It is a mid-sized 6.5” phone at 161.83 x 73.96 x 8.59mm x 184g. Screen – 6.5″ is just about right – Pass Motorola is continuing its push into the entry-level 5G market, particularly in Europe, with a number of G-series phones that aim to deliver great value at various price points. This time around, the subject of our review is the Moto G62 - a descendant of the Moto G60 and G60S and the second in rank in this year's G lineup. The Motorola Moto G82 runs Android 12 and uses the classic Moto interface. This makes fairly light changes to the Google blueprint, meaning you get to see the changes made to Android’s Material Design style in version 12. Dig into the camera app’s Settings menu and you can switch the 16MP selfie camera between 4MP and High Resolution modes. However, despite pixel binning, selfies become quite soft and vague in dim indoor light, and you don’t really see the benefit of the higher sensor resolution in good lighting. Like these specs suggest, the camera quality here is fairly middle of the road. The addition of an ultra-wide lens adds some flexibility, though a telephoto would have been nice to see rather than the narrow and niche utility of a macro lens.

You’ll only see software stabilization when shooting at a 30fps frame rate. There’s a 60fps mode, but this appears to be completely unstabilized, which is doubly disappointing when the phone has OIS. It doesn’t appear to be used at all in photo capture. In Fortnite, for example, the Moto G82 is limited to the Medium graphics preset, and the 60fps mode available to some phones simply isn’t present in the Settings menu. This is largely because it wouldn’t be able to reach anything like that frame rate anyway. After playing a couple of rounds with the allowed settings, the phone did handle the game OK; but there are obvious frame rate drops when you take to the skies in one of Fortnite’s aerial vehicles. This is, in part, because the Moto G82 has a sensor with a small surface area compared to its resolution. The Samsung JN1 is a 1/2.76-inch sensor, a little smaller than the 1/2.55-inch Sony IMX363 of the Pixel 6a (which also benefits from native resolution shooting), and dramatically smaller than the 1/1.56-inch Sony IMX766 of the OnePlus Nord 2T.The big battery and the less demanding Snapdragon 480+ bode well for the Motorola Moto G62's battery life, but we are taking nothing for granted and will do our usual set of tests to confirm its actual endurance. The Motorola Moto G82 5G has a 5,000mAh battery, the same capacity seen in a large and ever-increasing number of Moto-series phones. However, it’s good to see this capacity retained when this is a slightly slimmer handset than plenty of others in the Moto G family. The Moto G62 can make grassy nature scenes look a touch anemic, an effect more obvious in the main camera than the ultra-wide. And there’s too much sharpening and manipulation of contrast when you zoom into pics. However, if you didn’t have the Moto G82 to hand to make such comparisons, the Moto G62’s camera isn’t what you’d call a failure. All told, the under-the-hood hardware here proved to be a natural complement to Motorola's long-standing and very hands-off approach to Android itself. There's little in the way of bloatware, with the final experience of using the Moto G62 soars to a level of responsiveness that's rare among devices of this price point. While the processor here can't compete with the snappiness of a flagship one, a 120Hz refresh rate makes the difference between the two feel surprisingly fungible.

This takes the phone from flat to 50% charge in 27-28 minutes, and it reaches 100% after 80 minutes. The Moto G82 continues to draw a charge at a measly 4W for a while after, but when you’re running low on juice, the 2%-a-minute charge rate means just 10 minutes plugged in can see you right for a long night. Motorola doesn't have to make the nicest feeling smartphone ever, just something better than everything else this price-point can offer. Within that framing, the Moto G62 is a more-than-modest success story. Held in your hands, the device feels solid and tangible. It doesn't feel cheap, and it doesn't feel flimsy. It's a little on the heavy side, but that's a small price to pay for the tangible benefits that a larger screen and a 5000mAh battery earn you.Do not buy models PAU90020AE / PAU90006GB / PAU90002GB / PAUY0002IN, or those with a 6/.128GB capacity. Dark <40 lumens: The standard (not night mode) is quite good with excellent details/ although there is some noise.

The Moto G82 also has good, although not remotely class-leading, fast charging. It supports 30W fast charging, and a 30W charger is included in the box. The Moto G82’s 8MP ultra-wide camera suffers from the usual issues of secondary cameras in affordable phones. There’s significant loss of sharpness at the corners of the frame, and the lower dynamic range of the sensor is more likely to reveal the limits of the dynamic range processing, resulting in some blown out clouds in our test images. We also found the color temperature a little cool at the default setting. This is common, since a cooler tone can make a screen seem brighter and punchier. However, the Moto G82 looks better once it’s been tweaked slightly. The upgrade proves effective here, delivering multi-core scores that pull 5.6% ahead of the Moto G50 and outstripping the Nokia G50 by more than 10%. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11’s Snapdragon 680 processor is the closest challenger, coming in just 1% slower than the Moto G62 5G.By the way, the supplied USB-A to USB-C cable is for charging only – it won’t transmit data and will not handle 15W charging – buy a new charger and 3 to 5W cable. It ships with Android 12 and Motorola’s overlay My UX. You can reasonably expect Android 13 soon and two years of updates. The mid-range also sounds slightly less refined than that of the step-up Moto G82, although the tonal consistency between the bottom and above-screen drivers is good. Some stereo phone speakers have thin-sounding upper speakers: not the case here.