ENTRY-LEVEL PHONES

QUALITY HANDSETS YOU CAN AFFORD

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Considering the most expensive phones on the market, do you really need all those features? We think the smartest phone shopping is happening down at the other end of the market, below R5 000, where build quality, battery life and ease of use matter far more. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't have some cool features on your budget phone, or that it has to look cheap and boring.

Entry-level phones below R5 000 have a number of features in common, some of which are not found on more expensive phones.

Most top out at 4G, although 5G is fast becoming more affordable. They all have very large screens, well over 6 inches, and are often hard to distinguish from far more expensive phones. Storage for apps, data and multimedia is limited to 64 GB in most cases, but they all have a microSD card slot, which helps with big collections of music, photos and videos. They also all have FM radios and a trusty old-fashioned headphone jack.

Here are some of the best affordable workhorse phones we could find.

BUYING GUIDE

SCREEN

Screens larger than 6 inches are now the norm, making them perfect for gaming, videos, browsing and reading documents. But screen quality varies greatly across brand and models, with high refresh of 90 Hz, only offered on selected entry-level models. Research shows that your screen is the single biggest drain on your battery and switching off high refresh and turning down the brightness will probably help.

MEMORY AND DATA STORAGE