Moto G54 (Power edition) review

6.5-inch, 120Hz LCD

Just like its G84 sibling, the G54 Power has a decently large 6.5-inch display. Unlike the G84, however, the G54 Power unfortunately uses an LCD panel instead of an OLED one. That's one of the cost-saving measures Motorola undertook. On a more positive note, at least the resolution is still FullHD+, which translates to 1080 x 2400 pixels or an aspect ratio of 20:9. Density-wise, the math works out to a figure of around 405 ppi. That is perfectly sharp in practice.

One of this particular panel's least impressive aspects is its brightness output. We measured a maximum of 400 nits on the slider. The G54 Power does have some automatic brightness boosting behavior, though it only delivers a small bump up to 489 nits. Neither figure is enough to even approach being comfortable in the sunlight outside.

The G54 Power has some light bleed in its blacks, but not too much. It offers decent overall contrast for an LCD.

Unfortunately, the particular LCD panel on the Moto G54 Power doesn't have very fast pixels, leading to a lot of smearing and ghosting while scrolling. It is particularly noticeable on smaller text and when scrolling slower. There is nothing that can be done about that.

The Moto G54 Power has a total of two color modes - the default saturated mode and the natural mode. Saturated seems to target the DCI-P3 color space but fails to cover it adequately. Still, it exceeds sRGB coverage, though it is not overly accurate against that either.

Display color settings

In natural mode, the Moto G54 Power aims for the sRGB color space and practically nails that with deltaE values of under three and thus low enough for the mode to be considered color-accurate and even good enough for color-sensitive work.

The G54 Power has strong HDR decoder support, including HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG, just missing Dolby Vision. However, the display has no HDR capabilities.

HDR decoding • DRM • Netflix playback capabilities

We are also happy to report that the G54 Power has the highest possible Widevine L1 DRM certification, allowing services like Netflix to offer FullHD stream to saturate the phone's display resolution.

High refresh rate handling

The Moto G54 Power supports a total of four refresh rate modes - 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz and 120Hz. You don't really see 30Hz on a lot of phones these days. In terms of display operating modes in settings, you get to choose between 60Hz, 120Hz and Auto mode. Motorola has a track record of handling high refresh rates in a very straightforward manner. The Moto G54 Power does not break this norm.

Both 60Hz and 120Hz modes act like hard switches. In 120Hz mode, you get a pretty much fixed and constant 120Hz regardless of what is happening on screen and what app is being used, with some per-app exceptions that run at 60Hz.

Display refresh rate settings

Auto mode is quite dynamic and is mainly governed by what is happening on the display. If there is some motion going on, you are likely to get 120Hz or even, on occasion, 90Hz. If there is no motion, then 30Hz is likely what you'll end up with to save energy. Seeing a phone, especially a budget one, drop down to 30Hz is, as we said, uncommon but a welcome sight. Even during video playback in some apps, the display can drop down to 30Hz. The other part of the switching logic is whether you interact with the display. Touching the display will instantly shoot up the refresh rate to 90Hz. Scrolling on top of that gets you to 120Hz temporarily.

High refresh rate gaming turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag on the G54 Power. In 120Hz mode, most of our games did run at 120Hz, but there were some exceptions.

Gaming in 120Hz mode

Things were worse still in auto-refresh rate mode. Most of our test games ended up stuck in 60Hz mode. Thankfully, Motorola's Game interface allows you to manually force a refresh rate on a per-game basis.

Gaming in auto mode

We appreciate the relative simplicity of Motorola's approach to refresh rate handling and how most menus and apps are handled in auto mode. The ability of the G54 Power to lower its refresh rate down to 30Hz is admirable. However, the system is flawed when it comes to gaming and needs some work.

Battery life

The Motorola G54 Power has a massive 6,000 mAh battery on board. It managed a very nice Active Use Score of 13:54 hours in our testing. It's a healthy boost in battery numbers from the G84 with its 5,000 mAh battery to the G54 Power with its 6,000 mAh battery. The Dimensity 7020 appears to be as efficient as the Snapdragon 695 inside the Moto G84.

Charging speed

The Motorola G54 Power is equipped with a 33W PD3.0 and QC3+ capable charger. The phone itself charges using the Quick Charge 3+ standard when connected to a corresponding charger. Motorola advertises a charging rate of around 50% in 33 minutes. Our testing mostly confirmed that number.

In our testing, the Moto G54 Power charged at a reasonable rate. Fifteen minutes on the charger resulted in a charge from zero to 25%. Thirty minutes gave the phone 44% of charge, and filling up the battery completely took 1:23 hours.

Speakers

The Moto G54 Power is equipped with a stereo speaker setup. There is one dedicated bottom-firing speaker and an amplified earpiece that handles the other channel. This is a so-called "hybrid" setup, which is pretty common nowadays. This asymmetrical speaker positioning does harm the balance of the audio output. Even so, the G54 Power manages to produce a surprisingly balanced sound.

The G84 is also pretty loud, managing a "VERY GOOD" loudness score in our testing, even if just barely so. Regarding frequency response, the output of the G54 Power is quite clean. Mids, in particular, like voices, sound good and clear, which is arguably the most important bit. There is even some semblance of bass.

Despite some other feature omissions, the budget Moto G54 Power does have Dolby Atmos on board. You get a full equalizer to play around with and presets, including an automatic "smart" one.

Dolby Atmos and Spatial Sound

The G54 Power also supports Motorola's Spatial Sound technology. It offers virtualized surround sound and actually works pretty well in practice.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.