The 9 best affordable smartphones you can buy

The best $100 phone, with major caveats: Blu R1 HD

The Blu R1 HD is the top choice for those who want to spend the least money possible for something competent. It comes with some noteworthy caveats, however.

The R1 HD goes for as low as $100 unlocked on its own, but that can go down to just $50 if you’re an Amazon Prime member. That’s a good bargain, but if you get the higher-end model that costs $10 more, you get a totally acceptable performer that doesn’t feel totally cheap and has a bright, 5-inch, 720p display.

The catch with that “Prime-exclusive” deal is you have to put up with a torrent of Amazon-sponsored bloatware and lock-screen ads. Yes, actual ads on your lock screen, as in, your phone becomes a pocket billboard every time you turn it on. You might hate what this stands for, or you might learn to live with it. Either way, it's much smoother than the price suggests.

However — and this is a big however — there’s another reason to weigh your options. The New York Times reported in November that the R1 HD, along with a few other cheaper, little-known Android phones, was left open to a security flaw that allowed text messages, location info, and other personal info to be sent to a server in China. Blu has since patched the flaw, and says the R1 HD is no longer at risk. It stays on this list because of that, but know that holes like that are never too far away from inexpensive Android phones and smaller OEMs. If you can afford to take a step up, do so.

Check our full review for more.

The best $200-300 phone, and the best value overall: Moto G5 Plus

The Moto G series has set the standard for affordable phones for the better part of the decade, and the latest Moto G5 Plus only continues the trend. This year’s iteration comes with a cooler and sturdier metal design. It looks a bit boring, and the material isn’t as high-quality as you’d get with the pricier options on this list, but it keeps the phone from ever feeling cheap.

While the Snapdragon 625 chip isn’t the fastest around, it only hiccups with the heaviest games. Combined with a sizable 3,000mAh battery and a quality-but-not-overly-sharp 5.2-inch 1080p display, it also gets tremendous battery life. It’s not unreasonable to get close to two days out of it on a charge. The fingerprint scanner is fast, too.

Best of all, it runs on a super-clean version of Android 7.0. There’s no bloat, and the apps Moto does add are almost all useful.

The 12-megapixel camera tends to fall apart at night — but is decent enough in daylight — and Lenovo-owned Moto isn’t as fast to update its software as Google-owned Moto, but that doesn’t stop the Moto G5 Plus from being the most well-rounded phone you can buy for less than $300. We’d recommend the $299 model, which comes with a stronger 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, but a $229 model with half the RAM and half the storage is probably sufficient depending on how hard you push your phone.

Check our full review for more.

Also worth considering: Huawei Honor 6X

To be clear: While there are other perfectly solid devices in the $200-300 range, none of them put it all together the way the Moto G5 Plus does. That said, Huawei’s $250 Honor 6X does have a few key selling points. Its 5.5-inch 1080p panel is bigger, a bit more accurate, and much brighter than that of the Moto G5 Plus. Its metal body is thinner, and just as solid. Its fingerprint sensor is fast. Battery life is also a strength, even if it’s not as long-lasting as Moto's.

Most notably, the dual-camera setup on its back allows you to mess with the focus of your photos, akin to what Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus can do. It’s not always accurate, but it’s impressive when it works, and it tends to do better in low-light than the Moto’s camera either way.

There are issues, though. Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin 655 chip is fine, but results in a few more stutters than the Moto’s Snapdragon. The display lacks oleophobic coating, meaning it’ll pick up finger grease way too easily. And the whole thing puts a heavy skin over the already-dated Android 6.0, complicating bits of the software that don’t need to be complicated.

Huawei says it will update the Honor 6X to its newest software skin, which is , by the middle of the year. But until then, the phone will merely be a decent alternative to the Moto G5 Plus.

Also worth considering: ZTE Blade V8 Pro

Likewise, there aren’t too many reasons to take $230 ZTE Blade V8 Pro over the Moto G5 Plus, but it has bits that could appeal to the right person. Its battery lasts even longer than that of the Moto, it has a larger 5.5-inch 1080p screen, and it has a similar dual-camera setup as the Honor 6X. And while the rubberish back feels cheap to me, it does make the phone easier to grip than most of its peers. It also supports faster 802.11ac WiFi, which is lacking on both the Moto G5 Plus and Honor 6X.

But the camera isn’t as sharp as Moto's or Huawei's, and the dual-camera tricks aren’t as smooth as they are on the Honor 6X. It’s noticeably thicker and heavier than both the Moto and the Huawei, too. And while ZTE isn’t as aggressive as Huawei in skinning its software, it still sticks the phone with the older Android 6.0, and hasn’t said when it plans to update. Its fingerprint sensor doesn’t work as consistently as the others, too.

I can see the Blade V8 Pro making sense if you need to be as frugal as possible — its Snapdragon 625 chip and 3GB of RAM should make it a hair faster than the entry-level Moto G5 Plus — but it’s just not as pleasant to use as its rivals.

The best $400-450 phone: OnePlus 3T

For months, the best value in smartphones was the OnePlus 3. Simply put, it had no significant weaknesses: The smooth metal design looks and feels great, the hardware is fast, the software is clean, and the 16-megapixel camera is excellent.

The 5.5.-inch 1080p panel isn’t as sharp as other flagships, but it’s more than fine if you stay out of VR, and a few software updates helped make it nice and accurate. While there’s no microSD slot, its 64GB of storage is plentiful. The lack of water resistance stings, but otherwise, it's a $600 phone that only costs $400.

Last November, though, OnePlus took all that and replaced it with an updated model: the OnePlus 3T. It still looks and feels fantastic, but it ticks the processor up to a higher-end (but not newest) Snapdragon 821, sharpens the front-facing camera, and adds a couple more hours of battery life.

It also knocks the base price up to $440. That’s a bit harsh for upgrades that don’t make . The continued lack of water resistance or microSD slot is disappointing, too. (Though a 128GB option is available for $480.) But regardless of any business decisions, the 3T’s foundation is too good for it to not be great value.

Check our full review for more.

Also worth considering: Apple iPhone SE

For me, the iPhone SE is the best phone on this list. It didn’t have to do much to get there: It is a strong, genuinely compact phone, and nobody makes those anymore. After years of fumbling with phablets on the train, I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to go back to a device you can actually use with one hand or stash in a shirt pocket.

The key thing is that nothing important is compromised. Outside of a couple minor omissions, this is just an iPhone 6s in the body of an iPhone 5s. Its Apple A9 chip is aging, yes, but it’s still never slow, the camera’s still above-average, the display’s still accurate, and iOS is still a breeze to use. Because it pushes fewer (unnecessary) pixels, its battery is even better, easily capable of lasting over a day. It's as sturdy as it always was, and again, it never feels difficult to handle.

The only thing that was wrong with the SE was its limited storage, but Apple fixed that in March by bumping the entry-level model from 16GB to 32GB of space by default. You could say $400 is expensive for a recycled design, but that design never stopped being great, and iOS isn't as dependent on high-powered specs. Time has passed small phones by, which keeps the OnePlus the better device for most, but those who want their phone to feel like aphone can rejoice.

Check our full review for more.

Also worth considering: ZTE Axon 7

ZTE’s $400 Axon 7 is another flagship phone masquerading at a mid-tier price. It runs a tad slower than the OnePlus 3T, but only by a little, and its 5.5-inch 2560x1440 display looks superb. The camera and battery life are strong as well.

The big separation from the OnePlus is in design — the Axon 7 has heft, which some might not like, but gives off a more expensive feel. It’s good and slim for a handset with a screen this big, and its dual speakers are superb.

You can quibble about ZTE’s mostly unnecessary software touches, but it really comes down to your preferences with hardware, and whether or not you can spare the extra $40 for the cleaner and faster 3T. Either way, you get good value.

Check our full review for more.

Also worth considering: Huawei Honor 8

The $400 Honor 8 isn’t as strong as the OnePlus 3T or ZTE Axon 7, its glass back is slippery, and its battery doesn't last as long as most others on this list.

What it does have, though, is gorgeous hardware. Style is subjective, but this is one of the best-looking phones in the world, at any price. I've gone out of my way to use it.

That’s the only real reason to buy it, though. There’s little that’s flat-out wrong here — and a recent update to Android 7.0 cleaned up many of the irritating software issues it had before — but there’s little that demands you choose it over the OnePlus or ZTE.

Check our full review for more.

If you can find it on sale: LeEco LePro 3

I can’t recommend the LeEco LePro 3 outright. Its software is still too bloated to justify given the competition in the $350-400 range these days. If LeEco is able to sign enough content partnerships to make the three video apps it stuffs onto the device by default worth something, then it’s worth revisiting. For now, it’s just annoying.

There’s also no headphone jack.

Still, its Snapdragon 821 chip makes it faster than the $650 Google Pixel. The interface has been cleaned up a bit since the device's launched. And the all-aluminum design, while very similar to the OnePlus 3T, feels great. If it dropped down to $300, I could at least rationalize the purchase.

I say this because LeEco does just that every now and again on its e-commerce site. If you catch the LePro 3 at a very low price, and you really can’t go above $300, know that its hardware is more substantial than that of the Moto G5 Plus. Try to mod the software if you buy it. But at its regular $350, the OnePlus and Axon 7 are a step above.

Check our full review for more.

The 9 best affordable smartphones you can buy

The days of needing to pay top dollar to get a good smartphone are dead and buried.

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