Motorola Moto G100 review

64MP primary cam and 16MP ultrawide, somewhat odd app

The Moto G30's reign as the best camera system on a Moto G phone was short-lived - the G100's one-ups it. The 64MP main camera is joined by a 16MP autofocusing ultrawide, the two aided in their AF efforts by a ToF laser. A 2MP 'depth' camera is also present.

The main camera uses a 64MP OmniVision sensor with a 4-cell color filter array, OV's name for what Sony calls Quad Bayer and Samsung - Tetrapixel. It's a 1/2" imager with 0.7µm pixels. In front of it is an f/1.7 aperture lens of unspecified equivalent focal length that we're estimating at 25mm.

The ultrawide camera is based on another OV sensor, this one 16MP in resolution. It's 1/3.06" in overall size, with 1.0µm pixels. The lens has an f/2.2 aperture and covers a field of view of 117 degrees as per Motorola's specifications, though our experience strongly suggests that it's not as wide.

Perhaps what's most important about the ultrawide camera, however, is that it has autofocus and can shoot close-ups. For that particular task, it has a ring flash around the lens so that you can light up those nearby subjects.

Details on the ToF laser and the 2MP depth camera are scant, however.

The front-facing camera setup is better than usual as you're getting two separate modules. The 'primary' one has a 16MP 4-cell sensor and a 28mm equivalent focal length lens (f/2.2 aperture). Then there's the secondary, ultrawide-ish camera with a 20mm equivalent focal length lens (f/2.4 aperture) and an 8MP sensor.

The Motorola camera has its fair share of idiosyncrasies. One of those is the resolution handling though the G100 is somewhat okay in this respect because both its main camera and its ultrawide shot in 16MP by default, so the 16MP (Recommended) setting works for both. Still, there's an 11MP setting which seems arbitrary. Meanwhile, the actual 64MP full-res mode is in the extra modes pane.

There's more. This may sound like nitpicking, but the camera modes have been moved below the shutter key, so your thumb naturally falls on the camera modes instead of the shutter. Almost all, if not all, camera apps from other brands have the shutter key below the camera mode carousel. On a positive note, you can add modes to the carousel by holding an icon and dragging it to the spot you'd like.

One of the helpful unusual bits about the Moto camera app is that additional camera settings can be adjusted by pulling upwards from the shutter key, opening up a menu that lets you tinker with some of the options. The general settings menu is in its usual place - the gear icon in the viewfinder's upper-right corner.

There's a Pro mode, and we have some praise here, too - it gives you access to both the main and ultra camera, which is not all that common. Here, you can adjust ISO, shutter speed, exposure compensation, and white balance, as well as focus manually. The live histogram is appreciated too, tiny as it may be.

Camera UI

Daylight image quality

The images from the Moto G100's main camera are very sharp and detailed and with a relatively natural rendition of random textures. There's a certain level of grain in areas of solid color, but it's fine and unobtrusive. White balance is consistently accurate, and colors are just the right bit livelier than in real life. Perhaps the one area we'd like to see improvement in is dynamic range as the extremes can be rendered a bit harsh - we saw more clopped highlights and deeper shadows than we'd like.

Daylight samples, main cam, 16MP

The 64MP Ultra-res mode offers an improvement in resolved detail that ranges between minor and insignificant. Oddly enough, these have a slightly wider dynamic range.

Daylight samples, main cam, 64MP

It gets even stranger, in a good way, when we look at 2x zoom samples. These are very sharp, sharper than simple crops from 64MP shots. We're not as excited about their relatively dulled-down colors and slight underexposure, but not so much as to consider them dealbreakers. Overall, it's a really nice replacement for a dedicated short tele, to the point where we won't be mentioning it in the cons list at the end.

Daylight samples, main cam (2x zoom)

The ultrawide camera's images are good when shooting distant subjects - they're okay in terms of sharpness as ultrawide cameras go, and there's the same fine grain that doesn't get in the way. Colors are closely matched to the main cam's reproduction, perhaps ever so slightly lower in saturation. On the other hand, dynamic range is notably narrower, though that's again a common theme with ultrawide across the entire spectrum from cheap to expensive.

Distortion is very well corrected, likely a lot of it in software, but there's no way to disable the correction. It's the correction that's likely related to the somewhat narrower coverage than we expected from a camera advertised as having a 117-degree FoV - it's ultrawide alright; it's just the ultrawidest.

Daylight samples, ultrawide cam

Close-ups

Among that module's greatest virtues is its ability to autofocus, thus doubling as a close-up camera. It's a separate mode in the viewfinder, which introduces a crop - to the same coverage level as the main cam. The resulting images are still 16MP in resolution, so there's some upscaling action as well, meaning ultimate pixel-level detail isn't the greatest. But there's still heaps of it.

Close-up samples

The ring light really helps in darker environments providing much-needed illumination and improving detail and clarity. The light can still be a little harsh, though; perhaps some tweaking of the intensity could help. Sadly, no such option is at your disposal, not even in Pro mode (where close-up mode is also available).

Close-up samples

Here are a few more samples with the ring light on.

Close-up samples

Low-light image quality

In low light, the Moto G100's main cam photos are okay but not great. Dynamic range is relatively narrow, so you're guaranteed to have light sources blown out while shadows remain too dark and with indistinguishable detail.

Low-light samples, main cam

Night mode improves things quite a bit. It keeps the highlights in check, making a dramatic difference in areas lit by floodlights. There isn't as pronounced an effect on the deep shadows, and those remain too dark for our liking. There's a moderate boost in brightness in the mid-tones in some scenes, bringing out more detail there, but that wasn't consistent in all the scenes we shot.

Low-light samples, main cam, Night mode

Somewhat predictably, the ultrawide camera handled darkness poorly, putting out soft images with limited detail and dynamic range. There's no Night mode here to help out either.

Low-light samples, ultrawide cam

Once you're done with the real-world samples, head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the Motorola Moto G100 stacks up against the competition.

Motorola Moto G100 against the Galaxy S20 FE and the OnePlus 8 in our Photo compare tool

Portrait mode

Portrait mode on the Moto G100 comes with competent subject detection - as long as you don't have messy hair against a wood paneling background. The default blur level is a bit conservative; we bumped it up a little for these samples. It's nothing new, but as light levels drop, even by a little, image quality drops significantly.

Portrait mode samples

Selfies

The 16MP main selfie camera of the Moto G100 shoots in 4MP by default - it's a 4-cell (Quad Bayer) sensor behind it. 4MP is unusually low by today's standards, though some could say it's perfectly enough for your mug. Selfies have average dynamic range but are exposed well for your face and have pleasing skin tones and colors in general.

Selfie samples, main camera, 4MP

In full-res 16MP mode, the image has this upscaled and heavily sharpened but ultimately not very detailed look we all know and love. Well, not really. Perhaps a seemingly illogical (given the hardware) mid-way approach around the 8MP resultant resolution would have, in fact, been most sensible.

Selfie samples, main camera, 16MP

Selfie portraits will get you a blurry background, with a notably more liberal amount of blur applied by default than on the rear camera. The border regions aren't super well defined, and it's more of a halo there than a roll-off from subject to background.

Selfie portraits, main camera, 4MP

The Moto G100 also lets you take 16MP selfie portraits. It's basically a simple sum of the results above.

Selfie portraits, main camera, 16MP

The photos from the ultrawide selfie camera are notably softer if you stare from up close and there's a red tint added to skin tones. However, this one is more about coverage and adding context to your selfies, so we wouldn't be too harsh on it.

Selfie samples, ultrawide camera

It's just slightly counterintuitive that the Moto G100 lets you blur that context by offering portrait mode for the ultrawide camera. Having the option is appreciated, of course, and it works reasonably well. There's the one caveat that there's no HDR, so backlit scenes will end up with blown highlights as the phone rightfully prioritizes for your face.

Selfie portraits, ultrawide camera

Video recording

The Moto G100 can record video up to 6K at 30fps with its main camera (with a significant crop), and also 4K30 and 4K60. The ultrawide is somewhat artificially capped at 1080p/30fps for ultrawide purposes but can record at 4K30 when you go into the macro mode; only in that mode it's got the coverage of the main cam.

You get to choose between h.265 and h.264 codecs, with the more efficient h.265 selected by default. Stabilization is available on the main camera in 4K, both at 30fps and 60fps, but not in 6K, as well as on the ultra-wide.

6K footage (55Mbps bit rate in h.265) is nicely detailed but has this very distracting mesh effect, the cause of which we can only speculate on. We reckon that makes it unusable, detailed as it may be.

Since YouTube might not be too helpful in illustrating our point, here's a frame grab from the G100's 6K clip. Check out the sky in the top corners, for the most pronounced effect.

Frame grab from 6K clip (click for full size)

4K footage (42Mbps bit rate in h.265) doesn't suffer from that, thankfully. There's a lot of detail and next to no noise, while sharpening is reasonable, though not strictly conservative. Dynamic range is rather narrow; however, that bit we don't like.

The ultrawide's 1080p 30fps capture (13Mbps, h.264 only) comes with an even narrower dynamic range and strong warm color cast. It is sharp, detailed, and noise-free, so it has its merits.

Stabilization is excellent in 4K30 on the main camera. Walking-induced shake is competently removed, though if you stomp the ground particularly hard, it will make it to the video. Pans have no abrupt transitions at the beginning or the end, while pointing the phone in one direction results in very steady footage.

The above mostly holds true for the ultrawide's stabilization, only that one is more prone to wobble coming from the focus mechanism as it tries to adjust to the changing scene while walking. Not bad, but not perfect either.

Here's a glimpse of how the Motorola Moto G100 compares to rivals in our Video compare tool. Head over there for the complete picture.

Motorola Moto G100 against the Galaxy S20 FE and the OnePlus 8 in our Video compare tool