These 5 phones made our list of the best smartphones in the world, and they all cost $500 or less

Apple's iPhone 7 may be nearly three years old, but it's still a solid option for Apple devotees on a budget.

Now starting at $450, the iPhone 7 offers a water-resistant design and a sharp screen in a much more compact (and cheaper) package than the company's newest iPhones. It runs on the same processor that powers the entry-level iPad, which is plenty powerful for basic tasks like web browsing and mobile gaming.

The $500 Razer Phone 2 is proof that you don't have to sacrifice powerful performance if you're shopping on a budget.

Designed with gamers in mind, the Razer Phone 2 has a super-fast screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, which is noticeably higher than that of your average smartphone display. It also runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 processor, which is now slightly old but is the same chip that powers previous generation flagships from companies like Samsung. And with 8 GB of RAM, it has more memory than other alternatives.

It's not the newest Samsung smartphone, but it's still among the best. The $500 Galaxy S9 sports Samsung's colorful, curved, AMOLED screen and a high-quality camera that can adjust its aperture based on the lighting. Like Samsung's newer smartphones, the S9 also has the company's Bixby virtual assistant built into the operating system and the camera.

Google's answer to the industry's shift toward higher smartphone prices is the Google Pixel 3a, a scaled-down version of its Pixel 3 flagship.

Google sells two versions: a $400 model with a 5.6-inch screen and a slightly larger one with a 6-inch screen for $480. Both phones retain many of the characteristics of the pricier Pixel 3, such as Google's Night Sight feature for taking high-quality photos in the dark. And they both have an OLED screen, which generally produces better contrast than LCD displays.