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6/10
Open rating explainerInformationWIREDSolid performance. Good battery life with wireless charging support. Has microSD card slot to expand storage, headphone jack, and built-in active stylus.TIREDBase storage slashed to 128 GB. Same processor as 2025 model. Cameras are not competitive. Poor software update policy for a $500 phone.Brand loyalty is big in the world of smartphones, but some people have very specific needs. Maybe a microSD card slot is an absolute must-have, or you want a phone with a built-in stylus. It could be that you live and die by the headphone jack. There's really only one smartphone in the US that delivers on all of those fronts: the Moto G Stylus 2026.
Sadly, like most of its competitors, Motorola has had to jack up prices due to the memory shortage crisis, meaning this budget-to-midrange phone is firmly midrange after a $100 price increase, up from its $400 predecessor. At $500, it's in league with the Google Pixel 10a, Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, and Samsung Galaxy A57. It really should not cost this much, but for some people looking for a very specific mix of features, it might be the only phone worth the money.
Active Stylus
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Photograph: Julian ChokkattuThe big change with the latest entry in Motorola's long-running Moto G Stylus series is that the embedded stylus here is now active rather than passive. That means it supports tilt and pressure in supported apps, but it also requires a rechargeable battery. It's not a problem, though, since you stow the stylus in the phone and it automatically recharges—unless you plan to write notes with it for more than four hours. Like the phone, the stylus is also IP68/69 water-resistant.
There's a button on the stylus, and you can customize what happens with a single or long press. I have it open the toolbar with a single press, where I can choose to quickly annotate the screen or create a new note. A long-press triggers Google's Circle to Search feature, allowing me to circle something on the screen to run a Google Search. The implementation is a little awkward; just pressing and holding the button doesn't do anything. I have to circle something while I press and hold, which opens Circle to Search. Then I have to actually circle the part of the screen I want to search about again. Clunky.
I am not a fan of using a stylus on a smartphone, but it's nice to see these improvements, considering the only other option on the market is Samsung's expensive Galaxy S26 Ultra. Indeed, I was able to tilt and add pressure as I sketched some images. Jotting down a few notes, the Notes app automatically converted my handwriting to text, and it did a great job, though I assume this will depend on your penmanship. You can handwrite in text fields, like in messaging apps or the Google Search widget, though I find it hard to do this comfortably on a phone-sized device. If you love using a stylus, I think you'll enjoy the overall experience.
Despite the price bump, Motorola has cut the base storage from 256 to 128 GB. That's really disappointing, but at least you still have the microSD card slot, which supports up to 1 TB of extra space. Also disappointing is that the chipset and RAM have not changed: the Moto G Stylus 2026 is still powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 and 8 GB of RAM, just like the 2025 model. My benchmark scores came in a smidge lower than the older phone.
Photograph: Julian ChokkattuThis 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. A nice perk: There's wireless charging, so you have two ways to charge it up.
As for the 6.7-inch, 120-Hz AMOLED screen, I haven't had a problem reading it on sunny days, but like the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, Motorola's auto-brightness slider is very sensitive and constantly dims the screen when I don't want it to, so that might be something you'll get miffed by (you can always turn auto-brightness off).
Camera Blur
The camera system is where Moto G phones have always struggled, and now, in perspective with other $500 phones, the Moto G Stylus still doesn't quite measure up. The 50-megapixel main camera—in indoor conditions with decent lighting—struggles to capture a sharp photo of my dog when there's slight movement. (I have a lot of blurry photos.)
When he is staying very still, there's usually another problem, like too-dark shadows or too-bright highlights. Looking at one of my pet pics, the camera tried to keep the room well-exposed, but my pup's eyes are pitch black, and you can't see any detail on his nose—it's just a black void. In these kinds of high-contrast scenes, you'll also notice colors looking a little muted, too. In good lighting, you can snap great results, though the 13-MP ultrawide still struggles with colors; the sky has an unnatural blue tinge. The selfie camera is a decent performer, though, even when I'm backlit.
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The updates to this model just don't justify the $500 price. The Moto G Stylus 2026 looks better than Samsung's midrange offering, with a fun “twill-inspired texture” on the rear, but it lacks the design chops of a Nothing or Google. It doesn't have the metal build of Nothing's phone, nor does it have the camera prowess or software smarts of Google's Pixel 10a. Performance on all of those phones is markedly better, and while Motorola has drastically cut down the amount of bloatware, I still prefer the software experience of its peers.
Worst of all, this phone will only receive two Android OS upgrades and three years of security updates. When the Pixel 10a gets a blanket seven years of updates, Motorola desperately needs to step up its software update policy if it's going to charge this much.
But Motorola phones often see frequent discounts, so this Moto will likely hover around $400, especially during sale events. That makes it a little more palatable, though I was happier recommending its predecessor at its often-discounted $300 price. Still, there aren't many good-performing phones with a microSD slot and headphone jack these days, let alone a stylus. If you really want those features, well, you probably already have the Moto G Stylus in your cart.
$500 at Amazon$500 at Best Buy$500 at Motorola
