Top 5 phones under £300

Shopping around for a new phone but can’t quite find one in your budget? You’re in the right place.

One of our terrific members, wsjudd, is here to spill the beans on his thoughts on the top 5 phones you can snap up for under £300. Take it away, wsjudd.

wsjudd: Top 5 phones under £300

You may have noticed that the most desirable phones these days are often four figures. How about something a little more modest for £200 to £300 that leaves you with plenty of cash left over?

Take a seat as we look through some of the best phones available from the lovely giffgaff mobile phone marketplace, home to a series of great new and refurbished phones. Let’s take a look at five of my top picks for this price bracket.

5. Samsung Galaxy A23 5G - £219

We’ll start with a great option well under our £300 budget: the Samsung Galaxy A23 5G. This is a recently released phone, having debuted in June 2022. As such, it comes with some essential modern features: a 120Hz IPS screen at a comfortable 6.6 inches diagonally, a 6nm (!) chipset with an octa-core processor and a 50-megapixel (!!) rear camera.

Other niceties include the Android 12 operating system with Samsung’s relatively restrained One UI skin, expandable storage (necessary with only 64GB on board) and three additional rear cameras and one additional front-facer. Battery life is also a strong suit, with a 5000mAh battery capacity and 25W fast charging.

Altogether, this is a great phone for the money, and I’ll have to be strategic with my remaining picks to do better!

(https://www.giffgaff.com/mobile-phones/samsung/samsung-galaxy-a23-5g/new)

4. Sony Xperia 10 III 5G Refurbished - £249

Sony’s redesigned Xperia 10 series smartphones are pleasant monoliths; boxy black designs that hide an inordinate amount of tech.

This refurbished model may have debuted last summer (June 2021), but it still comes with modern Android (12), an 8nm Snapdragon chipset, 128GB of expandable storage and an impressive 12-megapixel rear camera that outperforms higher-megapixel alternatives.

The skinny shape of this phone may take a little getting used to, but there’s plenty to like here in terms of design, features, price and performance.

(https://www.giffgaff.com/mobile-phones/sony/sony-xperia-10-iii-5g-refurbished/like-new)

3. Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G - £289

Xiaomi, and its Redmi sub-brand, makes some of the best value smartphones on the planet, especially when you start to edge into the mid-range of the market.

The Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G is a recent release, having debuted back in spring, so, like the Galaxy A23, it comes with niceties like a modern SoC, unlocking excellent battery life, easy 5G connectivity and great gaming performance.

The OLED screen refreshes at a crispy 120Hz and there’s a 5000mAh battery, but the most impressive stat has to be the 108-megapixel rear camera sensor. This doesn’t produce 108-megapixel images by default, mind you - and you wouldn’t want it to unless you’re shooting billboard-sized photos - but it does produce incredibly detailed 12-megapixel images, combining all that sensor data to produce stunning results in long light.

A great option, and surprisingly the last new option in our top three…

(https://www.giffgaff.com/mobile-phones/xiaomi/xiaomi-redmi-note-11-pro-5g/new)

2. iPhone 11 Pro Refurbished - £299

It’s always good to see what kind of iPhone you could get at a certain price point, and at the sub-£300 level, you can actually pick up an iPhone 11 Pro - better than I expected.

This £299 handset leaves none of the budget on the table, but as it’s an Apple phone, it does offer excellent performance, a beautiful notched OLED screen, Face ID unlocking and all of the other much-loved features that have been available on Apple phones for a few years now.

As this is the Pro model, you get an additional telephoto lens, but interestingly it comes with a smaller screen than the non-Pro - a result of that phone sticking with a more traditional LCD screen rather than the Pro’s incredible-looking OLED.

The A13 chipset remains excellent even in 2022/23, and I’d expect it to remain good for many years to come. Altogether, an awesome Apple phone for the money.

(https://www.giffgaff.com/mobile-phones/apple/apple-iphone-11-pro/refurbished)

1. Samsung Galaxy S20+ 5G Refurbished - £299

We started with a modern mid-range Samsung smartphone, so perhaps it makes sense that we finish with a slightly older but significantly higher-tier Samsung handset.

This 5G-capable smartphone ruled the roost when it debuted in early 2020, and remains capable to this day thanks to a 7nm Exynos chipset, a gorgeous 120Hz OLED display with a single tiny camera cutout, an impressive 64-megapixel rear camera and a sub-surface fingerprint reader.

Normally, the price you pay with older Android smartphones is that updates to the latest Android version aren’t a guarantee, but Samsung has done well here to offer even Android 13 upgrades to this nearly three-year-old option.

Once again, this is a refurbished model to squeak under our £300 ceiling, but there is a range of models available in various condition levels at slightly higher prices - although odds are, you won’t be able to spot the difference with a case on anyway.

It’s awesome that you can pick up a nearly £1000+ smartphone for less than £300 today!

(https://www.giffgaff.com/mobile-phones/samsung/samsung-galaxy-s20-plus-5g/refurbished)

Wrapping up

Phew, that just about does it! Thanks for taking a look and I hope you found this useful. See you next time.

Is your budget a little lower? Take a look at wsjudd’s previous picks for under £200 and under £100:

(https://www.giffgaff.com/blog/best-phones-under-100-2022) (https://www.giffgaff.com/blog/best-phones-under-200-2022)

Thumbnail image credit: Plann from Pexels