We are often asked to recommend equipment to our customers and I’m keen that we don’t fall into the trap of pushing the ‘latest thing’ just because it’s new. Often the newest model is out of the customer’s price range and has way more bells and whistles than they need anyway.

Not so the Motorola Moto G. It’s not quite the latest thing – it’s been around for 4 months now – but it is consistently written up as being the best budget smartphone (under £200) on the market. Having spent the last month listening to my teenage sons reviewing and debating the relative merits of virtually every smartphone out there, it strikes me that if you want a smartphone (and you’re not wedded to Apple) there’s little reason to buy anything more expensive than this one.

Both boys are now the proud owners of a shiny new Moto G, so I asked them to give me the highlights:

1. Great price – it’s about £135 for the basic model (although some stores are currently offering it for £100) and even if you choose the 16GB version so that you can store more music, photos or just more apps, you still only pay £158.

2. Great screen – it’s a 4.5″ screen, which is bigger than my iPhone 4, with a resolution of 720p; if that is just Greek to you, it means the image quality is excellent, contrast is good and small text is easy to read. Also, I’ve just been told, the viewing angle is amazing.

3. Fast processing – the Moto G has a ‘quad core processor’ – this essentially means that loading speeds are really fast and the phone can perform lots of tasks at once. For example (says my son) you could make a call whilst sending an email, or watch You Tube while sending a text – if you were so inclined.

4. It runs the latest version of Android – Kit Kat – which has the clever, hands-free feature of voice search, amongst many others.

Apparently the only downside is that the camera isn’t brilliant – only 5 megapixels, as compared to the 8 MP camera in the iPhone 5 and 13MP in the Samsung Galaxy S4. But for most of us, the picture quality is perfectly adequate – particularly if you’re just using it to post pictures to Facebook – or your blog. Don’t forget it was only 5 or 6 years ago that the iPhone had a 2MP camera, and that was just fine.

In previous posts I have said you get what you pay for, but in the case of this smartphone, you definitely get a lot more than that.