Moto G Stylus 5G (2024): The $400 Phone Gets a New Vegan Leather Look - CNET

The $400 Moto G Stylus 5G -- the model that has traditionally been the highest-end of Motorola's value-oriented Moto G line -- is getting its 2024 revamp Thursday with boosted specs over last year's phone, along with the same vegan leather look that the rest of the line is getting. The phone will be released on May 30 with an unlocked model that will be available on Motorola's website, Amazon and Best Buy that day, and which later will come to Walmart.

The 2024 phone's biggest improvement will likely be its 30-watt wired charging, which is a substantial boost over the 20W speed of last year's model, along with the addition of 15W wireless charging that's also available on the $300 Moto G Power 5G. That charging speed will power up its 5,000-mAh battery, which is the same as last year.

The phone's getting a slightly bigger display over its predecessor, featuring a 6.7-inch screen at a 2,400x1,080p resolution. Like last year's phone, the Stylus will run at a smooth 120Hz refresh rate for animations and scrolling.

Motorola also touts improvements to the built-in stylus, including reduced latency and a refreshed stylus menu for accessing features that take advantage of it. This customizable menu will pop up after pushing the stylus out of the phone, which is a shortcut we've seen on other stylus-equipped phones.

Moto G Stylus 5G in Scarlet Wave.

The phone's rear camera system includes a 50-megapixel main lens along with a 13-megapixel ultrawide lens. The front of the phone has a 32-megapixel selfie camera.

Like other Moto G phones releasing this year, the Stylus 5G will get the grippy vegan leather back coating and come in Caramel Latte and Scarlet Wave colors. Storage and memory will vary depending on whether one is purchasing the unlocked model or the carrier models coming later, but Motorola says the Stylus 5G will include up to 256GB of storage and 8GB of memory. Its RAM Boost feature can use some of the storage to simulate an additional 8GB of memory, and its microSD card slot supports up to 2TB of expandable storage.

Despite all of these changes, the Stylus 5G will actually retain the same processor as last year's model, running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 (which launched in late 2022). The processor should still handle most tasks, but repeating it might be one way that the phone is able to improve some of these specs while retaining its price.

Read more: Best Phone Under $500 for 2024: Great Features at Lower Prices

The bottom of the Moto G Stylus 5G which features the built-in stylus.

Software and security updates remain a concern with the Moto G Stylus 5G, particularly at the $400 price point. While Motorola's entire Moto G line gets one major software update and three years of security updates, the $400 Samsung Galaxy A35 5G is getting four years of major software updates and five years of security updates. As phone makers continue to increase these commitments for value-priced phones, which include the seven years of support coming to the $499 Google Pixel 8A, it's notable that Motorola's kept steady on this shorter one.

But on the other hand, it has been refreshing to see Motorola continue to try out new materials for its phones, which even include a wood option to the internationally targeted Motorola Edge 50 Ultra.