Sony’s new smartphone strategy will see the company focus on higher end hardware, and while that mainly means the Xperia Z flagship range, it will include other products too. The newly announced Xperia M5 is the arguably the first proof of Sony’s plan to offer quality and affordability together. However, the handset arrives just a week after the OnePlus 2 and Motorola Moto X Play maybe changed the smartphone landscape.

Those two devices of course made their debuts last week with flagship specs and a price tag of $400 or lower (in the case of the OnePlus 2). With two quality devices right in the Xperia M5’s price band, how can the device possibly succeed? Well, whether it succeeds or not remains to be seen, but it seems this handset actually deserves to sit side by side with Motorola and OnePlus is offering arguably the best bang for buck on the market.

Simply put it does the things that those other handsets do so well, and that is come with extremely appealing specs and a dazzling design.

Let’s tackle the design first. Sony’s Xperia Z line maybe starting to get a little stale aesthetically, but it has always looked nothing less than elegant and oozes premium quality. Shrunk down for the Xperia M5 and bearing in mind the mid-range category the premium design actually looks better than ever here and not stale at all. The glass sandwiching a metal frame is retained and this is a very good-looking smartphone.

As we said, the $400 landscape has changed a bit in the last week, but it is almost as if Sony knew it was going to as the Xperia M5 blends nicely into that new category of flagship quality for less money. Indeed, there is not a whole lot of difference between this and the current Xperia Z3+ flagship, making the price even more appealing… of course Sony will be updating its flagship range to the Xperia Z5 next month.

So what about the specs? A 5-inch 1080p screen provides Full HD resolution and is an alternative to Motorola’s and OnePlus’ huge screened options. A 64-bit MediaTek MT6795 processor runs under the hood, maybe not quite as potent as some rival chipsets, this is still clocked at 2.0GHz and is part of the company’s flagship Helio X10 line. Elsewhere the flagship-like specs continue with 3GB of RAM, 16GB of native storage, thankfully a micro SD card slot, a 2,600mAh battery, and Android 5.0 Lollipop.

Sony has positioned itself as easily the biggest company in terms of smartphone camera technology, so it is not a shock to see the Xperia M5 filled with leading hardware in this department. A 21.5 megapixel rear camera comes with all the bells and whistles, not least an f/2.2 aperture and has a maximum light sensitivity of up to ISO 3200. A hybrid autofocus allows the camera to snap in 250 milliseconds, which is very quick, while 4K video adds to the quality of the rear set up. Not that the front facing lens is poor by comparison; it is a 13 megapixel lens, making it among the better selfie cams on the market.

Typically for Sony, the Xperia M5 is dust and waterproof to an IP65 level for dust and an IP68 level for water.