Best Phones of 2024: A Buying Guide by Budget

Eleven phones, five brands, and a price spread that runs from $429 to $1,399 — that's the range we've actually tested and verdicted on this site. If you've read a few of our reviews already, you know we don't hand out high scores lightly. So instead of repeating individual verdicts here, this guide sorts all eleven into four practical price tiers and tells you, plainly, which one to actually buy in each.

A quick note on how we got here: every phone below has been used as a daily driver for at least two weeks before we published a score, not benchmarked for an afternoon and handed back. That matters more than it sounds — battery degradation patterns, how a camera performs on a cloudy Tuesday rather than a staged studio shot, and whether a "flagship-tier" chip actually stays cool under sustained load only show up after real use. Price also shifts constantly, so treat every figure here as the launch MSRP we tested against rather than today's sale price; several of these phones are quietly cheaper now than when we scored them, which only strengthens the value case for the older models in this list.

Under $500: the compromise tier

Two phones live here, and they make very different compromises. The iPhone SE (3rd generation) at $429 gets you Apple's ecosystem, years of guaranteed software updates, and the same A15 chip that powered flagship iPhones not long ago — but it does that inside a design that dates back to the iPhone 8, complete with a small screen, thick bezels, and a home button. Our verdict landed at 6.8, and the reasoning was simple: it's a genuinely capable phone wearing genuinely dated clothes.

The Galaxy A54 5G at $449 is the better all-rounder of the two, and it's the one we'd actually recommend to most people shopping this tier. It scored 7.8 in our review on the strength of a 120Hz OLED display, a genuinely modern design, and four years of promised OS updates from Samsung. The camera won't compete with anything twice its price, but for texting, browsing, and casual photos it's more than adequate. If your budget caps out under $500, buy the A54 over the SE unless the Apple ecosystem is a hard requirement for you.

$500–$800: where most people actually shop

This is the busiest tier in our lineup, with three phones landing squarely inside it. The Nothing Phone (2) at $599 is the wildcard — its transparent back and Glyph lighting are pure novelty, but underneath that is a genuinely well-built Android phone that scored 7.6 for clean software and solid (if not class-leading) performance. It's the phone to buy if you're bored of every other Android phone looking identical.

Apple offers two options at exactly $799: the iPhone 14 and the newer iPhone 15. We scored the 14 at 7.9 and the 15 at 8.3, and the gap between those numbers is almost entirely down to two things: the Dynamic Island and, more importantly, USB-C finally replacing Lightning. If you're choosing between the two at the same price, buy the 15 — there's no scenario in our testing where the older model wins on merit at parity pricing. The only reason to consider the 14 is if a retailer discounts it below the 15's price, at which point it becomes a legitimate budget-flagship option in its own right.

$800–$1,100: the flagship crowd

Four phones cluster here, and this is genuinely the most competitive tier we've tested. Samsung's Galaxy S24, also $799, edges out both iPhones on paper with a 120Hz display and a more versatile camera system, and it backed that up with our highest score in this price bracket at 8.5. If you're not tied to iOS, this is the phone to beat under $800.

Step up to $999 and you get three genuinely different flagships. Google's Pixel 8 Pro scored the highest of any phone in our entire lineup at 8.7, driven almost entirely by computational photography that still leads the Android field. The Xiaomi 14 countered with a Leica-tuned camera system and flagship Snapdragon performance, landing at 8.1 — a strong phone held back mainly by software polish outside its home market. And Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip5, also $999, is the only foldable in our lineup, scoring 8.0 for a genuinely improved cover screen that finally makes the format feel like more than a gimmick.

At the top of this tier, HONOR's Magic6 Pro at $1,099 quietly out-specs almost everything else here — a huge battery, fast charging, and a capable camera — and earned 8.2 in our testing. It's the least well-known name on this list, and arguably the biggest "why isn't everyone talking about this" phone we've reviewed.

$1,100 and up: the niche pick

Only one phone in our lineup sits above $1,100: Sony's Xperia 1 V at $1,399, and it's the phone we're least likely to recommend to a general reader. We scored it 7.0 — respectable, but the lowest of any flagship-priced phone we've tested. Its 4K display and dedicated camera controls genuinely matter if you shoot video seriously, but for everyone else, the price gap over the Pixel 8 Pro or Galaxy S24 buys features most people will never use.

Our picks, if you want the short version

Best overall regardless of price: the Pixel 8 Pro. Best value: the Galaxy A54 5G. Best if you want an iPhone: the iPhone 15. Best if you want something nobody else has: the Nothing Phone (2) or the Magic6 Pro, depending on whether you value design or specs more. And best if the foldable format actually interests you: right now, it's the Galaxy Z Flip5 by default, simply because it's the only one we've tested.

One more thing worth flagging before you buy: longevity. Apple's two entries here, the iPhone 14 and iPhone 15, currently carry the longest realistic software-support runway of anything on this list, which matters if you plan to hold onto a phone for four-plus years. Samsung's update policy on the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy A54 has improved dramatically in recent years and is no longer the gap it used to be against Apple. Google's Pixel 8 Pro ships the cleanest Android experience and gets day-one updates, but Google's own hardware track record is shorter than Apple's or Samsung's. And smaller players — Nothing, HONOR, and Sony — are the biggest unknowns here; their software isn't bad, but their multi-year commitment is less proven simply because they've had fewer years to prove it.

Every one of these numbers comes from our own full-length reviews, not a spec-sheet skim — click through to any verdict above for the complete breakdown of what we liked and what we didn't.