The Moto G31 uses the MediaTek Helio G85 chipset, which is fine. Just plain old fine. It's supported by 4GB of RAM so it's far from a speedy phone, but it's also not the slowest either. It’s not all bad, though. Battery life is truly astonishing, which makes us think that the MediaTek processor must be remarkably more energy-efficient. The Moto G31 managed nearly a full day of looped video in our standardised test, and while none of the handsets we’re comparing it to is exactly weak on the stamina front, it’s a clear win for the Moto if battery is most important for you. Motorola Moto G31 review: Camera There is a vertically aligned triple rear camera setup in a dual-toned camera island and the rear-mounted fingerprint sensor is housed underneath the bat-wings logo. The panel isn't the whitest or very brightest ever - side-by-side with our Moto G200 it's clear the flagship wins in both regards, delivering a 'cleaner' image - but in isolation you'd never know and there's still ample brightness from the G31 to cut through varying lighting conditions too.

While colours are vibrant and sharpness is aplenty, it could’ve been slightly brighter as sunlight legibility wasn't the best.However, it's fair to say that the significantly better color reproduction and the higher brightness speak for the Moto G31's display. Moreover, the phone is also a bit more compact and lighter than some of its rivals, which is convenient for users with smaller hands. There are two ways of painting the results above. On one hand, while it’s marginally slower on the multicore benchmark, there’s not enough in it that you’d actively notice the difference between the two. Like the Snapdragon 662 inside the Moto G30, this is another octa-core 2GHz chip, so performance should be mostly similar on paper. That said, it has its share of limitations like the 60Hz refresh rate which for a few could be a downside while the rest might consider it a reason why the phone offers slightly longer battery life. Although it comes with an optional transparent plastic case for added grip, it’s not really necessary, as Motorola has replaced the smooth plastic finish with one that’s finely textured, with curved thin lines cascading out from around the camera section. It’s not the kind of thing you notice unless you’re looking closely, but it’s a nice touch and extra grip is always welcome.

But this doesn’t tell the full story. There’s a slight but noticeable delay between pressing the shutter and the camera snapping, which can prove frustrating with timings, and this also makes it pretty easy to get blurry images, too.

Easy on the Wallet

The most demanding games is the only area where the handset starts to struggle, though we were able to run the fairly intense Asphalt 9 racing game without any real problems. Geekbench scores of 346 (single-core), 1283 (multi-core) and 1174 (OpenCL) confirm that the phone is down at the lower end of the performance spectrum, and you'll have to do without 5G as well – perhaps not a disaster, considering that 4G is still rather speedy. Fellow Motorola phone, the Moto G9 Power, comes in about the same at 311 and 1,371, but it's also older. It doesn’t do too badly when digitally zoomed in, either. The macro camera is fine, if not great, and the zoom works well up to a point. You won’t get much quality if you go as high as 8x, but the 3x magnification and below retains enough detail in the stonework to be useful if you absolutely can’t get any closer. Performance is similarly sluggish. The Moto G31 is powered by a MediaTek Helio G85 chipset with 4GB of RAM, and while it's not the slowest of phones out there it's still woeful if you expect too much of it.