Galaxy S7 owners needn’t be too worried, though, since the J5 makes compromises in other areas, such as performance and overall build quality, in order to help keep the price as low as possible. Its plastic frame, for example, doesn’t protect against water damage, and its glossy finish can’t help but look and feel a little tacky after the beautifully sculpted metal frames on Samsung’s mid-range A series. Still, when the latest version of the A5 is almost double the price of the J5, a plastic chassis is fairly forgivable.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 are grippy rather than slippery.
Where the J5 leaps ahead of the 3rd Gen Moto G is its 5in, 1, 280 x 720 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 black and 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.
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.
Like a lot of budget smartphones these days, the J5 comes equipped with a 13-megapixel rear camera. More pixels doesn’t necessarily mean better quality photos, though, as I found the J5 could be quite temperamental depending on the lighting conditions.
Overall a gud buy at this price