Zipping along in the wake of ever more expensive flagships, 2018’s bargain blowers are better-specced than you might realise

GROUP TEST BUDGET PHONES

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

PAY AND DISPLAY

Nowadays you can spend £250 or less and still get an ultra-sharp 18:9 screen – great news for gamers.

SUPER STAMINA

Despite the increasing demands we place on phones, you should still expect a solid day and a bit from your battery.

BUILD QUALITY

Glass and aluminium in your palm is no longer the preserve of flagship models. Time to wave goodbye to plastic?

Honor 7X

Price £230 / stuff.tv/Honor7X

What’s the story?

Honor gets a double shout-out on this list – see also the 9 Lite on p62 – but the 7X is just about the most affordable route to a reliable, ultra-large-screen experience.

It has a 5.93in display, a good chunk larger than any other on test – and size matters if you like to watch a lot of YouTube or Netflix, or play games on the way to work. The 18:9 aspect ratio ensures it’s a modernlooking screen, not just a big one, and slim bezels means it’s much easier to handle than 6in screens of past years.

Just like other Honor phones it looks and feels great for the price: this isn’t a plastic-shelled phone, it’s smoothly curved aluminium, a lot like an older-gen iPhone.

Is it any good?

Like the Honor 9 Lite, the 7X will stutter a bit with Android’s toughest games. But cut down the graphics a little in titles like Asphalt 8 and you’ll be back to buttery-smooth racing.

This phone also has a much higher-res camera than most in its class, with a 16MP sensor. It’s not great in low light, though, and colour tends to look a bit muted – check out the Moto G6 Play opposite if you’re more of a photographer than a video streaming obsessive. And the other thing that stops the Honor 7X from ruling this list is battery life. Despite a large-sounding 3400mAh cell, we were not hugely impressed with this phone’s stamina. You may need to give it a top-up before bedtime on frantic days.