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Top 5 best gaming phones for under £200 (Spring 2017)

Cheap and tasty

Top 5 best gaming phones for under £200 (Spring 2017)
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The iPhone 7 and the Google Pixel are great phones. But who has £600 free to spend on a smartphone these days?

You do? Lucky thing. This article isn't for you. We'll be updating our top money-no-object smartphone recommendations a little deeper into the year, when there's something worthwhile to add.

For those of you who have significantly less to spend on a phone, there's some good news. You can get a stylish, capable, and gaming-ready handset for less than £200.

Here are five of favourites that are currently available in the UK.

Moto G5 (£180)

Motorola (and parent company Lenovo) has long made the best sub-£200 smartphone on the market. For years now the Moto G has been our go-to pick at this price range.

These days there's a lot more competition, as we'll go on to discuss, but the company appears to have upped its came accordingly with the 2017 Moto G5.

It's still a capable runner with a Snapdragon 430 CPU, and it also has a brilliant 5-inch 1080p display, a fingerprint sensor, and a strong 12-megapixel f/1.7 camera. But the key advance this year is in design, with a chic metal rear replacing the plastic of old.

Wileyfox Swift 2 Plus (£189)

We're big fans of British upstart Wileyfox - particularly its most recent efforts. The Wileyfox Swift 2 Plus is quite a phone.

What you're getting here is a handsome, stylishly constructed metal phone that feels a good deal more expensive than it is. You won't feel disappointed when you boot the phone up either, thanks to snappy performance from its Snapdragon 430 CPU and a slick Cyanogen UI, as well as a capable camera and decent fingerprint sensor.

If you want that hard-to-define flagship smartphone quality without the attendant cost, this could be the way to do - although one possible drawback is the phone's 720p display. It's the lowest resolution on this list.

Blu Vivo 6 (£185)

Blu is another smartphone brand that's hardly a household name, but that doesn't mean you should discount the US manufacturer's first UK effort.

The Blu Vivo 6 is a strong phone for the money, with a strong (if derivative) metal design, a speedy fingerprint sensor, a strong MediaTek Helio P10 CPU, a large 5.5-inch 1080p display, and a hefty 64GB of storage.

It's a generously proportioned phone that doesn't skimp in key areas - yet it'll set you back less than £200. Bargain.

Vodafone Smart Ultra 7 (£130)

The Vodafone Smart Ultra 7 is a bit of an ugly duckling compared to the sleek metal designs of the phones listed elsewhere on this list. Meanwhile its Mediatek MT6755M CPU, while capable, can lead to the odd graphical glitch in certain games.

But just look at that price. £130 for a capable phone with stock Android and a large and sharp 5.5-inch 1080p display. That's a bit of a steal.

There's just one additional note of caution here - the Vodafone Smart Ultra 7 is getting on a bit in smartphone terms, having launched in June 2016, so it may well be getting a replacement in just a few months.

Honor 5X (£175)

You may not have heard of Honor, but there's genuine pedigree behind the name. It's the high value online-only brand of Huawei, which is currently the world's third-biggest smartphone maker behind Samsung and Apple.

The Honor 5X gives you a lot of phone for less than £200. You get a metal body, an excellent 5.5-inch 1080p display, and decent performance for a good price.

Similar to the Vodafone Smart Ultra 7, the only real concern is the Honor 5X's age, and indeed the Honor 6X has just hit the market. However, the 6X pushes a little past the £200 barrier, so we've included the still-available (and still great) 5X instead.

Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.