Motorola Moto E

The Moto E is Motorola's play for the budget end of the market, with a price tag of £109 seeing it even cheaper than the Moto G. It might not have the fastest processor in the world, but this rarely affects daily use.

Principal to the Moto E is a great design - which now includes interchangeable "Bands" for a lick of colour, a good display, excellent battery life and microSDsupport for expanding the internal storage. Compared to the original 2014 model, the 2015 Moto E also adds a front-facing camera, a smoother Android experience, as well as all-important 4G connectivity for fast internet browsing.

Despite its low price point and slightly bulky build, the Moto E has glimpses of premium about it. It's a brilliant handset for just over the £100 mark and the budget handset to beat.

Adding a Touch Color

To look at the Moto E is a fairly straightforward handset, all finished in black. This time around it's binned one of the two not-so-pretty silver-colour metal bars from the front panel, which is a good start, but we still don't like the look of the solitary top-positioned one that remains.

But perhaps the biggest positive new difference - ignoring the slightly larger size, which we'll come to in a moment - is the inclusion of interchangeable colour accent edges, which Motorola prefers to call "Bands" (yep, with a capital B). Shown here with the blue option, the added lick of colour - which also conceals the microSD and SIM tray gubbins within; the battery is not removable this time around - makes for an even more enticing handset than before. We can't say the same about the shell cases (not shown here), however, which are ill-fitting and, in a word, pants.

Now the next big (but not too big) change: the 2015 handset has a 4.5-inch screen, not a 4.3-inch one. In truth it doesn't make a huge difference in use, as the same 960 x 540 pixel resolution delivers a suitably low-end experience in terms of potential clarity. Size-wise, though, the resulting phone body's 129.9 x 66.8mm full front is only around 5mm taller and 2mm wider than last year's model, but retains the same 12.3mm in thickness.

To put that in context, the Moto E 2015 is bigger than an iPhone, but in a market with ever-increasing screen sizes it feels like a sensible size to us. Having just swapped from using a 6-inch device prior to this review, the Moto felt almost small - but then we tried the older iPhone 4 and immediately thought of that scene in Zoolander.

Display

If there's one thing that budget phones can't offer then it's exceptional screens. But that doesn't mean a £109 phone has to have a bad screen by default, and the Moto E 2015 gets the important things right given its price point.

The 4.5-inch size is a good scale to work with; from typing, to watching YouTube clips, even playing games, it's a sensible phone screen. The 960 x 540 pixel resolution, however, is somewhat lacking, but not to the point that it's like looking at 8-bit computer games from the 1980s.

Importantly there's ample brightness and viewing angles are solid, albeit not perfect. For comparison we happened to have a Samsung Galaxy S5 to hand, and while the higher-resolution Samsung has a cleaner, cooler-colour display, there's not a great deal of maximum brightness difference between the two. The Samsung, however, maintains excellent colour and contrast at even extreme angles of view, whereas the Moto E has a slight fall-off when tilted beyond 45-degrees from line of sight. It's not a total Death Star implosion, though, with everything on screen remaining legible, even if the perceivable contrast isn't up to flagship standards.

The surrounding bezel to the side of the screen is a couple of millimetres wider than the very best handsets, but the way the screen is arranged is neat and tidy. Just because the Moto E is £109 doesn't mean its display is a write-off - pound for pound it's every bit as good as can be expected at this level. There's even adaptable auto-brightness which can be switched on or off to suit your battery-saving needs.

Battery boost

As the new Moto E's battery is fixed within - which we think makes for a neater design - there's no way to swap it out for a spare. In this new fixed format the 2390mAh capacity is around 20 per cent more than the original's 1920mAh offering, though, and that can definitely be felt in use - depending, that is, on how much 4G action you'll be using.

We've had a mixed experience throughout the week, but a generally positive one. Expectation may be at odds with outcome, but we've actually found theMoto E to hold up just as well as the so-so battery life of the Samsung GalaxyS5 that we've been using in tandem (as part of the Mobile World Congress show). That means a normal day's use is within reach, which is a few steps ahead of its predecessor. As ever, go in hard on the apps and you'll be reaching for the charger after getting back in from work.

Camera

Another slight moan we had with the original Mote E was its camera. At a paltry 5-megapixels it's not particularly high-resolution, and the 2015 model adopts the same innards, producing results that are, in essence, much the same. And by that we mean not very good. However, there's now a front camera for selfie action, which was absent in the last generation model.

Load up the camera app and Android handles things swiftly, capturing a shot with a simple tap of the screen. By default the camera adjusts autofocus for you as it sees fit, but a side swipe brings up a menu which includes a focus and exposure option. Once selected, drag the focus area around the screen for more control than the original Moto E.