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
Impulses - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
It looks very similar to the rest of Moto's lineup... You think the Moto X & G are fugly too? How many people have you polled to determine the majority definitely agrees with you?I happen to like how it looks, actually Moto's rounded plastic phones are some of the few I would dare use without a case... Both because they seem more resilient than metal ones and because the customization aspect makes it more unique.
I remember noticing a lip on the Moto X that actually lifted the screen by a mm when face down sans case, not sure if that's standard, but that and lack of a camera hump also make it easier to go case-less.
For reference I like the new SGS6 (tho I still dislike the home button) and Sony's Z line, I could take or leave the One design (poor ergos), and I thought older SGS with plastic imitating other materials was chintzy.
At the end of the day I care more about a phone's features, performance, and ergonomics than it's looks tho. None of them are *that* striking or stylish.
chizow - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Sure, here you go, the same tenets apply to smartphones as they do to people's faces:https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=symmetrical+f...
Its been shown whether subconsciously or not, the more symmetrical a face is, the more pleasing it is to the eye.
The rounded and concave edges just make it look like a cheap toy, too much round around the sharp angles of the rectangular screen and the asymmetrical nature of the speakers and cameras don't do it any favors either.
blzd - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Well that settles it. 100% Confirmed. Everyone agrees with you.lol please do the world a favor and delete your internet.
hans_ober - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
If it's anything, wide bezels make devices ugly.sonicmerlin - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
lol that was my first thought upon seeing the picture. It looks like a half-done prototype. The Lumias going for half the price look better.DabuXian - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Off topic, but why don't you update NAND performance of the Nexus 6? It's been vastly improved on Android 5.1.Brandon Chester - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Our NAND tests are being moved to Androbench 4. The writing of this review took place over a longer period than I had anticipated, which is why there are a few things like the usage of the older NAND bench and the GS6 not showing up in the charts. In future reviews the Nexus 6 should have up to date storage performance benchmarks done on 5.1.djvita - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
The graph for Basemark OS II battery score is missing the Moto E's score.whiteiphoneproblems - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
"The procedure for iOS is a bit different, and it involves signing into your iCloud account which I'm just a bit weary of..."Should be "...just a bit WARY of".
Also, I don't see the Moto E listed on the "Basemark OS II Battery Score" chart(?)
whiteiphoneproblems - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
(Apologies for x-post with the above)