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Gamers should not use the Motorola Moto G 5G - Anomalies with the Snapdragon 765

The Moto G 5G Plus combines a huge 5,000 mAh battery with a Snapdragon 765 at an RRP of just under 350 Euros.
The Moto G 5G Plus combines a huge 5,000 mAh battery with a Snapdragon 765 at an RRP of just under 350 Euros.
The Moto G 5G Plus proves to be a solid mid-range phone in our test. The Snapdragon 765's gaming performance suffers in the Motorola smartphone.

The Motorola Moto G 5G Plus showed a mixture of strengths and weaknesses in our review. The gaming performance is definitely not one of its strengths. Besides the fact that not all games from the PlayStore support the 21:9 format of Moto phones - which includes games like PUBG mobile -  our gaming tests also showed that the everyday performance while gaming was not ideal either.

In other Snapdragon 765 smartphones like the Xiaomi Mi 10 Lit and OnePlus Nord, the Adreno 620 offers enough graphics performance to play demanding games relatively smoothly even on high graphical settings - but this is not the case with the Moto G 5G Plus. The CPU-intensive racing game Asphalt 9 Legends currently does not exceed 30FPS. Despite running on low graphical settings, our measurements show visible drops in the frame rate down to 18FPS, which other Snapdragon 765 devices have not done.

051015202530Tooltip
Motorola Moto G 5G Plus Adreno 620, SD 765, 64 GB UFS 2.1 Flash: Ø28.8 (18-31)
Xiaomi Mi 10 Lite 5G Adreno 620, SD 765G, 128 GB UFS 2.1 Flash: Ø30 (28-31)
Motorola Edge Adreno 620, SD 765, 128 GB UFS 2.1 Flash; 2.2.2a: Ø29.7 (23-31)
OnePlus Nord Adreno 620, SD 765G, 256 GB UFS 2.1 Flash; 2.3.4a: Ø29.7 (24-31)
PUBG mobile does not support the 21:9 display format
PUBG mobile does not support the 21:9 display format

The racing game is nowhere near enjoyable to play on the Moto G 5G Plus on high graphical settings. The FPS drops down to 5 at times and averages at only 21, but the competition sits at a comfortable 30FPS consistently.

The case of the Motorola cell phone heats up quite a bit under sustained load - we measured over 44°C. However, this does not lead to a heat-related throttling of output. The Moto G 5G Plus shows consistent performance in the battery test of the GFXBench app. In the demanding Manhattan test (OpenGL ES 3.1), the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765 barely throttles even under continuous load. Thus, in everyday use, like playing games, performance drops due to excessively high temperatures are very unlikely.

051015202530Tooltip
Motorola Moto G 5G Plus Adreno 620, SD 765, 64 GB UFS 2.1 Flash: Ø21.3 (5-31)
Xiaomi Mi 10 Lite 5G Adreno 620, SD 765G, 128 GB UFS 2.1 Flash: Ø29.7 (14-32)
Motorola Edge Adreno 620, SD 765, 128 GB UFS 2.1 Flash; 2.2.2a: Ø29.7 (25-31)
OnePlus Nord Adreno 620, SD 765G, 256 GB UFS 2.1 Flash; 2.3.4a: Ø29.8 (25-30)

If you are interested in the Moto smartphone and would like to get a detailed impression of the affordable mid-range phone, we recommend our detailed review of the Motorola Moto G 5G Plus.

Update: The Moto G 5G uses the "normal" Snapdragon 765, not the 765G as was reported in a previous version of this article. 

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > Reviews > Gamers should not use the Motorola Moto G 5G - Anomalies with the Snapdragon 765
Marcus Herbrich, 2020-08-16 (Update: 2020-08-22)