Gadgetory

the mid-tier phone market right now is ripe there are a lot of really good options in that $500 price point and I thought I'd just make a video that showed I guess my 5 top picks of the bunch as well as talked about my personal favorite of this group in order to make this list every phone here is really good like there's no particular order when I'm actually talking about the different phones they're all good but the ones that have been excluded from this list I've purposely excluded like a lot of brands out there like some of the Huawei phones in light of recent events they're not in here but if they're in here they're all good so right off the bat the Samsung S 9 and s 9 Plus this is a phone that has appeared a lot on my channel it's such an easy phone and recommend the best things about it are really that it's an all rounder phone everything about this phone is solid like the speaker's the headphone jack the camera system the screen like it's just such a good all-rounder phone it covers all the bases and it does everything really well the camera isn't like the best thing in the world I would say that the pixel cameras are better in my opinion but it's just a great all-round phone if there's one thing I would knock on it it's their software not the actual software that it's running like some people are gonna love 1 UI some people may not it's more of a personal preference I'm talking about their lack of updates of software updates Samsung is a company that makes tons of phones tons of people have these phones around the world but for whatever reason they're just slow to update their phones I mean every year you're gonna get two maybe three major software updates which is a lot less than some of the other competitors out there also because this phone is over a year old at this point whatever lifespan that Samsung had originally planned for supporting this phone like if they were going to support it for two or three years it's now one year less so this is not gonna be updated forever by Samsung so that's probably it's only disadvantage fantastic phone overall but if you care a lot about frequent and long-term updates that may not be the best pick next up pixel three Axl this is Google's answer to the whole mid tier phone market they did an awesome job on this phone it's plastic but it still feels like a relatively premium phone like if you tell me that smells like polycarbonate shell I would have believed that it was glass and metal like it's just that well made weaknesses of this phone are its performance it's got a great camera great software but if you really want a fast experience this thing is noticeably slower compared to other $500 phones out there it also doesn't have wireless charging if that matters to you but if you're looking for just a good overall experience you don't care too much of a performance this is a great pick up next up one plus 60 you can pick up this phone for five hundred and fifty bucks on their website which doesn't really fit in the $500 category but I'm putting it in here anyways now oneplus as a brand has been traditionally known as like the budget brand budgets the wrong word but like value brand you get good value for this phone and over the years it's held up to that name but I would say that right now in mid 2019 their brand isn't as press competitive as it used to be not that it's a bad phone or anything I mean it's a great phone that's why it's even in this bunch but in terms of its price point I don't think it stands out as being like a value brand anymore it's still one of the nicest looking phones in this bunch in my opinion it's got a relatively small notch and the software is clean it's got - charging it does not however have a headphone jack and I think that this price point headphone jacks are pretty important Shaymin doesn't have it but that's the one +60 great phone but just not as clear of a price leader as it used to be then we also have our newest addition to this lineup the zenfone 6 I really like this phone I don't want to just oversell it because I feel like it's easy to do when you get something that's new and novel like this my initial impressions of this phone were that the hinge on the flip camera was questionable but I've actually tried to bust this thing like I've been rough with it I've been talking it around I think this thing will actually hold up quite well to real world use the advantages of this phone I would say are its aesthetic it's a really nice clean looking front I also say the software is quite clean the flip up camera makes water resistance on a device like this extremely difficult so I just I'm not gonna do water tests on this because just looking at the mechanism makes me feel like this thing would bust immediately five submerged this also the camera this is something that I feel like Asus has always been not like their camera software just doesn't process images as nicely to my eye I hope that they fix this but that's really it's only major flaw to me like everything about this phone feels right for five hundred dollars okay last up razor phone too this is a phone that launched for eight hundred bucks and at that price point just it was a bad recommendation no one was gonna openly say like hey this is a great phone buy for 800 bucks it is now a $500 phone it's such a good phone at that price see I find it unfortunate when companies do that when they launch a phone and they price it wrongly like when this thing goes out at eight hundred bucks and the camera software isn't great at launch it kills the product like they just can't recover from that we've seen this happen with the essential phone a couple years ago we now see it happen with the razor phone where the phone is good but because the price tag is so high the initial reviews are just like it's not worth the money and then they can't sell it like at this point for 500 bucks this is such a good phone it's not perfect but I think it can sit with the rest of these comfortably its main strengths is that 120 Hertz screen super smooth super fluid it just looks really nice I wish it was brighter still but still a good screen the biggest weakness I would say is the uncertainty of future updates for this phone razor as a company had some shifts internally and there were rumors that they were pulling some of the resource out of mobile hardware development including software so it's you know it's possible that this phone may not be supported really long term but they've seemed to held up over the past couple months I just hope that they keep it up but okay all these are great phones but if I had to choose one as like the best or my favorite of the five if you'd asked me two weeks ago I would have gone with the s9 plus really easy phone to recommend but I mean you've seen this thing a bunch of times my channel I like it a lot but because of the introduction of the zenfone 6 this is my favorite right now they've done fantastic job on this device I didn't expect it I think the world did not expect them to make something this good and if you're interested in a $500 phone I highly recommend checking this thing out I will say this this is kind of a message for Asus button this is a phone that has finally gotten the attention of a lot of eyeballs like they've made phones for a bunch of years but they've never been like massively popular this phone I think will be wildly popular it has a lot of eyeballs in North America which is something Asus has never really had with their zenfone lineup I hope they kind of appreciate that and I hope they respect that because this is a great phone but they got to keep it updated and they got to work on the camera software because as it stands I mean it could be a lot better ok that's my favorite of the bunch I think you can't go wrong with any of these but that wraps up this video ok hope you guys enjoyed it thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it see you guys next time