This is a playbook Motorola has used for the rest of its Moto G phones to keep prices static, but it especially stings here with the price increase. Thankfully, performance is completely fine. I have been using this phone for nearly a month and haven't had any issues, outside of some lag when launching the camera app. You'll see more of its limits running graphics-heavy games—something competing phones won't have as much trouble with—but it's generally more than adequate.

There's a slight bump in battery capacity to 5,200 mAh, and I can easily go two full days with light to average use. One day, when I had a very high screen-on time of nine hours, I had to recharge the phone by around 7 pm, so if you're screen-maxxing , you'll definitely need to top up once during the day. Overall, I'm happy with the juice.…