Best budget smartphones
Flagship phones are more expensive than ever, but as the high-end gets better, so too do more affordable models. It’s now possible to buy a new handset under £250 and still get a phone capable of handling everything you throw at it.
The best budget phones are also more attractive in the long-term thanks to cheaper contract prices, though you might prefer to buy these handsets outright and then pay only for your minutes, texts and data.
1. XIAOMI POCO X3 NFC
Price: £199 from fave.co/3mU6qjp
Budget phones come with compromises – that’s inevitable. What matters is picking the right compromises, and with the Poco X3 Xiaomi has done exactly that. By dropping 5G and building a little extra bulk onto the frame, Xiaomi has managed to squeeze strong specs, a 120Hz display, a solid camera, stereo speakers and an absolutely enormous battery into the Poco X3 while still somehow keeping the starting price below £200. I’m really not sure how Xiaomi is making money selling these things, and frankly I don’t want to know.
Design
Alright, let’s get the bad out of the way early. The Poco X3 – or Poco X3 NFC to give the phone its clunky full name – isn’t an ugly phone, but it isn’t exactly a looker.
Available in blue or grey, the first thing you’ll notice either way is the giant ‘POCO’ logo printed across the phone’s rear (see opposite). It’s inlaid in a striking finish that catch’s the light in rainbow patterns, but this really only serves to draw more attention to a logo I simply wish wasn’t there. I don’t know why some phone brands have started plastering text across device’s rears, but I really want them to stop.
The rest of the rear is decorated with a grid of diagonal lines leading up to the unusually shaped camera module. I’ll admit that I don’t love how it looks, but it is at least something a little different. The Poco X3 looks like nothing else on the market, and there is something to be said for that, even if it isn’t to my taste.
The back is understandably finished in plastic, but the phone’s frame is aluminium and the big 6.67in screen is encased in Gorilla Glass 5. That large display makes the whole phone tall, but more than that it’s thick (9.4mm) and heavy (215g). That’s a trade-off for the battery, among other features, but either way you can’t avoid the fact that this is a big, heavy phone.
An IP53 rating guarantees decent dust-resistance and some waterproofing – a rarity in a phone at this price, especially with a headphone jack in there too. Staying on audio, stereo speakers are another unexpected find in the budget space – I just reviewed a £700 phone that didn’t include stereo sound, so finding it on a £200 device is a welcome surprise.
Finally, along with the volume rocker you’ll find a recessed power button with a built-in fingerprint scanner on the right-hand side. This is another minor irritation – it too easily registers failed fingerprint attempts when you grab the phone the wrong way, and on the flip side frequently didn’t recognise my fingerprint when I did want to open the phone.
Display
Okay, so the Poco X3 is a mixed bag on build. But that’s only half of how a phone looks, and Xiaomi has absolutely nailed the other half. The display may be giant at 6.67in, but the specs are hard to resist. It’s a 120Hz LCD with an FHD+ resolution (2,400x1,080) and HDR10 support.
Colours are bright and punchy, and the high refresh rate panel is an absolute steal at this price point – it’s hard to go back to a regular phone once you’ve tried one. Because it’s LCD the viewing angles and contrast suffer a little, but you won’t find an OLED anywhere else at this price, and certainly not at 120Hz.
The bezels are a touch chunky, especially below the screen, with an overall screen-to-body ratio of 84.6 per cent. You’ll stop noticing this quickly enough though, and the central punch-hole selfie camera is small enough that it doesn’t detract either.
I’ll put it simply: right now this is the best phone screen you will find anywhere near this price point.
Performance
When it comes to the Poco X3’s internals, Xiaomi has made an interesting decision. It’s adopted Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 732G chipset, one of the few new chips for 2020 that doesn’t support 5G connections.
That is, in a sense, an obvious downside: if you want 5G it just isn’t here. But 5G isn’t that great yet, and accessibility is limited in many countries and cities, so why pay extra for it if you’re unlikely to see the benefit?
By making the choice to ditch 5G Xiaomi is instead able to deliver stronger performance for the price. Paired with 6GB of RAM, the Poco X3 runs smoothly in almost everything you throw at it. It even just about keeps up with phones like the OnePlus Nord running the more expensive 765G processor in our benchmarks, and beating the Pixel 4a, which uses the slightly slower (but also non-5G) Snapdragon 730G.
Geekbench 5 (multi-core)
Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC: 1,764
TCL 10 5G: 1,897
OnePlus Nord: 1,963
Realme 6: 1,677
Google Pixel 4a: 1,640
Redmi Note 9S: 1,770
GFX Manhattan 3.1
Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC: 27fps
TCL 10 5G: 35fps
OnePlus Nord: 34fps
Realme 6: 27fps
Google Pixel 4a: 27fps
Redmi Note 9S: 27fps
If that all sounds like a mess of specs and jargon, then the long and short of it is this: the Poco X3 punches above its weight in raw processing power, making it a great choice for gamers on a budget or anyone trying to buy a phone that won’t slow to a crawl two years from now.
It comes with a choice of 64GB
