Motorola Moto G73 5G review: Stunted growth

The Moto G73 5G is one of several new additions to the brand’s affordable G lineup, launching alongside the G53 5G, G23 and G13. As the numbering system implies, the G73 5G is both the priciest and most powerful of the bunch but what’s less clear is whether or not it’s the best-value option out of these new Motos. Or indeed, if it’s enough of a bargain to stand out in this cluttered corner of the smartphone market.

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There are, however, various points in the Moto G73’s favour, including a relatively powerful hardware upgrade, streamlined camera setup and faster charging. But are these improvements enough to outweigh the leap in price between this and our current favourite of the G series, the Moto G62 5G?

Motorola Moto G73 5G review: What you need to know

Slotting into the staggered Moto lineup, the Motorola Moto G73 5G swaps the G62’s Snapdragon processor for a MediaTek Dimensity 930 chipset, backed by 8GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. The battery is once again a beefy 5,000mAh unit, but the fast charging capacity has been increased from 15W to 30W. There’s a charger bundled in the box, too, so you don’t need to source your own.

The 6.5in IPS display is essentially identical to the G62’s, with the same FHD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. At the top of the screen, just below the moderately sized bezel, the selfie camera nestled beneath the glass has been bumped up from 8MP to 16MP. Flip the phone over and you’ll see that the macro lens has disappeared, leaving a dual-camera setup that comprises a 50MP main lens and an 8MP ultrawide sensor.

Motorola Moto G73 5G review: Price and competition

The Moto G73 is retailing for £270, which leaves it brushing against the upper limit of the budget phone market. This places it in such company as the OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite and its recent successor, the CE 3 Lite, as well as some now-discounted mid-range phones like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G and the Honor Magic 5 Lite.

While the Lite-branded OnePlus phones don’t present much of a threat to the Moto G73, scoring similarly enough in our tests to not warrant spending more, the Xiaomi and Honor challengers do hold some weight. Both have superior OLED screens and the Xiaomi has slightly faster performance, but weaker battery life. Conversely, the Honor doesn’t quite match the Moto’s power, but left all the competition in the dust in our battery life tests, lasting for nearly 29 hours before dropping to zero.

Motorola Moto G73 5G review: Design and key features

Aesthetically, the Moto G series is pretty straightforward these days, but each generation does receive a few minor tweaks to the formula. Of the new batch, the Moto G73 5G is the closest to the G62, with the same slightly curved back coated in a light gloss that seems to ring the dinner bell for finger smudges. The G53, on the other hand, gets a flat frosted rear that hides fingerprints much better and imitates glass well enough to look and feel slightly more premium than the G73.

Another strange decision is the lack of colour variants for the G73. The only version currently on offer is the Midnight Blue model you see here. To be clear, this isn’t unattractive by any stretch – in certain lights the blue shifts elegantly into a deep purple – but when the G13, G23 and G53 5G all get three colours to choose from, it feels like a weird omission to deny the G73 the same.

It may lack the colour variety, but the G73 is at least the lightest of the new Moto Gs at 181g, and is a little more svelte than the G62, measuring 161 x 74 x 8.3mm. The camera module on the rear has also been redesigned, tucking the pair of lenses into a slightly squatter rectangular housing that’s marginally lighter blue than the rest of the phone. It still lacks an official IP weatherproofing rating, but the design is said to be “water-resistant”.

Around the edges, you’ve got the volume and power buttons on the right, with the latter doubling as a serviceable fingerprint reader. The USB-C and 3.5mm headphone ports are on the bottom, with the dual-SIM tray on the left. The phone can take two nano-SIMs, but you can choose to swap one out for a microSD card, expanding the storage capacity up to a further 1TB. Finally, the phone has dual stereo speakers, which support Dolby Atmos playback – a feature that isn’t all that common in this corner of the market.

Motorola Moto G73 5G review: Display

The display is a carbon copy of the Moto G62’s, which isn’t great considering the £70 gulf between their launch prices. Despite this déjà vu, the 6.5in IPS panel is still a decent one, with a crisp 2,400 x 1,080 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate that ensures smooth scrolling and swift navigation. Contrast and peak brightness have at least seen a moderate improvement over the G62, measuring 1,764:1 and 452cd/m2, respectively.

There are two colour modes to choose from. The Saturated profile is the home of bigger and bolder colours, making it the better choice for streaming and mobile gaming, while the Natural profile proved more accurate when measured against sRGB. Here, I measured an sRGB gamut coverage of 94.8% and a volume of 98.4%, which is similar to the G62, though the average Delta E colour variance score was slightly higher, coming in at 1.64.

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Motorola Moto G73 5G review: Performance and battery life

The Octa-core 2.2GHz MediaTek Dimensity 930 chipset is paired here with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. This proves to be a fairly potent combination, outperforming the G53 and G62 but a big surprise is that it can also hold its own against the handful of pricier competitors.

It’s not top of the class – the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G ekes out a lead of around 7% in the multicore tests – but it keeps up nicely, scoring similarly to the OnePlus devices across the board and pulling 6% ahead of the Honor Magic 5 Lite in the multicore results. In general use, the G73 is pleasingly efficient for a sub-£300 phone – you do get the odd micro-pause when opening apps, but otherwise transitions are breezy enough.

The G73 also put in a solid showing with gaming content, pulling slightly ahead of the competition to hit 56fps in the on-screen GfXBench test. While this doesn’t make full use of the phone’s 120Hz max refresh rate, it’s still a decent result, and should easily see you through lighter games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds without issue. More demanding titles, such as Genshin Impact, suffer occasional frame rate dips, but it’s not bad enough to make the games unplayable.

The battery used here is once again a 5,000mAh unit, but the superior hardware must be more of a power drain, as the G73 doesn’t quite manage to hit the same stamina as the G62. In our standard video rundown test, the G73 lasted for 20hrs 15mins, which is roughly 46 minutes behind the G62, but is still a respectable result.

While the battery itself doesn’t pull ahead of the Moto G62, the fast charging here is doubled, with the provided plug supporting 30W charging, up from 15W. In testing, this was able to bring the battery from empty to 50% in 30 minutes, and on to full in under 90 minutes.

Motorola Moto G73 5G review: Cameras

Despite costing more than the Moto G62, the G73 has a slightly pared-down camera array, now featuring just two rear lenses, as opposed to three. Given that the G62’s macro lens felt superfluous to begin with, however, this isn’t all that bad, especially if the extra attention has been directed into the 50MP main lens.

While the pixel count and aperture size (f/1.8) are dead ringers of the G62’s main camera, if we look a little closer, we do see a fairly major boost to pixel size. The G62’s pixels measured 0.64µm, but here that’s been bumped up to a full 1.0µm – an increase of over 56%. What this means in practical terms is that each sensor should be able to absorb more light, with cleaner, more detailed images, especially in low-light conditions.

The way that this translates into the camera’s night mode is a little hit and miss, however. The artificial brightening does a good job of cranking up the exposure without completely washing away the shadows, but it comes with an unacceptable level of noise in the sky.

Things get miles better in brighter conditions, at least. The below image is bright and well-balanced, with plenty of detail showing brickwork most of the way down the street. Colour reproduction is natural enough to keep the tree on the right feeling realistic, yet vibrant enough to make the more colourful doors on the left side really pop against their muted surroundings.

As the ultrawide lens is essentially lifted straight from the G62, it’s unsurprising that the results are around the same as we saw there. Lighting is retained fairly well compared to the main camera, but some of the detail is smoothed out and the colours are noticeably more muted.

Video also sees no improvements over the G62, once again shooting footage at 1080p in either 30fps or 60fps. The quality level is around the same, with effective enough dynamic exposure shifts when moving between lighter and darker areas and relatively shake-free panning – at least, as much as you can expect from a phone without optical stabilisation.

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Motorola Moto G73 5G review: Verdict

If the Moto G73’s cameras were a little more effective, this would be a much simpler verdict. It doesn’t lose anything by dropping the 2MP macro camera from its setup, but what’s left doesn’t feel like it gets any better as a result, making it a fairly weak trade-off. Add to this the identical display and battery life, and there’s a little too much of the G62 in this recipe for my tastes, even if performance and fast charging are superior.

If you want a cheap Motorola, the Moto G62 is still better value than this, currently priced at £200, but often available for even less. If your budget can stretch a little further, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G is down to £275 at time of writing, and offers better performance and a gorgeous OLED screen, albeit at the expense of battery life. If stamina is more important, you can take a slight hit on the performance side and get the epic battery life of the Honor Magic 5 Lite, which is currently going for just £250.