Since 2020, Motorola’s Moto G Stylus line has been a reliable range of mid-range smartphones and a gateway into the niche world of stylus functionality. Upgrades in the Moto G Stylus series have typically been limited to small, incremental changes—but for 2025, Motorola has shifted gears, taking several big leaps forward.
The new Moto G Stylus introduces a suite of AI tools, improved battery life, a sharper and brighter display, and build quality that rivals premium-tier phones. If not for the signature “M” on the back and the absence of an always-on display, you could easily mistake it for a device that costs far more than its $399 MSRP.
The first change you’ll likely notice is the more exciting colour options. The 2025 Moto G Stylus is available in two PANTONE-certified colours: “Gibraltar Sea,” a rich, deep teal, and “Surf the Web,” a vibrant electric blue. The updated colour scheme gives the rear cover a much-needed splash of personality. The cover material is a comfortable semi-soft rubber with a subtle faux-leather texture.
“If not for the signature ‘M’ on the back and the absence of an always-on display, you could easily mistake it for a device that costs far more than its $399 MSRP.”
Overall, the phone’s construction is excellent. The housing is entirely plastic, but it feels durable and has an elegant design with a one-sided control layout. The camera array is housed in an unobtrusive, rounded-square bezel that sits nearly flush with the back—refreshingly minimal compared to the oversized bumps and gaudy lens covers that have taken over phone designs in recent years.
To complement the water-themed colour options, Motorola has also upgraded the phone’s water resistance from “weather-resistant” to full IP68 protection. That means the 2025 Moto G Stylus can theoretically survive submersion in up to 1.5 metres of fresh water for 30 minutes. The last time I tested an IP68 rating, it ended with a Samsung Galaxy S21 being inadvertently donated to one of the Great Lakes. But in the spirit of journalism, I reran the test—this time with only a few feet of water and a white-knuckled grip. It survived! I didn’t get the turtle photos I was hoping for, but I did walk away with a working phone.
Being able to recover your phone from the sea is a welcome upgrade, but the most significant improvement over last year’s Moto G Stylus is the display. It’s still a 6.7-inch, near-bezel-less pOLED panel with 10-bit colour and an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, but the resolution has been bumped from 2400×1080 to a sharper 2712×1220 (Super HD), and peak brightness has jumped from 1,200 nits to an astonishing 3,000 nits.
It’s an impressively bright display. When taking photos in full midday sun, I could see every detail of my subject without a hint of washed-out colour. It’s also an excellent display for gaming—large enough that two-handed controls won’t block anything important, and clear enough that every enemy and item can be easily tracked.
It’s not a dedicated gaming phone by any means, but the Gen 3 Snapdragon 6 and 8 GB of RAM are more than enough to run Diablo Immortal at 60 FPS with high graphics settings, and Genshin Impact at 30 FPS. You can definitely feel the Snapdragon getting toasty after about 10 minutes, but the phone never becomes uncomfortably hot.
To keep everything running, the Moto G Stylus uses the same 5,000 mAh battery as last year’s model but now includes 68-watt turbocharging. Under light use, it’s easy to squeeze out 40 hours of battery life. Unfortunately, when it’s time to charge, Motorola has joined the “let’s not include a charging block” bandwagon. As a midrange phone, the Moto G Stylus overperforms in nearly every category—so much so that it’s easy to forget the main selling point is supposed to be the stylus. Even after using it, I often forgot it was there.
The stylus features are basic but functional, designed more for accessibility than creativity. While it lacks the tilt recognition and pressure sensitivity of active styluses like Samsung’s S Pen, it still offers reliable performance for jotting down quick notes, navigating apps or sketching simple ideas. It’s more responsive than in previous models, but if you’re hoping for an entry-level device for digital art, this isn’t it.
Moto Note is a standout, though. Its ability to convert my chicken scratch into mostly accurate text is uncanny, and the freeform calculator—which lets you write math problems using the pen—will definitely find a loving audience. But the real novelty is the sketch-to-image feature, which uses AI to turn rough drawings into fully rendered images that sometimes resemble what you intended. It was amusing for about five minutes, but it’s nowhere near as accurate as image generators that use text prompts.
For a budget phone, the camera features on the Moto G Stylus are standard. However, the functionality of the camera app and the way image files are processed leave much to be desired. The main camera uses a stacked 50 MP Sony LYTIA sensor with an f/1.8 lens, delivering sharp images with decent dynamic range—even in low light. The second rear camera includes a 13 MP sensor paired with an f/2.2 ultrawide/macro lens, while the front-facing camera features a 32 MP sensor and an f/2.2 lens.
The JPEG quality is decent, but the processing tends to be overly aggressive. For quick snapshots and selfies, the cameras perform well—so long as you don’t plan to make any edits. When cropping images taken in the default “Standard” setting, I noticed that large blocks of colour were so stylized they became unrecognizable. Patches of moss and tree bark were muddied to the point of resembling an expressionist painting. In one shot of a miraged ship on the horizon, the processing overcorrected so severely that it erased the entire boat. The issue improves slightly when switching to the “High” photo size setting, but even then, key details can still be lost.
The live processing is similarly finicky. The digital depth-of-field effect in portrait and macro modes doesn’t take much to start tripping up. My curly hair and a squirrel’s bushy tail both confused the camera’s spatial awareness. In the final image, chunks of hair and fur were blurred in the wrong areas or surrounded by a sharp outline of unblurred pixels. Similar issues cropped up in macro mode as well.
With managed expectations, the standard camera modes perform well. They’re great for capturing a night out or snapping quick Instagram shots, with results that are surprisingly good. Add in specialty features like Night Vision, Panorama and Ultra High-Res, and the camera becomes downright impressive. But it doesn’t stop there—there’s also a Pro mode that captures stunning 24-bit RAW DNG files.
The quality of the RAW files is phenomenal and serves as a great showcase for what the LYTIA sensor can do. Shooting in RAW comes at the cost of digital zoom, but the ability to adjust exposure and crop heavily in post is worth the trade-off. In a picture of some apple blossoms I took, the DNG file held enough information to recover details in a blown-out sky and lift shadows without adding any noise. I’d be impressed to find that level of flexibility in a full-sized camera, but seeing it in a $400 Motorola was genuinely surprising.
“Despite its simple stylus and the omission of a charging block, the Moto G Stylus is a stylish, well-rounded phone that overperforms for its price.”
However, the shock faded once I started taking videos. Like the standard camera modes, the video quality is decent but comes with a take-it-or-leave-it processing style. The image features high vibrancy and contrast that’s difficult to tone down in editing, and the camera menu offers no options to tweak anything beyond frame rate and resolution.
That said, for quick videos, the available settings—4K UHD at 30 fps and 1080p FHD at 60 fps (recorded in AVC with bitrates of 62 Mb/s and 25 Mb/s, respectively)—are perfectly serviceable. For storing all those photos and videos, the Moto G Stylus comes with either 128 GB or 256 GB of internal storage and can be expanded up to 1 TB via microSD card.
The Moto G Stylus offers a lot for a phone priced at $399. With all-day battery life, solid processing power, ample memory and a decent camera array, it stands out in the mid-range category. Plus, it includes a stylus and one of the best displays you’ll find at this price. The stylus may be basic, but it adds accessibility for those who need it—without inflating the cost.
Despite its simple stylus and the omission of a charging block, the Moto G Stylus is a stylish, well-rounded phone that overperforms for its price. It’s an excellent choice for anyone looking for an affordable, dependable day-to-day device.
