Moto E4 versus Galaxy J3: Battle of the supercheap phones

Samsung may win kudos on the high end with the Galaxy S8 , but it's Motorola that's become the champion of the midrange and budget phones, with the Moto Z2 Play, Moto G5 Plus and now, the Moto E4. 

(To muddle matters, there's also a Moto G5 and a Moto E4 Plus . See what I mean? Moto is everywhere.)

I wanted to know: Can Samsung's Galaxy J3 hold its own against the Moto E4, which comes in at about the same price?

Watch this: Cheap Samsung phone gives us deja vu

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I reviewed the Galaxy J3, and my colleague Patrick Holland reviewed the Moto E4. Then we compared notes, performance speeds and image quality (using the same photos). Both phones share the same screen size and resolution, Android software version and storage capacity. The processors are about on par. However, the differences are clear.

In one corner, the Galaxy J3 has the far better build quality and support for a higher capacity external storage card -- that means you can store more photos, games and music files on the J3 than on the Moto E4.

Can you tell these photos were taken with a $130 phone?

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But the Moto E4 wins everywhere else. Image quality is far superior, the E4 is much faster and battery life runs a little longer. It's also cheaper than the Galaxy J3 in the US, UK and Australia. 

It's a shame, though. I wish the competition were closer. I really liked last year's Galaxy J3, but this year's disappointed me with hardware specs too similar to last year's model to make a huge performance difference, and actually less RAM than the 2016 version. In other words, while the Moto E4 for 2017 jumped ahead, the Galaxy J3 largely stayed in place.

Hopefully, Samsung puts more competitive effort into the Galaxy J3 for 2018. Buyers deserve a fair fight.