Motorola has proof that you no longer need to spend a fortune to get a really great smartphone

Antonio Villas-Boas

Jul 30, 2015, 20:13 IST

Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider

Motorola released three new smartphones on Tuesday. Two of them will be available in the US, and I've been using one of them, the Moto G, this week.

The new Moto G comes in two variants. The $180 base model has 8GB of storage and only 1GB of RAM, the phone's short-term memory that lets it store often-used apps in the background so you can access them quickly.

I've been using the $220 16GB model with 2GB of RAM.

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As far as I can tell from using the Moto G for the last few days, you'd be hardpressed to do any better for around $200. In fact, it stands up to the flagship devices, which only better the Moto G with screen sharpness, premium design and materials, and camera performance.

Benchmark results will always say that the premium innards of a $600+ flagship phone like the Samsung Galaxy S6 or iPhone 6 are faster than a $200 mid-range phone like the third-generation Moto G. But based on my real-world usage, I'm confident in saying that the Moto G generally works more reliably, and often faster, than the Galaxy S6, which stutters and slows down significantly during normal operation despite its fancy "octo-core" processor.

I'm blown away by how well the $200 Moto G works. I can open and zip around apps and menus with only the rarest performance stutter, and the 5-inch 720p screen is sharp enough for the price point.

The new Moto G's camera isn't as good as the Galaxy S6's, but it's the same 13-megapixel shooter from Google's Nexus 6, which was pretty good. The fact that you're getting the high-end camera from a $600+ device in a $200 device is amazing.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider

The 3rd generation Moto G's camera is from the Nexus 6, and it's pretty good. But you can bet it's the best in the mid-range class.

After Motorola's event on Tuesday, I wrote that I'd never spend $400+ on an Android smartphone, referencing to Motorola's new premium Moto X Style that costs $400, which is a relatively very low pricetag compared to other premium flagships from Samsung, HTC, and LG.

Now, because of the third-generation Moto G, I'm finding it harder to justify even spending more than $200.