The Motorola Moto G54 tries to make the most of a budget phone, which results in an inconsistent mess.

You can do good, but you can also want to do too much good. The Motorola Moto G54 (from 169 euros including VAT) is a perfect example of wanting to do good. The spec list looks too good to be true at this price.

However, with the exception of two major drawbacks, Motorola comes very close. Not coincidentally, things that are difficult to find out from a specifications list: loading time and graphics performance. Both are really disappointing, even at this competitive price. We’ll discuss whether the rest is important enough to consider this device.

Clear and yet not

An immediate surprise: there is a transparent bumper case in the box. It’s less nice for stores to sell an accessory, but for yourself it’s nice to keep the money in your pocket. In addition, unlike the Nokia G42, this phone does not look cheap at all. There is a fast fingerprint sensor under the power button and there is even a jack socket on the bottom for connecting wired headphones.

With a 6.5-inch screen, this isn’t the biggest phone on the market, but we wouldn’t call it small either. To our surprise, we were greeted by a Full HD screen (1,080 x 2,400 pixels), a rarity in this price range. Unfortunately, you can see that it is a budget model. If you tilt the Motorola Moto G54 a little, you lose more than half of the screen brightness.

Automatic switching between 60 Hz and 120 Hz is also difficult. Therefore, always choose the permanent 120 Hz, we are happy to accept the low battery load.

Solid CPU, bad GPU

Despite the competitive price, Motorola still includes a Mediatek Dimensity 7020 chip. It performed excellently in our test. Multitasking is no problem, also thanks to the generous 8 GB of RAM in this price range. Muscle work from Motorola.

What goes completely wrong with the Moto G54 is the graphics performance. Or rather: for lack of. This device performs three times (!) worse than we expect. If you occasionally play a game in 3D, you should stay away from this device. Do you just play some Candy Crush and other 2D puzzle games? Fortunately, that is still possible.

Nice, sharp photos

Cheaper devices are often burdened with a terrible camera, regardless of how many megapixels there are on the back of the device. Surprisingly, that is not the case here. The Motorola Moto G54 does an excellent job and leaves many 100 to 150 euros more expensive competitors behind.

We are particularly fans of dynamic color gamut and realistic color reproduction. The 50 megapixel sensor also ensures a lot of detail in a photo, which is nice. Avoid taking night photos as the camera quality is far from sufficient.

Also ignore the 2 megapixel macro lens. This is purely psychological reasons for the consumer to get “more” camera, but the main camera takes much better macro photos.

“Turbopower” is disappointing

There is no lack of battery life. The Motorola Moto G54 doesn’t achieve the best points, but it’s more than enough to get through a full day of work.

What really sets this phone apart is its fast charging. “Turbopower” pops up nicely on the screen when you plug in a fast charger, but it still takes 50 minutes to charge the battery to 50 percent. That’s far too long these days in a market where manufacturers compete with each other with ever faster chargers.

Why is that important? For example, if a phone can sprint to 50 percent in fifteen minutes, you no longer need to charge your phone every night. A short break at the breakfast table or while showering is enough to get you through the day. Is your phone suddenly low on battery? Then it’ll be charged again in no time, don’t panic. We’re seeing this fast charging technology more and more often in budget devices. Admittedly, this is a competitively priced device, but almost an hour and a half to charge to 80 percent is far too long.

Diploma

The Motorola Moto G54 has a lot to offer, but some things come with an asterisk. We still have to mention the biggest disadvantage: only one OS update. Since the device came onto the market with Android 13, this has already been the case since Android 14. This used to be common, but not anymore.

More and more manufacturers are committing to providing more operating system updates. Then we can expect the same from Motorola. Fortunately, the manufacturer provides security updates for three years.

All in all, we can only recommend the Motorola Moto G54 to anyone who is looking for the best camera under 200 euros and also wants a good display. As long as that person can live with the significant negatives.

This short test report is part of our comparative mass test of mid-range cell phones between 200 and 350 euros. Click Here for the other reviews.

The Motorola Moto G54 has been available with 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage since September 15, 2023 and costs 269 euros including VAT at the time of writing. A variant with 8 GB of RAM is also available for 189 euros including VAT.

Android Update Policy: Motorola promises an operating system update (up to Android 14) and three years of security updates starting with launch on September 15, 2023.