Moto G200 review: a lot for little

Motorola is known for the fact that the manufacturer delivers excellent devices for a good price. On paper, the Moto G200 is also a device for not too much money, but still with excellent specifications. In this test you can read how the device performs in practice.

Moto G200 review

Motorola released budget devices in the G series in the past. Devices with an excellent price-quality ratio. With the Moto G200, the manufacturer brings a device on the market that can compete with devices that are twice as expensive in terms of specifications.

Sales package

The Moto G200 comes in a rectangular box like most devices. The contents of the box are nice and complete: in addition to the device, we also find a fast charger with cable, some booklets and a cover. The pin to open the sim tray was hidden between the booklets.

Design and interface

When you see the Moto G200 for the first time, you immediately see that it is a Motorola device. Although the device is fairly heavy with its 202 grams, it fits well in the hand. The LCD screen is 6.78 inches in size and has a Full HD+ resolution and a refresh rate of 144Hz.

Also with the Moto G200, Motorola has again chosen to add a button for the Google Assistant on the left side. Since it is placed quite high, you will not easily start the assistant by accident.

On the right is room for the volume buttons and the on and off button. The fingerprint scanner is also incorporated in this button. The bottom offers space for the speaker, the USB-C port and the SIM tray. Motorola has omitted the 3.5 millimeters on the device, as well as space for an SD card.

The back is made of plastic and has a matte finish. As a result, the device does not feel slippery and will not quickly slip out of your hands. The camera module is located on the top left side of the back. The manufacturer has placed three lenses in this module, which we will return to later in this review.

Interface

The skin that Motorola provides on its devices is called “My UX” by the manufacturer. This skin doesn’t look very different from standard Android, but some useful functions have been added. You can adjust the start screen to your own taste and you have a number of handy gestures at your disposal, for example to start the camera or the flashlight. We think it’s a shame that the device still runs on Android 11, although Android 12 will be made available for the G200.

Communication: calling, chatting and networking

Of course, the Moto G200 is perfectly suited for calling, texting and surfing the internet. The apps to do this are Google’s default apps. Thanks to the support of 5G and WiFi, the internet is nice and fast. Of course, the device is also equipped with GPS, Bluetooth and NFC.

Multimedia: music and film

Motorola has also done its best to score well in this area. And then we are especially talking about watching movies. The 6.78-inch screen is of excellent quality and is also easy to read on sunny days. We noticed that the automatic brightness is set a bit on the bright side. The image is sharp and colorful, nice to look at.

The Moto G200 is also great for listening to music, although it is not possible to use a wired headset. A 3.5 millimeters is missing, and we think that is a minus. Another downside is that the device is not equipped with stereo speakers. Although the sound from the speaker that is placed at the bottom of the device is fine. Of course it is possible to connect a wireless headset via Bluetooth.

Camera: photo and video

Motorola has equipped the Moto G200 with three lenses on the back of the device and one on the front; the selfie camera. The three lenses on the back are successively the main lens with 108 megapixels, a wide-angle lens of 8 megapixels and a depth lens of 2 megapixels.

The camera app is also nice and clear. All options are within reach and you can easily switch between photo and video. Switching between the main camera and the wide-angle lens is also easy. By clicking on the arrow next to the shutter button, you open a number of quick settings. A menu button is placed next to the option to switch between photo and video. When you open this menu, you have quite a few options, such as taking a panorama, taking a portrait photo and switching to night vision.

The quality of the photos is quite nice. The camera is not a high flyer, but certainly not bad either. It is striking that when zooming in, the photos look okay. You do see a loss of quality, but compared to other devices, the loss of quality is not particularly great. On the other hand, we see quite a lot of loss of quality with photos taken in the dark. These photos show quite a bit of noise and are moved quickly. For example, when there is some street lighting, this is immediately reflected in the quality of the photos. The quality of macro photos is reasonable.

The photos we took with the Moto G200 can be found in the online photo album.

Selfie and video camera

As previously reported, the selfie camera has an 8 megapixel lens. Photos taken with the selfie camera are generally fine, in the dark, however, the quality deteriorates a bit.

The video camera is easy to operate, although it took a while to find where you can change the resolution. To access these settings, simply swipe from the shutter button to the center of the screen. The quality of the videos is actually the same as the quality of the photos, which is reasonable. We think it’s a plus that you can switch between the lenses while filming.

Other options

Like many other smartphones, the Moto G200 also has a number of functions that we have not yet discussed. You guessed it, in this section we briefly discuss these options.

fingerprint scanner

Motorola has incorporated the fingerprint scanner into the power button again. This is located on the right side of the device. We have no complaints about the speed, a light touch is enough to unlock the device. Of course you have the option to add multiple fingerprints.

Motorola Actions

The Moto G200 has also been equipped with the handy Moto app. This app is full of useful options. For example, you can give the device a different look, but also switch on the interactive display or set some handy gestures to quickly turn on the flashlight or quickly open the camera app.

Performance: battery, speed and memory

The Moto G200 has been given the Snapdragon 888+. This is a high-end processor and it shows. Supported by 8GB of RAM, apps open very quickly and multitasking or playing a graphics-heavy game is no problem at all. You have to make do with 128GB of storage, this will be more than enough for most people.

Battery

With the 5000 mAh large battery you can easily get through the day. With intensive, we still had a third of the capacity left during the test period. The screen-on-time is also perfectly fine, we recorded an average of between 4 and 6 hours. At less intensive use, the battery will even last two days. You can charge with the 33W supplied charger.

Update Policy

Motorola doesn’t exactly have a good reputation when it comes to updates. The manufacturer continues this tradition with the Moto G200. The device will receive security updates for two years and only one Android OS update. That is Android 12. You do not pay the main price for the G200, but we think this is a big downside.

Rating

We have recently been able to test the Moto G200 from Motorola. We liked this. The device is lightning fast, performs tasks quickly and without stuttering. The battery is also fine, with intensive use you can easily get to the end of the day. The camera may not be an outlier, but the photos are still of reasonable quality. And all that for less than 400 euros. All in all, very neat, we would have liked to see the device receive updates a little longer.

The Moto G200 from Motorola is for sale at Belsimpel and Mobiel.