Does it offer better value than the Moto E7 Plus?

The Moto G10 Power is Motorola’s new big battery smartphone, priced at only Rs. 10,000. Smartphones at this price point are usually a bit underwater and not packed with features, but Motorola wants to change that perception.

In many ways, you might think of this as the next step up from the Moto E7 Plus (review). Although belonging to a different series, the G10 Power uses the same courage as the E7 Plus, but with additional features for exactly the same price.

The same configuration, with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, is priced at Rs. 9,999 in India. It’s time to find out if the Moto G10 Power has a better value than the Moto E7 Plus.

Moto G10 power design

Budget phone design is usually a low priority for manufacturers, but I think Motorola has done a decent job with the Moto G10 Power. It certainly looks much better than the Moto E7 Plus thanks to the 3D diagonal texture on the back, similar to the design of the Realme Narzo 30A (Review).

The body is built entirely of plastic but feels sturdy. The buttons are not too clickable and the Google Assistant button is just out of reach, which is something we can’t get used to during the week-long review period.

Motorola has kept the headset jack, which is nice. I’m also happy to see a USB Type-C port here. The Aurora Gray color unit I’m testing hides fingerprints well, so it’s not too difficult to maintain a new look. The fingerprint sensor does not miss a beat but the unlock process is a little slow. Face recognition is much slower, so I never used it.

I like the design of the Moto G10 Power rear camera module. It doesn’t stick out too much and you get a total of four sensors, not often seen at this price point. On the other hand, the HD + display has an unmistakably low-budget look, with smooth edges visible on icons and light colored stripes in some shades of pictures. Viewing angles aren’t the best either. Initially, I found the brightness to be inadequate, however this display is still very readable even in direct sunlight.

Moto G10 specifications and power software

The Moto G10 Power uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 460 SoC, which is fairly powerful but certainly not the best in this segment. The recent Narzo 30A has a Realme MediaTek Helio G85, which offers more power at a lower price.

However, Motorola compensates for this in a way by offering an official IP52 rating for water resistance and dual-band Wi-Fi. The Moto G10 Power supports many satellite navigation systems and has all the basic sensors, albeit without a compass.

Motorola has been offering a clean Android experience for years now, and this continues. The Moto G10 Power runs a near-stock version of Android 11 with only a few changes along the way. There is a “Adaptive Performance” toggle in the Settings app, which claims to help launch frequently used apps faster. The Moto app offers a number of useful shortcuts and gestures we’ve been used to seeing from Motorola.

Moto G10 performance and battery life

There’s no way to say it politely, but the thing is, Android 11 doesn’t feel very catchy on the Moto G10 Power. You have to be a bit patient when opening system menus or switching between apps because of the too-small SoC. Once you get used to it, it’s not that bad. Benchmark numbers are slightly weak as expected, with AnTuTu reporting only 1.47.290 points.

The lack of bloatware is always refreshing, and I didn’t come across any spam ads or notifications during my one week review period. Motorola has struck the best balance, in my opinion, between offering a stock Android experience and adding comforts as a game mode, which is something HMD Global should learn from.

The Power Moto G10 doesn’t warm up when used regularly, but the back warms up a bit during gameplay. Speaking of which, simple titles like Xenowerk work well, but heavier games like Call of Duty: Mobile will need to be played on lower graphics settings to get a decent enough gaming experience.

The single speaker goes high and the sound quality is decent. You can enable equal presets for the speaker as well. Watching videos is not a great experience because of the disappointing display, but this phone is useful.

One of the main reasons you would choose this phone over others is battery life, which is excellent. The 6,000mAh battery easily lasts two full days on a single charge, even with thorough use. If you are not a heavy user, you should be able to go beyond that. The reload speed is decent given the capacity. You can expect to charge around 54% in an hour, and a full charge will take almost two hours. The Moto G10 Power also ran for over 25 hours in our HD video loop test.

Moto G10 Power Cameras

The Moto G10 Power has a 48-megapixel main camera, an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 2-megapixel depth sensor and a 2-megapixel macro camera. There’s an 8-megapixel selfie camera. The camera app is packed with features and you even get night mode for the selfie camera, Pro mode with RAW capture, and interesting creative shooting modes like Spot Color for photos and videos. The camera app needs a bit of a learning curve as there are many menus to explore, which can be a little confusing at first.

The main camera is the one you’ll want to use most often because the others aren’t as good. Daylight shots were decent with good HDR, detail and color.

Closed-ups looked good too and thanks to the minimal shutter delay, you can get sharp shots of moving objects. The ultra-wide camera is a nice addition, which the Moto E7 Plus didn’t have. The image quality is slightly lower than the main camera, but can be used in good light.

The depth sensor seems to work well, as portraits look good, with desired pitch depth. The macro camera is poor even in good light.

In low light, the main camera captures much softer detail. Night mode helps accurate exposure but does little to improve detail. It is not possible to use night mode with the ultra-wide camera, so the image quality is very poor in the dark.

The front camera works well during the day for all shooting modes, but the quality in low light is very poor. Here, too, night mode doesn’t help much. The Moto G10 Power can shoot videos up to 1080p 60fps with its main camera. Stabilization of the main cameras and super-wide, provided you record at 30fps. Video quality is good in daylight, but there is a noticeable drop in quality in low light.

Verdict

The Moto G10 Power has a lot to offer in Usd143. It looks great and has excellent battery life, fast charging, and Android stocking. The main camera is efficient enough during the day, but the photo and video capabilities are pretty basic. Some aspects of this phone that could have been better are the display and camera performance in low light conditions.

Compared to the Moto E7 Plus, the Moto G10 Power offers better battery life and faster charging. However, if you are looking for better games or system performance at this price level, the Narzo 30A could be a good alternative or, for a bit more, you can get the Moto G30 (review).