Moto G5 Plus: Is this the best smartphone under MYR1,300?

Moto G5 Plus

Moto is slowly but surely clawing its way back into consumers’ minds with brand new vigour, and new devices. It has promised to introduce no less than nine new devices this year. The latest to make it to Malaysian shores is the premium mid-ranger–Moto G5 Plus.

Making a debut at MWC17 earlier in the year, the fifth-generation Moto G5 Plus is everything you want in a modern smartphone–design, functionality and affordability.

Costing a little under MYR1,300, the Moto G5 Plus boasts a fast processor, great battery life, advanced camera, rapid charging and fingerprint scanner. All neatly packaged into a premium metal body, that’s been diamond-cut and bead-blasted to perfection.

Moto G5 Plus

The durable aluminium body houses a 5.2-inch Full HD display, protected by Gorilla Glass 3.

If you were to single out one killer feature of the Moto G5 Plus (although there’s many more to love), it would have to be the camera.

The main shooter is a 12MP f/1.7 unit with Dual Autofocus Pixels. Autofocus is superfast, and thanks to the large aperture lens, it works great in low-light, too. In fact, thanks to its bigger pixels and lens, it lets in 25% more light than the previous generation Moto G4 Plus.

Moto G5 Plus Moto G5 Plus

For selfies, there’s a 5MP f/2.2 wide-angle lens with display flash. Naturally, there’s Moto’s own beautification mode with the added “Best Shot” feature which captures multiple shots before and after the screen is touched.

Under the hood, the Moto G5 Plus gets the services of the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, mated to 4GB RAM and 32GB of storage.

The great thing about the device is that it has a dedicated microSD slot. None of the hybrid dual-SIM slot nonsense.

Helping the device stay up all day and night is a large 3,000mAh battery with TurboPower charging. The rapid charging technology lets you gain six hours of battery life with just 15 minutes of charge time.

Moto G5 Plus

The impressive mid-ranger also comes with a fast fingerprint scanner built into the Home button.

Moto has also built some handy software features into the Moto G5 Plus. This included Moto Actions which lets you do tasks using gestures. For instance, do a “chop-chop” action to trigger the LED flash; or twist the device to launch the camera.

The smartphone runs Android 7.0 Nougat out-of-the-box.

Pricing and availability

The Moto G5 Plus is available in Lunar Gray and Fine Gold. It retails at MYR1,299 and will be available for pre-order from 29 May till 4 June 2017 at the Lenovo Smartphone Official Store and DirectD Official Store, both on Lazada Malaysia.

Delivery will start from 5 June 2017 onwards.

Moto G5 Plus

Pre-order offers

For pre-orders, Moto is giving buyers 12-month extended warranty under the Moto Care Plan, worth MYR199. Additionally, also get a Moto Flip Case and screen protector worth MYR99 (whilst stocks last).

Those who miss out on pre-orders, don’t fret. You’ll get a Moto Flip Case and screen protector worth MYR99 (whilst stocks last).

For more information about the Moto G5 Plus, visit moto.com/my.

Vernon
Vernon is the founder and chief editor of Vernonchan.com. A graphic designer by profession, he has a deep love for technology, cars, gadgets, food, and travel. He tweets too much and is also known as a caffeine bacterium ("life's too short for bad coffee"). Bleeds Blue (go Chelsea FC!) and considers BMW, Porsche, Alfa Romeo cars to have in the garage--hallmarks of a true petrolhead.