Moto G45 5G review: One of the best sub-Rs 10,000 smartphone

Moto G45 5G is effectively priced at Rs 10,000. The smartphone features a sleek design, big battery and powerful chipset. While all good on the paper, does the device feel just as good when put through its paces? Let's find out in the detailed review by India Today Tech.

Moto G45 5G review - 8/10

Pros

• Vegan leather
• Big battery
• Sleek design

Cons

• Camera shutter speed
• Charging speed

In Short

• Moto G45 5G features a 6.5-inch HD+ display
• It packs a 5,000mAh battery with 18W charging support
• It is available in three-colour options: Viva Magenta, Brilliant Blue, and Brilliant Green

Just weeks after it launched the Moto G85, Motorola launched another smartphone in the series but at a more affordable price. The new Moto G45 5G is an entry-level smartphone, with some impressive features like a flat 6.5-inch display, 5,000mAh battery and 50-megapixel rear camera. The phone continues to sport the design language of the G-series with the signature vegan leather back. I have been testing the Moto G45 5G for a week, and it exceeds expectations despite some minor flaws. Let's find out the Moto G45’s real-world performance in this review by India Today Tech.

Sleek design with vegan leather

Like many other OEMs in the market, Motorola too has a lot of focus on offering a sleek design. It is impressive that the company is managing that form factor even with a phone under Rs 10,000. Despite a big 5,000mAh battery, the smartphone is light and easy to carry. It weighs 183g and is 8.03mm thick.

Similar to the more expensive Motorola phones launched this year, the Moto G45 continues to sport the premium vegan leather back panel. Having said that, despite lending some premium-ness to the phone, if you look a little closer you can see that Motorola has compromised on quality somewhere to include that vegan leather finish in a phone under Rs 10,000. The edges of the vegan leather aren’t well flushed with the plastic frame of the device. We can’t say for sure yet, because we have only used the phone for a week right now, but it seems like prolonged usage could cause the leather back to peel around the edges. But there is also an upside to it: the Moto G45 does not attract dust and smudges easily.

I recently reviewed the Moto G85, which honestly looked a bit more premium –– it also costs almost Rs 8,000 more –– but that also got dirty really quick. So there is always an upside and a downside.

The back panel is absolutely clean with the company logo in the middle of it. The dual-camera set-up is housed on a slightly elevated island, which also has a small flashlight just next to the camera sensors.

Along the edges, the smartphone boasts a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, which doubles as a power button. I am not a fan of fingerprint sensors on the side, but it does speed up the process of unlocking the screen. Overall, the Moto G45 5G’s design is nifty.

Impressively bright display

The Moto G45 5G features a 6.5-inch HD+ display with 120Hz refresh rate. It is smooth, it has seamless transition, and it is bright enough to deliver vivid colours even under direct sunlight. The device is IP52-rated for protection against dust and water splashes.

While the display looks great, the Moto G45 5G sports thick bezels. The bezels are even thicker on the bottom edge. While thick bezels are almost expected in phones in this price segment, I would have still loved to see these bezels going slightly thinner. The display is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

The overall experience of watching content, gaming, scrolling on Instagram, and reading articles on the Moto G45 5G was good. In fact, it exceeds my expectations.

Performance is up to the mark

The Moto G45 5G meets my expectations of a sub-Rs 10,000 smartphone, if not exceeds them. What were my expectations? Being able to use social media apps like WhatsApp and Instagram, watch YouTube videos, watch some movies and shows on OTT apps, and of course, place and receive phone calls. Moto G45 did all of it, and it did them well and without any lags or issues.

I also like that the Moto G45 has a clean UI. Most of its competitors like the ones from Poco, Xiaomi, and Realme, come with a bunch of bloatware. The Moto G45 5G only has Google services pre-installed in it.

The Moto G45 5G is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6s Gen 3, and comes in a 4GB and 8GB RAM variant. I have been testing the 8GB model, which is priced at Rs 12,999. The device offers a single storage option of 128GB. The Moto G45 runs Android 14.

To further test the performance of the Moto G45, I also ran some benchmark tests on the device. The device clocked 904 for single-core score and 2118 for multi-core score on Geekbench. During the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme stress Test, an extreme gaming test, Moto G85 achieved a stability score of 99.2 per cent, with a best loop score at 378, which is much higher than the Redmi 13 5G, launched last month at a starting price of Rs 13,999.

But as I said at the beginning of this review, the Moto G45 isn’t without flaws. Multitasking isn’t the smartphone’s strong suite. Even though most users of a phone in this budget wouldn’t exactly multitask on it, it's my job to put it through its paces and I found that if you switch between multiple apps simultaneously, the device does hang for a few seconds. That said, it is likely that this issue could be patched with an OTA update.

The general performance, however, is decent. I hardly faced any heating issue, even when it was charging.

Powerful battery

The Moto G45 5G packs a 5,000mAh battery with 18W charging support. The device easily lasted more than a day, even though I was using the phone actively and is my primary device. To do a real-life test of the phone’s battery performance, I watched a 30 minute standup comedy show on the phone, while simultaneously switching to Instagram and Whatsapp. I did this for about 40 minutes and in that time, the battery drained only 5 per cent.

I also used the device to watch content online for over an hour and a half and the battery drop was minimal. The maximum drain at one go I observed was a 20-25 per cent drop when I used the phone at a stretch for 2 hours.

While the battery life is excellent, the charging speed is not too great. It took the Moto G45 5G over 30 minutes to charge from 10 per cent to 48 per cent. If you are at zero per cent battery, it boosts up immediately when you plug it to a charger but it takes over 1.5 hours to fully charge the device.

But here is something to note. You may want faster charging speeds, because convenience. However, if you get a phone with a good battery life, I think compromising on charging speeds isn’t such a bad thing. In fact, it’s not a bad thing at all. Slow charging speeds also mean good battery health for a longer time. So, if you want to use a phone for a few years after buying it, I say get a device with a good battery life and it’s ok if it doesn’t offer the crazy 40-50W charging speed.

The rear camera clicks great shots

The Moto G45 is at its best when you are using its rear camera. It boasts a 50-megapixel dual camera setup. For selfies and video calls, it has a 16-megapixel front camera. It takes vivid and clear images but the only condition is that the subject isn’t moving too much.

The shutter speed of the smartphone is one of the major challenges I faced while testing the camera. The image takes time to process, delaying the actual shot I wanted in the first place –– unless I and the subject stay very, very still.

The Portrait mode has decent edge detection. It’s not flawless, but it mostly gets the blurr right. But if you compare the portrait mode on the rear and the front camera, you get better results from the rear ones. Front struggles a bit more with edge detection, especially if the lighting condition isn’t ideal.

Overall, Moto G45 5G’s camera works well. Here are a few photos clicked by the Moto G45 5G:

Moto G45 5G: Is it worth it?

Moto G45 5G is effectively available at a starting price of Rs 9,999. This is with bank offers. Without it, you can get the phone at a starting price of Rs 10,999. As for if it’s worth it, as a sum of its parts, the Moto G45 comes together as a solid device in the price segment. It looks great, it has a good display, it has largely lag-free performance and offers an over-a-day battery life.