The newest Moto G is the best phone you can buy for under $300

For the past four years, Lenovo's Moto G line has been something like the platonic ideal of an Android phone: cheap and good enough.

It can never compete with an iPhone on its face, but because it sells for a fraction of the cost of a "flagship" device, it's always easy enough to gloss over its flaws. It has consistently been the most popular Moto phone as a result.

So it goes with the Moto G5 Plus, the latest variant to hit the US. It's up for pre-order on Friday, with a full release coming on March 31. Once again, it meticulously finds the point where good-but-not-great hardware can become strong value at the right price.

Here, that price is either $229 for a model with 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage, or $299 for a model that doubles both of those. I've been using the latter for the past week, and I don't think there is a better pound-for-pound value for less than than $300. Still, it forces you to accept a few clear compromises. Here's what I mean: