I had a GS5 and had the upgrade bug and my contract was up for renewal. I went in to VZW and looked at the Note 5 and the Turbo.
At the time, the Turbo was $199, but if you traded in a phone they gave you $100 plus waved the upgrade fee. That put the Turbo at $99, and the Note 4 at $299. To me, the Note 4 was what I wanted, but $200 more made it not worth it to me... So I got the Turbo.
Very nice phone. Fast, great screen, nothing wrong with it. But to be honest, it was not much different than the GS5. Roughly the same size screen, marginally cleaner, the Moto controls are nice. But side by side, the Turbo really is more of a lateral move. I didn't notice a speed difference, but that is because the GS5 is a fast phone.
Batter life was nice, I will give it that. But to get it you give up an SD slot, an IR blaster, the heart rate monitor, camera quality is mediocre at best, currently there is no voice and data at the same time, and the call volume is very low(common for Moto phones)... When you look at what you give up, just to get a marginally crisper screen and better battery life, I didn't feel like it was much of an "upgrade" overall...
But then on Black Friday the Note 4 went on sale, to $199 and they threw in a free Ellipsis 8 tablet and upped our 10GB data plan to 15GB for free. They also credited the $100 trade in to the Note 4 and waived the restocking fee.
The Note 4, is everything that I loved about the GS5, but bigger, faster and the screen is drop dead gorgeous. The S-pen is cool, it's thin, has an SD slot and all the cool stuff, etc...
Nothing wrong with the Turbo, but I felt like it could have been more. It seemed like it was relying too heavily on the Droid reputation to draw in "fans". The Specs look great and there isn't anything wrong with it, but at the same time the way it was executed didn't set it apart from the pack either...
