It's only IP52 water repellent, so it'll be fine in the rain, but not so much if you drop it in a pool. And there's also no near-field communication sensor, so you can't tap to pay with the Moto G Play. It's not be a dealbreaker, just inconvenient. 

There's a good chance you won't use the camera much, which was the case for me. There's a 16-megapixel main camera joined by a 2-megapixel macro camera and a 2-megapixel depth camera for portrait mode photos. Daytime photos are passable, though the cameras can struggle with high-contrast scenes. Anything in low light will be dark, muddy, and almost unusable. 

Motorola is only promising one OS update for this phone, and considering it launched with 2021's Android 12, that means it'll only be updated to Android 13. Bleh. The good news is this phone will get three years of bimonthly security updates, which is a step up from prior budget Motorola phones. At least your device will be kept up-to-date and secure for that time. 

However, there is a much better solution: Samsung's Galaxy A14 5G. I just switched to this brand-new $200 handset, and it's already a huge improvement over the Moto G Play. It's much speedier, so I'm not frustrated every five minutes using it. There's NFC so I can pay at the deli even if I forget my wallet. There's 5G support so loading webpages doesn't feel as sluggish. It has double the storage (plus a microSD card slot) and will get two OS upgrades and four years of security updates. It's also running the latest Android 13 out of the box. It quite literally trounces everything about the Motorola phone in every way and costs just $30 more.

You can also try and find an older flagship phone for under $200, though it likely won't have as long of a software shelf life as buying a newer device. Or check out our Best Cheap Phones guide for other alternatives. But really, though, switching to the Galaxy A14 5G after a week with the Moto G Play feels like I was stuck somewhere in limbo. Motorola, stop playing around.