Motorola Moto G55 5G review: My new favourite budget phone

The Motorola Moto G55 5G always had a difficult task gaining my approval. This latest budget smartphone from Motorola enters the lineup as the successor to my favourite cheap handset from the past couple of years – the Motorola Moto G54 5G. The sheer value for money offered by its predecessor is a tricky act for the Moto G55 5G to follow, so can it step up and match that level of quality?

The short answer is yes, just about. There are a couple of minor downgrades from the previous generation but, for the most part, the Moto G55 5G adds enough functionality to warrant its slightly higher price tag. And with the G54 5G rapidly disappearing from shelves, there’s space for a new king of the budget phones – and the Motorola Moto G55 5G is well equipped for the job.

Motorola Moto G55 5G review: What you need to know

A lot of my praise for last year’s Moto G54 5G was due to it fixing problems I’d had with its predecessor, the Motorola Moto G53 5G. With no major issues of its own to address, the Moto G55 5G has instead opted for some good old-fashioned improvements, and they can be seen in most areas of the phone.

The processor is a slightly faster MediaTek Dimensity 7025 chipset, again paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. The 5,000mAh battery also returns but charging has been bumped up from 15W to 30W – though you’ll need to own a compatible charger as there’s still no plug in the box.

The IPS display is pretty much the same as before – it’s technically 6.49in instead of 6.5in, but that difference is completely indiscernible – as is the 16-megapixel (f/2.4) selfie camera set in a hole-punch notch near the top of the screen. The main 50-megapixel (f/1.8) rear camera returns too but Motorola has made the sensible decision to jettison the pointless 2-megapixel macro lens and slot in an 8-megapixel ultrawide shooter as the backup camera.

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Motorola Moto G55 5G review: Price and competition

The Motorola Moto G55 5G launched at £200, which is £20 more than its predecessor. However, as I’ve been writing this review, it’s been reduced to £180 at all retailers, making me wonder if Motorola either quickly realised it had made a mistake bumping the price up or artificially inflated the price to give the appearance of a swift discount around Prime Day and Black Friday.

My cynicism aside, I’d recommend getting the G55 5G for £180 if you can but, even at £200, it’s still excellent value. So much so, that its only real competition comes from previously more expensive phones that have since been discounted down into this price range.

The Honor Magic 6 Lite, Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 5G and Honor 200 Lite all started life between £250 and £350 but are now much cheaper. The Honor Magic 6 Lite is the same £180 as the reduced-price Moto G55 5G, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 5G is £170 and the Honor 200 Lite can be snatched up for £179.

Motorola Moto G55 5G review: Design and key features

Motorola rarely changes up the design much with these iterative releases and the G55 5G is a case in point. It measures the same 74 x 162mm (WxH) and is marginally thicker than the G54 (8.1mm compared to 8mm). The reason for this is presumably because the display is now covered with scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 5. That also contributes to a slightly heavier weight, with the plastic-backed model weighing 179g and the version coated in vegan eco-leather weighing 182g, both up from the G54 5G’s 177g.

There are three new colours to choose from, with the Smoky Green style reviewed here and the striking Twilight Purple shade both wearing eco-leather on the rear and the more muted Forest Grey opting for a more traditional plastic back. There’s still no IP rating, with Motorola just claiming a “water-resistant design”. That’s pretty common for budget phones so it’s not exactly a flaw but I’d advise you to avoid getting this one wet.

You do at least get the usual grab-bag of user-friendly features that we’ve come to expect from Motorola, with a microSD slot that allows you to expand storage by 1TB, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a fingerprint sensor in the power button on the right edge and face unlocking via the selfie camera.

The Motorola Moto G55 5G runs Android 14 out of the box and outside of Google’s own Pixel phones, Motorola’s UI is the cleanest and most straightforward Android installation you can get. The number of preinstalled apps is wonderfully few – before I added my benchmarking software, the app drawer was a single page – with only a handful of mobile games standing out as superfluous. The only downside here is that Motorola has again committed to just one future OS update, alongside three years of security patches.

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Motorola Moto G55 5G review: Display

The 6.49in display once again has a resolution of 2,400 x 1,080, delivering a solid pixel density of 405ppi, and refreshes at up to 120Hz. It’s an improvement on the G54 5G’s screen overall, though there are a couple of downgrades. Looking at the good first, I measured a much better peak brightness of 501cd/m2 on manual brightness (up from 415cd/m2) while on adaptive brightness with a torch shining on the light sensor, it hit an even more impressive 980cd/m2, which is bright enough to handle direct sunlight.

The Vivid colour profile is still punchy and the Natural is nicely colour accurate; on the latter, I measured an sRGB gamut coverage of 90.8% with a total volume of 91.3%. The average Delta E colour variance score came back at 1.15, which is similar to the G54 5G’s result (1.09) and close enough to the target value of 1 or under. My only qualms with the display are the contrast and black levels, which measured 1,611:1 and 0.31cd/m2 in my testing, respectively. Both are acceptable but not as impressive as the G54 5G’s results.

Motorola Moto G55 5G review: Performance and battery life

The octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 7025 chipset is near-enough identical to the 7020 used in the Moto G54 5G, except that the two Cortex-A78 cores are now clocked up to 2.5GHz, instead of 2.2GHz. As you can see below, this small change is still a reasonably effective one, yielding performance improvements over the G54 of around 16% in the single-core benchmarks and 4% in the multi-core.

This new chipset still uses the same IMG BXM-8-256 GPU, however, so we don’t see any improvements on the gaming side of things. The G55’s 19fps in the offscreen portion is fine for this price, as long as you keep gaming expectations low – think more Candy Crush and less Call of Duty: Mobile.

MediaTek claims superior power efficiency for the 7025 and it’s hard to argue when you look at the results of our battery life test. The Moto G55 5G lasted for a solid 24hrs 36mins, beating the G54 5G by more than three hours. The Honor phones still have the edge here but regardless, this is a great result for the Moto G55 5G.

Also improved over the G54 5G is the charging speed, which has doubled from 15W to 30W. Plugged into a compatible charger, the G55 5G can recharge from empty in around 1hr 16mins, whereas the G54 5G took just under two hours.

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Motorola Moto G55 5G review: Cameras

Back to things that haven’t changed, we’ve got the same 50-megapixel (f/1.8) main camera that was used on the G54 5G. This isn’t a huge problem because, for the most part, this camera performs very well. There’s ample fine detail, the contrast is nice and rich and the colours, though slightly muted, are accurate and punchy enough.

Unsurprisingly, night photography isn’t great but I’d say that it’s a little better than on the G54 5G. Small details remain fairly hazy but the brightening is more effective here and there’s a solid vibrancy to the colours, too.

I found the 2-megapixel macro camera on the Moto G54 5G useless so it’s great to see it replaced with the more functional 8-megapixel (f/2.2) ultrawide lens. This isn’t an incredible camera by any stretch, with fairly smudgy detail towards the edges, but it’s a reasonable enough effort to be counted as a positive change.

And best of all, the ultrawide camera can shoot macro shots anyway – though they’re not much better than the G54’s 2-megapixel lens. You’ll get better results using the main camera’s portrait mode in most situations.

Otherwise, the camera suite is unchanged, with the same solid 16-megapixel (f/2.4) selfie camera and rear video camera that can shoot 1080p at 60fps. There’s no stabilisation, electronic or otherwise, so footage can get a little shaky, but the quality is still decent for this price.

Motorola Moto G55 5G review: Verdict

I don’t love annual iterative smartphone releases, and scheduling software support to end just as the following year’s model launches only feeds into an anti-consumer cycle. If it wasn’t for that tricky little wrinkle, I’d have happily continued to recommend the G54 5G as the best budget phone around.

As things stand, however, the G54 5G is on its way out regardless of my feelings on the matter, and you can get an extra Android update with the G55 5G. Throw in slightly improved performance, a more comprehensive camera suite, superior battery life and faster charging, and this is far from a consolation prize. I may disapprove of the circumstances around it but the simple fact is that Motorola has once again claimed the best budget phone crown with the excellent Moto G55 5G.