Audiovisual Connectivity Performance Battery Camera We will find that out here in this Smartprix review of the Moto G51. Navigate this article: Moto G51 feels a lot like the Moto G60 I had reviewed earlier this year. It is a long and broad slab with squarish sides and a slight curve by the back. At 170.5mm height, 9.1mm thickness, and 208 grams weight, it’s a brawny fella. What this means is that it won’t be the easiest one to carry around. Especially if you have small hands or pockets.
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Now, this size would prove a deterrent in using that Google Assistant button. Even to access the volume rocker, you’d have to stretch your fingers or slide down your palm. You might not care about the Google invoker but volume buttons are something you’d use regularly. So, I wish the handset was a bit handier. The good thing is that the fingerprint scanner which is part of the power button is accessible as well as accurate in its job. It would be the go-to biometric option in dark environments wherein facial recognition struggles. The rest of the peripheral stuff such as the 3.5mm jack, USB-C port, dual mics, solo speaker, and hybrid SIM slot is par for the course. Rotate to the rear and there you have a triple camera stack housed in a rather flat oblong. Beneath it sits a Moto logo. The phone is made out of plastic and looks simple with a subtle sheen in the Indigo Blue color. Perhaps its boxy physique is its ID ‘cause there aren’t any other idiosyncrasies setting it apart from the dime-a-dozen devices out there. That’s one way of looking at it or you say it doesn’t matter as you’d slap on a case anyway. Moto bundles a transparent TPU silicone cover in the box. Although the device manages to resist smudges, a case should act as an extra layer of resistance against both dirt and damage. Speaking of damage, it is IP52 rated against water but I suggest you don’t risk it. And with that, let’s move to the display on the front. The display stretches 6.8-inches with a punch-hole cutout and thick bezel only at the bottom. It is fairly bright outdoors. And despite being LCD, it is good in color reproduction and contrast. Yeah, blacks aren’t perfect but passable. Things appear well defined on this full HD panel. There is up to 120Hz high-speed refresh rate and a 240Hz touch sampling rate. This means everything from regular scrolling to game animations should respond smoother than a standard screen. Within the settings, you can downgrade to 60Hz for lesser power consumption. Here, you also get options like Adaptive brightness toggle, color profiles (Natural, Saturated, and temperature tuner), system-UI theming options, Dark Theme, Night Light, Attentive Display, split-screen, screen recorder, etc. As for the audio, the G51 comes with a downward-firing single speaker and a headphone jack. The sound output from the speaker should be enough for listening in a small room but don’t expect anything beyond that. You can choose various sound profiles within Dolby Atmos settings. Moving to the wireless audio and stuff now. The call experience is alright from the two-mic and earpiece setup. Moto G51 sports dual SIMs although it is a hybrid slot. On the plus side, there is support for 4G VoLTE as well as 5G. It comes with compatibility for 12 global Sub-6GHz 5G bands and the list includes n1/n3/n5/n7/n8/n20/n28/n38/n40/n41/n77/n78. The company has also equipped the device with 3CA carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO, Bluetooth 5.1, VoWiFi, dual-band WiFi ac, NFC, GPS, and a USB-C 2.0 port. And next, let’s check out its core internals. Moto G51 is the world’s first Snapdragon 480+ phone. Now, don’t go by its name as it is a spiritual successor to something like Snapdragon 720G instead of SD480. Blame Qualcomm for its naming convention. Anyhoo, SD480+ is an 8nm chip with 2 Cortex-A76 cores clocked at 2.2GHz and 6 Cortex-A55 cores at 1.8 GHz clock speed. This is paired up with Adreno 619 GPU, a Snapdragon X51 5G modem, 4GB of LPDDR4x RAM, and 64GB of uMCP storage. There is an option to expand it further up to 512GB using a microSD card. As for synthetic test results, the scores are promising of a competent performance: Then there is the good-old stock Android 11 software with My UX skin. And as you know, this preserves the vanilla minimalism with some meaningful features like the Google discover page, three-finger screenshot, karate chop motion for fast torch access, a quick twist of the phone to open the camera, peek display for a glance at notifications, and important information like date, time, battery percentage, etc. One of the new things I found was Power Touch which brings a side panel upon pressing of power button twice in quick succession. Although, I couldn’t make it work. Now for the gamers out there, Motorola has a neat toolbox called Gametime which offers nifty tools like a screen recorder, quick-access app shortcuts, an option to disable auto-brightness, block notifications, and calls. And although I am yet to intensively test gaming on this device, here are some screenshots of the popular titles. An half an hour gameplay of Asphalt 9 and the battery level reduced by 7-percent. There were no concerning heating issues whilst gaming. Now from performance, let’s get into power consumption. Moto G51 bags a 5000mAh cell that is underpinned by a 20W adapter. This is the exact combo that is being offered with the G31. And like there, here too you have settings like the battery saver, overcharge protection, and adaptive battery option. As for the battery life, in the PCMark test, the device ran for 14 hour 46 minutes, which is plenty good. And if you bring down the refresh rate to 60Hz you can eke out more. Anyhoo, if it asks for charge, plug in the bundled charger and the thing should be full from zero in slightly more than 2 hours. Moving on… Finally, on the photography side of things, you are getting a 50MP triple camera setup. Moto G51’s primary is a 50MP sensor that outs downsampled results. In the camera app, you get an Ultra-res 50MP camera mode. BTW, this app takes a second in loading to the viewfinder. The shutter speed is fast though. Besides the main camera, you also get an 8MP ultrawide snapper (which also doubles up as a depth-mapper) and a 2MP macro module. As for the front, the selfies and video calls are handled by a 13MP camera. In the features department, you have Portrait, Night Vision, Pro Mode, Slow-Mo, Timelapse, Panorama, Spot Color, Dual Capture, Cinemagraph (GIF-maker), and videography up to 1080p at 30 fps from both sides. The photos from the 50MP main shooter are good enough to post on socials straight away. There is oversharpening in some areas (take a look at leaves in the first image for instance). The colors and dynamic range were authentic and reasonable respectively. The colors appear washed out in the ultrawide snaps though whence compared to the original. They also lack details, which you would notice upon cropping in. There is notable amount of noise. Things get miserable in dark settings for this 0.5x field of view. The Night Vision spikes the ISO causing the exposure in the frame to shoot up. But that’s at the peril of quality as the shots are plagued with digital grains. Coming to human subjects, selfies, portrait or otherwise comes out rather poorly in night times. In regular clicks, there aren’t sufficient details and highlights are also clipped. Night Vision makes things appear bright and better exposed. Finally for the videos which are FHD at up to 60 FPS, the results have judders and focus hunting issues. You can get by serviceable clips if you keep your expectations in check. And with that we are at the end. It’s time for — The Moto G51 comes across as a decent 5G phone for the MSRP of ₹14,999. The raft of interesting things includes the well-specced Snapdragon 480+ processor, 12 5G bands, a 5000mAh battery with 20W charging, a 120Hz FHD+ display, ad-free and bloat-free Android experience, and a 50MP triple camera setup. Now I think Motorola could have better tuned the camera performance in dark scenes especially with the ultrawide sensor. That and its size are my main misgivings. But even with them this isn’t a bad deal, for all good things listed above and below. Hence, if you are out in the market for a phone in the sub-15K bracket, this one’s worth looking into. Q. Does Moto G51 has a dedicated microSD slot? A. Yes, Moto G51 has a hybrid expandable micro-SD Card slot up to 512GB. Q. Does Moto G51 support a dedicated memory card? A. No, Moto G51 comes with a hybrid slot that facilitates storage expansion up to 512GB. Q. What is the SAR value of Moto G51? A. Moto G51 SAR values are 1.34 W/Kg (Head); 1.39 W/Kg (Body) Q. Does Moto G51 support dual-band WiFi? A, Yes, Moto G51 supports dual-band WiFi (2.4GHz + 5GHz). Q. Does Moto G51 support VoWiFi or WiFi calling? A. Yes, Moto G51 does feature Call over WiFi. Q. How many microphones are on the Moto G51? A. Moto G51 comes with two microphones. Q. What are the 5G bands supported by Moto G51? A. Moto G51 is compliant with these Sub-6GHz 5G bands: n1/n3/n5/n7/n8/n20/n28/n38/n40/n41/n77/n78 Q. Is Moto G51 water-resistant? A. Moto G51 features an IP-52 rating, which makes it a water-repellant design. Q. Which is the Android update on Moto G51? A. Moto G51 ships with October 01 security patch and August 1 Google Play System Update. The company is promising the Android 12 upgrade and two years of security patches too. Q. Does Moto G51 support GCam or Camera2API? A. Moto G51 comes with Level 3 Camera2API which isn’t full supported for GCam. Also, whether there is a modded GCam for the Snapdragon 480+ processor is a different thing. Q. Does Moto G51 support Netflix Full HD streaming? A. Yes, Moto G51 supports DRM L1 certification for full HD streaming on Netflix and the likes.
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