Let’s be honest, a smartphone doesn’t need to be as powerful as Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra or as incredibly good-looking and versatile as the OnePlus Open to prove useful or attractive enough as a Christmas gift for a special someone or even yourself.
There are loads of solid budget 5G phones available today that will undoubtedly be appreciated by the right person if you wrap them up nicely and slip them under their trees come December 25, but very few seem to offer the same level of quality and value as the Moto G 5G (2023) at a similarly reasonable price.
Released around six months ago at $249.99, the 6.5-inch mid-ranger was naturally discounted ahead of Black Friday by a cool 80 bucks. Extremely hard to beat in the bang-for-buck department once it broke the $200 psychological barrier, the handset is now even cheaper than last week, fetching a new all-time low of $161.99 on its manufacturer’s official US website only.
You can choose between Ink Blue and Harbor Gray color options at the exact same $88 discount right now, and at least in theory, you have until the end of the week to take advantage of this (extended) Cyber Monday deal, as is currently the case with the higher-end ThinkPhone.
By no means a screamer, the latest non-pen-wielding addition to the Moto G family does pack a decidedly respectable Snapdragon 480+ processor, a decent 4GB RAM count, and perhaps most impressively, the same hefty 5,000mAh battery as the costlier Moto G Power 5G (2023).
That should prove especially impressive in terms of real-life endurance between charges with the help of the phone’s frugal 1600 x 720 pix res screen, which also happens to shine on the refresh rate front with 120Hz technology.
All in all, this thing certainly offers a lot more than you’d normally expect at (well) under two Benjamins, undercutting the OnePlus Nord N30 5G and Samsung Galaxy A23 5G, for instance, by around $80 and more than $100 respectively.
