The market for budget smartphones is very competitive, with many vendors that are permanently fighting to get their share. Motorola has recently launched two budget-friendly smartphones called Moto E4 and Moto E4 Plus. Over the last week, we have used and tested the Motorola Moto E4, a smartphone that is sold at the incredibly small price tag of only 100 dollars. It looks good, and it promises to offer a decent user experience so who could say no to this smartphone? If you want to find out whether the Motorola Moto E4 is a bargain or not, read our review:
What is the Motorola Moto E4 smartphone good at?
The Motorola Moto E4 is a good smartphone for:
- Basic smartphone needs such as calling others and browsing the internet
- People who do not want to charge their smartphones every day. The Motorola Moto E4 can last for more than a day on one charge
- Individuals who want to spend little money on a smartphone. The Motorola Moto E4 has a meager price tag
Pros and cons
Here are some of the most positive aspects about the Motorola Moto E4:
- It has a very affordable price
- The build quality is surprisingly good for its price, and the body is made from metal
- The display has vivid colors and good brightness
- The battery can last you for more than a day between charges
- It can connect to 4G LTE mobile networks
- It has a fingerprint reader that helps you unlock it quickly
- It comes with Android 7.1.1 Nougat, while most smartphones at a similar price don't
On the other side, the Motorola Moto E4:
- Has very modest hardware and the performance it offers is lower than other budget smartphones that we have tested
- The display has a low resolution
- Is a poor choice for gaming experiences
- The camera experience is far from ideal
Verdict
The Motorola Moto E4 is a very cheap Android smartphone. Sure, the hardware is on the weak side of things, and the camera experience is far from being ideal. However, for one hundred bucks you get a working smartphone with a new version of Android (7.1.1 Nougat), a good display, a fingerprint reader and a large enough battery to last you for more than a day on a single charge. Furthermore, this smartphone also looks pretty good, and it has a metal back cover. These are not things that you often find on smartphones sold at this price tag. If you want a decent Android smartphone that does all the basics people need and does not look cheap although it is, then Motorola Moto E4 is one of the best choices you could make.
Hardware specifications and packaging
The Motorola Moto E4 Android smartphone comes in a bright orange cardboard box. It looks good, and it feels aimed at a young audience. The blue balloon shaped like a dog that is printed on the Motorola logo adds to that impression.
On the back of the package, you can see a few pictures with the smartphone and its most important features. If you want more details about the smartphone, you can look on the sides of the box: one of them should hold a sticker with more information.
Inside the box you will find the Motorola Moto E4 sitting on top of a paper tray. Under the paper tray, you will find the bundled accessories: an AC power adapter with a detachable USB to micro USB data cable, a pair of earphones, the warranty card, a safety information leaflet and the user manual.
The Motorola Moto E4 is available in three color variations: Iron Gray, Blush Gold, and Oxford Blue. The model that we tested was the gray model.
Motorola Moto E4 has a 5-inch screen with an HD 720p resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels. The screen has a pixel density of 294 PPI, which is not much but it is expected from a budget device. The front of the smartphone, including the screen, is protected from dust and scratches by the 2.5D glass.
The smartphone is powered by a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor running at 1.3 GHz, on a MediaTek MT6737 chipset. For the video, it uses a Mali-T720 MP1 graphic chip that runs at 650MHz. As for the memory and storage, the Motorola Moto E4 has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage space. If you need more room for storing your photos, music or any other type of data, you can also add a microSD card, next to the removable battery.
The rear camera has 8 megapixels, an aperture of f/2.2, autofocus, and an LED flash. The front camera has 5 megapixels, a f/2.2 aperture and, interesting enough, a dedicated LED flash.
The connectivity to the rest of the world and other devices is assured by a Wi-Fi chip that offers support for the 802.11 b/g/n standards and a Bluetooth 4.2 chip. The Motorola Moto E4 does not have support for the 802.11 ac wireless standard, and that means that it cannot connect to networks that are broadcast on the 5GHz frequency.
Among the built-in sensors, we have to mention the fact that the smartphone has an accelerometer, a proximity sensor and a fingerprint reader, which is something you do not usually see on budget devices that cost around 100 USD.
The autonomy of the Motorola Moto E4 is offered by a removable battery with a capacity of 2800 mAh.
The smartphone is a rather small device for today's standards, with a length of 5.7 inches (144.7 mm), a width of 2.85 inches (72.3 mm) and a thickness of 0.37 inches (9.3 mm). It weighs 5.33 ounces (151 grams).
For more details about the hardware specifications and features of the Motorola Moto E4, visit this web page: Moto E4 Specs.
The unboxing experience we had for the Motorola Moto E4 was a pleasant one: we appreciated the fact that unlike other vendors, Motorola also included a pair of earphones in the package. The hardware specifications are not impressive, but we did not expect them to be since this is a low budget smartphone.
Design and build quality
The design of the Moto E4 tells you immediately that this is a Motorola smartphone. The top and bottom edges have a slight curvature that is specific to Motorola. The Moto E4 is a rather small device, having a screen of only 5 inches in diagonal. However, it feels heavy for its size. That is not a bad thing in our opinion, mainly because it is the consequence of the rather large battery and the metal body of the smartphone. Yes, this smartphone is a budget device, but somehow Motorola managed to offer it an aluminum body and that is great!
The front of the Motorola Moto E4 is home to the screen, the fingerprint reader on the bottom area and the front camera, earpiece and LED flash on the top area. Between the earpiece and the screen, there is also a small and subtle gray moto logo.
On the back of the smartphone, the first thing that catches your eye is the camera and the LED flash which is found inside a small bump with a circular form. Also in the center of the back area, there is the M logo for Motorola, and towards the bottom right there is the loudspeaker grille.
As for the buttons and ports placement, the Motorola Moto E4 is as traditional as it can be. On the top edge, you can find the 3.5 mm audio jack, on the right side, there are the power button and the volume rocker, and on the bottom edge, there is only the micro USB 2.0 port and a small microphone pinhole. In other words, everything is where it should be.
The default Android buttons for Back, Home and Recent apps are all software and are displayed on the screen, not on the body of the smartphone. It feels a bit awkward to have the Home button right above the fingerprint reader, but after a while, you can accommodate to this arrangement.
The Motorola Moto E4 is a smartphone that follows the traditional design lines of Motorola phones. There is nothing spectacular or innovative about that, but we appreciate its build quality. Moto E4 is a budget device with a metal body that looks good and feels robust.
If you would like to read more about the smartphone experience offered by Motorola Moto E4, its camera, bundled apps, and performance in benchmarks, read the second page of this review.
The smartphone experience on the Motorola Moto E4
The Motorola Moto E4 is a rather small smartphone (5-inch screen), but that is a good thing for some people. It means that it is easy to use with only one hand, even if you have small hands. It is also easy to carry in your pockets or a small purse.
Motorola Moto E4 has a screen that offers a mixed experience. Its colors are vivid, the viewing angles are relatively generous, and the brightness is higher than you would expect. However, the screen resolution is the weak spot of this smartphone. It looks good indoors, and it is readable when you take it outdoors in bright light. However, the small resolution of 720p does not help when you want to watch a movie or when you want to read text displayed in smaller font size. The image is a bit coarse, and the fonts are not as smooth as we would like. In the end, the display is usable, and most people probably do not expect the best image quality from a smartphone with a price of only 100 dollars.
As for how it feels to use it daily, we have to say that the Motorola Moto E4 is OK. Sure, it does not break any speed records at loading apps or websites, but it does everything in a decent amount of time. The user interface does not lag, and the apps run decently on it. Unfortunately, if you like playing games, you should know that the video chip is not great: it can run games but only at low-quality settings and lower framerates. And, there is one other thing that the Motorola Moto E4 seems to have trouble with: taking pictures with its rear camera is a slow experience, probably because the smartphone has a slow internal storage space and saving your photos takes a while.
The Motorola Moto E4 is a good choice if you want a smartphone that does not cost a fortune and which is great at doing its most basic purpose of being a phone. The signal reception is excellent in all conditions: we managed to have stable 4G data connections and stable phone calls even in a room with two thick concrete walls where other phones have issues doing so.
The 2800 mAh battery should provide the Motorola Moto E4 with enough power to last for more than a day. We can confirm that, at least during the time that we had it in testing, this smartphone lasted for more than one day between charges. However, if you play games or keep the brightness at maximum levels, expect to charge it daily.
The Motorola Moto E4 offers a balanced smartphone experience. The user interface does not feel slow, the display is decent, and the signal reception is good.
The camera experience on the Motorola Moto E4
The rear camera on the Motorola Moto E4 has a sensor of 8 megapixels, a f/2.2 aperture, autofocus and an LED flash to help it in low light environments. The front camera has 5 megapixels, the same f/2.2 aperture and also its dedicated flash for selfie enthusiasts.
Unfortunately, both cameras are rather weak, and we would not recommend that you use them for your holiday family photos. They are there just for taking quick shots, not for shooting beautiful pictures. Even in good light conditions, photos suffer from of lack of details and are often blurry. In low light conditions, like during night, the pixelation is severe and the photos are extremely noisy. Plus, the smartphone needs a long time to save your photos on its internal memory storage space. To get an idea of the results you should expect from the cameras on the Motorola Moto E4, browse the gallery below. We have included photos were taken both outdoors and indoors, panoramas and selfies.
The Motorola Moto E4 does not do any better when it comes to recording videos either. The main camera can film at a maximum resolution of 720p and has no image stabilization features. The results are modest, as you can see in the samples below. Here is an example of a panorama video in which there is little movement:
Moreover, here is a video that was filmed while riding a bicycle, in which you can get an idea of how the Motorola Moto E4 does when it has to record movement:
The camera experience on the Motorola Moto E4 is not a good one. The cameras are there, both on the back and on the front of the device, but their performance is mediocre. However, they can be used for quick shots when you have no other options left.
Android 7 Nougat and the default apps
The Motorola Moto E4 comes with Android 7.1.1 Nougat pre-installed. The operating system and the user interface are the stock Android ones, and we tend to prefer those. If you want a clean operating system on your smartphone, Motorola is among the few smartphone brands that come with a stock Android that is unaltered. There are no weird apps bundled or any Motorola clones to the existing Google apps. We love this, and we hope more manufacturers will use the same approach.
However, if you buy the Motorola Moto E4 from a mobile operator, you may get a few other apps that have been pre-installed by your operator. For instance, the sample we had in tests came from Orange, and we had a few installed by them.
If you would like to know more about all the features available in Android 7 Nougat, you should visit its official website: Android 7 Nougat.
Motorola Moto E4 comes with a modern version of Android, namely Android 7.1.1 Nougat. The stock Android user interface is unaltered, and there are no useless apps bundled on it. Many people will love this.
Performance in benchmarks
To get some numbers to back up our user experience on the Motorola Moto E4, we have also run a series of benchmarks. Here are the results we got and also a few comparisons between the Motorola Moto E4 and other budget smartphones with similar prices: Xiaomi Redmi 4A, ASUS Zenfone 3 Max and ASUS Zenfone Live.
The first app that we used is called Vellamo, an app that is developed by Qualcomm. We started with its Multicore tests, which tell how good the processor is in multitasking. The Motorola Moto E4 got 1284 points. Unfortunately, that is a meager score, lesser than that of a Xiaomi Redmi 4A or an ASUS Zenfone 3 Max, but higher than that of an ASUS Zenfone Live.
Vellamo has another series of tests called Metal. These tests measure the processor's performance per core. They show how well the smartphone does when it has to run older apps that do not know how to use multiple cores, as well as games or other demanding apps that need performance per core. The Motorola Moto E4 got 1018 points, a very weak result. Once again, it is less than what you get from a Xiaomi Redmi 4A for instance, but it is more than you would get from an ASUS Zenfone 3 Max or from an ASUS Zenfone Live.
Next, we ran the Browser tests from the same benchmarking app called Vellamo. These tests are a good indicator of how the browsing experience you get on the smartphone will be. The Motorola Moto E4 obtained 1807 points. The score shows that this smartphone gives you roughly the same quality of browsing as does the ASUS Zenfone 3 Max or the ASUS Zenfone Live, but a worse one than you would have on the Xiaomi Redmi 4A.
Then we checked how the Motorola Moto E4 performs in games. For that, we used an app called GFXBench GL Benchmark. We recorded the results from the 1080p Manhattan 3.1 Offscreen and 1080p T-Rex Offscreen tests. We run these tests in 1080p because it is easier to compare results of smartphones with different resolutions. We could not run the 1080p Car Chase Offscreen tests because the Mali-T720 video chip found on the Motorola Moto E4 does not offer support for OpenGL ES 3.2 graphics rendering API which is used by the latest games.
In the 1080p Manhattan 3.1 Offscreen tests, Motorola Moto E4 rendered 86.36 frames. It is a weak result: roughly half of what you get on a Xiaomi Redmi 4A or the ASUS Zenfone 3 Max and about 40 percent worse than what the ASUS Zenfone Live can do.
In the second gaming test we ran, 1080p T-Rex Offscreen, we got another poor result: the Motorola Moto E4 rendered only 335.9 frames. That is a result similar to that of the ASUS Zenfone 3 Max and ASUS Zenfone Live, but it is less than what you get from the Xiaomi Redmi 4A.
We also tested the 4G speed and reliability offered by the Motorola Moto E4. The measurements we made with Speedtest were good and in line with other smartphones.
Finally, we also tested the battery performance with a benchmarking app called PCMark. Using the Work 2.0 battery life test, the Motorola Moto E4 managed to keep on going for 9 hours and 56 minutes. This is a good result - it means that the smartphone should last you for more than a day before having to charge its battery.
The Motorola Moto E4 is nowhere near what you would call a fast device. It is, however, a decent smartphone that can perform any basic task.
What is your opinion about Motorola Moto E4?
Now that you know what our opinion is about the Motorola Moto E4 smartphone in real-life and you have also seen its results in benchmarks, what do you think about it? Would you buy one? If you want, you can share your thoughts in the comments below.
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