Moto G Stylus Review

This is the moto g stylus, which is motorola’s new entry level phone that comes with uh, wait for it stylus and today, we’re gon na be checking it out hello. My name is brad. I review tech for creative professionals, illustrators designers, people who aren’t used to installing sim cards in their phone, and i don’t review a lot of phones around here, because i tend to focus on art tools, but motorola decided to tuck a stylus into their budget mid tier Moto g smartphone and it piqued my interest and the interest of a lot of you who comment on these videos. Now, since august, my primary phone has been the galaxy note: 10 plus they say that the best camera you have is the one that you have with you. Well, the best sketchbook you have is also the one that you have with you, and even though the drawing experience itself is only so so on the galaxy note, because of its small screen at least compared to a tablet and thin stylus that isn’t comfortable to hold For more than a few minutes, at a time always having it with me, really has been a game changer if i ever have an idea or just want to work something out having a decent digital. Drawing app at my fingertips at all times is great. The only real downside of the galaxy note line is that price, which starts at 950 dollars u.s. If you want a phone with a stylus, you have to pay out the nose for it.

Until now, motorola has decided to dip their toes into the smartphone stylus pool with their new moto g stylus phone and get this. It is only 300 quick note. If you’re outside of the us, you might be able to get your hands on a galaxy note, light for between 500 600, but that’s, not an option where i am, and yeah that’s still significantly more being a mid range phone. I thought it would be a huge step down in quality coming from the note 10, but i was pleasantly surprised. The gap between the high end phones and the mid tier phones don’t feel that big sure you can go down the spec sheet and talk about megapixels and amoled displays, but those have a surprisingly small impact on the actual user experience. One big compromise and a deal breaker of a compromise for a lot of creative folks is going to be the stylist. This is not a smart stylus it’s, just a metal stick you’re, not gon na get the same accuracy you’re not going to get any pressure sensitivity. You’Re not going to get all of the things you come to expect from a smart, active stylist. There is one exception: one app that i’m going to talk about in a minute, but in general don’t expect all the fancy tilt and bluetooth features that you get in the galaxy phones and tablets. So with that said, let’s run down the specs, the stuff you don’t see that they put inside.

It is a snapdragon 665 processor, with 128 gigs of storage and 4 gigabytes of ram storage is expandable, with the inclusion of a micro sd slot by the sim card. I promise you. I eventually got that in three cameras along the back and a hole, punch, selfie cam around the front. One of those cameras on the back is installed sideways, so you can take horizontal video without turning your camera sideways, which i i got ta admit. I really liked it’s, also a fingerprint reader along the back the front. Its display is a 6.4 ips screen that has 2 300 pixels by 1080 pixels. The back is an aluminum, at least according to the website, and has this cool shimmering blue color, but the coating on it makes it feel like plastic and who knows, maybe it is plastic. I did get a couple little scratches on it over the week or so that i used the phone. I also noticed that the speaker, grill along the front, is kind of a gunk magnet in the few days that i was using it. There was a significant amount of pocket lint that got trapped in there already. What surprised me the most is all the specs are good enough yeah. I can tell the screen isn’t as good as the note that i use on a daily basis. There is some dark coloring around the edges of the display, but the display itself is pretty crisp, it’s pretty bright and generally it looks fine, the viewing angles again: they’re, not great, but you’re, usually not holding your phone.

At a weird angle, i thought i would see a lot more lag or poor performance or really bad battery life or really bad camera, but no all of those things are fine, not great, but fine. I wasn’t doing anything crazy performance wise, but so far all the tasks i was using it for held up well battery life is actually better than fine. I would call that great motorola says you get two days from it. I went three days before having to plug it in and charge it that was partially because i’m stuck inside doing my social distancing thing and i’m, not using a phone as much as i normally would. My point here is that for a third of the price, you’re not getting a third of the quality you’re taking a step down but it’s not like this huge, drastic, crazy step down. Yep i can tell the camera is a step down from the note, especially in lower light situations, but if you’re coming from a three or four year old phone, this camera is still going to feel like a step forward. I’M, not going to do a deep dive into the camera and all the things that it can do, because a lot of other youtubers have already done that. And i want to spend more time focusing on the art stuff. But if you do want to see those i’ll link those down below in the description, there were two things that i missed on this phone, the first one was conductive charging.

I had to plug it in using the usb c port along the bottom and of course the second thing was that pen, but before i get to that i’d like to thank today’s, sponsor squarespace from websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics squarespace is your All in one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business, i like being able to see how many people are visiting my site and what content they’re most interested in with squarespace’s built in analytics. I can quickly see page views, traffic sources, time on site, most read, content, audience, geography and more get feedback on what’s working and how i can improve my site: go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you’re ready to launch go to squarespace.com bragg colbo. To save 10 on your first purchase of a website or domain, like i mentioned before, this is not a smart stylist. Like the galaxy note, it’s, just a metal stick now. This is a 300 phone it’s hard to hate on something so inexpensive, and even though this is not a professional caliber tool, it still has some value to it. It’S more accurate than i expected, often with these dumb styluses, doing simple things like closing a circle or getting lines to meet without overshooting can be tricky, but here it’s not as bad it’s, not as good as an active stylus but it’s not as bad as i Expected, i think the thing is is because of how narrow the tip of the stylus is.

It doesn’t have a big soft tip, like you see, on other inexpensive styluses, which gives it more accuracy i’m trying to figure out how to describe this stylus tip it’s like mesh metal, almost like a steel wool type material, and i know what you’re thinking the last Thing you want to do is drag a piece of steel wool across your brand new phone screen, but this didn’t damage my phone at all for all of the use that i was using. It don’t worry about that. That was just the closest thing i could think to compare it to when you take a look at some of the tools motorola has built into the os, not as many features as what samsung offers, but the important ones are here. You can just start jotting down a note or grab a screenshot and write on it. That’S my personal favorite and there’s also a little app called keep, which is like a notes app on steroids. Palm rejection is a problem here. The phone screen can’t tell the difference between your finger, your palm your stylus a carrot, so there will be plenty of times when you go to draw and a little part of your palm is touching the screen and you will zoom instead or maybe part of your Finger will brush the screen and you’ll leave an extra line and that, more than anything, is what holds this phone back from being a really good art tool.

Since you have to hold it firmly along the sides and make sure you don’t touch the screen at all. It’S hard to get really steady, comfortable lines. I felt my lines were always wobbly, not necessarily because the stylus was wobbly, there’s, some wobble to it, but because i could never get a good grip on the phone with accidentally getting just the edge of my finger on the phone and messing up everything. You also have to press a little harder to register a line in many art applications, which means you have to hold the phone harder, which means your fingers more likely to touch the edge, which is why i don’t recommend this for anybody. Who’S a perfectionist and wants to make really crisp clean, finished art sketching on the go sure crisp clean line. Art no way. I’Ve talked a lot about android apps before i have a whole video on the best ones. You should check it out when you’re done here. So here’s the two long didn’t read versions of that there’s: five standouts medibang autodesk sketchbook, ibes paint, artflow and infinite painter. The last one of these is the one i’m going to be focusing on here, since the stylus doesn’t have any pressure to it. Most of these apps are usable, but you’re not going to get finished art out of them at least i’m personally, not going to be able to get finished art out of them. I would think of these as little sketchbooks that you have so you can jot down ideas or just kind of sketch things out as they come to you now.

Infinite painter is a cool little app in here. It becomes even cooler because they’ve figured out a way to fake pressure sensitivity without a pressure, sensitive stylus. I think how they’re doing this is through the amount of screen area covered by the stylus tip the more you press on the stylus, the flatter and wider. The tip gets and as it covers more surface area of the screen, the app makes your lines wider. Basically, the harder you press, the wider. Your line gets the downside. Is you really have to press hard to get that variation to kick in it’s? Not a really sensitive, intuitive thing like using a wacom stylus or something like that, but it works in a pinch. So was there anything i didn’t like about this phone? I think for 300 i’m willing to shrug off many of the negative things the inexpensive screen, the plastic feeling of the phone itself, but most people will cover that with the case anyway. The camera it’s only okay, often with inexpensive products, there’s, just like one or two things that just stops me in my tracks and makes me say no. I will not compromise on that and i didn’t really run into that here. Maybe the pen but, like i said for 300 i’m willing to compromise on that and yeah. I guess you could go on amazon and buy an inexpensive like little stylus that you carry with you, no matter what phone you have and you would get the same.

Exact effect out of that, but one of the great benefits here is that it tucks into your phone, and it knows when it’s in your phone. So when you pull it out, it brings up those note features if you leave it out. When you pick up your phone again it’s going to give you a little message, saying: hey, you forgot your stylus. In fact, it’ll even tell you where you were when you last used your stylus. If you don’t, remember, i think going in you have to know that this is not gon na, be your primary art device but, like i said before, it’s just really nice to capture an idea on the goal and it’s better than not having any stylus at all. And as long as you go in with those expectations, you’re gon na be fine, i think what surprised me the most about the moto g stylus is just the gap between the really high end flagship phones and these mid tier phones or at least how small that Gap has been narrowed over the last several years. The processor is good enough. The screen is good enough. The camera is good enough. None of them are great, but all of them are good enough. So that’s what i think about the moto g stylus. What do you think, let me know down below in the comment section.

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