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Top 5 best gaming phones for less than £400 (Winter 2018)

Middle of the pack

Top 5 best gaming phones for less than £400 (Winter 2018)
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We've already refreshed our recommendations for the best money-no-object smartphones, as well as those at the budget end of the market.

But as the best phones have gotten more expensive and decent phones have gotten cheaper, a new and prominent middle class has emerged. It's now possible to get yourself a phone that looks and feels much like a flagship device, but at around half the price.

Some of these are older flagship phones that are still a going concern and still perform more-than-adequately. Others are custom made for this section of the market.

Most importantly for where we're coming from, all of these phones are capable of playing games almost as well as their bigger, more expensive brothers.

Here, then, are five great gaming smartphones that won't cost you an arm and a leg.

iPhone 6S

Why on Earth would you want a two-and-a-bit-year old smartphone to play games on? For one thing, the iPhone 6S is still capable of playing the vast majority of new mobile games through a combination of strong Apple support and a very capable processor.

But the most important reason you should consider the iPhone 6S - which at the time of writing was available through Amazon for just under £400 - is because of the App Store, which remains the best source of mobile games by some margin.

iPhone SE

As we mentioned above, the iPhone 6S can currently be had for £400 online, but Apple itself sells it for more. If you can't get the larger phone there's always the iPhone SE, which Apple sells for £350.

Okay, so the SE's 4-inch phone seems tiny by today's standards. But it has the same A9 CPU as the 6S, which means it runs all the latest games. And of course, it simply has access to all the latest games, which even the most expensive Android phones don't.

Honor 9

The Honor 9 is exactly the kind of thing we were talking about in the intro - a phone that has many of the hallmarks of a flagship phone, but which has been smartly designed to a much lower price point.

So, you get an attractive metal and glass design, a dual camera set-up, a nicely balanced 5.15-inch 1080p display, loads of storage, and (crucially) a very speedy Kirin 960 CPU with ample RAM. All for well under £400.

Huawei P10

The Huawei P10 offers a very similar experience to the Honor 9, which is perhaps unsurprising when you consider that Honor is a Huawei sub-brand. You get a very similar 5ish-inch 1080p display, a similar metal design, and the exact same Kirin 960 CPU powering the P10.

That last bit is key to its position on this list - games fly on this thing. Now that the Huawei P10 and the Honor 9 are similarly priced, chasing one is really a case of aesthetic preference.

LG G6

When it launched in early 2017, the LG G6 was a bit of a 'not-quite' phone. Its edge-to-edge display, design, processor and camera weren't quite up to Samsung's best, making its asking price seem a little steep.

Less than a year on, that phone is going for well under £400, which makes it a lot more interesting. You're getting a handsome, capable phone with a huge 5.7-inch QHD screen for not a lot of money.

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.