Four £200 Phones, One British Week: The Budget Handset Verdict
Photo: Alan Stanton, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Budget phones are supposed to be boring. In 2026, that is no longer an insult. The sub-£250 market is packed with handsets that can do almost everything a £1,000 flagship can do, just with a bit more patience and a slightly worse camera. To find out which one is actually worth your money, we took four of the best-value models available in the UK and used them as our daily driver for a week. One phone per day, roughly, plus a lot of swapping SIMs and muttering at train Wi-Fi. Here is how they got on.
The contenders
- Samsung Galaxy A26 — £249
- Motorola Moto G86 Power — £229
- Redmi Note 15 — £219
- CMF Phone 2 Pro — £239
All four are available SIM-free in the UK and all four promise at least two years of software updates. On paper, the Redmi looks the best value. On paper, so did the Titanic.
Monday: contactless and the commute
First test: can I get out of the house, onto a bus and into a coffee shop without looking like a tourist? The Samsung, Motorola and Redmi all handled Google Wallet without a wobble. The CMF Phone 2 Pro is the odd one out: no NFC, so no contactless. In 2026, that is a proper annoyance, not a quirk. If you rely on your phone to tap in and out, this is a dealbreaker. The Moto was the fastest to wake and pay, which sounds trivial until you are holding up a queue at the till.
Tuesday: battery brutality
We started at 7am with a full charge and used the phones normally: podcasts, maps, WhatsApp, a bit of YouTube, too much scrolling. By 11pm, the Moto G86 Power was still at 38 per cent. The Samsung was at 19 per cent, the Redmi at 17 per cent, and the CMF at 14 per cent. The Moto wins this one comfortably. Its 6,000mAh battery is not a gimmick; it is the reason to buy the phone. The others will get you through a day, but only just.
Wednesday: camera at the chippy
Camera test: a bag of chips, a rainy seafront and a friend who refuses to stand still. The Redmi Note 15 took the best main-camera shots, with punchy colours and enough detail to make the chips look genuinely appetising. The Samsung was close but a bit soft in low light. The Moto was fine until the sun went down, then it got noisy. The CMF was the most fun, with a decent portrait mode, but it struggled with bright skies. None of these are pixel-peeping champions. All of them are good enough for Instagram and the family group chat.
Thursday: train Wi-Fi and hotspot hell
On a two-hour train journey, the Wi-Fi was rubbish — as usual. The test was which phone held onto a signal best and which one could turn into a hotspot without melting. The Samsung was the most reliable, holding a weak signal longer than the others. The Moto was close, but its hotspot drained battery faster. The Redmi was fine until it wasn't, and the CMF dropped connection twice. If you work on trains, the Samsung is the safest bet. If you just want to watch a downloaded episode of Taskmaster, any of them will do.
Friday: bloatware audit
This is where budget phones often fall down. The Samsung comes with a fair amount of Samsung stuff, plus a few partner apps you cannot remove. The Redmi is the worst offender: browser, store, weather, a couple of games and a folder of 'recommended' apps that feels like a car boot sale. The Moto is pleasantly clean, with only a handful of extra apps. The CMF is the cleanest of the lot, which makes sense given its stripped-back pitch. If you hate deleting things on day one, the Moto or CMF will annoy you least.
Saturday: pub quiz and low light
The pub quiz test is not about processing power; it is about whether the phone can survive being passed around a table of people who have had a pint. All four held up. The Samsung has the best screen for reading questions in a dim pub, the Moto has the loudest speaker, and the Redmi has the brightest display. The CMF feels the nicest in the hand, but it is also the most slippery. Bring a case.
Sunday: the verdict
After a week of real use, the Moto G86 Power is the one we would buy. It is not the prettiest, the camera is merely decent, and the software is not quite as clean as the CMF. But it wins on the things that actually matter: battery life, a reliable contactless experience, a good screen and a price that leaves room for a case and a decent pair of headphones. The Samsung Galaxy A26 is the sensible alternative if you want longer updates and a more polished feel. The Redmi Note 15 is the camera pick, provided you can live with the bloatware. The CMF Phone 2 Pro is the fun pick, but the lack of NFC makes it hard to recommend as an only phone in 2026.
| Phone | Battery | Camera | Software | Contactless | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moto G86 Power | 5/5 | 3.5/5 | 4/5 | 5/5 | 4.5/5 |
| Samsung Galaxy A26 | 3.5/5 | 4/5 | 3.5/5 | 5/5 | 4/5 |
| Redmi Note 15 | 3/5 | 4.5/5 | 2/5 | 5/5 | 3.5/5 |
| CMF Phone 2 Pro | 3/5 | 3.5/5 | 4.5/5 | 0/5 | 3/5 |
Winner: Motorola Moto G86 Power. Best for updates: Samsung Galaxy A26. Best camera: Redmi Note 15. Best if you hate bloatware: CMF Phone 2 Pro, but only if you can live without contactless. The lesson of the week is simple: a £230 phone in 2026 is not a compromise. It is just a phone that makes you think about what you actually need. And that is a very British kind of value.
