Motorola Moto G Play 2026 Review: This is what a budget phone should be

Once upon a time, Motorola was sort of the undisputed king of the cell phone industry. Its devices were highly sought after, and you couldn’t toss a pebble in any direction without seeing that iconic M logo on someone’s device. Things changed once Android smartphones became more common, and slowly but surely, Motorola lost a bunch of market share in the North American market, where it was once a behemoth.

But before it started to fade into the background a little, Motorola’s enterprising release of the Moto G line cemented it in a position as one of the better budget devices you could get your hands on. Fast forward to the end of 2025, and we now have the Motorola Moto G Play 2026, one of the brand’s budget-minded devices of the modern era. A phone that is part of Motorola’s bounce back to a rock-solid position with US consumers. I like to think of Motorola’s most recent phones as a representation of a great comeback story.

A once giant turned underdog that has clawed its way back toward the top. That leads us to this Motorola Moto G Play 2026 review. We’ve spent the last couple of weeks with it to see how it stacks up with other budget devices. Namely, the standard Moto G 2026, and other similar devices like the Galaxy A36 5G. Even though the latter is a bit more expensive, it’s close enough in price and performance to compare the two. But is the Moto G Play 2026 worth the money? Should you go with the regular Moto G 2026 instead, or something else entirely? Let’s dive into this review and find out.

Motorola Moto G Play 2026 Specs

Motorola Moto G Play 2026 Review: Design and Build Quality

Motorola knows how to design a phone. Period. I could leave it at that, and it would get the point across pretty nicely; however, the level of design Motorola has been putting out lately warrants further explanation on what makes the style of its most recent phones so good compared to the competition. In the case of the Moto G Play 2026, as well as other devices in its lineup, the use of Vegan Leather for the back material of the phone looks so good that it’s hard not to sit and just stare at the back of the phone sometimes. There aren’t many other smartphone companies taking risks like Motorola with the design. Many of the brands are playing it safe. That’s fine, of course, because there are a lot of other good-looking phones out there. That being said, the Moto G Play 2026 and Motorola’s other current phones have a tendency to stand out. They’re eye-catching.

This eye-catching design is enhanced by Motorola’s continued partnership with Pantone. The results are a series of striking colors you won’t find anywhere else. The Moto G Play 2026 comes in a color called Pantone Tapestry, and it has an almost turquoise color. It’s a bit blueish green, though I personally think it leans a little more toward the blue side. Either way, it looks really good. And I hope Motorola continues to use Pantone for colors on future phones. As I feel that partnership has become part of its unique identity these days, and it’s what I feel makes Motorola’s phones a little more special.

As for the rest of the design, the Moto G Play 2026 is well-crafted. The frame matches the color of the back quite well, and the phone’s flat sides make it easy and comfortable to hold in the hand. You’ll find both the power button and the volume buttons on the right side, while there’s a SIM card slot on the left. On the bottom, you have the USB-C charging port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and the bottom-firing speaker. It’s a budget device that’s built solidly, and paired with its beautiful style, you might not know that this phone only costs $179.99. I think that’s fantastic, and a clear benefit for Motorola.

Motorola really nails the fingerprint sensor

The fingerprint sensor is an easy thing to overlook because, at the end of the day, you can unlock your phone with a pattern or pin as well. That being said, the fingerprint sensor is faster. Or, it’s supposed to be. When I started reviewing the Galaxy A36 5G just before this phone, one of the main complaints I had about it was that the fingerprint sensor was so painfully slow. I was dreading how slow it might be on the Moto G Play 2026, a phone that, on average, costs more than $100 less than the Galaxy A36 5G. To my surprise, the fingerprint sensor on the Moto G Play 2026 is actually quite fast. Compared to the Samsung phone, I might even go so far as to say it’s lightning-fast.

I can pick up the phone, place my thumb over the power button where the fingerprint sensor is located, and almost instantaneously, the screen unlocks. There’s no waiting for some weird sort of loading ring or really any waiting. It just works, and it works fast. I’m not saying it’s the fastest, but it’s plenty fast. And for a phone this inexpensive, I expected it to be terrible. This just goes to show that Motorola knows what’s important.

Motorola Moto G Play 2026 Review: Display

Budget phones aren’t known for their displays, and that rings true with the Motorola Moto G Play 2026. At a retail price of $179.99, you can most certainly look at the display of this phone and make an educated guess that it didn’t cost a whole lot of money to buy. I’m not saying the display is bad, just noticeably lower quality than what you’ll find on a phone you spend at least a few hundred dollars more for. For example, there are some pretty thick bezels here with the Moto G Play 2026, just like the standard Moto G 2026.

It’s also noticeably lower resolution, although, for me, the lower resolution doesn’t bother as much as it might some people. At the end of the day, this is a phone, and I really just need it to be high enough resolution for things like general browsing and the occasional video. The display on the Moto G Play 2026 serves both of those purposes for me. However, I do prefer a higher resolution display if I have the option. With a brightness of 1,000 nits, the display on the Moto G Play 2026 doesn’t get nearly as bright as other displays, but I think this is going to be fine for most situations.

The issue you might come across is if you’re using this phone in an incredibly bright environment, like outside during the peak of Summer directly under the glare of the sun. However, it’s easy to avoid this by finding a bit of shade. Since it’s winter here, I never really had this issue outside. I also never experienced problems with the brightness inside, so overall, I think it’s fine. What I like most about this display is the refresh rate. At 120Hz, it’s not slow. This made browsing and scrolling more enjoyable because, visually, things appeared smooth. While this display isn’t the most gorgeous phone display on the planet, I wouldn’t classify it as terrible. I think it’s more than suitable, and I don’t think anyone who spends $180 on a phone is going to care too much.

Motorola Moto G Play 2026 Review: Performance

Chances are, if you’re spending under $200 for a smartphone, you’re not looking for a phone that will outperform a bunch of other devices. That’s a good thing if this is the phone you end up choosing, because it’s definitely not a high-performance device. It won’t allow you to max out graphics in games, and you’ll see the occasional stuttering or lag when doing too many things at once. That’s not the end of the world, though. You simply have to manage your expectations with this device. Once you realize what the phone can do in terms of multitasking, performance is smooth sailing. For example, if you’re updating a bunch of apps, set the phone down and let it update the apps. With only 4GB of RAM, there is only so much this phone will do at one time.

In my experience, the phone was smooth when I was doing just about everything, as long as I wasn’t doing too many things in the background. Such as updating a few apps, while also trying to load webpages with a bunch of stuff. When I kept my usage to one or two less resource-intensive tasks, I didn’t really have much of an issue with lag or anything like that. That is key to making this phone feel smooth. It’s also important to note, I feel, that the Moto G Play 2026 will perform just fine for games, but you will have to manage expectations here too, and make sure that graphics settings are adjusted to a reasonable level. The best part of the performance on this phone, at least in my opinion, is the fingerprint sensor. It’s incredibly fast and almost immediately after I place my thumb on the power button (this is where the fingerprint sensor is located), the phone unlocks. It’s almost as fast as it is on the Pixel 10 Pro, which is pretty darn quick for me.

Benchmarks

Just like any other phone, we pair our real-world performance experiences with benchmark tests to see how this phone performs on paper. For that, we put the phone through a few different tests. Geekbench 6 tests the single-core and multi-core scores of the CPU, and tests the GPU. We also run it through AnTuTu, and finally, the 3D Wildlife Extreme Stress Test in 3DMark to test the performance under heavy loads for longer periods of time.

The Moto G Play 2026 didn’t break any records in any of these tests, but again, you shouldn’t expect it to for the price. Still, you can see the scores above in our table for Geekbench 6. As for the AnTuTu and 3D Wildlife Extreme Stress tests, the scores are as follows: The Moto G Play 2026 received a score of 548,738 in AnTuTu, and its 3DMark scores were 384 for the best loop, 382 for the lowest loop, and a stability of 99.5%.

Motorola Moto G Play 2026 Review: Battery Life and Charging

Battery life and charging are, in my opinion, the strongest and weakest parts of this phone, respectively. Battery life is exceptional, lasting nearly as long as the longest-lasting phone we’ve tested. The charging speed, however, was not great. If you’re charging overnight, every night, though, this really isn’t going to matter. Not to mention the battery life is going to ensure the phone lasts well into the evening, so you should have absolutely zero issues with battery life on this device. To put it another way, getting home with lots of battery life left at the end of the day shouldn’t be a problem. At which point, you can plug the phone in, and you’re good to go for the next day.

For me, I was getting at least 6 hours of screen-on time with the device, which is a lot, and I had about 50% or nearly 50% battery life left when I was done using the phone at the end of the day. A lot of people are going to struggle to drain the battery here because it lasts a long time. Even if it isn’t the largest battery a phone has, it’s a sizeable battery. When you take that and pair it with a 720p display that only has 1,000 nits for peak brightness, you aren’t going to be able to drain the battery as quickly with general, everyday use. You might be able to kill it faster by gaming, though even my experiences with gaming on this device didn’t seem to drain it too heavily. Likely because of the lower-powered chipset.

Benchmarks

In addition to using the phone normally, we also test our devices during reviews to see how long the battery will last. For this test, we make sure the device is fully charged to 100%, and then we pull up a 24-hour YouTube video and play it to let the battery drain down to 1%. When doing this, the Motorola Moto G Play 2026 was able to last for around 23 hours and 54 minutes before hitting 1%. So almost at the full 24 hours. This is actually really good. If you watch a lot of videos on your phone, then you’ll be able to stream video for quite a while throughout the day. Since most people are probably doing more than just streaming video, expect there to be some variance in battery drain based on your usage.

Where this phone really struggled was with the charging speeds. The Moto G Play 2026 only charges at 18W maximum. This felt quite slow compared to the speeds we’re used to seeing. It also resulted in the Moto G Play 2026 taking over two hours to charge up to 100% from 1%. Specifically, two hours and seven minutes. As I said before, this isn’t a huge issue for anyone who will still have some battery life by the end of the day and plugs their phone in every night. For those who are power users, you may want to keep a battery pack on hand to drip-feed your phone some power when necessary. The slow charge times aren’t great, but the battery life should be good enough to look past that.

Motorola Moto G Play 2026 Review: Software

When it comes to software, Android is kind of like a playground. Everything runs on Android, but each manufacturer tends to layer their own UI on top of it, so it doesn’t really feel like the same Android you’d get on a Pixel device. That’s the case with most manufacturers, anyway. Motorola is one of those brands where the UI layer isn’t much different from stock Android. So, you get a pretty stock experience, with a few minor details that are slightly different. This includes the phone coming with a few apps pre-installed that you wouldn’t find on a Pixel device, like Perplexity AI, a few games, and some other random apps. Luckily, you can uncheck the boxes to have these installed during the setup, so what you end up with is all of the normal Google apps, and then the Motorola apps.

The Moto G Play 2026 is also running on Android 16, so you get an up-to-date experience with the OS as well. This really made using the Moto G Play 2026 feel as native to me as possible when comparing it to my Pixel 10 Pro user experience from the software side of things. That being said, the phone wasn’t as snappy, and you can certainly notice that in the software when doing simple things likescrolling through menus. Though I think this has more to do with the performance than anything. Overall, Motorola’s software implementation is one of the better ones if you like a more stock Android experience. It keeps just about everything the same in terms of functionality while adding a few extras.

Motorola Moto G Play 2026 Review: Camera

Cameras on smartphones have gotten a lot better these days, and this is true for budget phones just as much as it is for those in the higher price range. The Moto G Play 2026 definitely has a better camera than you would expect from a budget device, but it’s also not as good as you might hope for being a 50MP main camera. As long as you keep in mind that this phone only costs $180, I think you’ll be pleased with the camera results.

If you take a lot of phone pictures and you want them to be as high quality as possible, then you might not like the quality here. However, the camera shots are decent, and that is especially obvious when there’s enough light. The camera does struggle more in low-light situations, though. So you really do want to make sure there’s enough light for images, you might notice them coming out with less clarity. You also don’t get as many different camera features with this phone compared to a device that costs a lot more, but there are quite a few different modes like slo-mo, portrait, time-lapse, and a handful of others. So you can do some fun things with the camera if you really want to. You can check out some of the camera samples below.

While this is far from being the best camera on a smartphone, it does a surprisingly good job for having a price point that sits under $200. In other words, if you don’t care as much about having the best possible quality photos from your phone’s camera, don’t let the camera on this phone keep you from considering it, as it is really affordable.

Should you buy the Motorola Moto G Play 2026?

The Motorola Moto G Play 2026 is just about everything the Moto G 2026 is, but at a slightly lower price point, at the cost of a few extra features. In other words, the Moto G Play 2026 is exactly what you want out of a budget phone. It offers decent everyday performance to the average user, it has a decent camera, a long-lasting battery, and it comes with a pretty big screen. And of course, it’s stylish, like, really stylish. It doesn’t look or feel cheap, and that can be a pretty important thing in a budget phone.

Motorola understands that just because the phone doesn’t cost a whole lot of money, that doesn’t mean it has to suck. This phone does a great job of showing the consumer this. It does make compromises, but they aren’t the kind of compromises that matter all that much if you’re already shopping for a phone at this price point. Because everything it doesn’t compromise on works pretty well.

You should buy the Motorola Moto G Play 2026 if:

• You’re looking for an extremely affordable phone
• You need really good battery life without spending too much
• You aren’t a heavy user of your phone

You shouldn’t buy the Motorola Moto G Play 2026 if:

• You’re after the highest quality pictures
• You want something that offers really high-performance
• You want all the best features that phones offer these days

The post Motorola Moto G Play 2026 Review: This is what a budget phone should be appeared first on Android Headlines.

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