Motorola Moto E (2nd Gen) review: E for Evolved

Telephony and messaging

The contacts manager has received a thorough refresh in Android 5.0 Lollipop with Material design. The app features tabbed interface, which displays all contacts and the favorites.

The contacts app

You can sync with multiple accounts including Google and Exchange. A button to add a new contact is constantly present in the bottom right corner - you can choose which account to sync the new addition with.

The phone tab got redesigned as well and comes with a tabbed interface for speed dial, recent calls and all contacts. The dialer is invoked by taping on its dedicated key and supports smart dialing.

The Phone app

The new Moto E offers high in-call volume. Its loudspeaker scored a Good mark on our loudspeaker tests, and came quite close to being Very Good, meaning you'll hardly miss any calls and notifications. The loudspeaker sound quality isn't the best we've heard, but it seems louder than our Good score suggests, so you'll be fine in every scenario.

The messaging is pretty much straightforward as on every other droid out there. One thing we noticed is the generic Email app is being decommissioned in favor of the Gmail app. If you tap on its icon, it will tell you the Gmail app is the client that will handle all your emails from now on.

As expected, the default Google keyboard is on board as well. It offers two sleek-looking, brand new skins - Material Dark and Material Light. The duo matches the new look of Android 5.0 Lollipop.

The stock Android keyboard

Multimedia

Motorola's proprietary Gallery is the default image explorer on the Moto E (2nd Gen). Its browsing interface is very basic, but there are powerful editing options. It handles videos, too, as there is no dedicated video player.

Motorola's Gallery app

Google Photos is onboard as well. Upon opening the app you'll see two tabs - one for all photos and another one for highlights. Above those two tabs you will find shortcuts for settings and bulk selection.

Viewing a single photo gives you a number of options. You can share it, set it as wallpaper or contact photo, or edit it. The built-in Photos editor is incredibly powerful too.

Photos gallery app

Both galleries handle video files, as Android Lollipop lacks dedicated video app, and are equally capable. Available video decoders include Xvid, DivX, H.263, H.264 AVC (MKV files), and MPEG-4. The app will play most major file formats, though serious video fans should certainly seek out a more capable solution from the Google Play store as the lack of AC3 audio support is quite limiting.

Subtitles are not supported.

The video player is basic

Finally, Google Play Music is the default player for your tunes on the Moto E (2nd Gen). The app has been treated to the new material design, though it functionality remains unchanged - it can play your local files, as well as stream music from the cloud.

Google Play Music

You can tweak the sound via the built-in equalizer. There are dedicated toggles for surround sound and bass.

EQ settings

Google will give you six months of free subscription to its music streaming service.

Motorola Moto E 2nd Gen also has stereo FM radio with RDS.

Solid audio output

The Motorola Moto E did great when connected to an active external amplifier. All of its readings were great and the volume levels were above average, rounding up an impressive performance for the entry level device.

Better yet, plugging in a pair of headphones causes a very modest amount of degradation. Outside of the notable increase in stereo crosstalk the readings are unaffected and the output is crispy clear. A good result for any device and a great one for the low-budget Moto E.

And here go the detailed results so you can check them out for yourselves.

Motorola Moto E (2015) frequency response

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.