Motorola Moto G53 review

Design

The overall look of the Moto G53 can best be described as minimalistic, non-intrusive and dignified. It's the kind of phone that will blend right into any environment. This is partly due to its colorway. The phone can be had in either Ink Blue, Arctic Silver or Pale Pink. All of the colors are very tame.

The Moto G53 strikes a nice balance between a boxy overall look and subtle curvature for in-hand comfort. The middle frame, for instance, is pretty flat along its straights and then curvy around the edges.

While the back of the G53 is flat, it does have a chamfer at the very edges. One that is met by the chamfers on the middle frame, which is kind of a particular look for sure. The camera island looks pretty boxy, too, but it also features rounded corners and a chamfer.

The front of the G53 is almost perfectly flat. However, the display bezels extend down and make for a black "ring" of sorts that goes around the entire device.

Construction-wise, the G53 consists of three distinct parts - the display assembly at the front, a flat back panel and a middle frame sandwiched in between.

Build quality

The phone feels very solid with practically no flex. There is no hollowness to the back side either, which is something you might see on lower-end devices.

The G53 is made with a plastic back and plastic middle frame. The back, however, does a convincing job of imitating frosted glass, while the frame looks just like metal. Both surfaces are pretty easy to keep clean and do not retain a lot of dirt and grease.

The front of the G53 is covered with glass, though we don't officially know exactly what kind and what drop and scratch resistance we can expect from it.

Speaking of resistance, the G53 features a water-resistant design and Motorola's signature nano-coating on the inside. There is no official ingress protection rating, though.

Controls

The Moto G53 has a perfectly standard set and layout of controls. The volume rockers and power button are on the right-hand side of the device. These are well-positioned in terms of height and are easy to reach. However, they don't feel particularly good to press but rather mushy with poor tactile feedback.

The power button actually doubles as a very skinny fingerprint reader. We found it works just fine and is both snappy and reliable. No complaints there.

The left side of the frame houses a single Nano-SIM slot on a tray right next to the dedicated microSD storage slot.

The top side of the G53 just has a single tiny hole for the secondary noise-canceling mic. Also, a Dolby Atmos logo.

Indeed, the G53 has Dolby Atmos support. There is also a stereo speaker setup. We find a single bottom-firing speaker on the bottom of the phone while an amplified earpiece handles the second channel.

Also on the bottom of the phone is a 3.5mm audio jack, the main microphone and a USB Type-C port.

In case you were wondering, there is no notification LED on the Moto G53.

Connectivity

As we mentioned, one of the highlights of the Moto G53 compared to its predecessor is the inclusion of 5G connectivity. It comes courtesy of the X51 5G/LTE modem integrated inside the chipset. It should support theoretical max download speeds of 2.5 Gbps on 5G and up to Cat 15 (800 Mbps) on LTE.

The G53 and its Snapdragon 480+ offer dual-band Wi-Fi ac and Bluetooth 5.1 with LE for local connectivity. There is also GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS support and NFC. Though the latter is market-dependent. There is no FM radio, but there is a 3.5mm audio jack.

The Type-C port on the G53 is only wired for USB 2.0 data connectivity (up to 480 Mbps), but it does have USB Host (OTG) functionality. While Motorola does not advertise its "ready for" platform for the G53, we nevertheless tried, and there is indeed no video output from the Type-C port.

The G53 has a slew of sensors on board. There is an accelerometer and gyroscope combo (BOSCH bmi3x0), a magnetometer and compass combo (MEMSIC mmc56x3x) and a light and proximity sensor combo (AMS AG tmd2755). There is no barometer on board.