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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RealTheXev - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link
In my mothers situation.. the fact it can even connect to the wifi is the only thing that matters. lol She will never notice the speed.serendip - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Is this the first Lenovo-fied Moto device since the acquisition? The specs and price are very underwhelming when similar low-end devices from Lenovo and Xiaomi have 720p displays, more RAM and faster SoCs. 1 GB RAM is a nightmare on Android because apps get killed and have to reload often. That's really annoying for web browsers because the content has to be downloaded again instead of being cached.serendip - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Xiaomi have really upped their game recently. Flagships have always had weekly MIUI updates but now the budget line (Redmi 1S/2/Note) are also on a weekly schedule for the developer ROM. Better late than never.As for hardware support, that's a big issue because Xiaomi officially doesn't sell outside of China and some APAC countries. You won't have a physical repair depot to turn to if you buy from an online reseller.
spiked_mistborn - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Great review. You just confirmed what I have been experiencing since I got my Moto E LTE when they first came out. Some of the initial reviews said the screen was dim and poor quality, but I have not found that to be the case, and your test backs that up. Being a recent college grad still looking for work in my field, in addition to a tech enthusiast, this phone was the best option for my budget. It works well enough that I don't mind waiting, for a long time if necessary, for that killer phone that I would actually feel is worth paying several hundred dollars for. Nothing fits that description yet IMO.One thing that I would love to see added to future reviews is network throughput speeds through a VPN. I use OpenVPN all the time for both remote file access/music streaming, and also for security on open WiFi. The OpenVPN connect client recently added support for ARMv8 crypto instructions, so it would be nice to see how everything stacks up when the speed of the internet connection is not a bottleneck. Maybe test over mobile data and WiFi? The WiFi link speed might still be the limiting factor, but if the rest of the soc is working too, such as streaming HD video, the extra efficiency from ARMv8 might be quantifiable. Qualitative differences in the video could show up as well. Maybe a battery rundown test while streaming over the VPN might show some major differences as well?
sonicmerlin - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Buy a phone used on eBay if you're on a budget. You can get last year's flagships for less than $200sonicmerlin - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
What's the speed difference between Cortex A7 and A53?sasidharkareti - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Moto E 2nd generation has good upgrades DDR3, 8GB internal, 4.5 inch IPS, 2300 mAh, Android 5.0, front camera and 3G/4G are most welcomed.The removable bezel is a bit scary everytime it is plucked out. The battery takes a bit loger time to recharge. Besides these two, I love Moto e's performance.
Harry_Wild - Tuesday, April 28, 2015 - link
"802.11 b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, NFC"It has NFC but no "ac" for the Wi-Fi standard!
Maverick215 - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link
Out of curiosity, did you test NFC performance? I ask because the arstechnica review indicates that there is no NFC capability present in this device. Likewise the specs listed on motorola.com say "NFC - No"While I'm hopeful you have some information regarding activating this hidden feature, I'm guessing this was just an error.
Jwraith15 - Sunday, September 27, 2015 - link
Bestbuy now has the Sprint Prepaid LTE VERSION for $39