The best budget phones are affordable for a reason. Since they’re built with a certain price in mind, they often make compromises in order to stay below that threshold — which is why these phones don’t always have good battery life. But the Moto G Power (2024) will force you to rethink about what it means to be a cheap phone.
That’s because for a phone under $300, Motorola’s newest Android phone delivers exceptional battery life that puts it well above the curve. In fact, its endurance is long enough to be the latest addition in our best phone battery life list. (Or at least it will join the list once we inish testing the phone.) That’s impressive given how the majority of all the phones in that list sell for $500, with a handful inching closer to the $1,000 mark.
Even more remarkable is the fact that the Moto G Power sets a benchmark by offering the best battery life in phones under $300. Here’s why.
Moto G Power (2024) battery benchmark test
All phones we review at Tom’s Guide go through the same battery testing, which consists of setting the phone’s display to 150 nits and running a script that simulates average web surfing habits while connected to a cellular network. The time starts ticking the moment the script starts to when there’s no more gas in the tank, leaving us a final battery life time.
For this round of testing, we set the display of the Moto G Power (2024) to auto mode, which is the default setting out of the box. That’s because the 6.7-inch FHD+ display has an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate that can go down to as low as 60Hz to better preserve battery life. Most people often don’t tinker with the refresh rate out of the box, so we tested its battery life in auto mode.
With an average time of 14 hours and 24 minutes, the latest Moto G Power beats out both the OnePlus Nord N20 and TCL 30 V 5G by nearly an hour. Compared to an earlier Moto G Power (2022), the 2024 version makes an improvement of 1 hour. Considering that the average battery life is typically 10 hours, the Moto G Power (2024) is well above average in this department.
While Motorola's phone trails the 18-plus hours we get from the top performers in our best phone battery life list, its endurance is best in its class. It’s also worth noting that it comes with a beefy 5,000 mAh battery that could be providing most of its stamina, but we suspect more is happening in the background because the Moto G Power (2022) was also rocking a 5,000 mAh cell. Not only could the new display be more power efficient, but the MediaTek Dimensity 7020 chip in the 2024 edition of the phone could also have something to do with its better than average performance as well.
Moto G Power (2024) battery recharge test
Furthermore, it’s worth pointing out that the Moto G Power (2024) also makes big gains in the battery recharge side. Thanks to its 30W wired charging speed, we’re able to get it to a charge level of 28% in 15 minutes of charging — and eventually to 53% in 30 minutes. In contrast, the Moto G Power (2022) that we reviewed got to 20% in 30 minutes, which is painfully slow by today’s standards.
These battery tests are promising because it shows that you can still get a long battery life in a phone that doesn’t cost a lot. In addition to its above average battery life and speed recharge, the icing on the cake is that Motorola fashions in 15W wireless charging — which again isn’t a feature we’d likely expect to find in a phone under $300.
When we take all of this into consideration, the outlook for the Moto G Power (2024) is promising because it doesn’t appear to be sacrificing much for its price. Then again, we’ll have to see how it performs in other areas like the photo quality from its dual cameras, to really pass judgment on the Moto G Power.
