The front of the phone is all glass with a thin protective plastic lip around the perimeter. The 5.2-inch screen only covers about two-thirds of the front, meaning there’s a large bezel above and below it. The front-facing camera and flash are above the screen, situated on each side of the earpiece that also serves as the only speaker. There’s nothing exciting about the Moto E5 Play design. In many ways, it’s not so dissimilar to the first-generation Moto G we had four years ago. Make no mistake, the E5 Play looks like a budget phone. The all-plastic build and uninspiring looks aren’t going to win any design awards, but the phone feels robust and the removable plastic rear cover allows you to easily replace the phone’s 2,100mAh battery, access the 128GB microSD card expansion, or swap out the nano-SIM.

The E5 Play has a 5.34in 960 x 480 FWVGA+ (18:9) TN display. The phone’s resolution is rather poor for a modern-day phone, and given that the Vodafone Smart N8 has been out for over a year and sports a 720P display, it’s rather disappointing to see Motorola hasn’t upped the pixel count. Despite its name, this phone isn’t cut out to play games. You can fire up Candy Crush or Temple Run, but don’t expect to play PUBG Mobile on it. And if you’re wondering why the E5 Play outperforms all its rivals in the onscreen tests, there’s a simple answer: its lower resolution screen is less taxing on the hardware. Despite only having a rear 8-megapixel f/2.0 and front 5-megapixel single lens camera, the E5 Play captures plenty of light and detail. With Moto Actions, your simple gestures make everyday interactions more convenient. Whether you’re shrinking down the screen with a simple swipe or silencing the ringer just by lifting up the phone, you can do more with less effort. Call quality is mixed. Earpiece volume is reasonably loud, letting you take calls outdoors, but clarity and noise cancellation aren't the best. Processor, Battery, and CameraThe hardware you do get looks pretty good, though: a 13-megapixel camera at the rear, with an aperture of f/2 and phase-detect autofocus, capable of shooting 1080p video at up to 30fps; plus a 5.5-megapixel f/2.2 camera at the front. Unusually, there’s an LED flash at both the rear and the front. The Moto E5 Play launched as US exclusive, though a different phone with the same name is now available in the UK (more on that below), while Australia is only getting the Moto E5 or Moto E5 Plus. The E5 Play isn’t waterproof, though Motorola claims the phone is ‘water repellent’ due to ‘advanced nano-coating technology’ – so it should survive the odd accidental splash of water. Just don’t take it in the bath. As you’ll see from the graph above, the phone looks on-par with other budget phones, but in practice it’s a different story. Motorola’s decision to pair the 1.4GHz quad-core processor with only 1GB of RAM is regrettable. By comparison, the regular E5 has 2GB, while the Vodafone Smart N8 has 1.5GB. That extra bit of RAM goes a long way; it allows for a more fluid experience, and especially when you’re switching between apps. This, however, is where things begin to go slightly awry and it’s performance that begins the erosion of the Moto E5’s appeal. The culprit is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 425, a chipset I haven’t come across in a smartphone before. The paltry 2GB of RAM doesn’t help either.

Like the Moto G6, the Moto E5 comes in three different flavours: the regular Moto E5 which is on review here, the Moto E5 Plus, which comes with a ridiculously large 5,000mAh battery, and the E5 Play, which is the baby and cheapest of the bunch. You don’t get a dual camera on the Motorola E5 like you do with the Moto G6 phones and so there’s no portrait mode. In fact, the camera offers a pretty basic roster of facilities, with very few extra modes beyond panorama. As long as you’re not planning to read lots of full books from the Moto E5 Play, its screen is perfectly adequate. What it's like to use

Motorola’s E5 Play has its flaws, but its sub-£100 price and capable camera save the day

The Moto app that handles those features is actually the only add-on software we spotted on the phone. The Moto E5 Play is a great example of how clean Motorola keeps Android on its phones. Everything else pre-installed was the typical Google fare, like Chrome, calculator, maps, and the G Suite. (Different mobile carrier options may come pre-loaded with different apps, though.) The Moto E5 Play is protected from splashes and light rain by a water-repellent coating, like many of Motorola’s other phones. But don’t confuse this with waterproof. It’s not a very water-resistant phone. The entire handset measures 151 x 74 x 8.85mm and weighs a light 150 grams.