Moto E4 Plus Review – Better Battery Life At a Low Price?

Motorola recently added another budget phone to its arsenal in the form of the Moto E4 Plus – one which sports a good design for its price and supposedly boasts of a better battery life, thanks to its large 5000mAh battery.

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Do we think it’s worth the price? And does its large battery work as well as Motorola claims it should be?

Design

For a budget phone, the Moto E4 Plus is encased in a tough metallic curved case that makes you feel like you’re holding something durable.

The bezels in the Moto E4 Plus are pretty thin so it isn’t as distracting if you’re particular about watching videos or movies.

For me, the gold back design gathers a bit of dirt and personally, if you’re particular about seeing black dirt from time to time, you’d find yourself wiping off the dirt at times just to make sure it looks clean.

In terms of portability, the Moto E4 Plus feels chunky and heavy. This is mainly due to the large, non-removable battery inside the phone, which is amazing because Motorola managed to fit the bigger battery inside the Moto E4 Plus without compromising its design.

The Moto E4 Plus also fits well in most hand sizes thanks to its curved edges but I found it quite heavy to carry around compared to other phones of the same size.

There’s also no SIM slot on the metal casing of the Moto E4 Plus, so you’ll have to pull off the back cover if you want to change your MicroSD card and your SIM.

Sound

The audio works well if you’re not very particular about sounds. They’re not exactly spectacular, but the speakers are okay enough if you want to watch or listen to something on the go.

For music and radio lovers, there’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack at the upper-left side of the phone, which gives you plenty of options for earphones.

Display

The Home button is touch-based, so you don’t have to press hard on it to open your phone.

In terms of brightness, its mid-brightness setting feels a little dim to use outdoors, and I felt like the maximum brightness level looked better indoors, so I wish they could have added a bit more light.

Camera

With a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera, the Moto E4 Plus works well if you want a phone that can also take shots. Unfortunately, that’s all there is to the camera, considering it doesn’t have other additional features. For instance, it can’t be shaken like the Moto Z2 Play camera, where you can switch to the camera app by shaking your device. So if you want to play around with the Moto E4 Plus’s camera, you might have to download other camera features from other apps separately.

Performance

Performance-wise, the Moto E4 Plus is surprisingly responsive for a budget phone, and we didn’t find any lags of any sort. Being a budget phone does not serve as a hindrance to having a smooth performance as well, but don’t expect it to play high quality games or apps.

Numerous Benchmark tests on the Moto E4 Plus revealed the following results:

• Antutu Benchmark – 31,734
• PCMark – 2763
• Geekbench – 541 (single-core score); 1531 (multi-core score)

The fingerprint scanner below the screen also works well and we didn’t have a hard time unlocking the Moto E4 Plus with it.

Battery Life

Perhaps the one thing that makes the Moto E4 Plus stand out is its battery life, which, compared to the Moto E4 and the more expensive Moto G5, serves as its biggest asset. With a 5000mAh (milli Amp hour) battery, the Moto E4 Plus has a pretty long battery life. Using our ManilaShaker Battery Rating, we can confirm that the Moto E4 Plus lasted at a total of 54 hours and 40 minutes, and after using it in conjunction with Wifi and Bluetooth, it still managed to last for more than nine hours.

Compared to its other competitors in the market, the Moto E4 Plus fares quite well among them, falling short under the Asus Zenfone 4 Max by at least eleven hours:

• Moto E4 Plus – 54 hours, 40 minutes
• Asus Zenfone 4 Max – 65 hours, 20 minutes
• Oppo F3 – 45 hours, 20 minutes

Capacity

The Moto E4 Plus comes in either 16GB or 32GB of internal memory, which can also be expanded up to 128GB through a microSD card.

Verdict

For a budget phone, the Moto E4 Plus looks and feels pretty good at emulating a premium phone. Sure, it doesn’t have spectacular features and remains a basic phone at best, but if you’re looking for a phone that will help you last for more than a day, the Moto E4 Plus has enough battery life to help you do so.

Moto E4 Plus Specs, Philippines pricing