Top 5 best gaming phones for under £200 (Summer 2017)

What's the best gaming smartphone? We've covered that one already. Spoiler: it's still the iPhone 7 Plus, followed by several brilliant Android rivals like the Samsung Galaxy S8.

The trouble is, all these phones will cost you well north of £500 up front. Many of us simply don't have that kind of money to hand - or simply refuse to spend it all on a fragile communication tool that will be obsolete in a couple of years.

Fortunately, you don't need to spend loads of money on a phone any more - even if you're really into your games. For less than £200 you can get a machine that plays all the latest that the Google Play Store has to offer (there's still no such thing as a budget iPhone).

Here, then, are five of the best budget gaming phones on the market. We should note that PG is a UK-based website, so we've gone with phones that were available to buy here at the time of writing.

We've featured Motorola's G-series phones a lot here on PG. They've pretty much been the reference point for sub-£200 smartphones for a number of years.

The Moto G5 is no different. While internally it's not all that different from the Moto G4 before it, the Moto G5 adds a sense of design class that had been lacking in its predecessors.

Its strong 5-inch 1080p display and capable Snapdragon 430 CPU make it great for games, too.

Yes, THAT Nokia. After its ill-fated backing of Microsoft's virtually defunct Windows Phone system, the Finnish brand looked to be done with the smartphone business.

Now it's back and finally making Android phones like it ought to have done all along. Critics might point out that it's Nokia's new hardware partner HMD that's actually making these new phones under the Nokia license. But as HMD is based dead opposite Nokia HQ, and is run by former Nokia staff, we'll give it a pass.

Besides, the Nokia 6 is a beautifully built, highly capable and well specced device. You know, a Nokia phone.

British manufacturer Wileyfox has a slightly spotty record with its affordable phones, but the Swift 2 family is universally strong.

The range-topping Wileyfox Swift 2 X offers a classy metal design, a sharp 5.2-inch Full HD display and solid performance via a Snapdragon 430 and (crucially) 3GB of RAM.

Its price is officially listed as £220, but you can often pick the Wileyfox Swift 2 X up for less if you shop around online. If you can't, the Swift 2 is a similarly accomplished phone - but with a lesser 720p display and a corresponding lower price.

European mobile operator Vodafone has quietly produced some extremely impressive and aggressively priced phones over the past few years. The Vodafone Smart V8 is the latest of these, and it's a cracker.

For just £160 you get a Snapdragon 435 CPU, a 5.5-inch 1080p display, an all-metal body and a decent camera - which can be tricky to find at this price point.

The Huawei P9 Lite might buck the trend and go with plastic over metal, but it's still a great-looking and feeling phone. Plus, you get a fine 5.2-inch 1080p display to gawp at.

Elsewhere there's a speedy Kirin 650 CPU backed by 3GB of RAM, offering strong performance - though that Kirin chip isn't always as well supported by developers as the more mainstream Snapdragon efforts elsewhere on this list.