The 7 best affordable smartphones you can buy

Let’s be clear: This year’s Moto G has its issues. It’s jumped up to a potentially unwieldy 5.5 inches, it’s not water-resistant anymore, and the Snapdragon 617 chip at its core isn’t terribly smooth. It doesn’t feel like a steal the way its predecessors did. Motorola's new parent company Lenovo hasn’t really improved on anything the company did when it was owned by Google, either.

Still, the Moto G formula is hard to screw up. For $200 (or $150 with the Prime offer noted above), you get a great 1080p panel, a nice build, enough battery life, and a respectable camera. The totally clean take on Android, meanwhile, is excellent at any price. (As is the microSD slot.) It runs quickly enough for casual use, too — just don’t expect it to punch far above its price tag this time out.

There is a higher-end Moto G4 Plus available, too, but it’s not much of an upgrade. The camera’s a bit sharper, and there’s a fingerprint scanner. Is that worth another $50 to you? If so, go for it, but I doubt it.

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

The 5.5.-inch 1080p panel isn’t as sharp as those on 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 is a $600 phone that only costs $400.

Or at least, it was that. In November, OnePlus made the curious decision to kill the 3 completely. In its place comes the new OnePlus 3T, which still looks and feels fantastic, but ticks the processor up to the class-leading Snapdragon 821, sharpens up 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, in everyday use, don’t make that much of a difference. The continued lack of water resistance or microSD slot is disappointing, too. (A 128GB option is available for $480.) But regardless of whether or not OnePlus is trying to squeeze out higher margins, the 3T’s foundation is too good for it to fail.

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ZTE’s $400 Axon 7 is another flagship phone masquerading at a mid-tier price. It’s weaker 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 exceptionally slim for a handset with a screen this big, and its dual speakers are powerful.

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

And much like OnePlus, ZTE has launched a mid-year upgrade. It boosts the RAM from 4GB to 6GB, bumps the storage from 64GB to 128GB, and adds a pressure-sensitive screen. It’s also $500, and currently only available in limited quantities. The regular Axon 7 is staying, though, and should remain the better buy.

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The iPhone SE is my personal favorite on the 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 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. It’s not cutting-edge, no, but it’s still fast, the camera’s still awesome, the display’s still accurate, and iOS is still simple enough. Because it pushes fewer unnecessary pixels, its battery is even better, easily capable of lasting over a day. Yes, the small size isn’t for everyone, but what’s there is sturdily put together.

There is exactly one thing wrong here, and that’s storage: To hit its $400 price, you have to put up with 16GB of non-expandable space. This is dumb. If you can conserve, though, it’s a steal. Otherwise, the 64GB model is passable for $450 if you absolutely need something small.

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The $400 Honor 8 isn’t as strong as the OnePlus 3T or ZTE Axon 7, its glass back is slippery, and Huawei’s EMUI skin, while improved, still strays too far into its own world to really be comfortable.

What it does provide, though, is gorgeous hardware. Style is subjective, but to me, the Honor 8 is one of the best-looking phones in the world, at any price. It is something I’ve gone out of my way to use.

That’s the only real reason to buy it, though. There’s little that’s flat-out wrong here; there’s just little that demands you choose it over the OnePlus or ZTE.

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I can’t recommend the LeEco LePro 3 outright. Its software is too much of a mess to justify given the competition in the $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.

However, all in all, this is another case of commoditized hardware allowing for great value. The Snapdragon 821 chip at the phone’s core makes it faster than the $650 Google Pixel. And the all-aluminum design, while very similar to the OnePlus 3T, feels great. If it dropped down to $300 or less, I could at least rationalize the purchase.

I say this because LeEco seems committed to doing 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, it’s worth a look. Maybe try and mod the software while you’re at it. But at its standard price, the OnePlus and Axon 7 are a step above.

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