GoKawiilMotorola Moto G Stylus (2026) The Moto G Stylus 2026 comes in at $500, a $100 increase from the 2025 model. For the extra $100, Motorola throws in an active stylus with new functionality and a slightly better screen. It's an obvious pick for folks who want a stylus, microSD card slot, and 3.5mm headphone jack, but if those features aren't essential to you, you'll probably want to look elsewhere.
Everything’s getting more expensive lately, and a perfect storm of supply chain disruptions has hit electronics especially hard — from budget models to flagships, smartphone prices have been creeping up this year. Case in point: Motorola’s latest Moto G Stylus. The 2026 model starts at $499, a $100 increase over the pretty darn good 2025 edition.
For your extra $100, you’ll get a new active stylus, along with a handful of other minor improvements. But with the same chipset, RAM, cameras, and design language as the 2025 model (along with some other annoyances), I don’t think the Moto G Stylus (2026) ($499.99 at Amazon) does enough to justify the higher price tag.
What’s actually new here?
Taylor Kerns / Android Authority
Where last year’s Moto G Stylus came with a passive stylus, this year’s phone gets an active stylus that can do quite a bit more. It can detect pressure and tilt, which should make taking notes or sketching feel more natural compared to the previous version. The 2026 Moto G Stylus also features palm rejection when using the stylus — a big get compared to its predecessor. The new stylus is a bit thicker, too.
My favorite stylus feature is the ability to jot down quick notes. You can pop the Moto G Stylus’s pen out and start writing immediately, without opening any apps or even unlocking the phone. It’s not a unique feature to the G Stylus line, but it works well here. The new palm rejection is great when I’m jotting down a quick to-do, and newly added pressure sensitivity does make for some nice sensorial feedback.
You can configure a long-press on the stylus’s button to do a few things: take a screenshot to mark up, open a new note, magnify an area of the display, or open Circle to Search.
Taylor Kerns / Android Authority
Circle to Search integration piqued my interest, but it feels a little clunky in practice. To activate the feature, you have to hold the stylus near the screen, press and hold its button, and wait a beat for the Circle to Search interface to appear before highlighting the content you want more info about, all of which takes longer and felt less natural than just activating Circle to Search with my finger. (I ended up assigning the button to open a new note.)
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