The Ace offers a large screen and massive battery, but it falls short in some key areas.

The Motorola One 5G Ace is a $399.99 phone that does a ufabet 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 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 $400 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 $400, and are those acceptable trade-offs for someone considering it?

MOTOROLA ONE 5G ACE HARDWARE

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.