Packing premium entertainment features into a budget price tag, the Motorola Moto G32 sets a high standard when it comes to affordable Android smartphones.
While some people always want the latest and greatest devices, there’s no need to spend top dollar to get a decent smartphone these days. Especially if you don’t need excessive amounts of grunt to run demanding apps or high-end games.
If your needs are simple, but you don’t want to sacrifice on usability, the Motorola Moto G32 is certainly worth adding to your shortlist when shopping for an affordable smartphone.
While Motorola makes some great smartphones, the sheer number of handsets it keeps producing can make it quite frustrating when you’re trying to decide on the best one for your pocket. Along with the Razor range, there’s also Motorola’s Edge, One, G and E families to choose from.
With a $299 price tag, the Motorola Moto G32 is close to entry level, on par with the $299 Moto G22 yet still more expensive than the $229 Moto E32. In return, the new Moto G32 focuses its efforts on entertainment. The 6.5-inch display steps up the resolution to Full HD and is accompanied by stereo speakers which support Dolby Atmos sound – great for watching your favourite streaming services on the go.
All of this combines to make a decent first impression, offering a bright, crisp IPS LCD screen on a smartphone which sits comfortably in your hand. The 20:9 aspect ratio makes it quite tall, but not as unwieldy as the very tall Moto G51 5G.
The screen’s white balance is quite cool and the colours a tad saturated, because the Display is set to “Saturated” by default, but you can easily change this to “Natural” if you wish.
The handset features volume and power buttons along the right-hand edge, with the latter doubling as a fingerprint reader to unlock the device (or you can use Android’s Face Unlock). Along the bottom of the phone you’ll find a USB-C charge port and a speaker, so the phone can produce stereo sound when held sideways. There’s also a 3.5 mm headphone jack, with earbuds included in the box.
Around the back you’ll find a rear triple camera array consisting of a 50 MP primary lens, 8 MP ultrawide and 2 MP macro. On the front, there’s a 16 MP selfie camera.
As with many of Motorola’s current handsets, the Moto G32 comes with a basic transparent protective case. It offers some impact protection, but doesn’t seem as robust as something like a Tech 21 case. Still, it’s good to have a case right out of the box.
Remove the case and you reveal the plastic unibody chassis, which looks good but naturally doesn’t quite have the premium feel of higher end models.
The Motorola Moto G32 ships with Android 12, with minimal bloatware. As you’d expect, the handset makes a few sacrifices to keep the price down, but this might not bother you depending on what you value in a phone.
For starters, the handset supports 4G LTE mobile phone networks but can’t take advantage of Australia’s fastest 5G networks – unlike the $399 Moto G 62 5G (the Moto G32 is practically a 4G version of that handset).
To be fair, 4G is still pretty fast and, if you’re shopping in this price range, you’re probably looking to pair the phone with a 4G mobile service rather than pay extra for 5G.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 4G chip and 4 GB of RAM under the bonnet are enough to handle day-to-day tasks, but it’s certainly not for people who like to push their handsets to the limit.
Multimedia is where the Moto G32 really shines, thanks to that large, crisp display and Dolby Atmos for making the most of the high-end audio found in streaming services like Netflix.
Another sacrifice is that the handset offers 90 Hz refresh rate, whereas some of Motorola’s more expensive handsets take this up to 120 Hz. Again, to be fair, 90 Hz still offers very smooth scrolling and you’d need an eye for detail to really appreciate the improvement of 120 Hz.
The phone will certainly keep you entertained for a long time, with a generous 5000 mAh battery ensuring that, if you don’t push it too hard, you should be able to go 2 days before recharging. Support for TurboPower 30 charging ensures you can get a few hours worth of charge in just a few minutes and a full recharge in less than 90 minutes.
As you’d expect, the GeekBench 5 benchmarks don’t set the world on fire. The handset scores 377 on the CPU single core test and 1601 on the multi-core. That’s about what you’d expect considering the price tag and what’s under the bonnet, putting it in similar territory to the Samsung Galaxy A22 5G.
When it comes to photography, 50 MP might sound like a lot of pixels, but keep in mind that it’s a relatively small sensor with small pixels. This means that photos taken in good light are reasonable but it can struggle in low-light conditions. The phone incorporates Quad Pixel technology to improve low light photos, but the results are still underwhelming.
The Motorola Moto G32 is a solid budget handset which offers the benefits of a big screen and long battery life. It understandably makes a few sacrifices to keep the price tag down, but you might not mind as long as you’re not looking for a powerhouse device or 5G mobile data speeds.
If you want a big screen but your needs are simple, the Moto G32 might be a good fit – but make sure you weigh it up against the rest of Motorola’s low to mid-range handsets.
The G32 is a great phone in almost every aspect aside from lacking 5G or a fast CPU, but for the price it’s very hard to beat.
The main shortcoming for many buyers is the size — Motorola has pretty much their whole line-up in the same size, and a smaller purse-sized/kids-pocket-sized model is not among them. Of course, most of the competition are following this trend, (the only exceptions are Apple’s Mini/SE, Samsung Flip and the Moto Razr which are all far too pricey for a kid’s phone).
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