Samsung Galaxy J5 review

The most important thing is that it feels well-made, and the J5 delivers on this in spades. Its matt cover is rather plain compared to the grooved finish on the 3rd Gen Moto G, but both phones feel like they could survive the odd knock. The J5's slim dimensions also make it very easy to hold, and its curved sides don't feel like they're about to fly out of your hand.

Display

Where the J5 leaps ahead of the Moto G is its 5in, 1280x720 Super AMOLED display. This is the cheapest Samsung phone I've ever seen to come with one of its Super AMOLED panels, and it makes other budget LCD-based displays look positively insipid by comparison. The screen on the Moto G, for instance, is pretty good, but it can't match the sheer vibrancy of the J5's display. With its 100% sRGB colour gamut coverage, perfect 0.00cd/m2 blacks and ultra-high contrast ratio, images on the J5 look absolutely stunning, and I've yet to see an LCD-based screen at this kind of price that can best it.

Of course, the one downside of AMOLED screens is that they're nowhere near as bright as LCD. However, the J5's peak brightness of 357.72cd/m2 is still pretty respectable, and should be more than enough for most lighting conditions. Only in bright sunshine will you need to have it on max.

Performance

Admittedly, it's not the fastest handset around, as its quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor and 1.5GB of RAM put its day-to-day performance on par with almost every other budget smartphone. In Geekbench 3, the J5 scored 459 in the single core test and 1,343 in the multicore test, putting it just behind the Moto G on our budget leaderboard.

That said, Samsung's Android 5.1.1-based TouchWiz interface still feels relatively smooth and responsive, and apps don't take an age to open either. The Moto G proved quicker at loading games, but web browsing was more or less a level playing field, as evidenced by the J5's Peacekeeper score of 634, which is only around 100 points short of the Moto G. Scrolling was a little jerky in places, and browsing could be rather stop-start when pages were still loading, but otherwise surfing the web was pretty hassle free.

The J5 isn't really capable of playing the latest games, as it only managed 113 frames (or 1.8fps) in the offscreen Manhattan 3.0 test in GFX Bench GL. This is to be expected on a budget smartphone, so Hearthstone fanatics should probably look elsewhere. However, I was able to play simple games such as Threes! absolutely fine, so you should still be able to get your Candy Crush fix on the J5 without too much trouble