A flagship smartphone can cost you $1,000 or more, but you don’t have to spend nearly that much to get the features you need. After weeks of testing half a dozen cheaper Android phones, we found that the OnePlus Nord N30 5G is the best budget Android phone. It’s fast enough for most people, has a bright LCD screen, delivers good battery life, and even has Verizon 5G connectivity—a rare feature for a phone that costs just $300.
Our pick
The OnePlus Nord N30 5G delivers solid performance and has a bright, fast LCD screen with a high refresh rate. It also comes with a side-mounted fingerprint reader and Verizon 5G support.
The OnePlus Nord N30 5G is the newer version of our previous pick, and though it doesn’t offer flagship performance, it does have some high-end features. Unlike many budget phones, its 6.7-inch, 120 Hz refresh rate display is good for gaming. The N30 5G has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 chip and 8 GB of RAM, which delivers more powerful performance than many of the budget phones we’ve tested. It will support Android 14 when it rolls out, and it will get security updates through June 2026. And unlike the Nord N20, the Nord N30 works on Verizon’s faster 5G UW network.
Runner-up
Samsung’s cheapest 5G phone performs better than most phones in this price range, and Samsung offers an impressive four years of guaranteed software updates.
The Samsung Galaxy A14 5G has a boring, generic design, and the screen picks up more fingerprints than more expensive phones, but it’s big, bright, and more responsive than you might expect for just $200. It also runs Android 13, and Samsung promises several more updates in the future, too, with an astonishing four years’ worth of update support (through early 2027). Most budget phones are lucky to get half that.
Budget pick
The Samsung Galaxy A03s has better performance and update support than other ultra-budget phones, and it works on all cellular networks.
At a mere $160, the Samsung Galaxy A03s is the cheapest phone in Samsung’s current lineup, but it doesn’t perform like a bargain-basement phone. The A03s is fast enough to browse the web, send messages, and play simple games. And despite the phone’s low price, Samsung isn’t skimping on updates: The A03s will receive updates through early 2026, a full four years’ worth of support from launch, unheard of for a phone this cheap. The build quality takes a step down in comparison with the Galaxy A14 5G, the camera isn’t very good, and this model has no 5G support, but the battery life is excellent.
