Our roundup has plenty of options to help you find what you’re looking for. If you are dedicated to the iPhone world, you’ll have to go used because there’s nothing in Apple’s product lineup that goes down to $300. The Motorola Moto G Power is much less than $300, but you wouldn’t know it. Why? Long battery life, good screen, and plenty of power. Now, it’s true, some things are left out: No real water resistance and no wireless charging. If you ask us, those are perfectly fine trade-offs for a good phone at a very reasonable price. Oh, it works with nearly any carrier, too. Front and center, you get a 6.4-inch display with a camera cutout in the upper-left corner. Under the hood, the phone is no slouch either. Camera capabilities are also impressive for the price, but the real selling point here is the battery. According to Motorola, the runtime should be enough to last three days without needing to recharge. Screen Size: 6.4 inches | Resolution: 2300 x 1080 | Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 | Camera: 16 MP/8 MP/2 MP rear and 16 MP front | Battery: 5,000 mAh During benchmark tests, the Moto G Power performed better than other budget phones; menus loaded smoothly, apps launched quickly, and I was able to run multiple apps, stream video, and open over a dozen web pages without a hitch. The Moto G’s main feature is its large 5,000 mAh battery. I was actually able to get more than three days of use out of this phone with my regular level of phone calls, texting, web browsing, and app usage. Its weak spot is its camera. The performance of the main rear camera is just okay for a phone in this price range, turning in decent results if the lighting is great and both you and your subject remain absolutely still. — Jeremy Laukkonen, Product Tester The camera quality is also solid, with a triple camera setup on the back, which includes a 48 MP main sensor, an 8 MP ultra-wide camera, and a 5 MP sensor for depth data on portrait and bokeh shots. All in all, it’s a great phone in a nice package. Screen Size: 6.3 inches | Resolution: 2280 x 1080 | Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 | Camera: 48 MP/8 MP/5 MP rear and 20 MP front | Battery: 3,500 mAh Getting around the interface is smooth and speedy, although I hit occasional sluggish hitches here and there. Gaming was a solid experience. Titles like “Asphalt 9” and “Call of Duty Mobile” delivered a pretty smooth frame rate at the cost of some detail and resolution. I wouldn’t recommend playing music out loud using the speaker, but it’s totally fine for watching videos. The 5-megapixel camera is capable but inconsistent, while the sizable 3,500 mAh battery comfortably delivers a full day’s usage. — Andrew Hayward, Product Tester Under the hood, you’re looking at an Exynos 9610 chipset with 4 GB of RAM. It’s not the most powerful processor, but it’ll do decently for browsing and opening apps. It even handled games reasonably well. The triple camera sensor array on the back also proved to be surprisingly good, though it won’t be as detailed as higher-end phones. Screen Size: 6.4 inches | Resolution: 2340 x 1080 | Processor: Exynos 9610 | Camera: 25 MP/8 MP/5 MP rear and 25 MP front | Battery: 4,000 mAh It’s sleekly designed but uses plastic in places instead of glass or aluminum. The 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display is very crisp and clear and has strong contrast. Performance suffers from semi-regular hitches and slowdowns. It can be slow to open apps and games, as well. Sound quality is nothing special, but the three back cameras do a pretty good job of capturing detail and delivering crisp, colorful images. The meaty 4,000 mAh battery typically had about 355 to 40% charge remaining at the end of the day, which means you have a buffer for a long night out or perhaps a heavier day of streaming media and gaming. Ultimately, despite its drawbacks, it’s impressive how much of the Galaxy S experience remains intact on the Galaxy A50, which still looks like a high-end phone, has a very good triple-camera setup, and boasts an excellent screen. — Andrew Hayward, Product Tester If you sometimes like to write out your ideas with a pen (in this case, a digital pen called a stylus), then the Motorola Moto G Stylus is what you are looking for. It has all the great features of the Moto G (OK, the battery isn’t quite as big as in the Moto G Power, our top pick), a really good camera, a big screen, and, according to reviewer Jeremy, “The phone automatically launches Motorola’s note-taking app if you remove the stylus with the screen off, making it easy to jot things down any time you want.” Jeremy also noted the speakers are really quite good, too. Screen Size: 6.8 inches | Resolution: 2400 x 1080 | Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 678 | Camera: 48 MP/8 MP/2 MP rear and 16 MP front | Battery: 4,000 mAh I never had issues with performance. There were no slowdowns or lag, and apps always launched quickly. Video streaming never skipped a beat, even when saddled with an unreasonable number of open web pages. The phone’s Dolby speakers sound absolutely fantastic, and the camera produced uniformly crisp and colorful images in good lighting. If you need a stylus with your smartphone, the Motorola G Stylus is an easy recommendation. — Jeremy Laukkonen, Product Tester Still, there’s only so much that software polish and a couple of hardware perks can enhance a $180 phone, and the Nord N100 suffers from sluggish performance and has mediocre cameras. It still feels like a cheap phone for the most part—but it’s usable, and those premium benefits give it a slightly grander allure than your usual budget handset. The much-improved Nord N10 5G is strongly recommended if your budget can stretch to $300, but if not, this is still a pretty solid handset for the price. Screen Size: 6.52 inches | Resolution: 1600 x 720 | Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 | Camera: 13 MP/2 MP/2 MP rear and 8 MP front | Battery: 5,000 mAh The phone’s overall performance is sluggish, though, due to its lower-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 processor and 4 GB of RAM. The speakers are fine for music and watching videos in a pinch, but you’re better off with headphones. The 13-megapixel camera takes decent-looking daytime shots, but they show a lot of noise when zoomed in on crisper displays. The robust 5,000 mAH battery can easily get you two days of usage, and the 18W quick charger can top you up quickly. While it has some issues, the OnePlus Nord N100 is a well-designed, long-lasting, large-screened phone for only $180. — Andrew Hayward, Product Tester The two reasons to love this phone are the upscale look and excellent stylus functionality. This is one of the best-looking sub-$300 phones around, and that extends to the beautiful FHD display. It’s a bit dim in full sunlight but looks fantastic anywhere else. The stylus is spring-loaded, and removing it brings up a handful of memo and note options automatically. It’s quite responsive and accurate, with no real lag unless you move it especially fast. Forget to put it back in its holster, and the phone sounds a little alarm when you try to turn it off. You can find phones that perform better than the Stylo 6 for the same money, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find one that looks this fantastic at this price point. If you don’t ask a lot out of your phone and only want something that looks great while performing basic tasks, the Stylo 6 fits that description perfectly. Screen Size: 6.8 inches | Resolution: 2460 x 1080 | Processor: MediaTek MT6765 Helio P35 | Camera: 13 MP/5 MP/5 MP rear and 5 MP front | Battery: 4,000 mAh While the included stylus is a bit stubby, at about 4.5-inches long, it’s just long enough to hold comfortably. The speakers are loud and surprisingly good, and the main rear camera works well enough when there’s plenty of natural light. Battery life is fantastic and typically got me through two days of normal usage before the phone needed a charge. Overall, the LG Stylo 6 is a beautiful phone that stumbles hard when it comes to performance, but it might be a good pick if you won’t use it for much more than phone calls, texting, and light web browsing. — Jeremy Laukkonen, Product Tester The best thing about this phone is undoubtedly the price. With a reasonable MSRP for the unlocked version, and even more attractive pricing when locked to a carrier, the K51 punches way above its weight class in terms of premium look and feel, sound quality, and battery life. While the K51 underdelivers in terms of performance, thanks to an underpowered processor, this phone is still a fantastic option at such an affordable price point. If your budget won’t allow you to step up to a more powerful phone, or you can find this one at a price that really speaks to you, it won’t disappoint in terms of premium look and feel, sound quality, or battery life. Screen Size: 6.55 inches | Resolution: 1600 x 720 | Processor: MediaTek MT6765 Helio P35 | Camera: 32 MP/5 MP/2 MP rear and 13 MP front | Battery: 4,000 mAh The speakers are pretty great for a budget phone. They’re loud, plenty loud enough to fill a room, and there’s very little distortion even at the highest volume. Both the rear and front-facing cameras perform well enough as long as there’s enough light. I was able to go two and three days at a time without a charge, using the phone for calls, texting, and some light web browsing and email, thanks to its big 4,000 mAh battery. — Jeremy Laukkonen, Product Tester

Processor

Mid-range chipsets consist of Snapdragon and MediaTek processors. While they won’t match flagship processors in terms of benchmark testing, many budget phones are optimized in terms of day-to-day performance. This is especially true of Google’s Pixel devices. The clean software works great with less powerful hardware. Most mid-range phones can handle the typical set of apps, multitasking, and multimedia. More demanding 3D games might prove a challenge, but there are still several budget phones that are capable of it.

Camera

Camera performance on mid-range phones tends to be the big sacrifice in most cases, but this isn’t universally true. An increasing number of budget phones offer multiple rear cameras, giving you the option of telephoto zoom and wide-angle shots, as well as features like bokeh mode. Google’s Pixel phones are particularly capable of punching above their weight when it comes to camera performance, boasting the same sensors as flagship models.