Sony Xperia M2 review – still hanging in there

The Sony Xperia M2 is more than two years old now, and it’s almost gone end of life. Only a handful of retailers still have it stock, but with prices starting at around £155 for a new phone (or £70 used from Amazon), this is an awful lot to spend on something so old. After all, even Motorola’s excellent 3rd Gen Moto G is now only £110 on PAYG or £130 SIM-free from Carphone Warehouse, and this has a newer (and better) version of Android, as well as a considerably faster processor and a much better camera.

Admittedly, the 3rd Gen Moto G is also getting on a bit, as this was first released last summer. As a result, it’s likely that Motorola will soon be releasing its 4th Gen Moto G very soon, which will probably replace the 3rd Gen Moto G as our top budget smartphone. However, until that happens, the 3rd Gen Moto G is still our top budget smartphone to buy, as it’s definitely aged a lot better than Sony’s Xperia M2.

For instance, while the M2’s slim 8.6mm unibody makes it feel extremely solid, its angular design doesn’t feel half as appealing in the hand as the smooth rounded corners of the Moto G. Likewise, the M2’s bulky chassis is almost the same size as the Moto G despite having a smaller 4.8in display, making it feel oversized for the amount of screen space available. Likewise, both the front and rear of the phone are extremely prone to picking up fingerprints, making it perpetually dirty despite our best efforts to keep it clean.

Display

This is a shame, as the M2’s 4.8in 960×540 display actually looks relatively decent despite its somewhat mediocre 87.7% coverage of the sRGB colour gamut. While it doesn’t have any of Sony’s X-Reality display options, colours still looked incredibly rich and vibrant and we actually preferred its warmer colour cast to the cooler hues present on both the Moto G.

That said, despite a contrast level of 874:1, there was actually less detail present in our test images on the M2 than its rivals. Areas of shadow were particularly gloomy, but you can always remedy by increasing the brightness up to its maximum level of 410.75cd/m2. This will make blacks look quite grey in return, resulting in a rather lacklustre black level reading of 0.47cd/m2.

However, the M2’s real downfall is its tiny resolution of just 960×540. With a pixel density of 229ppi, the sharpness of the M2’s display pales in comparison to the Moto G, which has a much higher pixel density of 294ppi. Text and icons are just about crisp enough on the M2, but look closely and you’ll soon see the rough jagged edges on curved letters and images. Text also has a tendency to look slightly fuzzy when reading articles on the web, but this is less of a problem on sites specifically designed for mobiles.

Performance

The M2’s Android 4.3 operating system also feels rather antiquated when you first take it out of the box, but a couple of system updates will soon see you running Android 4.4.4. Sony’s even confirmed it’s bringing Android 5.1 to the M2 via an OTA update once it’s been rolled out for the Xperia Z series. It’s not yet known how long this will take, but it’s great to see Sony isn’t leaving its lower-end devices behind when it comes to Android Lollipop updates.

When Android 5.1 does eventually arrive, the M2’s quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor should be more than capable of running the OS smoothly. The Moto G has a newer version of this chipset – the Snapdragon 410 – but it still runs Android 5.0.2 perfectly fine. Admittedly, the M2 didn’t score quite as highly in our Geekbench 3 tests, as its scores of 309 in the single-core test and 1,024 in the multicore test are a fraction behind the Moto G’s scores of 341 and 1,156, but we saw very few signs of stuttering when swiping through its Android 4.4.4 app tray and browsing through its various menu settings.

Web browsing performance was a little more uneven, as the M2 often stumbled when scrolling down web pages with multiple images. Text-based articles posed fewer problems, but we often had to wait a while before news sites such as the Guardian became usable without any kind of lag or delay. This was reflected in our Peacekeeper browser test score of 461, which is one of the slowest scores we’ve seen.

Graphics performance, however, was more or less on par with the Moto G, as it produced 110 frames in the offscreen Manhattan test in GFX Bench GL 3.0. However, when we fired up Blizzard’s Hearthstone to see how it coped with real-world games, we were promptly told the M2 didn’t fit its recommended hardware specification. While the game was just about playable, animations were very jerky and the hard, brittle texture of the touchscreen wasn’t particularly pleasant for moving our cards round the screen and executing attacks. As a result, you’ll probably want to stick with simpler 2D games on the M2.

Storage and Battery Life

However, bear in mind that you’ll probably need to use the microSD card slot if you’re planning on installing lots of apps, as despite having 8GB of storage, only around 5GB is available to the user. Once we’d installed all of our benchmark apps, for example, we’d almost reached full capacity, with hardly any room left to install app updates or take many photos.

One thing you won’t need to worry about, though, is battery life. In our continuous video playback test with the screen brightness set to 170cd/m2, the M2’s 2,330mAh battery managed an excellent 11h 43m, which is around 30 minutes longer than the Moto G. It even outlasts the Xperia M4 Aqua, which only lasted 10h 16m under the same conditions.

Camera

On the rear of the phone is an 8-megapixel camera. While we were pleased with the camera’s vibrant colours, every shot we took had noticeably blurry edges round certain objects, even when we specifically tapped the screen to help focus the camera. This is a shame, as it meant images looked perpetually hazy even in bright lighting conditions.

^ The sky was slightly overexposed, but colours were rich and accurate in our outdoor shots. The only problem was the lack of detail

^ Switching on HDR mode helped with the sky, but objects and buildings still looked quite fuzzy round the edges

There wasn’t a lot of detail present either, and this carried over to when we tried taking photos indoors as well. Even with our external lamp turned on, there was a fair amount of noise present and there was quite a lot of compression when we zoomed in to its native resolution. It only grew worse when we switched the lamp off, but turning on the flash did help improve the level of contrast somewhat. Either way, though, you’ll probably want to limit your camera usage to quick social media shots rather than use it for important family occasions.

Luckily, Sony’s camera app comes primed and ready with plenty of fun additional lens modes to help make up for its slightly poor quality. AR Effect, for instance, lets you insert virtual dinosaurs, party hats, fish, dragons and even Spider-Man characters into your scene, while Picture Effect lets you apply several different filters, including kaleidoscope and fisheye lens effects.

^ Even with our external lamp switched on, there was still a lot of noise present in our indoor test images

^ Colours looked more natural when we turned the lamp off, but there still wasn’t much detail

Conclusion

In a way, it’s not surprising the Xperia M2 has lasted this long. It’s well-made and has a great battery life, and its performance still just about holds up against the current budget greats. However, its small screen resolution is starting to look particularly outdated now and its camera is a bit of a disappointment. We’re also not big fans of its chunky, angular design and how it continually picks up mucky fingerprints.

More importantly, though, the M2’s price just isn’t as good value as the Moto G. The M2 is by no means a bad handset, but the Moto G continues to reign supreme. Buy Now from Amazon