Sony Xperia M2 review

It may be more than a year old, but the Sony Xperia M2 has proven to be an enduringly popular choice for budget smartphone buyers. Despite having been superseded twice, the newest Sony Xperia M phone being the M4 Aqua, the Xperia M2 is still available for as little as £140 SIM-free or £10.50-per-month on contract. However, at this price, the M2 is firmly in 2nd Gen Moto G territory, and the M2 hasn't aged nearly as well as Motorola's budget marvel.

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 960x540 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 and the M4 Aqua.

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, but at least its black level of 0.47cd/m2 isn't as high as the M4 Aqua, which reached a disappointing high of 0.72cd/m2.

However, the M2's real downfall is its tiny resolution of just 960x540. 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, and 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 the same chipset after all, and it 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, but then again the Moto G doesn't fare much better with its result of 494.

Graphics performance was also on par with the Moto G, as it produced an identical 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, beating the Moto G by a full two hours. It even outlasts the M4 Aqua, which only lasted 10h 16m under the same conditions.

Camera

On the rear of the camera is the M2's 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 of £10.50-per-month just isn't as good value as the 2nd Gen Moto G. While the current Moto G is a fraction more expensive at £11.50-per-month for 500MB of data, you're getting a higher resolution screen, a superior camera and a much more attractive smartphone for your money. The M2 is by no means a bad handset, but the Moto G continues to reign supreme.