The Moto E (2015) Review
by Brandon Chester on April 21, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Motorola
- Mobile
- Moto E (2015)
Display
In the past few years we've seen a tremendous improvement in the quality of smartphone displays at every single price point. The display was often the first thing to be compromised when building a smartphone to meet a low cost, and the most inexpensive phones could ship with TN panels at resolutions as low as 480x320. But today even inexpensive smartphones like the Moto E have IPS displays and high enough resolutions to render text without overwhelming aliasing.
The 2015 Moto E has a 4.5" 960x540 IPS display, which makes it slightly less sharp than the original Moto E which had the same resolution on a 4.3" panel. However, a display's pixel density is just one of many attributes. To evaluate the various other aspects of the Moto E's display quality we turn to our standard smartphone display tests. As always, measurements are performed with X-Rite's i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer and SpectraCal's CalMAN 5 software, with the exception of contrast measurements which are done with an i1Display Pro colorimeter.
At 402 nits, the Moto E's display actually has a fairly good peak brightness. Black levels are also very good, which leads to a surprisingly high contrast ratio. It should be noted that the Moto E makes use of Content Adaptive Backlight Control (CABC), and dynamic contrast. The actual contrast ratio is closer to 1050:1, which is still a very good result.
Greyscale results from the Moto E are unfortunately nothing exceptional. However, with a price point of $149 they are also not unexpected. The Moto E actually does not fare much worse than Motorola's flagship Moto X. The display's average white point tends toward the red as the blue component of luminance drops off when shades of grey approach white. The warm appearance of whites is definitely noticeable during use, but it's not highly bothersome.
With saturations the Moto E actually performs better than I had expected it to. It's certainly imperfect, especially with blue and any secondary color with blue as a component, but with a price of $149 it surpassed my expectations of how well it would perform. The gamut itself is also larger than what one might expect from a budget IPS display.
In the colorchecker test the Moto E does very well. While it isn't at the level of the most expensive flagships with calibrated displays, it beats out many devices that cost significantly more. The display is surprisingly accurate when displaying color mixtures, with much of the error coming from the issues with reproducing shades of grey.
Overall, the Moto E's display is actually much better than I had expected it to be. While I would really love if it were a 1280x720 panel, it's just not manageable with the price point that Motorola had to meet. Even so, text was still rendered fairly well, and colors were reproduced with much greater accuracy than I expected. If you have reasonable expectations of the Moto E's display when you purchase it, I think you'll find yourself pleasantly surprised.
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Hubb1e - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
While the camera performance is pretty meh, I really don't see how you can complain about 802.11n being a downside. AC wireless is nowhere near ubiquitous and N is surely fast enough for low end users. AC is decidedly a high end feature in phones and even computers these days. Most users of this phone probably still have wireless G in their homes or coffee shop hotspots which I would argue is still plenty of speed for a phone with a low end mobile chipset.hans_ober - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Yeah, it makes more sense to upgrade the cameras to 8MP/2MP than to switch to 802.11ac.Olaf van der Spek - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
The E makes the much more expensive but slower G seem a bit expensive. Is Moto planning a new G?Cryio - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
"It wasn't that long ago that I recommended buyers looking for inexpensive smartphones avoid Android devices in favor of Windows Phone."" With Android Lollipop and new budget devices like the Moto E, my opinion about the quality of low end Android devices has changed."
While all these may be true, the Lumia 640 is a true challenger. There are still reaasons to recommend the 640 over this.
sprockkets - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Problem is what is the price, and two, it's a 5 inch phone. It was made to compete with the Moto G, not the Moto E.Currently I find WP to be great at first, but after a few days of trying again WP with the Lumia 635, it just flat out tries to annoy me. Today's annoyance is opening up the weather app goes to the store telling me there is a pending update. Then it disappears to the home screen. Before that when I told it to update all apps, it updates 16 out of 26. Why does the next 10 have to have me tell it again to download and install?
After the update it took two tries to open the weather app as it keeps crashing to the home screen.
The camera on it works good for pictures, but is utterly useless at night for video. Why can't they allow exp control for video?
Also learned they won't issue GDR1 or 2 updates for WP8.1 since it will go to WP10. Too bad the latest build is a buggy mess.
BMNify - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
You seem to have a defective Lumia 635, get it replaced, never seen or used such a buggy Lumia, Even the old and humble Lumia 520 performs much better than what you describe.Kakti - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
I bought this phone about two weeks ago from Best Buy - it's $79.99 for the Verizon one with NO contract. Not $120, not $150. $80 bucks. I can buy six of these for the same price as a new galaxy.The size of the phone is perfect, the screen is very nice, and due to the low resolution (compared to flagship phones), the battery actually lasts a really long time. Charging is fast and mine did come with a charger.
I've already recommended this phone to several family members and friends who are sick of 2 year contracts, gigantic phones that don't fit in your pocket, etc. Yes the camera sucks, no it doesn't beat a flagship in bench tests. But I don't run benchmarks, I have maybe 5-6 apps open at once and it has never slowed down or locked up on me.
Honestly if you're looking to save money and not have a laptop jammed into your pocket, take a look at this. The only reason I didn't get the Moto E last year was it didn't have 4G and we don't know how long until the 2015 Moto G comes out. 80 bucks no contract is pretty hard to beat.
BMNify - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
No contract does not mean Unlocked, it is still a Verizon locked phone and that is why you are getting for a lower price. As long as people keep buying locked phones from Carriers they cannot and should not complain about software updates. You become a carrier slave and slaves don't ask.sonicmerlin - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
If it runs on Verizon's LTE then it comes unlocked.RealTheXev - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link
I'm pretty sure all Verizon phones on LTE come unlocked. It sucks because some bands that it would normally access will probably require hacking (whenever that might happen), but all of my Verizon LTE phones are unlocked by default.