This year, the Xperia X in Sony's new phones almost covers three levels of low, medium and high end. Previously, the Xperia C and M series in the middle and low end did not know how to deal with it. However, the Xperia E series designed for the low-end market has ushered in the latest E5, and the parts outside the hardware - appearance design, screen, endurance and even photography have been improved. But can this model, which costs "up to" 199 euros in Europe, succeed in the market?

Appearance design

A major improvement of Xperia E5 is its new appearance design. It is no longer full of cheap feeling like the previous E-series models. The elegant and simple appearance is a great advantage compared with the models at the same price. E5 is a typical Sony style. The symmetrical front panel and rounded rectangle design, the body and the back are made of polycarbonate. It has a very solid hand feel. All of these make the Xperia E5 more pleasing than the Xperia Z5 in the grip feel.

For Sony fans, it will soon be noticed that Xperia E5 does not have the traditional physical photo key, and this change has little impact on the actual use. Instead, the volume key is moved to the upper half of the distance, which makes it a little inconvenient to operate with both hands. The power key is arranged well, and all physical keys provide a good feel.

screen

As a low-end machine, the Xperia E5 is only equipped with a 5-inch 1280x720 screen. The parameters are really not good, and it can basically meet daily use. The pixels are more obvious near the point. However, the quality of this screen is good. The highest brightness goes to more than 500 nits, and the lowest is 4 nits. E5 can provide a suitable brightness both outdoors in direct sunlight and in the bed before turning off the lights. At the same time, this screen has excellent performance in color temperature, color accuracy and other parameters.

system

In terms of the system, Xperia E5 pre installs the latest Android 6.0, making the whole system more colorful, mainly visual updates. In terms of functions, it is still Sony's consistent style. Users who like the pure Android experience may prefer it. The theme function of Sony features will be further improved. Of course, as a low-end machine, E5 has no fingerprint identification.

performance

What is worth mentioning about Xperia E5 is its hardware configuration. Like the previous E-series, the E5 also uses MediaTek's SoC - 1.3GHz MT6735. The GPU is Mali-T720 MP2, but the RAM is only 1.5GB, and the ROM is 16GB. It supports expansion cards. But in our experience, even for relatively picky and demanding users, the smoothness of the system is not a problem, and ordinary casual games can easily cope with it. However, the performance of Mali-T720 MP2 is not enough to support games with high requirements for GPU, which needs to be highlighted.

photograph

This time, the Xperia E5 rear camera has been upgraded from 5 million pixels for decoration to 13 million pixels for f/2.0 aperture, and the front camera has also been upgraded to 5 million pixels. With the update of the photo interface to the latest version, it is consistent with other Sony series, but only three modes are available: manual, automatic, and video. The manual mode can only adjust the white balance and select scenes.

(Xperia E5 daytime sample)

(High brightness, medium brightness, low brightness, dark environment live shot samples in turn)

For the photo effect of E5, the editor of phonearena summarized: We were actually surprised! (We are really scared!) The outdoor daytime imaging is amazing, the details are satisfactory, and The white balance is good, the color restoration is quite accurate, and the tolerance is high. In the dark environment, the shutter speed of E5 is too fast and the light is insufficient, so that some samples are much darker than the actual scene. A closer look at the dark light proof shows that the brightness is insufficient. If it is blue or green, the imaging effect is disappointing. In general, E5 can perform well when the white balance is properly set in sufficient light.

P.S. More photos can be viewed at phonearena

Endurance

Although the endurance performance of the previous generation Xperia E4g left a deep impression, the Xperia E5 did not inherit this advantage, and only maintained 6 hours and 10 minutes of use in the customized endurance test. Although it is at an average level, the E5 is equipped with 2700mAh batteries and a relatively power saving 720P screen, which is not an excellent performance.

The actual use also verifies this test. A mild use can barely maintain a day's endurance, and E5 is a bit stretched out if you play games or watch videos for a long time. The charging speed has slightly recovered the disadvantage, but it takes 114 minutes, nearly 2 hours.

tail

At the end of the summary, phonearena gave a rare suggestion to purchase. In fact, the performance of Sony's low-end machine was surprising. It was not expected to be removed from the purchase list. As a 199 euro (210 dollars) machine, the Xperia E5 well met the demand. If you are still waiting, Moto G4 Play (no more than US $199) or Asus Zenfone 3 (US $249), which will be launched later, may be a better choice. But if you want to buy a new machine at present, the Xperia E5 is worth starting. After all, the E5 has achieved 8 points, which is higher than the flagship Xperia X Performance of 6.3 (laugh).

Translation and arrangement of pictures and texts

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