Smartphone Best Buy Guide – Tweakers

Once every two months we publish an update of the Smartphone Best Buy Guide and so it’s that time again. Smartphonespitsuur may be over, but it hasn’t calmed down. We have also received a lot of new devices during this period and have tested them extensively. Especially in the low-end category there are quite a few newcomers. The list has almost doubled in length. Thanks to a price reduction, the Moto G31 and G51 have ended up in this price category. TCL has launched a number of 30-series devices; we have tested the 30E and 30 SE. The Moto 20 SE had to leave the field as it is no longer available. Furthermore, OPPO has released the A54, and the POCO M3 Pro has dropped in price and entered this category. Finally, Samsung has expanded the Galaxy series with the A53, A33, A13 and A03s. Unfortunately, the A53 did not arrive on time, so we were unable to include it in our tests.

The midrange segment has always been busy and the list is only getting longer. Not only is there a pile of new devices that are being added to the list, some smartphones from the more expensive segment have also fallen in price and devices from the cheaper segment have become more expensive. Especially the Chinese manufacturers have come up with a pile of new devices. For example, OPPO comes with the A74 and POCO with the X4 Pro. Redmi has no fewer than three new devices from the Note series: the Note 11, Note 11s and Note 11 Pro. Furthermore, the realme GT Neo 2, OnePlus Nord CE 2 and Motorola Edge 20 have come down in price, earning them a spot in this list. In addition, some smartphones from the lower segment have risen in price and have ended up in this list: the Xiaomi Redmi 9T, OnePlus Nord N10 and two Motorola devices: Defy and G30.

This time there is also a lot of new growth in the more expensive devices. Xiaomi sent us the 12X, 12 and 12 Pro, while OPPO also sent us luxury smartphones: the Find X5 and Find X5 Lite. A number of models have the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 soc on board, for example the Realme GT2 Pro, Nubia Redmagic 7 Pro, and OnePlus 10 Pro. The new soc is also showing up at OPPO and Xiaomi. The only smartphone chip at the moment that is significantly more powerful is the Apple A15. The phone brand places it in its new entry-level model, the iPhone SE (2022), which we also include this time.

We have reviewed all devices again and included the price development. All this, of course, to determine which smartphones are the most recommended of the moment per category. Some recommendations from the previous BBG return in this BBG, but there has been a shift and fortunately there are some newcomers who have made it into recommendations.

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