Motorola Moto G85 smartphone review – The mid-range phone with an almost borderless 120-Hz display

Please note: We have updated our rating system and the results of version 8 are not comparable with the results of version 7. More information is available here.

Motorola has clearly made an effort to offer something new with its Motorola Moto G85 5G. The screen glass is now stretched over the corners—a feature that was previously reserved for the higher-end phones in Motorola's Edge series. This makes the bezels around its screen appear even thinner.

To make the screen less sensitive to being damaged, the manufacturer has installed Gorilla Glass 5, which offers moderate protection against scratches and damage.

Motorola uses different materials on the back of the phone depending on which color you choose: Our test device features the colorway Urban Gray and has a matte plastic back, which still looks pretty high-quality. If you choose the more lively colors Cobalt Blue or Olive Green, you'll get a back made of artificial leather.

In fact, there is even a slight difference in weight between the two back materials: While our model only weighs 171 grams, you'll have to factor in 173 grams for the variants with a faux leather back. Even so, the Moto G85 5G is a very lightweight smartphone for its screen size.

Its build quality is great and the phone cannot be bent or dented with bare hands. The camera module is lined with glossy plastic, but it fits very well into the back despite the difference in material—this is thanks to a slight curve in the transition.

The phone isn't protected against water or dust.

If you want to insert a microSD card, there is a separate slot for this. Although the reader proved to be somewhat slower than the predecessor model during our copying test, it still offers solid transfer rates compared to other smartphones in its price range.

We couldn't find an analysis of the Motorola Moto G85 5G's CO₂ consumption over its life cycle.

In terms of packaging, Motorola has gone for the thinnest possible box, which was also made possible by its lack of a power supply unit. The box is only printed in one color with soy ink and the phone is packaged completely plastic-free.

Performing self-repairs is still quite difficult, but at least Motorola has now entered into a cooperation with iFixit, which already provides spare parts and instructions for many older devices.

The Moto G85 5G has to make do with Wi-Fi 5 as its fastest Wi-Fi standard. Although this isn't unusual in this price range, the Nothing Phone (2a) proves that you can also get faster Wi-Fi.

Thanks to transfer rates between 316 and 373 MBit/s (which were also very stable during our test), the phone makes fast data transfers possible, but it can't totally make use of a gigabit internet connection.

The Moto G85 may be a 5G phone, but it is by no means a world phone. Before traveling further afield, you should look up whether the smartphone can also be used for connecting to the web in your destination country, as some 5G and 4G frequencies are not supported.

The phone's cellular reception quality isn't quite as good as that of high-end phones, but it is definitely sufficient for everyday use—as various spot checks during our test period showed.

The Motorola Moto G85 5G uses Google's standard phone app which is supplied with Android. However, other phone apps can also be installed and are run without any problems.

We checked the phone's call quality with several test calls. Our call partners sounded easy to understand via the earpiece, but they were sometimes a little muffled. The microphone recorded our voice clearly.

Calls sound quite loud via the loudspeaker, but not overmodulated. Here too, the other party had a tendency to sound a little muffled, but they were nevertheless easy to hear. They could hear us clearly via the hands-free microphone, too, but background noise wasn't filtered out as well.

We additionally tested the Moto G85's main camera in laboratory conditions by taking pictures of a test chart and a color chart in very good lighting and with only 1 lux illumination.

Sharpness problems already became evident in very bright light, and hardly anything was recognizable in the photos taken in very low light.

Apart from a USB cable and a SIM tool, the phone also comes with a silicone bumper. Motorola doesn't offer any special accessories via its website. A charger costs an additional approx. US$20. 

The Motorola phone is covered by a standard 12-month warranty as long as it was purchased within the United States.

Its GPU is the same graphics solution as its predecessor had, namely the Adreno 619.—but its clock rate has been increased slightly, as the Moto G85 managed a few more frames in our benchmarks.

Overall, high resolutions and very complex graphics in the display's native resolution are not necessarily the main strength of this graphics card, but it still performed well with reduced details and in older benchmarks.

The Motorola phone performs well when surfing the web. This may also be due to the newer Chrome version, but the benchmark values it achieved are really good for a mid-range phone.

In practice, even complex websites load very quickly and images are sometimes already displayed while scrolling.

Although the device's UFS 2.2 storage is standard within this price range, some comparison devices show that you can sometimes get much faster components for this budget. One example is the Nothing Phone (2a) with significantly faster UFS 3.1 flash—at least when it comes to sequential reading and writing.

You'll often have to allow for slightly longer waiting times when copying data, and loading times for complex apps aren't always quite as short. All-in-all, however, the Moto G85's storage is definitely fast enough for everyday use.

We measured a maximum temperature of up to 45.9 °C on the phone's case after a period of prolonged load. This is already clearly noticeable when you have the device in your hands. Since we measured this at room temperature, you can expect the temperatures to rise even more on hot days.

Thankfully, the SoC didn't seem to mind these temperatures and could maintain its performance even after several benchmark runs.

The Moto G85 5G is fitted with stereo speakers, with the earpiece being used as a second speaker in addition to the speaker on the bottom edge. The device's sound isn't too bad for a mid-range phone and even features a hint of deeper mids.

Even so, the sound can become treble-heavy at high volumes. If you reduce the sound a little, then the speakers sound more pleasant. Sound enthusiasts will probably prefer to connect headphones or external speakers, which can be done via its USB-C port and an adapter or Bluetooth.

All important audio codecs for wireless sound transmission are supported, including more exotic codecs such as Opus, LDAC or LHDC V2 - V5.

The smartphone shows very similar consumption values to its predecessor, which isn't surprising given the similarity of the two SoCs. Only under very high load is a little more power required, but compared to other phones within the price range, its overall power consumption is low.

The Moto G85 can be charged at up to 30 watts. The smartphone worked with all the chargers we tested and could be recharged in a maximum of 2 hours. This phone doesn't support wireless charging.

You can surf the web via Wi-Fi using the Motorola Moto G85 for almost 15 hours before its battery runs out of juice. This is slightly less than its predecessor, but it's still a decent battery life for a smartphone in this price range. This should get you through two days of normal use.

If you like watching movies or series and make sure to download them in advance, you can watch them for 18:34 hours without needing to recharge the phone. That's enough for a rainy day watching your favorite series.

Still, the Nothing Phone (2a) gets even longer runtimes out of its battery, which has a capacity of 5,000 mAh—just like the Moto G85.

At the time of writing, the Moto G85 isn't yet available to purchase in the United States.

Please note: We have updated our rating system and the results of version 8 are not comparable with the results of version 7. More information is available here.