Pros and Cons

Let’s start with the downsides of buying a cheaper phone.

■ You won’t get the best camera. Budget phones lack the advanced camera sensors found on high-end smartphones. So if you go cheap, your phone camera probably won’t be very fast, won’t do a great job at taking photos in low light and will lack features like optical image stabilization, which helps photos remain clear even when your hands are shaky. ”The camera is a big one,” said Andrew Cunningham, a Wirecutter editor. “If you’re taking photos, especially in low light, performance is going to fall off a cliff.”

■ Obviously, you won’t get cutting-edge features like the infrared face recognition system on the iPhone X or the fancy stylus on Samsung’s big-screen Galaxy Note. You also won’t get the fastest computing processor, so your phone won’t be as capable of running games with heavy graphics.

■ You also won’t get the brightest and most vibrant display. The fanciest smartphones have OLED screens, which have better color accuracy and contrast.

■ You won’t get many software updates, which are important because they introduce new features and security enhancements. For phone makers, the priority is issuing big software updates to more powerful smartphones. At best, with a cheap Android phone you will probably get one major software update and a few security updates over 18 months.

With all that said, there are plenty of benefits to buying a good budget phone.

■ You will get a decent camera. Many cheaper phones have high-resolution sensors that can take clear, rich photos. “A cheap phone today is going to have a better camera than a cheap phone from three years ago,” said Nathan Edwards, a senior editor for Wirecutter. “It’s not like they’re truly awful.”

■ You’ll get a good enough screen for reading websites, watching videos and looking at photos. Budget phones still use LCD, an older display technology that has greatly matured and still looks quite good.