Joining in the pre-CES announcement train is Acer with its ultra-affordable smartphone – the Liquid Z5. Sadly, the Z5 does not really pack in a punch that low-end offerings from other OEMs pack nowadays. 

The Z5 sports a 5-inch TFT display with a disappointingly low FWVGA (480*854) resolution. It is powered by a MediaTek MT6572 chipset, which consists of a dual core A7 chip clocked at 1.3GHz, a Mali-4oo GPU and 512MB of RAM. Other unimpressive specs of the handset include 4GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot, Wi-Fi and a 2000mAh removable battery. There is also a front speaker on the handset, which is further enhanced by DTS Sound technology.

The highlight of the ZTE Z5 is its 5MP camera, which is made from a 5-element plastic lens with an f/2.4 aperture size. The BSI sensor sports a usual than larger pixel size at 1.4ūm for better quality images in low-light conditions.

On the software front, the Z5 runs on Android 4.2.2 with Acer Float user interface that packs features like AcerFloat and AcerCloud. The former allows a bunch of floating apps to be used on top of the currently running app, while the latter allows for quick sharing and management of all your personal media on the device.

The Acer Z5 will retail for $230 in France, the U.K., Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Ukraine after CES ends. The 32GB version of the Moto G costs $199, and has a much more impressive spec sheet compared to the Z5, which makes it tough to recommend the latter.