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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
90 Comments
View All Comments
Kakti - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Don't all companies have to unlock phones these days once you're not in a contract though? I personally use the month to month for $45, but figured if they ever scrapped it or raised the price I'd move to an MVNO.Also, I recently received a MS Nokia Lumia 635 from my work - that's another real nice cheap phone IMO. Was originally going to get one for my personal but went with the Moto E when I saw the price. Everyone complains about it at work (they all use Iphones) but I think it's great for what its intended purpose is i.e. make calls, read emails, read news, weather, etc. I dunno maybe I'm just getting old (get off my lawn) but the prices and specs of top end phones these days are so overkill. Having a 2560p 6.5" screen and then needing a 300g battery to power it? No thanks....
RealTheXev - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link
Several people on XDA forums have been able to contact Verizon and get the phone added to their postpay plan. I would have gone that route myself if I could have unlocked the bootloader (but you can't with Moto's tools).All Verizon LTE phones should come unlocked, but I have no other carriers to try my mothers Moto E on (that would get reception no less).
Gunbuster - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Would be nice to see a review of the new BLU Win JR LTESamus - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Super nice phone for $150. Probably the only android phone id recommend to people like my parents.grant3 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Does this phone respond to 3-button android headset controls?What is the sound quality on music playback?
I'm disappointed that so much effort and detail was put into analyzing the display/software/etc. but there is nothing about the audio.
Kakti - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Can't comment on android headsets but the sound quality through $10 earbuds is fine. Sounds the exact same as my previous phones playing FLAC files.Playing music without headphones is alright, it's definitely loud enough for most uses; I play music on it after most leave my office and can hear it probably 50-75 feet away. There's roughly 0.0% bass as expected....played some Omni Trio drum and bass and it was like listening to half the song ;) But that's a given for any cell phone speaker really. Playing rock music FLAC files sounded as good as I could ask for from a cell phone.
grant3 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
The issue I had with a previous motorola droid was there was a lot of line hiss. i.e., if you were in the quiet portion of a song, you can hear a background hiss (sounds like when you're on a phone call and no one is talking)It's sometimes tricky to notice because the internal amp would shut off when music is paused. and usually people are listening to their phone in a place where there is some background noise.
Kakti - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Just checked with some live concert soundboards - between songs it's pretty much silent and I didn't hear any hiss at volume levels that are comfortable to listen to.ASEdouardD - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Why use FLAC files using $10 earbuds? I'd go high quality MP3.CharonPDX - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I'm curious - is lack of 5 GHz WiFi (n or ac) really that much of a problem in an ultra-low-cost phone?I understand it would be great for future-proofing, but how often are people looking at ultra-low-end phones going to have 5 GHz 802.11n, much less ac? Or the high-enough-speed internet to notice the difference?