**Motorola Moto G 2014 Review: A Hidden Gem at $180**

In this review, we'll take a closer look at the Motorola Moto G 2014, a budget-friendly smartphone that packs quite a punch. With a price tag of $180, it's hard to believe what you're getting for your money. The Moto G 2014 is a winner in our books, offering a great balance of features and performance.

**Display**

The Moto G 2014 boasts a vibrant display, which is definitely not a washed-out screen like some other budget-friendly smartphones we've reviewed. We can see that the display quality is quite good, making it perfect for watching videos or browsing the web. The aspect ratio of the display is 43 and 169, giving you a great viewing experience. You also have the option to switch between widescreen mode and standard mode, which allows you to adjust the display settings to your liking.

**Camera**

One of the standout features of the Moto G 2014 is its camera. The camera starts from this wheel on the side, and you have the option for HDR Auto on or off. We found that keeping the HDR auto feature turned off was a good idea, as it gives a more natural look to your photos. You also have the ability to focus on specific areas of the image using the metering control, which is a nice touch. The camera can take 720p video and slow-motion video, but unfortunately, there's no option for 1080p resolution.

**Additional Features**

The Moto G 2014 has some additional features that set it apart from other budget-friendly smartphones. You have a FM radio, expansion card slot (although it's only available via USB OTG), and stereo speakers that provide a great audio experience. The phone also comes with an 8-megapixel camera, which is a nice upgrade over the 5-megapixel camera found in some other budget phones.

**Performance**

The Moto G 2014 is a smooth device, despite having only 1GB of RAM and an aggressive shutdown feature that closes apps suddenly. However, this shouldn't be a concern for most users, as you're getting a great balance of performance and price. The phone's performance is also comparable to the flagship Moto X, making it a great option for those looking for a budget-friendly device.

**Software**

The Moto G 2014 runs on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean out of the box, but thanks to its near-stock launcher, you'll be getting updates quickly. This means that you can expect to get the latest Android update, including Lollipop, which is a great feature for those who want a device with up-to-date software.

**Conclusion**

The Motorola Moto G 2014 is a hidden gem at $180. With its vibrant display, great camera performance, and additional features like an FM radio and expansion card slot, it's hard to beat this deal. The phone's aggressive shutdown feature might be a concern for some users, but overall, the Moto G 2014 is a smooth device that won't disappoint you. Our only hope is that Motorola releases an LTE variant of this device in the future, making it even more appealing to those who want fast data speeds.

**Rating and Recommendations**

We highly recommend the Motorola Moto G 2014 for anyone looking for a budget-friendly smartphone with great performance. The phone's price tag of $180 makes it an attractive option for those on a tight budget. While there are some drawbacks, such as the lack of 1080p video recording and the aggressive shutdown feature, these shouldn't be a concern for most users. Overall, we think this is a great device that won't disappoint you.

**Comparison to Moto X**

We compared the Motorola Moto G 2014 to the Moto X, which is a flagship smartphone from Motorola. While the Moto X has some additional features like a 5-megapixel front-facing camera and a more premium design, the Moto G 2014 offers a great balance of performance and price. The Moto G 2014 also has some exclusive features like stereo speakers and an expansion card slot that are not available on the Moto X.

**Final Thoughts**

The Motorola Moto G 2014 is a device that should be taken seriously. With its great display, camera performance, and additional features like an FM radio and expansion card slot, it's hard to beat this deal. We hope that Motorola will release an LTE variant of this device in the future, making it even more appealing to those who want fast data speeds. For now, we highly recommend the Moto G 2014 for anyone looking for a budget-friendly smartphone with great performance.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody this is Erica the technology nerd who likes to film stuff and before me I have the Moto G this is the second generation Moto G and what I want to do in this video is talk about The Good the Bad and the Ugly of what I have found so far with this device this device runs you $18 for just the Baseline model which is just incredibly cheap so just say you're someone who doesn't have a smartphone yet and you want to get into the smartphone market or you're somebody who needs to have a backup phone or you have kids and you don't trust them with an expensive phone or even if you are not interested in the flagship devices that are coming out and you want to have a really decent but cheap device this might be the phone for you so let's go ahead and look at some of the good bad and uglies so that you can decide if you want to go for this guy or not the first thing that I want to talk about is the new look of the Moto G right next beside it you can see that we have the original Moto G this was a 4.5 in display and this is now a 5-in display you can see just how much bigger the Moto G is now part of the thrill for me for the original Moto G was just how small and manageable it was it is nice to have that 5-in display but honestly it almost feels like the size is unnecessary we do have quite large bezels on the top and bottom I know that has to do a lot with the stereo speakers that we have on this phone which I will get into but now if you take it and compare it to other phones on the market here we have the M8 which is quite a tall phone you can see that it's nearly the size of the M8 so it is not a small phone anymore by any means here we have the Galaxy S5 you can see it looks pretty much like the same type of footprint it really does look to be the same size you can see that it's not a thin phone either so they took it from a delightful size to something that really is much bigger if you're curious here we have it next to the LG G3 you can see that it's still thicker than the LG G3 and also we have the Galaxy Note 3 so you can just see that this is not a small phone anymore and interestingly enough it's actually quite heavy too and here's the last one for size the Moto X this is the new Moto X and interestingly enough they made the Moto X much larger than the original as well Motorola said that they did well to listen to the feedback of customers but on this one aspect did they really so taking a look around the phone and also talking about some specs both of these devices have the exact same s so inside of them the Snapdragon 400 so that has not changed so we've got four cortex A7 CPU cor clocked at 1.2 GHz and an adreno 305 GPU still it's got only 1 GB of RAM for internal storage you have either an 8 or 16 GB variant and these days we do have an SD card slot the original Moto G did not have an SD card slot but the 4G LTE version that was later released did have an expansion card slot on the back here we have a 5 megapixel camera and we now have an 8 megapixel camera that is on the new Moto G sadly for video recording it's still only 720p I will show you some samples for video and some samples for pictures and I can say right now that I am very very impressed with this camera especially on the image side the video side need some work there are some issues going on with it right now you will see all of that in just a little bit but this is a very very nice camera we also have a single LED flash here and even though I don't want to compare these two devices because they're separate entities entirely meant for different markets the camera on the Moto G in so many different ways does a lot better than what the Moto X is doing right now on the back you can see that we still have that dimple and of course you have the ability to change out these back covers motorol did provide me with an extra back cover you can see I've got this yellowish Green version it's kind of a Lish yellow green it's really hard to tell exactly what color this is but yes the back cover is still removable although that battery is not removable now unfortunately they did not increase the size of the battery it's still 270 milliamp hours so we do have a much bigger display and the same size battery so you bet that the battery life is not as good as the original Moto G I haven't gotten conclusive results just yet but it looks like I'm getting somewhere around 4 hours of onscreen time that's with heavy use of course and this one just did so so much better so I will continue to use this and really see what's going on with that battery life but it's got the exact same s so inside of it so performance- wise there really shouldn't be any other factors changing anything so on the top we have a standard headphone jack we've got a microphone on the right side we've got the power button and volume rocker I haven't had any issues they feel very quality at least on the bottom we've got a micro USB charging port it does have usb OTG support so you can plug in something like a flash drive on the Le hand side there is nothing on the front we have a 2 megapixel front-facing camera up from the 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera that was on the original Moto G we've got a proximity ambient light sensor and then interestingly we've got stereo speakers on the front of this device here that was something that was was totally unexpected especially because if you look at the Moto X it's got that same appearance that same look but unfortunately on the Moto X only the bottom one is a speaker so it's not stereo speakers on the Moto X this is just the receiver at the top so this has kind of put some people into an uproar wondering why does the flagship device not have stereo speakers but this device does so this is where I want to move on and talk about the speakers a little bit yes these are truly St stereo speakers we truly do have a left Channel and a right channel I've done a lot of listening to actually both of these devices and I can say that yeah it's nice to have these stereo speakers but they are not by any means great speakers they don't have much of a stereo resolution and a lot of the times I can tell that there's quite a bit of distortion especially at loud volumes and looking at the speakers on the HTC1 M8 these are louder these are much more clear there is just no competition yes this has stereo speakers but they don't come close to touching the quality of the M8 the other interesting thing that I am finding is that even though this does not have stereo speakers the speaker on the bottom is nice it's pretty loud it's pretty clear and Motorola has added some type of a stereo effect to it to where in all honesty I think that just this one speaker on the Moto X is better quality than both of the speakers together on the Moto G so yeah I think the stereo speaker ERS are nice for gameplay it does give it a little bit more of a dimension than just having one speaker on it that's of just quality but now you just have two speakers of just okay quality so they're nice but trust me they're not that nice so please don't envy the speakers that are in this one I would just be more envious that Motorola did not include stereo speakers in this one so no speakers are not better Just because they're stereo there is another thing that I am curious about and another thing that I want to point out you can see that the look of this device is very very similar to the Moto E down to the way that it's built you can see that the whole design look is very similar if you look at the Moto E you can see that there is a little bit of space between where this glass meets the plastic and we're seeing the exact same thing here I do have to say that I don't see such a gap on the original Moto G so what I I am seeing with this Moto G and this new way that they're putting it together is that there is some light leaking especially when you turn up the brightness all the way just say that you are in the dark and you are enjoying some content you're watching YouTube videos or you're on Netflix unfortunately I see light leaking out the side here it was the exact same thing on the Moto E and also on the backside when that backlight is all the way up you can see the light leaking through the back cover as well so that is something that is not very Pleasant at all that's something I did not see with the original Moto G I really would like to get my hands on a black version of this device but to me when looking at the way that this was put together it's not the same design process as what we have on these two here I'm sure we're going to see variations between how much light bleeding that we see but anywhere that you see a gap on this device they indeed is light bleeding right through it it's not sealed off as it should be so shame motorol a shame shame shame when you have the brightness of the backlight lower you don't tend to see the light leaking through as bad in fact when you are on the lowest brightness it's quite hard to see the light that's leaking through so it might not be something that's very bothersome and something that people might not notice at all if they're using the device in the dark but I just think it's unacceptable now talking a little bit about performance what is just absolutely great about what Motorola has here is that even though this is $180 for the phone without contract without any ties or anything like that you've got a very decent performing phone in all honesty in day-to-day use most of the time I can't even tell that this is $180 phone it just it's nice and it's smooth and that I have to think in part because Motorola does not include a bunch of launcher changes they don't do a bunch of Frills and crazy things there's nothing to bog it down or slow it down this really is essentially vanilla Android and I appreciate that this is is a very nice functioning phone you don't have to expect it to have cheap performance because it's actually cheap web browsing is a pretty decent experience although from time to time I do notice a little bit of lag here and there but it's not horrific it is still very very usable but in terms of scrolling panning zooming don't expect it to be as smooth as a flagship device but it's more than usable once in a while when typing I do see that it lags a little bit it doesn't matter whether it's using Swift key or the stock keyboard once in a while you will see that the input of your characters will be behind your key presses and that's something that's a little bit annoying it happens here and there there is only 1 GB of RAM on this phone but usually I notice that it's actually quite smooth of an experience now moving on to gameplay I'm actually quite happy to see that this device handles games pretty well adrino 305 is not bad even for handling Asphalt 8 so as far as games in the Android market I am confident you should be able to play them without much of an issue I don't think you're going to have a buttery smooth experience but it's totally fine and completely playable there is one thing that annoys me is that yeah I mentioned already that there's only 1 Gaby of ram so I got out of my game for just a second and just say that I go to look at my Twitter or whatever I let that Twitter load la la la then I try to go back to Asphalt 8 and it restarted itself so I find that to be a bit annoying so this device really isn't going to be great for multitasking but all things considered sole performance is actually pretty good now taking a look at this display this is a 5-in display it's protected by Gorilla Glass 3 it is an IPS display I think that the viewing angles are okay you can see though that from the side you do lose a bit of brightness although I'm happy to say that there is no color shifting that I can see also this display is over 100 knits brighter than the original Moto G so with brightness at 100% I'm roughly getting 363 knits although this is only at 100% brightness this is not with auto brightness out in direct sunlight one thing to remark about direct sunlight is that I do think that it looks pretty decent in direct sunlight I don't have any issues reading the display although for the contrast ratio I do wish it was a little bit better it is below 8800 to1 now going and looking at some measurements it looks like they have boosted the gamma in midtones and in Shadow areas when you boost gamma not only does it boost saturation but it also makes the image a little darker I can also see that they are pushing gamma lower towards highlights that would be in an effort to make highlights brighter so my guess would be that they are compensating a little bit for that lower contrast ratio but at least I'm glad that they're not doing terrible things with the colors they're not tweaking or processing the colors that's what I'm able to see here when we have these dots in a straight line and evenly spaced this is 0% saturation of a particular color up to 100% saturation you can see that they look straight they're not tweaked they're not really close together so they're not doing crazy things with the colors they're not crazily processing the colors like I've seen on many many different displays so that is definitely a good thing the one thing that bothers me about this display is the same thing that Motorola did on the original Moto G is that they really boost blue so you can see that the whites are actually not too blue but as you go to midtones which is like faces skin tones up to Shadows which is the darker parts of an image you can see how they're really boosting the temperature so it gets really blue in Black areas now this is probably on purpose it gives it kind of a graded appearance I I honestly don't really like it when watching content on Netflix or on YouTube or whatever I think things have a considerable blue cast to them but overall this is definitely not a bad display at all the colors look quite nice to me and it's definitely not a washed out display either so you get quite a nice display for 180 bucks the last thing that I want to do is talk about the camera starting from this wheel that we have on the side here you have the option for HDR Auto on or off I have to say that when testing HDR that it really is give or take I would suggest just keeping it off I think the HDR definitely looks overblown I will show you some samples you also have the ability for Flash Auto on off you have a metering control where if you drag this little bracket around you can choose what you want to focus on and also the exposure for video we have either 720p there is no 1080P or you can use slow slow motion 720p you've got the ability for Panorama Geo tagging you can put in a SD card to save your content you also have the option for widescreen 6 megapixels 169 or standard 8 Maps 43 so the aspect of the sensor itself is 43 and then you have a 6 megapixel 169 crop and then you can also turn on or off the shutter to have discrete pictures you have the ability to switch to the 2 megapixel front-facing camera or to start filming video now sadly when filming video when you touch the display just like it was before all you do is you take a picture so everything is completely Auto although you do have the ability to pause and you can touch to resume recording so that is a nice feature so it's a very very simple camera I really want to show you some samples because I'm very excited with the results not only does this have nice colors in photos but it actually does decent and low lighting as well there isn't a bunch of noise in the images to speak of it just does a good job this is a good camera versus what I think is hilarious on the Moto X is that they really did something weird with the colors in photos although colors tend to look a little bit better in video but in low lighting this device just doesn't do very good at all there's a lot of noise in the images also I find it interesting that this has a wider aperture lens 2.0 versus 2.25 also I noticed that when taking pictures with the Moto xit things look a little bit more cropped so for the price of this device I am not disappointed by the performance of the camera at all the one thing I am a little bit disappointed with is the video camera because it is that 720p although colors are nice but the issue though is that it has some real problems with the exposure it really bounces around and you'll be able to see that as well that's something that they really should be able to fix so I hope that motorol is able to see this video and thanks to themselves yeah we should fix that so let's go and look at some content we'll do some comparisons of content so you can see just how well this actually does a yeah BL really now like than all start so thank you everybody for watching this has been Erica the technology nerd who likes to film stuff please rate comment and subscribe this device really is a winner for $180 versus the $500 or so that you pay for the flagship they did put some extra features that are just not on the Moto X you've got those stereo speakers you've got an awesome 5 megapixel camera that's just great you got an expansion card slot which is something that you don't have with the Moto X and unfortunately this is a 16 GB model and I have no expansion no ability to expand except for usb OTG this also has a FM radio so it just looks like Motorola did put a lot of thought into this phone I'm not so fond of the size but you can't really beat this for the price plus the launcher is very close to stock so you should be getting updates pretty quickly so you will be getting the Android L update it's a very very nice and smooth device you do have some shortcomings such as not very much RAM it's kind of aggressive shutting down apps but otherwise it's very smooth and you can't tell that this is $180 you just can't my only hope is that they come out with an LTE variant because this really does deserve to have an LTE variant although I would assume it' be something like the original Moto G where they release one that's not LTE and then a little later they release an LTE model although really they should have just released LTE to begin with and this would be almost a perfect device so let me know what you all think ask me questions if there's something that I didn't cover for right now down in the comment section below give this device a look don't ignore it just because it's $180 I don't think you'll regret it have a good nighthey everybody this is Erica the technology nerd who likes to film stuff and before me I have the Moto G this is the second generation Moto G and what I want to do in this video is talk about The Good the Bad and the Ugly of what I have found so far with this device this device runs you $18 for just the Baseline model which is just incredibly cheap so just say you're someone who doesn't have a smartphone yet and you want to get into the smartphone market or you're somebody who needs to have a backup phone or you have kids and you don't trust them with an expensive phone or even if you are not interested in the flagship devices that are coming out and you want to have a really decent but cheap device this might be the phone for you so let's go ahead and look at some of the good bad and uglies so that you can decide if you want to go for this guy or not the first thing that I want to talk about is the new look of the Moto G right next beside it you can see that we have the original Moto G this was a 4.5 in display and this is now a 5-in display you can see just how much bigger the Moto G is now part of the thrill for me for the original Moto G was just how small and manageable it was it is nice to have that 5-in display but honestly it almost feels like the size is unnecessary we do have quite large bezels on the top and bottom I know that has to do a lot with the stereo speakers that we have on this phone which I will get into but now if you take it and compare it to other phones on the market here we have the M8 which is quite a tall phone you can see that it's nearly the size of the M8 so it is not a small phone anymore by any means here we have the Galaxy S5 you can see it looks pretty much like the same type of footprint it really does look to be the same size you can see that it's not a thin phone either so they took it from a delightful size to something that really is much bigger if you're curious here we have it next to the LG G3 you can see that it's still thicker than the LG G3 and also we have the Galaxy Note 3 so you can just see that this is not a small phone anymore and interestingly enough it's actually quite heavy too and here's the last one for size the Moto X this is the new Moto X and interestingly enough they made the Moto X much larger than the original as well Motorola said that they did well to listen to the feedback of customers but on this one aspect did they really so taking a look around the phone and also talking about some specs both of these devices have the exact same s so inside of them the Snapdragon 400 so that has not changed so we've got four cortex A7 CPU cor clocked at 1.2 GHz and an adreno 305 GPU still it's got only 1 GB of RAM for internal storage you have either an 8 or 16 GB variant and these days we do have an SD card slot the original Moto G did not have an SD card slot but the 4G LTE version that was later released did have an expansion card slot on the back here we have a 5 megapixel camera and we now have an 8 megapixel camera that is on the new Moto G sadly for video recording it's still only 720p I will show you some samples for video and some samples for pictures and I can say right now that I am very very impressed with this camera especially on the image side the video side need some work there are some issues going on with it right now you will see all of that in just a little bit but this is a very very nice camera we also have a single LED flash here and even though I don't want to compare these two devices because they're separate entities entirely meant for different markets the camera on the Moto G in so many different ways does a lot better than what the Moto X is doing right now on the back you can see that we still have that dimple and of course you have the ability to change out these back covers motorol did provide me with an extra back cover you can see I've got this yellowish Green version it's kind of a Lish yellow green it's really hard to tell exactly what color this is but yes the back cover is still removable although that battery is not removable now unfortunately they did not increase the size of the battery it's still 270 milliamp hours so we do have a much bigger display and the same size battery so you bet that the battery life is not as good as the original Moto G I haven't gotten conclusive results just yet but it looks like I'm getting somewhere around 4 hours of onscreen time that's with heavy use of course and this one just did so so much better so I will continue to use this and really see what's going on with that battery life but it's got the exact same s so inside of it so performance- wise there really shouldn't be any other factors changing anything so on the top we have a standard headphone jack we've got a microphone on the right side we've got the power button and volume rocker I haven't had any issues they feel very quality at least on the bottom we've got a micro USB charging port it does have usb OTG support so you can plug in something like a flash drive on the Le hand side there is nothing on the front we have a 2 megapixel front-facing camera up from the 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera that was on the original Moto G we've got a proximity ambient light sensor and then interestingly we've got stereo speakers on the front of this device here that was something that was was totally unexpected especially because if you look at the Moto X it's got that same appearance that same look but unfortunately on the Moto X only the bottom one is a speaker so it's not stereo speakers on the Moto X this is just the receiver at the top so this has kind of put some people into an uproar wondering why does the flagship device not have stereo speakers but this device does so this is where I want to move on and talk about the speakers a little bit yes these are truly St stereo speakers we truly do have a left Channel and a right channel I've done a lot of listening to actually both of these devices and I can say that yeah it's nice to have these stereo speakers but they are not by any means great speakers they don't have much of a stereo resolution and a lot of the times I can tell that there's quite a bit of distortion especially at loud volumes and looking at the speakers on the HTC1 M8 these are louder these are much more clear there is just no competition yes this has stereo speakers but they don't come close to touching the quality of the M8 the other interesting thing that I am finding is that even though this does not have stereo speakers the speaker on the bottom is nice it's pretty loud it's pretty clear and Motorola has added some type of a stereo effect to it to where in all honesty I think that just this one speaker on the Moto X is better quality than both of the speakers together on the Moto G so yeah I think the stereo speaker ERS are nice for gameplay it does give it a little bit more of a dimension than just having one speaker on it that's of just quality but now you just have two speakers of just okay quality so they're nice but trust me they're not that nice so please don't envy the speakers that are in this one I would just be more envious that Motorola did not include stereo speakers in this one so no speakers are not better Just because they're stereo there is another thing that I am curious about and another thing that I want to point out you can see that the look of this device is very very similar to the Moto E down to the way that it's built you can see that the whole design look is very similar if you look at the Moto E you can see that there is a little bit of space between where this glass meets the plastic and we're seeing the exact same thing here I do have to say that I don't see such a gap on the original Moto G so what I I am seeing with this Moto G and this new way that they're putting it together is that there is some light leaking especially when you turn up the brightness all the way just say that you are in the dark and you are enjoying some content you're watching YouTube videos or you're on Netflix unfortunately I see light leaking out the side here it was the exact same thing on the Moto E and also on the backside when that backlight is all the way up you can see the light leaking through the back cover as well so that is something that is not very Pleasant at all that's something I did not see with the original Moto G I really would like to get my hands on a black version of this device but to me when looking at the way that this was put together it's not the same design process as what we have on these two here I'm sure we're going to see variations between how much light bleeding that we see but anywhere that you see a gap on this device they indeed is light bleeding right through it it's not sealed off as it should be so shame motorol a shame shame shame when you have the brightness of the backlight lower you don't tend to see the light leaking through as bad in fact when you are on the lowest brightness it's quite hard to see the light that's leaking through so it might not be something that's very bothersome and something that people might not notice at all if they're using the device in the dark but I just think it's unacceptable now talking a little bit about performance what is just absolutely great about what Motorola has here is that even though this is $180 for the phone without contract without any ties or anything like that you've got a very decent performing phone in all honesty in day-to-day use most of the time I can't even tell that this is $180 phone it just it's nice and it's smooth and that I have to think in part because Motorola does not include a bunch of launcher changes they don't do a bunch of Frills and crazy things there's nothing to bog it down or slow it down this really is essentially vanilla Android and I appreciate that this is is a very nice functioning phone you don't have to expect it to have cheap performance because it's actually cheap web browsing is a pretty decent experience although from time to time I do notice a little bit of lag here and there but it's not horrific it is still very very usable but in terms of scrolling panning zooming don't expect it to be as smooth as a flagship device but it's more than usable once in a while when typing I do see that it lags a little bit it doesn't matter whether it's using Swift key or the stock keyboard once in a while you will see that the input of your characters will be behind your key presses and that's something that's a little bit annoying it happens here and there there is only 1 GB of RAM on this phone but usually I notice that it's actually quite smooth of an experience now moving on to gameplay I'm actually quite happy to see that this device handles games pretty well adrino 305 is not bad even for handling Asphalt 8 so as far as games in the Android market I am confident you should be able to play them without much of an issue I don't think you're going to have a buttery smooth experience but it's totally fine and completely playable there is one thing that annoys me is that yeah I mentioned already that there's only 1 Gaby of ram so I got out of my game for just a second and just say that I go to look at my Twitter or whatever I let that Twitter load la la la then I try to go back to Asphalt 8 and it restarted itself so I find that to be a bit annoying so this device really isn't going to be great for multitasking but all things considered sole performance is actually pretty good now taking a look at this display this is a 5-in display it's protected by Gorilla Glass 3 it is an IPS display I think that the viewing angles are okay you can see though that from the side you do lose a bit of brightness although I'm happy to say that there is no color shifting that I can see also this display is over 100 knits brighter than the original Moto G so with brightness at 100% I'm roughly getting 363 knits although this is only at 100% brightness this is not with auto brightness out in direct sunlight one thing to remark about direct sunlight is that I do think that it looks pretty decent in direct sunlight I don't have any issues reading the display although for the contrast ratio I do wish it was a little bit better it is below 8800 to1 now going and looking at some measurements it looks like they have boosted the gamma in midtones and in Shadow areas when you boost gamma not only does it boost saturation but it also makes the image a little darker I can also see that they are pushing gamma lower towards highlights that would be in an effort to make highlights brighter so my guess would be that they are compensating a little bit for that lower contrast ratio but at least I'm glad that they're not doing terrible things with the colors they're not tweaking or processing the colors that's what I'm able to see here when we have these dots in a straight line and evenly spaced this is 0% saturation of a particular color up to 100% saturation you can see that they look straight they're not tweaked they're not really close together so they're not doing crazy things with the colors they're not crazily processing the colors like I've seen on many many different displays so that is definitely a good thing the one thing that bothers me about this display is the same thing that Motorola did on the original Moto G is that they really boost blue so you can see that the whites are actually not too blue but as you go to midtones which is like faces skin tones up to Shadows which is the darker parts of an image you can see how they're really boosting the temperature so it gets really blue in Black areas now this is probably on purpose it gives it kind of a graded appearance I I honestly don't really like it when watching content on Netflix or on YouTube or whatever I think things have a considerable blue cast to them but overall this is definitely not a bad display at all the colors look quite nice to me and it's definitely not a washed out display either so you get quite a nice display for 180 bucks the last thing that I want to do is talk about the camera starting from this wheel that we have on the side here you have the option for HDR Auto on or off I have to say that when testing HDR that it really is give or take I would suggest just keeping it off I think the HDR definitely looks overblown I will show you some samples you also have the ability for Flash Auto on off you have a metering control where if you drag this little bracket around you can choose what you want to focus on and also the exposure for video we have either 720p there is no 1080P or you can use slow slow motion 720p you've got the ability for Panorama Geo tagging you can put in a SD card to save your content you also have the option for widescreen 6 megapixels 169 or standard 8 Maps 43 so the aspect of the sensor itself is 43 and then you have a 6 megapixel 169 crop and then you can also turn on or off the shutter to have discrete pictures you have the ability to switch to the 2 megapixel front-facing camera or to start filming video now sadly when filming video when you touch the display just like it was before all you do is you take a picture so everything is completely Auto although you do have the ability to pause and you can touch to resume recording so that is a nice feature so it's a very very simple camera I really want to show you some samples because I'm very excited with the results not only does this have nice colors in photos but it actually does decent and low lighting as well there isn't a bunch of noise in the images to speak of it just does a good job this is a good camera versus what I think is hilarious on the Moto X is that they really did something weird with the colors in photos although colors tend to look a little bit better in video but in low lighting this device just doesn't do very good at all there's a lot of noise in the images also I find it interesting that this has a wider aperture lens 2.0 versus 2.25 also I noticed that when taking pictures with the Moto xit things look a little bit more cropped so for the price of this device I am not disappointed by the performance of the camera at all the one thing I am a little bit disappointed with is the video camera because it is that 720p although colors are nice but the issue though is that it has some real problems with the exposure it really bounces around and you'll be able to see that as well that's something that they really should be able to fix so I hope that motorol is able to see this video and thanks to themselves yeah we should fix that so let's go and look at some content we'll do some comparisons of content so you can see just how well this actually does a yeah BL really now like than all start so thank you everybody for watching this has been Erica the technology nerd who likes to film stuff please rate comment and subscribe this device really is a winner for $180 versus the $500 or so that you pay for the flagship they did put some extra features that are just not on the Moto X you've got those stereo speakers you've got an awesome 5 megapixel camera that's just great you got an expansion card slot which is something that you don't have with the Moto X and unfortunately this is a 16 GB model and I have no expansion no ability to expand except for usb OTG this also has a FM radio so it just looks like Motorola did put a lot of thought into this phone I'm not so fond of the size but you can't really beat this for the price plus the launcher is very close to stock so you should be getting updates pretty quickly so you will be getting the Android L update it's a very very nice and smooth device you do have some shortcomings such as not very much RAM it's kind of aggressive shutting down apps but otherwise it's very smooth and you can't tell that this is $180 you just can't my only hope is that they come out with an LTE variant because this really does deserve to have an LTE variant although I would assume it' be something like the original Moto G where they release one that's not LTE and then a little later they release an LTE model although really they should have just released LTE to begin with and this would be almost a perfect device so let me know what you all think ask me questions if there's something that I didn't cover for right now down in the comment section below give this device a look don't ignore it just because it's $180 I don't think you'll regret it have a good night\n"