The best 2026 phones we’ve tested under $1000

New smartphones come at a huge range of prices, though many of us automatically gravitate to the biggest and best even if they come with a $2000 tag. If you’re hoping to get some of that flagship magic at half the price, here are some brand new options that will fit the bill.

If you want a brand new 2026 iPhone for $1000, the 17e is of course your only choice. But it’s still an excellent choice, offering the bulk of iPhone 17 features in a slightly smaller package for $400 less. From the front it looks identical to 2021’s iPhone 13, but the action button on the side and the silky frosted glass on the back mark it as more modern. Looking at the specs you’d also get the impression this is a smaller phone than the 17, but in the hand it feels exactly the same; it just has a smaller screen owing to thicker bezels around the border. Personally though I think it’s a great size for lovers of smaller phones. At 169 grams it’s easy to use one-handed, and it’s nice and pocketable at less than 15cm tall.

Compared with last year’s 16e, the changes are fairly minimal. But chances are you’re coming from an iPhone that’s a few years old, in which case you should notice some marked upgrades. The A19 chip powering the phone is the same as on the iPhone 17, with a couple of graphics cores shaved off, meaning it’s incredibly fast, great for graphically intensive apps and games, and supports Apple Intelligence. The 17e also has 256GB of storage as standard, which is double what many older iPhones (and the 16e) came with. The OLED is just as sharp as on the 17, and though it’s not as bright it has the same anti-reflective coating and Ceramic Shield 2 protecting it. And like every other recent iPhone except the 16e, it supports MagSafe for easy wireless charging and attaching accessories.

iOS 26 looks and runs great on this device, the battery lasts all day, and while using the 17e I rarely ever felt I was getting an inferior experience to the iPhone 17. Sure it doesn’t have the dynamic island or the camera control zone, the 60Hz screen with no always-on display feels like a step back, and there’s no ultra-wide camera. But those all feel like things few people care about, so they’re fine features to drop for a cheaper phone.

And speaking of cameras, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the single rear shooter on the 17e, which produces images easily on par with the main camera on the 17 and brings the same improvements to portrait mode. The 17e does not support Cinematic Video mode, so you won’t be able to get the same background blur in your clips, but it looks great in stills. Low light performance is also excellent, and the selfie camera is very good, although it doesn’t have the same automatic reframing as the other new iPhones when more than one face is detected.

Compromising in smart ways to deliver top-tier design and features at a lower price is one of Nothing’s main things, so it’s no surprise to find the British tech firm’s latest a-series nailing it here. While previous phones have gone for an exposed tech-under-glass look, the 4a Pro restricts that to the camera bump area and leaves the rest metal, emphasising a strong new aluminum unibody design. Combine that with the chunky retro minimalism of Nothing OS, a trio of rear cameras, and idiosyncratic features like Essential AI and the Glyph Matrix, and you have a very capable phone that also stands out.

I like that the phone looks like a retro future version of the iPhone Pro Max, at less than half the price, but it also backs it up. The three-lens camera system includes a telephoto (at 3.5x, with zoom up to 7x looking clean), which is rare in this category, and both performance and battery life are excellent. Of course it can’t hold up to $2000 phones in the detail; I found the view in the camera app sometimes looked a bit wonky even though the pics came out fine, for example, and zooming while filming video is not smooth. But in general use most people would believe this is a high-end phone.

If you commit to Nothing’s stylish take on Android (and you don’t have to), you can end up with a device that looks and feels quite different to a Google or a Samsung. Apps have stark monochromatic icons, system widgets have a playfully retro Tamagotchi vibe that matches the bleeps and bloops of the notification noises, and there’s an emphasis on disengaging from doomscrolling and compulsive app-checking. Around the back, the Glyph Matrix is bigger than on last year’s Phone 3 and still delightfully weird. It’s a low-fi screen that can be set to show info like the time or battery life, but it also reacts to notifications, or shows the progress of events like food delivery. The idea is to encourage putting your phone face down.

Nothing has some interesting takes on community and generative AI content. You can have the phone invent new ringtones and assign them to each contact so you know who’s calling, or set up rules so that only certain notifications make it through in certain times, with dedicated Glyph icons. So for example, you know your partner tried to contact you because it’s displaying a heart. You can press the Essential key on the phone’s left side to capture a voice note, screenshot or photo, and it gets added to the Essential Space app which uses AI to draw inferences, adding calendar notes, reminders or offering suggestions. There are more AI-forward options like ChatGPT integration, but I like that they’re not constantly pushed on you as with other Androids. There are also small widget apps, camera presets, music EQ profiles and Glyph Matrix toys created by other Nothing users that you can download.

In one sense the Pixel 10a is quite disappointing, since it’s virtually unchanged from the Pixel 9a in terms of chip, screen and cameras. But then the 9a is a fabulous phone, and here it’s had a nice coat of paint. I like that the rear cameras are now completely flush so that the phone sits flat on a table, and this year’s colours – a scorchingly hot pink, a strong purple, a subdued green and regular old black — are great. It’s a beautiful device.

Google’s entry-level model feels custom-built to compete with Apple’s, at $150 less, and it makes for a compelling alternative. It’s roughly the same width but with a noticeably more spacious screen, which is also much brighter, smoother thanks to a 120Hz refresh, and protected by Gorilla Glass. In fact the panel is bright even at flagship standards, with a peak of 3000 nits (which you’ll only see in HDR content) and a sustained 2000 nits in auto mode when the phone detects a lot of ambient light. Google has even introduced some new iPhone-like features to the a-series, including emergency satellite SOS calls and automatic screen tone adjustments. The Pixel’s handling isn’t quite as nice as the iPhone, thanks to a plastic rear panel that’s a little on the slippery side, but it’s pretty good.

The Pixel variant of Android is, I think, the nicest take for everyday use, and the 10a is the cheapest way to get it on a brand new phone. The OS has a bright and cheerful look, and with your home screen populated with a couple of system widgets and maybe four app icons (the system is proactive enough that you won’t need them all sitting there) it feels calmer than the competition. If you like generative AI features Pixels are also definitely for you. You can have a two-way chat with Gemini while sharing the feed from your camera with it, vibe edit your photos by describing changes, or have AI answer and screen your calls. Magic Cue is a new one that’s useful when it chooses to show up, learning from your calendar, messages, photos and more to offer suggestions.

Google has long been a leader for photos, and the shots from the main camera here are consistently excellent. There’s no telephoto lens so you really can’t zoom more than 2x, but the 10a gets top marks for colour and clarity. Plus, the AI tools like auto best take (automatically makes a composite when multiple photos are taken, giving every subject their best facial expression), and camera coach have come over from Pixel 10. Performance-wise the 10a won’t win any awards, but in general use and light gaming it keeps up fine. I noticed the battery life was significantly better than the 9a, despite very similar spec sheets, which shows Google has switched something under the hood.

Here’s a classic of the Chinese smartphone genre; a phone with the display, battery life and general shape of a top-tier flagship phone, coupled with some outrageous spec numbers in the camera and charging speed department that may or may not amount to anything, all for a surprising lower mid-range price. The Redmi Note 15 Pro+ does come with some notable downsides, and they’ll be familiar to anyone who pays attention to Xiaomi phones. But if your main priorities are a big high-quality and very long battery life, it’s a great option for the money.

Compare the 15 Pro+ to the $2000 iPhone Pro Max and it does surprisingly well at a glance. It’s the same height and width with the same size screen, but noticeably thinner and lighter. The screen is just as bright, just as smooth, and supports Dolby Vision, so running movies side-by-side is surprisingly comparable, with the iPhone having a slight edge in colour and contrast. In battery, the unit in the Redmi is a full third larger in capacity than the one in the iPhone Pro Max. Does that mean it beats the iPhone for battery life? Not if you leave the screen on; Apple’s display tech is far too efficient. But it will outlast the latest from Google or Samsung, and in my testing had no problems if I only put it on the charger every other night.

And speaking of chargers, this phone supports up to 100W if you have a suitable wall plug, meaning you can go from 25 per cent to 50 per cent in around 10 minutes. I think the utility of that is arguable, but if fast charging is important to you, it’s there. It’s a similar deal with the purported 200MP main camera; it hands in consistently good shots given good lighting, but there’s no obvious benefit over a good 20MP camera. In fact I found shots taken at 4x to be pretty inconsistent, despite the ability to crop and zoom being a supposed advantage of a big sensor.

The mid-range Snapdragon chip is perfectly adequate for general use, but overall there are three issues with the 15 Pro+ that I think need to be weighted against its strength in display and battery. First, while plastic bodies aren’t necessarily bad, my black review unit is so slippery I had to apply the included silicon case to keep it falling off my desk. There’s a brown model with a faux-leather finish that may be better. Second, the phone uses Xiaomi’s older HyperOS 2, so it’s likely going to burn one of its promised four major upgrades just getting up to 2026 level. And third, as usual HyperOS comes filled with garbage you need to delete immediately, including adware, gambling games and shopping services.

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