Motorola Moto G73 Review: A Performer!

After a long time, it really felt like Motorola had finally made a comeback in the smartphone market last year. I was especially impressed with its budget-friendly “G” series phones like the Moto G52 and Moto G71, which were a couple of great bargains for the price. So naturally, I had high expectations with what Motorola had in store for 2023. And when they launched this guy, the Motorola Moto G73, I ordered it right away to prepare this review. It’s priced at Rs. 18,999 for the sole 8/128GB variant, and after using the phone for about two weeks, here’s what I think about it.

Motorola Moto G73 Review: Specifications

• Body: Plastic Build, 161.42 x 73.84 x 8.29 mm, 181 gm
• Display: 6.5-inch IPS LCD panel, 120Hz refresh rate
• Resolution: FHD+ resolution (2400 x 1080), 20:9 aspect ratio, 405 ppi
• Chipset: MediaTek Dimensity 930 (6nm Mobile Platform)
• Memory: 8GB RAM, 128GB storage (expandable up to 1TB)
• Software & UI: Android 13 with My UX on top
• Rear Camera: Dual (50MP primary, 8MP ultra-wide)
• Front Camera: 16MP, f/2.4 sensor (punch-hole cutout)
• Security: Side-mounted fingerprint scanner
• Battery: 5,000mAh, 30W charging
• Connectivity: Dual-band Wi-Fi 5 (802.11 ac), Bluetooth 5.3, NFC
• Color Options: Midnight Blue, Lucent White
• Price in Nepal: INR. 18,999 ; coming soon to Nepal

Motorola Moto G73 Review:

Performance

• Octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 930 SoC (6nm)
• 8GB RAM, 128/256GB storage
• Android 13 with MyUX on top

The first thing that’s absolutely great about this phone is its performance. For a phone under Rs. 20,000, the Moto G73 earns a straight A from my side in this department.

If you are familiar with the smartphone industry, you might know that brands have been compromising on the performance side of things in their budget phones to make room for 5G connectivity. Unfortunately, this trend is still present in 2023.

Just look at some recent launches like the Redmi Note 12, Realme 10 Pro, and OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite for that matter. To accommodate 5G, they all feature rather average processors for their price.

But Motorola is offering plenty of powerful MediaTek Dimensity 930 chips here, all the while including support for 13 5G bands. And if you compare its performance with the Snapdragon 695 or Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 which are common in this price range, you can clearly see that the Dimensity 930 wins by a great margin.

A bit underclocked

Interestingly enough, the Dimensity 930 actually has underclocked Cortex-A78 CPU cores compared to the Dimensity 920. And while this does reflect in benchmarks, it is still a capable chipset in its own right.

And I have to say I got a much better everyday performance here than the likes of Redmi Note 12 or Realme 10 Pro. I can instantly notice how fast apps open, and how effortless multitasking is. Pair that with a well-optimized 120Hz refresh rate, I had a great experience with this phone.

Gaming

Dimensity 930 also unlocks a great gaming experience. Although not at the highest of settings, you can easily play even the most demanding games like Genshin Impact in medium settings with 30 fps.

The phone does get warm at the back reaching around 40ºC after 15 minutes into the game, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it a heating issue. More importantly, this doesn’t throttle the performance and the phone’s temperature cools down very quickly too.

I even ran a CPU throttling test for 15 and 30 minutes to further check the sustained performance of this new chip. And I am happy to report that the Moto G73 never throttled below 90%.

Anyway, PUBG Mobile is also playable with 40 fps at Balanced graphics and Ultra settings. You can also crank up the setting to HD graphics for better details, but this will bring down the gameplay to just 30 fps. Other high-fps optimized games like Critical Ops and Mech Arena are playable at 120 fps, so that’s good too!

Battery

• 5000mAh battery with 30W charging

Apart from performance, the Moto G73 has also impressed me with its battery backup. Even with my rigorous usage pattern which includes hours of gaming and binge-watching movies, alongside other daily tasks, I was still able to get around 8 hours of screen-on time here! Not only this, but the overnight battery drain on this phone is also around 2-3% only.

So yeah… Motorola has optimized the phone very well to deliver a solid battery backup. And in terms of charging, the 30W adapter that’s available inside the box takes around 1 hour and 20 minutes to fully juice up the phone.

Design

• 161.4 x 73.8 x 8.3mm, 181g
• Glass front, Plastic frames/back
• Water-resistant design

Moving on, another aspect that I’m quite fond of this phone is its design. I know, it doesn’t look that different from other “Moto G-series”, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think, just like Samsung, Motorola is also trying to create its own visual identity by offering a similar design across all G-series smartphones. And I see no harm in that.

In fact, the build quality is actually of greater importance to me. And I must say, the G73 is a well-built smartphone. Of course, for a budget device, it has an all-plastic build material. But despite this, there are no noticeable creaks here and there, and it doesn’t feel that cheap as well.

I am also someone who prefers using the phone without a cover. And to my surprise, the Moto G73 has survived a relatively clumsy lifestyle with nothing to show for it. Its white finish hasn’t gotten that dirty either, although I would still recommend wrapping it around a case because—after all—it’s a plastic body that can pick up scratches at any time.

Display

• 6.5-inches FHD+ IPS LCD panel
• 120Hz refresh rate

Now, while the phone’s back panel looks good enough, the story isn’t the same when coming to the front. There’s a noticeable chin at the bottom, and this hole-punch cutout for the selfie camera is also not the smallest I have seen on a smartphone. I remember praising the Moto G52 for having symmetrical bezels all around, but I really don’t understand Motorola’s take here.

Even the actual quality of this screen is not that great. First off, it’s not AMOLED but rather an IPS display. So coming from an OLED panel on last year’s G72, this feels like an unnecessary downgrade to me. But even for an IPS panel, I found its quality to be average at best. The thing is, Moto G73’s screen is just not that bright and its viewing angle is not that great as well.

Audio and Haptics

• Dual stereo speakers
• 3.5mm headphone jack

Still, it is good enough for indoor usage and you can easily stream Full HD content on Netflix. To further enhance your movie-binging experience, Motorola has also included a stereo speaker setup with support for Dolby Atmos. And they can get sufficiently loud, while there’s no such issue as distortion at the highest volume. Of course, there’s little to zero bass to enjoy here, but I’m not nitpicking here!

However, Motorola could have definitely given a better vibration motor. Its feedback is quite buzzy and I found it to be a bit irritating, to be honest. As a result, I turned it off entirely while I was using the phone.

Cameras

• Dual camera setup at the back
• (50MP main, 8MP ultrawide)
• 16MP selfie camera (hole-punch)

Regardless, let’s talk about the cameras now. And historically, this is the one aspect where Motorola phones have not performed that well. However, the company is trying to change things with the G73. Here, instead of offering useless 2MP sensors, Motorola is focusing on improving the rest of the camera hardware. As per them, the G73’s primary camera uses Ultra Pixel technology for brighter, sharper photos.

Normal Images

And as promised, the output from its 50MP camera looks quite good. I wouldn’t say they are bad at all. I like the level of contrast and dynamic range the images are able to pull off. And the photos have a wider field of view too.

vs Poco X5

Comparing the pictures of the G73 with the similarly priced Poco X5, the G73 was able to perform much better in every aspect, whether it be colors, contrast, exposure handling, or field of view.

Ultrawide

Just like normal images, ultrawide photos from the Moto G73 are also better in terms of dynamic range and sharpness.

Nighttime

The same holds true for nighttime images, where Motorola’s outputs are far better than those of the Poco X5. And if you’re shooting night images, I would recommend directly using the Night Mode as it maintains a good balance of sharpness and exposure, all while retaining a good amount of details.

Portraits

In terms of portraits, there is a lot of improvement on Motorola’s part. I found the images to be highly inconsistent in maintaining skin tone and exposure. Sometimes the portraits look okay, but most times they are straight-up bad.

Overall, if I have to rate the camera prowess of the Moto G73, I would say that it has a good primary camera for general usage both during daytime and night time minus the subpar portrait shots.

Videos

But like every other budget phone, its video capability is average at best. While the Dimensity 930 chip on the phone supports 4K recording, Motorola has limited the resolution to 1080p@60fps. Even here, exposure isn’t maintained well, and there are slight jerks in the video every now and then. Selfie videos are also capped at 1080p@30fps, and while the skin tone looks decent, it struggles to maintain background exposure.

Motorola Moto G73 Review: Conclusion

Okay, it’s time to wrap up this review now. So is this smartphone a viable option in the sub-20K price bracket? I would say, yes. It has the best-in-class performance, its battery life is quite awesome, and even the cameras are pretty decent here. And how can I forget its clean stock Android experience with few Motorola-exclusive features?

So yeah, the software is also a big win for me when it comes to Motorola phones. However, I do hope the company improves its software update policy since this thing will only get a year of platform updates. This means it’ll taste Android 14, and no more.

Other than this, I don’t think Motorola should have compromised in terms of the display either. I am not just saying an OLED panel would’ve fixed everything, but the G73 could’ve certainly used a better and brighter IPS screen. Still, budget phones compromise in one way or the other, so if you can overlook all this, I think it is currently one of the best options under Rs. 20,000.

Motorola Moto G73 Review: Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Best-in-class performance
• Capable cameras
• Great battery life
• Nice design
• Stock Android experience

Cons:

• Display could’ve been better
• Terrible haptics