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This is the new Moto G Stylus. It's basically the only mid-range phone on the market with a built-in stylus pen. But there's no free lunch. So, did Motorola have to cut something to stay on budget here? Let's take 2026's Moto G Stylus, run it through our gauntlet of tests, and find out. If you're looking for a phone with a stylus, there aren't too many options out there. And the Moto G Stylus is notable for doing so for much cheaper than a Galaxy S26 Ultra. Just like the previous model, this G Stylus is only being released in North American markets. In fact, not a ton has changed since last year. But at least the ingress protection now includes IP69 to handle everything up to heated water jets.
Other upgrades include a slightly larger battery and faster internal storage. Design-wise, the new Moto G Stylus is just like the previous one, down to the same weight and measurements. You get a plastic back covered with a textured polymer that rises to seamlessly cover the cameras. The frame is made of plastic, too. The stylus tucked in the bottom is an active one, which gets charged inside the phone, and it's comfy to hold. It also features a button which you can use to launch shortcuts with. And you can reassign these in settings. And it now has hover support, too. The Moto G Stylus has a 6.7-in OLED display with a high resolution and refresh rate and Gorilla Glass 3 protection. In our testing, we saw that the screen
gets plenty bright. The Moto G Stylus maxed out at over 1,400 nits in automatic mode and nearly 1,900 nits when measuring a smaller portion of the screen. The screen's high refresh rate dials down when the phone idles to as low as 60 Hz to save energy. And while there is support for 10-bit color depth here, the Moto G Stylus doesn't support HDR video playback. Beneath the display is an optical fingerprint scanner, which is quite responsive. Like previous models, this year's Moto G Stylus again has a 3.5-mm jack for headphones. And the phone has a loud set of stereo speakers. They earned an excellent mark
in our loudness test. As for the sound, while highs are good and vocals are okay, there is not much for bass. You can listen for yourself in our comparison tool linked below. The Moto G Stylus 2026 uses UFS 3.1 storage, faster than the UFS 2.2 of last year. And on top of that, the storage is expandable through microSD. The interface of the phone is Android 16 with Moto's proprietary Hello UI on top. It packs plenty of custom Moto features, many of which you can find organized within the Moto app. And the features that involve connecting the phone to a PC, tablet, or display,
either wired or wirelessly, are found within the Smart Connect hub. You actually have the choice of several different AI models here on one device. Of course, there's Google Gemini. But if that doesn't tickle your fancy, there's also Copilot and Perplexity, both pre-installed. Motorola's own Moto AI, which we saw in the Edge series, seems to be missing here, though. Let's get into the stylus-based features. When you remove the stylus from the phone, you get a minimalistic floating menu with several options to choose from. This menu is customizable in settings. Taking notes is easy, and the screen and the stylus are nicely responsive.
Converting the handwritten text to machine text is almost flawless, too. And you can use sketch to image to turn your doodles into AI-generated pictures. Like the previous model, there's not a ton of software support. Motorola promises two major OS updates and 3 years of security patches. Now, we get to the chipset, and it's the main compromise I hinted at the beginning of this video. Motorola hasn't made any changes here.
Just like the previous model, this phone is powered by a Snapdragon 6 Gen 3. Unfortunately, this means that the Moto G Stylus 2026 is a bit outdated when it comes to the chipset performance. In benchmarks, its scores are at the bottom of the charts for its class. This is probably not the phone to choose for heavy gaming, but at least we didn't notice any issues like hiccups or slowdowns in our daily use. And having a rather basic chip means that this phone doesn't run hot, and the Moto G Stylus 2026 aced our prolonged stress tests with hardly any throttling. As I mentioned, there's a larger battery this year, 5,200 mA hours, compared to 5,000 on the previous model. In our battery test, the new Moto did a
considerably better job, earning an overall active use score of over 12 hours. It's nothing to write home about, but at least not lackluster like we experienced last year. There's been no change to the wired charging. It's again rated at 68 W. With a proper Moto adapter, we were able to charge this phone from 0 to 70% in half an hour, and a full charge took 50 minutes. And there's also support for 15-W wireless charging here. The Moto G Stylus 2026 straight-up reuses the camera setup of its predecessor. On the back, this includes a 50-megapixel main camera and a 13-megapixel ultrawide, which has autofocus.
The main cam does pretty well taking photos in good light with pleasing colors and wide dynamic range, but the detail seems a bit less of a priority. Zooming in to two times isn't recommended. There's a lot of sharpening trying to make up for a lack of detail. The main cam's photos turn out just about okay at night. The exposures and dynamic range are good, but there's not a whole lot of detail. With the ultrawide, colors are vibrant and there's plenty of contrast. Not a lot of detail and plenty of sharpening, though. But it is nice to have autofocus in this price bracket.
It allows for shooting macro close-ups as well. Low-light ultrawide shots are soft and gritty. The dynamic range is solid, though. Selfies come out at 8 megapixels, and they're good. They're nicely sharp. Stick around to the end of this video to see the selfie video quality. The Moto G Stylus can record in 4K with all of its cameras, and from the main cam, stabilization is generally very good.
The main cam does well for the class, both in daytime and when shooting at night. And the ultrawide's daylight clips are quite sharp. So, that's the Moto G Stylus 2026. It's available in the US. It's really the only mid-ranger with a stylus, unless you count last year's model. You get a headphone jack and expandable storage, and both the display and the camera experience are solid for the class. However, this is not the most powerful smartphone in this price range, even by a long shot. And there's not a ton of software support promised here. So, in the end, while the Moto G Stylus 2026 is a decent phone, keep in mind
that it might not hold up so well a few years down the line. Thanks for watching, guys. If you want the stylus support for cheaper, you can check out last year's model. And another mid-range alternative is the Samsung Galaxy A57. Let us know what you think down below, and I'll see you on the next one.
