Sonys mid-2015 attempt at making a decent mid-range phone was rather quite compelling, to say the least. Successor to the Xperia M2 Aqua, the Xperia M4 Aqua has all the tricks up its sleeve that one would expect out of a smartphone under a mid-range price tag.

From the outside, the M4 Aqua is a not-so-big device that comes with a 5.0 inch screen (protected by a scratch-resistant glass) at a resolution of 720 x 1280 and a pixel density of 294 pixels per inch. Its also quite slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, giving it a more premium feel. Another big selling point worth mentioning here is a gimmick that is already hinted in the phones name. The M4 Aqua is IP68 certified, which means that it is dust and water proof up to 1.5 meters and 30 minutes.

Moving over to what powers the device, the M4 Aqua runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset, along with an eight-core (Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 + Quad-core 1.0 GHz Cortex-A53) processor and the Adreno 405 GPU. This sums up to a good performing device under heavy load. Memory wise, the M4 Aqua has two variants, one with 8 GB of internal storage and the other with 16 GB, alongside 2 gigs of RAM in both of them. It also has a dedicated microSD card slot (up to 128 GB) for storage expansion purposes.

Looking at the cameras on the phone, the M4 Aqua has a 13 megapixel sensor at the back with an aperture of f/2.0 and an LED flash. It also records videos in full HD 1080p. On the front, there is a 5 megapixel sensor that is the 2015 flagship standard and is good enough for its usual purpose.

The battery has been upgraded (from a 2300 mAh one in the M2) to a 2400 mAh one in the M4 Aqua. It is big enough to last the phone for a days use on an average basis. So bottom line is that the Xperia M4 Aqua is quite a good bargain under this price-tag, which rightly gives Sony the praise it deserves on this one.