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Motorola's most popular budget phone has just been refreshed for 2026. The $300 Moto G Power (2026) brings slight improvements to the battery and camera, and has that signature soft touch back design that you don't see on other phones.
The battery has been bumped to 5,200 mAh size, the selfie camera gets a new 32MP lens, and the back cameras get slightly tweaked colors.
The display, however, is still an LCD one, while other competitors come with OLED screens. Still, the clean software and decent performance somewhat make up for that. Plus, apart from Samsung's Galaxy A series, this is one of very few budget phones you can buy in the United States. So should you? Let's find out.
Motorola Moto G Power (2026)
4.9
PhoneArena Rating
5.7
Price Class Average
Battery Life
7.1
7.1
Photo Quality
5.5
5.6
Video Quality
4.1
4.2
Charging
6.8
7.1
Performance Heavy
2.5
3.2
Performance Light
5.1
5.5
Display Quality
3
6.7
Design
4
6.2
Wireless Charging
0
Biometrics
7
6.8
Audio
5
5.8
Software
4
4.9
Why the score?
This device scores 14% worse than the average for this price class, which includes devices like the Nothing CMF Phone 2 Pro, Motorola Edge 60 Fusion and Xiaomi Poco M7 Pro
Motorola has its own desing language in the past few years with soft touch materials on the back of the phone, which we actually like. The Moto G Power (2026) is not a bad looking phone — it has flat sides and a design style that's mostly in line with current trends. However, it's all-plastic build quality and big bezels around the screen make its look a bit aged compared to sleeker rivals like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 15 series.
The screen is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 7i, which can theoretically survive drops of up to three feet. You also have an IP69 water and dust protection rating, a rarity at this price point, so it's quite tough.
The new G Power comes in two colors: Pantone Pure Cashmere, a warm and soft tone, and a darker Pantone Evening Blue shade. Both versions have that soft-touch leather-inspired back.
There is not much you can find in the box of the Moto G Power 2026. You get a charging cable (Type C on both sides), the SIM tool and the user manuals. There is no charger, nor a case included.
In 2026, it's a bit embarrassing to see an old-school LCD display in use. Sure, the G Power is not even a mid-range phone, but most other rivals in this price segment have long transitioned to higher quality OLED screens.
The display is a 6.8-inch LCD with 1080p resolution (still better than the 720p screens on the cheaper Moto G and Moto G Play models).
The CIE 1931 xy color gamut chart represents the set(area)of colors that a display can reproduce,with the sRGB colorspace(the highlighted triangle)serving as reference.The chart also provides a visual representation of a display's color accuracy. The small squares across the boundaries of the triangle are the reference points for the various colors, while the small dots are the actual measurements. Ideally, each dot should be positioned on top of its respective square. The 'x:CIE31' and 'y:CIE31' values in the table below the chart indicate the position of each measurement on the chart. 'Y' shows the luminance (in nits) of each measured color, while 'Target Y' is the desired luminance level for that color. Finally, 'ΔE 2000' is the Delta E value of the measured color. Delta E values of below 2 are ideal.
The Color accuracy chart gives an idea of how close a display's measured colors are to their referential values. The first line holds the measured (actual) colors, while the second line holds the reference (target) colors. The closer the actual colors are to the target ones, the better.
The Grayscale accuracy chart shows whether a display has a correct white balance(balance between red,green and blue)across different levels of grey(from dark to bright).The closer the Actual colors are to the Target ones,the better.
Motorola talks about the screen hitting higher max brightness, which is nice, but that is still not even close to the peak brightness numbers you get on OLED phones like the Galaxy A17 5G.
The other weakness of this display is its minimum brightness. At 2.5 nits, it doesn't get dim enough at night and this might bother the night birds who like to read in bed.
In terms of biometrics, the fingerprint reader is embedded in the power button on the side. No issues with that, it worked reliably and quickly. We prefer an in-screen fingerprint reader for convenience, but that's down to a subjective preference at the end of the day.
Motorola Moto G Power (2026) Camera
Video quality could be better
Motorola Moto G Power (2026)
PhoneArena Camera Score
BEST 158
117
PhoneArena Photo Score
BEST 165
127
Main (wide)
BEST 87
65
Zoom
BEST 30
19
Ultra-wide
BEST 26
19
Selfie
BEST 30
24
PhoneArena Video Score
BEST 155
107
Main (wide)
BEST 83
57
Zoom
BEST 27
13
Ultra-wide
BEST 24
16
Selfie
BEST 28
21
The Moto G Power is not a strong performer by any means of the imagination and you can see that reflected in our PhoneArena Camera Score above.
It comes with a 50MP main camera with a narrower than usual 30mm lens and f/1.8 aperture. You also have a secondary 8MP ultra-wide camera at 0.5X and f/2.2 aperture. No dedicated telephoto camera on board here.
Photos look decent in good light, but don't expect anything beyond that. Colors appear very saturated with skies that often appear bluer than in real life and grass greener than reality. Detail is decent with the main camera though. The 30mm lens is an interesting choice (most phones have a wider 24mm lens) and some may like it, but if you are used to taking wider photos it might be limiting.
The ultra-wide camera is less convincing. Colors are mostly in line with those on the main camera, but detail drops significantly, and we don't recommend reaching for the ultra-wide camera at night.
Video Quality
You can only record up to 1080p60 video on the new G Power. On one hand, that's understandable for the price, but some phones at a similar price have 4K recording, so we were a bit disappointed you don't get that here. Detail with 1080p video is just significantly lower.
There are some other limitations too: once you hit the record button with the main camera, you cannot zoom out to the ultrawide one. And vice versa, if you start recording with the ultra-wide, you cannot go to 1X.
When it comes to zooming, you maximum is 6X zoom, which is not very long-reaching and with digital zoom the quality is just average. On the positive side, you have pretty decent video stabilization, but that's kind of the bare minimum and overall, it's clear that this phone is probably not the best choice for camera enthusiasts.
Motorola Moto G Power (2026) Performance & Benchmarks
Decent
The Moto G Power 2026 comes with a MediaTek Dimensity 6300 (6nm) chip under the hood, which is a decidedly low-end affair, but surprisingly — it's paired with a generous 8GB of RAM.
Overall, the phone performs decently well. It's not fast, but it's not too slow and there are other devices that feel much more sluggish at this price.
Similar story on the GPU front — this is not a gaming phone by any stretch of the imagination, but it will run some popular titles in lower graphics settings okay-ish.
The 128GB of built-in storage is the standard you get in this price class, and that's exactly what you get with the G Power.
Motorola Moto G Power (2026) Software
The phone comes with the latest Android 16 at launch with the light and zippy Motorola custom UI on top.
I generally like Moto's software — it's unobtrusive, predictable, and has those cool gestures like chop-chop to start the flashlight or double twist to start the camera.
I also think that a high-quality native weather app is an essential part of any phone experience, but I was disappointed that the Weather app here comes with ads front and center (the forecasts are powered by 1Weather Premium). This is just poor user experience that you don't get on Samsung's Galaxy A phones or some other budget brands.
Probably most concerning, however, is the commitment to only two years of OS updates, while, again, Galaxy phones come with 6 years of promised OS updates. That's quite the contrast.
"Power" is in the name of the phone so you expect excellent battery numbers.
However, in the past years, that DNA of battery excellence was mudded. Now, budget phones like the Redmi seriers pack much bigger batteries at a similar price. The Moto G Power comes with a 5,200 mAh battery, which is a bit bigger than what you get on Samsung phones, but not really impressive.
The phone got decent scores in our three independent in-house tests (Web Browsing, YouTube video streaming and 3D Gaming), but this is not the battery beast Motorola was once known for making. In real use, I find this tends to be a one-day phone usually.
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On the charging front, you get 30W wired charging speeds. We measured that a full charge takes 1 hour and 9 minutes, while a 30-minute top-up gives you 53% juice back. Those are decent numbers.
There is no wireless charging support, but of that we cannot be critical — no other budget phone has that.
Motorola Moto G Power (2026) Audio Quality and Haptics
Interestingly, you still have a 3.5mm headphone jack on this phone, a rare find in 2026.
Audio quality from the loudspeakers gets surprisingly loud and boomy, but if you listen to music on your phone we'd recommend turning it down 2 or 3 notches for less squeaky vocals. The lower frequencies also sound flat, but let's tone down our expectations for such an affordable phone.
Haptics are not as tight and sharp as on mid-range phones, and you can feel that too, but again, those are common things for sub $300 phones.
Should you buy it?
At $300, the Moto G Power is a very affordable phone.
Out of the three Moto G series phones in 2026, this one makes the most sense as it has a 1080p display and 128GB of storage, while the others compromise on that. Performance on it is also decent and the light software helps with that.
The list of upgrades compared to the previous model, however, is short and we are particularly sad to see an LCD screen for yet another year, instead of an upgrade to OLED. The colors are just not as vibrant and pleasant on an LCD display.
The Samsung Galaxy A17 and other A series models are the strongest competitors, offering better screen quality and arguably a better camera, but performance there might feel a bit more stuttery.
Victor, a seasoned mobile technology expert, has spent over a decade at PhoneArena, exploring the depths of mobile photography and reviewing hundreds of smartphones across Android and iOS ecosystems. His passion for technology, coupled with his extensive knowledge of smartphone cameras and battery life, has positioned him as a leading voice in the mobile tech industry.
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