Motorola One 5G Ace | 2021 | 2-Day battery | Unlocked | Made for US by Motorola | 6/128GB | 48MP Camera | Hazy Silver
List Price: $399.99 Details
With Deal: $299.99
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Style: Motorola One 5G Ace
Model Name: Motorola One 5G (2021)
Wireless Carrier: Unlocked
Brand: Motorola
Form Factor: Bar
Memory Storage Capacity: 128 GB
Operating System: Android 10.0
Color: Silver
Cellular Technology: 5G
Year: 2021
Included: User Guide, Phone, 10 W USB Wall Charger, USB Type- C Cable, SIM
Components: Tool
About this item
Unlocked for the freedom to choose your carrier. Compatible with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon networks. Sim card not included. Customers may need to contact Sprint for activation on Sprint’s network. To use this Device on Verizon, first, provision your SIM through Verizon Wireless. Log in to your account on Verizon Wireless. Devices - activate or switch devices - activate.
Superfast 5G speed. Download your favorite movies in seconds, feel like you’re right there in video chats, and play games without lag time.
Over 2 days of battery life. Work and play to your heart’s content without worrying about recharging thanks to a 5000 mAh battery.
6 GB RAM Memory. Keep multiple apps open at once and move effortlessly between them with 6 GB of LPDDR4 RAM.
6.7" Full HD, Max Vision display. Watch your favorite movies and games come to life in sharp contrast and vivid, true-to-life color.
48 MP triple camera system with AI. Capture sharper low-light photos, vivid nighttime pictures, ultra-wide angle shots, and incredibly detailed close-ups.
Enhanced gaming with the latest processor. Immerse yourself deeper in epic games with faster performance from Qualcomm.
ABOUT MOTOROLA ONE 5G ACE 2021
The Motorola One 5G Ace is a $299.99 phone that does a somewhat convincing impression of a more expensive phone. It’s large, which feels like a flagship kind of thing, even if that’s not strictly true. It’s relatively heavy, which, in keeping with the wisdom of Jurassic Park’s unluckiest lawyer, means it’s probably expensive. It’s shiny. I held it up for a friend to look at it from six feet away, and he described it as “sleek, like an old iPhone.” And of course, there’s 5G, which was (until somewhat recently) reserved for premium devices.
It makes a great first impression, but once you look closer, you start to see where it lacks the polish of a high midrange or flagship phone. Its processor stumbles with heavy tasks, that big screen lacks the resolution or faster refresh rate commonly found on high-end devices, and its cameras can’t compete with the best. As is so often the case, you get what you pay for.
Though $299.99 is affordable by 5G phone standards, it’s still more expensive than quite good non-5G alternatives. The Ace is one or two hundred dollars more than other capable budget options — some of which even offer 5G, too. The question, as always, is what compromises did Motorola make to offer this phone at $299.99, and are those acceptable trade-offs for someone considering it?
The One 5G Ace features a generous 6.7-inch screen. Depending on how you feel about big phones, that might be one of this device’s best selling points. Battery is another strength: the Ace is equipped with a 5,000mAh battery (likely a contributor to its big size), which is head and shoulders above the 4,000 or 4,500mAh capacity typical in budget and midrange phones.
The Ace is a large phone that makes itself known; you won’t forget it’s in your pocket, for example. It’s a hair taller and wider than the Galaxy S21 Ultra and 1mm thicker. It’s on the heavier side, too, at 212g, probably owing to the battery. I found its size a little awkward. It feels like a strain to reach my thumb across the screen with the phone in one hand. I also fumbled it a couple of times, picking it up too quickly and forgetting how much it weighs. This is very likely a Me Problem, though; my husband thinks it’s comfortable to hold one-handed.
The screen is a 1080 x 2400 LCD panel with a standard 60Hz refresh rate. It’s bright and viewable even in direct sunlight, but it lacks the nice contrast of OLED. Viewing it from slightly off angles results in a loss of contrast and slight color shift. Its resolution is stretched a bit thin on a screen this size, and if you’ve had higher-resolution phones before, you will probably notice it doesn’t look quite as crisp.
Likewise with refresh rate: quick scrolling motions and animations are just a little choppy, particularly if you’ve used a 90Hz or 120Hz screen. If you aren’t switching from a phone with better resolution or a faster refresh rate, you won’t feel like you’re missing out on anything, and you’ll probably just appreciate what is a very large, pleasant-to-use screen.
With moderate use, I generally got two days out of the Ace’s huge battery. Gaming or watching a lot of videos would cut that down, but it’s hard to imagine a real-world scenario where you wouldn’t get at least a day and then some on a full charge. A 15W fast-ish charger is included in the box.
The Ace uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G 5G chipset. It had no problem handling my daily scrolling through Twitter and Instagram, and it generally felt pretty snappy cruising through Zillow and starting the camera. It struggles with certain heavier tasks, like using certain JavaScript features on a webpage (image sliders on this site, for example).
The Ace is offered with either 4GB of RAM / 64GB of storage or 6GB of RAM / 128GB storage, both of which are expandable via microSD card. I tested the 6GB of RAM variant. Overall, it feels like an appropriate amount of processing power for a $400 phone. The rear-mounted fingerprint scanner is quick and mask-friendly as a bonus, and the Ace includes a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Then there’s 5G. Worth noting: the Ace supports Sub-6GHz 5G only, which is the more widespread “nationwide” variety. We still have complicated feelings about the state of 5G in the US, but carriers are pouring resources into expanding and improving their existing 5G offerings. In that sense, choosing a phone that supports it now will mean your device is future-proofed for what 5G brings in the next couple of years. Don’t expect a night-and-day difference just yet, though.
You get what you pay for
“You get what you pay for” is an appropriate takeaway here, and I mean that in both a cautionary and a complimentary sense. Despite some resemblance, this isn’t a $1,000 phone, and you won’t get a $1,000 experience. But for $400, you should expect to get a phone that will get you through your day without giving you trouble. It should do the things you need it to do — even some things you want it to do — and it should see you through a couple of years at least.
The One 5G Ace meets all of those requirements, even though it does fall short of good midrange and high-end devices. Though capable, its processor can’t quite hang with the best of them. The camera is a little clumsy. The screen, while plenty big and bright, isn’t going to offer the rich viewing experience of a competing device with an OLED.
For now, the Ace doesn’t have much direct 5G-capable competition for $400, but that will change quickly. If you plan to hang on to your phone for the next couple of years, it does make sense to pick a 5G model now. For a bit more, the $460 Google Pixel 4A 5G offers a superior camera, a nicer screen, and a slightly better processor. Or you could save some money and get the $300 OnePlus Nord N10 5G with a 90Hz screen that’s almost as big and a better camera, though it offers a less powerful processor. If it’s an option, you could wait things out for a few months. More affordable 5G devices are on the way.
I don’t have a problem recommending the Motorola One 5G Ace if — and it’s an important if — a large screen and great battery are priorities for you above all else. But if you think you’ll want a better camera or a nicer screen, it would be best to look elsewhere.