The 7 best affordable smartphones you can buy

Business Insider/Steve Kovach

The days of needing to pay top dollar to get a good smartphone are dead and buried.

The smartphone has become a commodity, and as such the costs of manufacturing something decent has gone down. That means great phones are now common for a price of around $400, and good phones are available for much less than that.

Still, some devices are better than others. So after testing a whole lot of phones this year, we’ve broken down the affordable side of the market, and rounded up the handsets worth buying.

The best $100 phone, with major caveats: Blu R1 HD

The Blu R1 HD is the Amazon Fire of smartphones: Nothing about it is great, but it’s way better than it has any right to be. It goes for as low as $100 unlocked on its own, but that can go down to just $50 if you’re an Amazon Prime member. That’s a good bargain, but if you get the model that’s $10 more, you get a perfectly competent performer that doesn’t feel totally cheap and has a bright, 5-inch, 720p display.

The catch with that “Prime exclusive” deal is you have to deal with a torrent of Amazon-sponsored bloatware and lock screen ads. Yes, lock screen ads — as in, your phone becomes a pocket billboard every time you turn it on. You might find this dystopian, or you might learn to live with it. Maybe you’ll do both. Whatever the case, this is the only phone worth considering for under $100.

However — and this is a big however — there’s another reason to potentially hold off. The New York Times reported in November that the R1 HD, along with a few other cheaper, little-known Android phones, was left open to a security flaw that allowed text messages, location info, and other personal info to be sent to a server in China. Blu says it has patched the flaw, and that the R1 HD is no longer affected.

I’ll leave it here because of that, but know that risks like this are ever-present with inexpensive Android phones and smaller manufacturers. If you can afford to take a step up, do so.

Check our full review for more.

The best $200 phone: Lenovo Moto G4

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.

Check our full review for more.

The best $400-450 phone: OnePlus 3T

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.

Check our full review for more.