Moto G54 (Power edition) review

A dual camera setup with a bit of extra versatility

The Moto G54 Power has a familiar primary camera setup. It is rocking a primary 50MP camera plus an 8MP ultrawide with autofocus capabilities, thus capable of shooting macros. On the front, there's a 16MP fixed-focus selfie.

Digging a bit deeper into specs, we found that the main 50MP camera on the Moto G54 Power uses an OmniVision OV50D sensor. It's a 1/2.88" sensor with 0.612 µm individual pixels and 4-cell binning for an equivalent pixel size of 1.22 µm. The OV50D also has type 2 2x2 ML phase detection autofocus. The sensor sits behind an f/1.8 lens, and the camera has OIS.

The 8MP ultrawide camera uses a Samsung sensor - an ISOCELL S5K4H7AF. The last "AF" part denotes that it is equipped with autofocus, which, as already mentioned, is one of the party tricks of the G54 Power. The sensor in question has a 1/4" size with 1.12 µm individual pixels. It sits behind an f/2.2 lens. This is a pretty familiar ultrawide setup also found on other Moto devices like the G84.

Finally, we have the 16MP selfie cam. It is based on the SK Hynix hi1634q sensor. It is a 1/3" sensor with 1.0µm pixels and a Quad-Bayer filter. It sits behind an f/2.4 lens.

Camera app

The camera app on the G54 Power is developed in-house, in contrast to the otherwise stock-looking approach to software.

The basics are as usual - the camera modes are arranged in a customizable carousel formation, with the 'More' tab at the rightmost end of the carousel holding the more seldom-used shooting modes.

Pro mode gives you full control over the camera's settings like white balance, ISO, focus, shutter speed, and exposure compensation, and it works on all cameras - both rear ones and the selfie camera (minus the manual focusing). A tiny live histogram is provided, but there's no focus peaking or zebras.

Additional settings for each camera mode can be found by swiping down in the viewfinder. There's a tiny bar at the far end to indicate that, but if you miss it, you may be left wondering where some controls are, like the self-timer settings in Photo mode.

Camera app

The gear icon for the general settings menu houses even more settings, though there needs to be a more straightforward separation of what you're going to find where. For example, unlike the G84, which has its full resolution main camera mode as a separate camera mode, on the G54 Power, that setting is buried in the settings menu alongside the full resolution mode for the selfie camera.

One new addition to the G54 Power includes two photo color modes - Natural and Auto Enhanced. We'll talk more about them in a bit.

Daylight photo quality

As expected, the main camera on the Motorola G54 Power captures 12.5MP stills by default. These look nice overall, but nothing to phone home about. There is plenty of resolved detail, and everything looks nice and sharp.

Perhaps even overly sharp since there is clearly a lot of artificial sharpening applied to the frame. Contrast is cranked way too high for our taste, which also results in a very overprocessed look. Dynamic range could be a bit better, too. Shadows, in particular, are frequently crushed.

Motorola G54 Power: 12.5MP main camera samples

As already mentioned, the Moto G54 Power has two app-level color modes to choose from. There is the default "Natural" mode, and then there is "Auto Enhanced". Even in "Natural" mode, the G54 Power produces rather saturated and vibrant colors that are not representative of the real world. That being said, it's a look that appeals to many. "Auto Enhance" doesn't really do much to the colors on the primary camera, but it does seemingly add a bit more saturation still.

Motorola G54 Power: 12.5MP main camera samples, Enhanced colors

You can make the main camera capture in its full 50MP resolution. The setting is, unfortunately, buried in the settings menu and not easily accessible through the main camera UI.

These 50MP images don't offer more detail or any other obvious benefits compared to the regular 12.5MP ones. We would advise sticking to the default 12.5MP setting and saving some space instead.

Motorola G54 Power: 50MP main camera samples

Here's how the main camera compares to the competition in our extensive camera compare database at both 12.5MP and 50MP. Pixel-peep away.

Motorola G54 Power against the Motorola G84 and the Samsung Galaxy A24 4G in our Photo compare tool

50MP: Motorola G54 Power against the Motorola G84 and the Samsung Galaxy A24 4G in our Photo compare tool

The G54 Power can capture portraits with its main camera. These look decent, with nice subject detection, separation, and convincing background blur.

Motorola G54 Power: 12.5MP main camera samples

Motorola G54 Power: 12.5MP main camera portrait samples

Portrait mode also works fine on non-human subjects, but getting the focus and subject detection to cooperate and trigger properly is a bit more fiddly. It is still doable, though.

Motorola G54 Power: 12.5MP main camera portrait samples

There is no dedicated telephoto camera on the Moto G54 Power and no 2x toggle on the camera interface, which leads us to believe that Motorola doesn't trust the zoom capabilities of the main camera all that much.

Moving on to the 8MP ultrawide, you can get some pretty decent regular shots from it, at least as far as ultrawide expectations go. The autofocus rarely misbehaved in our testing, which is great to see. The frame has a reasonable amount of detail. Contrast and dynamic range aren't bad.

Motorola G54 Power: 8MP ultrawide camera samples

Noise and softness are somewhat unavoidable with these shots, especially near the edges of the frame. Colors look pretty good but aren't what we would call "true-to-life", nor are they particularly well-matched to the main camera. We tried the default "Natural" color mode and "Auto Enhanced," honestly, we almost can't tell the difference so much that we are even wondering whether the toggle does anything at all.

Motorola G54 Power: 8MP ultrawide camera samples, Enhanced colors

The real party trick on the ultrawide camera, however, is the macro shots it can pull off thanks to the inclusion of autofocus. This works great, and the shots themselves are pretty impressive all around.

Motorola G54 Power: 8MP ultrawide camera macro samples

The 16MP selfie camera does a solid all-around job. There is plenty of detail. Skin texture comes through well. Skin tones and colors in general, are a bit oversaturated here, too, but nothing too dramatic.

Motorola G54 Power: 4MP selfie camera samples

"Auto Enhanced" color mode doesn't seem to do much for the selfies. We did still give it a try, though.

Motorola G54 Power: 4MP selfie camera samples, Enhanced colors

By default, the selfie camera captures 4MP stills. You can, however, set its resolution to 16MP if you wish. We didn't notice any major difference between the two, so unless you explicitly need the extra resolution, you might as well save some space and go with 4MP selfies.

Motorola G54 Power: 16MP selfie camera samples

Selfie portraits look great as well. Subject detection and separation work surprisingly well, and the quality of the background blur is excellent. Besides that, you get the same great detail in facial features.

Motorola G54 Power: 4MP selfie camera portrait samples

Video capture quality

Video capture on the Moto G54 Power is a bit of a mixed bag. This is one area in which the Dimensity 7020 chipset choice really hurts the phone since it limits capture resolution to 1080p. That's a real shame since, other than that, Motorola offers a versatile set of video-capturing options.

Video can be recorded from every camera on the phone, including the ultrawide, in a special macro mode. You also get the option of using EIS in every video capture scenario. On top of that, there is an h.265 (HEVC) option in settings, which can be applied to any of the cameras.

By default, the video gets captured in h.264 (AVC) format with a video stream of around 20 Mbps plus stereo 48 kHz AAC audio, wrapped inside an MP4 container. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Quality-wise, the main camera does alright, given the resolution limitations. There is a decent amount of detail for FullHD. Colors are looking good too.

However, there is plenty of noise and shimmering throughout the frame, particularly in finer detail. Dynamic range isn't particularly wide, with both crushed shadows and clipped highlights.

Here's how the Moto G54 Power stacks up against the competition in our extensive video compare database.

Motorola G54 Power against the Motorola G84 and the Samsung Galaxy A24 4G in our Video compare tool

The ultrawide camera also captures decent 1080p video. Detail is good enough for this sort of camera. There is no excessive focus hunting, just a small bit, which is great to see. Colors look good and are surprisingly well-matched with the main camera.

Dynamic range is expectedly rather narrow, and there is some visible noise and shimmering. Nothing too excessive, though.

The selfie camera captures relatively impressive 1080p videos in its own right. There is plenty of detail, and facial features and tones come out looking fine. Contrast is a bit high, but that tends to help the overall look of the video, in our opinion.

These videos do look very shaky and jittery when in motion, though. Thankfully, the Moto G54 Power offers electronic image stabilization on all of its cameras at their full 1080p resolution. It generally works great to smooth out shakes and bumps rather nicely.

It does, however, crop away quite a bit of the frame in the process. Worse still, using EIS on both the main and ultrawide cameras seems to cause the autofocus to misbehave and hunt aggressively. That kind of renders EIS a bit unusable in our view.

Low-light camera quality

The main camera on the Moto G54 Power does quite alright in low-light conditions, especially for a budget device. There is plenty of detail in the frame, even in darker areas. Highlights are well developed, too, with well-contained highlights and light sources. Colors are on the warmer side, but not too bad at all.

Motorola G54 Power: 12.5MP main camera low-light samples

The Moto G54 Power has a night mode, called "Night vision." Using it brightens up the photos noticeably and brings out more detail in the darker areas. Colors look more natural with this mode on as well.

Motorola G54 Power: 12.5MP main camera Night vision samples

Unfortunately, Night vision shots are pretty slow to capture and take a good few seconds. Also, the mode only works on the main camera - not the ultrawide or the selfie.

And the ultrawide camera could have really used some extra help. The photos it captures are pretty soft overall, especially on uniform surfaces. Light sources are quite blown out as well.

Motorola G54 Power: 8MP ultrawide camera low-light samples

Still, for a budget ultrawide, Motorola could have definitely done worse.

The selfie camera produces alright shots in its own right. Some skin texture gets captured, and skin tones are quite natural.

Motorola G54 Power: 4MP selfie camera low-light samples

There is plenty of noise throughout the frame, but these photos are still perfectly usable. The Moto G54 has a screen flash feature to help with low-light selfies.

Low-light video from the main camera is decent but largely unimpressive. The 1080p resolution limit does not allow too much detail to come through. While colors generally look good and noise is kept low, light sources are noticeably blown out.

The ultrawide camera is largely unimpressive for low-light video capture. These clips are soft and dark and also a bit noisy. The biggest issue, however, is that the ultrawide focus hunts constantly.