Motorola Moto G04 smartphone review – A well-equipped phone for very little money

In addition to classic black, Motorola also offers its affordable Moto G04 in blue, green and orange—it has certainly chosen a strong color palette. The back is made of plastic which is slightly glittery and has a matt finish. As a result, it isn't as much of a fingerprint magnet. The smartphone is very sturdily built; pressure and twisting don't bother it whatsoever and we couldn't elicit any creaking noises from it.

The phone's material transitions are also very clean and the slightly thicker camera module looks very elegant as it is fitted with a slight curve into the transition to the back. Relatively slim bezels around the screen give the front a very modern look.

64 GB mass storage and 4 GB RAM proved to be a little tight on our test model; models with 128 GB storage and 8 GB RAM are also available internationally. There is a headphone jack on the top edge of the phone and a USB-C port at the bottom. The latter is only connected internally via USB 2.0 speeds, which hardly speeds up data transfers. It is nice to see that Motorola has installed NFC for wireless payment services and tag reading.

Aside from 2 SIM slots, it also features a dedicated microSD card slot which you can use to expand the phone's storage. We tested it using our reference microSD card—an Angelbird V60— and noted pretty decent speeds. During the CPDT benchmark, however, we noted the occasional fall in transfer rates.

Although the Motorola Moto G04 supports WiFi 5 according to the manufacturer, the smartphone wasn't able to reach the typical speeds—even after several repetitions during our test. Instead, only slow WiFi 4 speeds were possible which limited its transfer rates to around 50 Mbps. Even with just one antenna, we would expect to see better results. Perhaps Motorola can help with a software update.

This device is a 4G phone and all the necessary frequencies for use in Central Europe (where this test was carried out) are supported. However, if you are planning to go on trips further afield, you should check in advance whether the phone can connect to the web in your destination country. When taking some samples during our test period, the phone had to contend with moderate reception at times.

The phone comes with Android 14 installed and barely anything has been changed about Google's operating system by Motorola. Several games come preinstalled on the phone. The Moto G04 is Widevine-certified, meaning you can stream from most major streaming platforms in HD. The manufacturer promises software updates every 2 months until January 2026. This isn't all too long but within this price range, an update promise itself is a rarity.

Despite its low price, the Moto G04 has a 90-Hz touchscreen that can be operated smoothly. The touchscreen remains very responsive right into the corners and along the edges. The physical volume and standby buttons are located on the right-hand side of the case. You can feel for them easily and they have a clear pressure point.

A fingerprint sensor is also integrated into the standby button, which unlocks the phone quickly and reliably once fingerprints have been memorized. In addition, it features a facial recognition function which also works reliably and the light coming from the phone's screen is usually sufficient for recognition even in the dark.

Motorola has opted for a rather slow SoC, even within the very affordable price range, namely the Unisoc T606. Since the phone's screen has a low resolution, its graphics performance during our on-screen tests was still usable, but its performance during the browser benchmarks dropped sharply. In everyday use, this means that you will often have to live with stutters and longer waiting times.

On the other hand, Motorola hasn't been lazy when it comes to the phone's storage, installing UFS 2.2 flash which is fast and is also used in more expensive phones.

We measured a maximum temperature rise of 40.8°C on the device's case under prolonged load. This is not critical, but noticeable. The 3DMark stress test showed us that the SoC's performance remained roughly the same even after repeating a benchmark several times, in other words, the SoC is not throttled.

The speaker on the bottom edge has to make do on its own, so it can only offer mono sound. It is loud enough to fill a medium-sized room but our diagram already confirmed that it offers no bass and only a few lower mids. We were able to confirm this result after our listening test: voices and vocals are clearly understandable, but music sounds flat and very treble-heavy.

You'll usually get a better sound if you connect external speakers or headphones. This can be done via the 3.5-mm jack on the top edge of the case or via Bluetooth. There are several wireless audio codecs to choose from: In addition to standards such as AAC, SBC, aptX, aptX HD and LDAC, the phone also supports more exotic variants such as LC3 and Opus.

The Motorola Moto G04 gets average performance for its price class from its 5,000 mAh battery: In our WLAN test, the device achieved 15:07 hours, which suggests that you will be able to survive a day of moderate use without needing to charge the phone.

A charger is included with the phone but it can only provide a maximum of 10 watts, while the phone explicitly supports up to 15 watts of charging power. This is annoying in many respects: the charging process takes around an hour longer with the included charger. In addition, customers who want to take advantage of the full power may have to buy another charger, which produces additional electronic waste.

At the time of writing, the Motorola Moto G04 retails for around US$130 but cannot yet be purchased in the United States.