Specs at a glance: HTC One M8 Google Play edition Screen 1920×1080 5"(441 ppi) LCD OS Android KitKat 4.4.2 CPU 2.36GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 RAM 2GB GPU Adreno 330 Storage 32GB with MicroSD slot Networking Dual-band 802.11b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS Ports Micro USB, headphones Camera 4MP "UltraPixel" rear camera, 5MP front camera, depth sensor Size 146.36mm x 70.6mm x 9.35mm Weight 160g Battery 2600 mAh Starting price $699 unlocked Other perks Front-facing stereo speakers, notification LED

A controversial statement: I don’t really care that much for the Nexus 5.

Oh, there’s no denying it’s a fine phone. It’s fast, it gets updates quickly, it's solidly built, and its price is unmatched by any other smartphone vendor. These are the things that make the Nexus 5 (and the rest of the Nexus family) popular among the tech set. It’s a really good deal.

And yet, it leaves me feeling a little cold. It’s a very plain-looking slab, possessed of no particular style or distinctiveness. Its boxy edges feel awkward in the hand. It is exactly the sum of its parts: on paper it’s superior to something like the Moto X in every possible way, but in practice I’d rather carry Motorola’s phone than Google’s.

Which brings us to the Google Play edition family's newest member, the HTC One M8. This phone combines Google's clean, fast version of Android (and relatively prompt access to software updates) with HTC's attractive metal chassis. The downside, as with all the Google Play edition devices, is that the OEMs set the prices. The HTC One M8 Google Play edition costs $699, fully double what you'd pay for the cheapest Nexus 5.

Where does the M8 best the Nexus 5? Is there anything about it that justifies the extra cost, or should you just pocket the cash and get the Nexus instead?

Where HTC wins

Design and build quality

The M8's single biggest selling point is the way it looks and feels—it's mostly aluminum where the Nexus 5 is mostly plastic (albeit a nice, solid plastic and not that flexy, slippery stuff you'll find elsewhere). It's all curves where the Nexus 5 has boxy edges. It's a phone that looks just as good in person as it does in pictures, where the Nexus 5 is a serviceable-but-bland slab. The Nexus 5 also has a weak, ineffectual vibration motor, while the M8's is like a firm handshake.

You get the point. We could wish the M8 was a little smaller and that its top-mounted power button was in a place where you could actually reach it with one hand, but there's no denying that HTC is making some of the prettiest, sturdiest smartphones you can buy today.

Like other Google Play edition devices, the M8 also has one perk that no recent Nexus has: a microSD card slot for expanding the phone's 32GB of internal storage. KitKat limits the ways in which applications can interact with that storage, but if you just want to dump a bunch of video files on it and then watch them you'll be very happy.

Speakers

Strictly speaking, I can live without the M8's twin front-facing "BoomSound" speakers—if I'm watching or listening to anything on my phone, I'm usually doing it with headphones in—but there's no denying that they're both louder and clearer than the single tiny speaker on the bottom of the Nexus 5. The M8 can fill a small room with decent-sounding tunes. The Nexus 5 can't even spell "bass."

Battery life

The M8 has a nice, roomy 2,600mAh battery, a smallish but significant increase from the Nexus 5's 2,300mAh battery. According to our Wi-Fi browsing test, this should buy you around an hour and a half of extra runtime, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Warranty

The M8 Google Play edition is sold through Google, but since it's still an HTC phone, it benefits from the HTC Advantage program the company announced in February. One of the program's promises—two years of Android updates following a phone's launch—doesn't really apply here, since Google Play edition phones get those anyway. The others—50GB of free Google Drive storage for two years, and one free screen replacement if you crack the thing in the first six months—are still applicable. It's too bad that the screen replacement offer isn't good for the entire 12-month warranty period, but that's a bit like getting a free piece of cake and complaining that it's not two free pieces of cake.

Where the Nexus 5 wins

Size and weight

As nice as the M8 looks and feels, it's about 23 percent heavier than the Nexus 5. The difference is only about an ounce (30 grams, for those of you on the metric system), but for extended bouts of one-handed use you'll notice the extra heft.

More annoying is the M8's extra height—those nice front-facing speakers and the bulky bezel add about a third of an inch (around 9mm) to the phone's height, making it that much harder to interact with the entire 5-inch screen without using two hands.

Price, price, a million times price

The primary weakness of the Google Play edition devices is that the OEMs get to set the prices, and those prices are far higher than those of comparable Nexus gadgets (the Moto G excepted, though its specs are a sight lower than either the M8 or the Nexus 5). You can buy two 16GB Nexus 5s for the price of one 32GB M8, which is kind of outrageous.