similar to Google’s Pixel phones in that it runs it’s own slight variation of a more stock Android. On the G84 this absolutely flies with little issue on the Snapdragon 695, which has been around for a while and isn’t the fastest and yet it’s a smooth experience. This is the opposite of the experience I’ve had with budget Android handsets over the years. Ever since using budget Windows Phone devices many years ago I’ve struggled to find a budget Android that was anywhere near as smooth and just simply nice to use. In 2024 I have finally found that budget handset. It was released in 2023 but you know what I mean.

So it’s good to use, with solid performance and currently selling for £186 on Amazon, it’s sounding like a pretty good buy. But what about those cameras? This is usually the main weakness of a budget handset and this is still the case here too. However they’re not bad cameras. In fact the main camera has been doing me quite well. Here are some of the images below that I managed to take, with a mix of auto and edited in Lightroom Mobile shots:

Battery life on the G84 is stellar. A 5000mAh battery coupled with that Snapdragon 695 gives you all day battery life and if you don’t use your phone much during the day you may even get two full days out of it. Even for gaming playing something like Pokémon GO at 120fps it’s a smooth experience and you’ll have no issues playing similar style games that aren’t too taxing. You will struggle with the more 3D heavy titles such as Genshin (don’t recommend).

I enjoyed using this phone a lot. Maybe we’re finally at the point where budget Android phones are going to be nice to use going forward. Hopefully Samsung catches up, but right now Motorola are doing a lot right and are my automatic budget recommendation going forward.

Disclaimer: I was supplied this device by Motorola for review. It has no input in my review and sees the article and videos at the same time as everyone else.