The Honor 7X is the latest in Honor’s long, evolving budget phone series. The Honor 5X and Honor 6X — its predecessors — were good phones for their respective prices, but the Honor 7x really hits the nail on the head in terms of design, performance, and camera capability. That’s why we think the Honor 7X is the best budget phone you can buy today, with a starting price of just $199.

Design

We got a preview of the Honor 7X’s aesthetic in this year’s Honor 8 Pro, which shares many of the same design elements. Honor adopted the 8 Pro’s brushed anodized aluminum unibody design for the new Honor 7x, and to great effect — it gives the phone a flagship-like look and feel. It’s almost entirely smooth on the back and front, with the dual-sensor camera bump the minor exception. And it puts the Honor 7X’s FullView screen front and center, which is a good thing: It stretches all the way to the edges of the device for an impressive 77 percent screen-to-body ratio, which makes the 5.93-inch, 18:9 2160 x 1080 (~407 PPI) aspect ratio display easy to reach with one hand. This display is similar in size and resolution to the OnePlus 5T, but Honor is using an IPS LCD, so colors aren’t as punchy as what you can find on the AMOLED 5T.

Huawei’s done a lot of work to make sure applications and games take full advantage of the 18:9 display. It’s tested over 200 of the top mobile games and 1,500 applications for compatibility, and apps that don’t support the 18:9 ratio natively will automatically expand to fill to take up the full screen, unlike some wide-aspect phones like the Galaxy S8, which requires the user to press the “expand” button to make apps go full-frame, so you don’t get those ugly black borders around the top and bottom. Additionally, Huawei’s partnered with Gameloft to optimize Modern Combat Versus, its popular multiplayer title, for the Honor 7X.

Launched in December of 2017, the Honor 7X is the next installment of Honor’s budget line of phones.

Performance

Honor 7x	Specs
CPU	HiSilicon Kirin 659, Octa-core4x Cortex-A53 @ 2.36GHz 4x Coretex-A53 @ 1,7GHz
GPU	Mali-T830 MP2
RAM	3GB/4GB LPDDR3 (USA/ROW)
Battery	3,340mAh (5V/2A)

Thanks to Huawei’s new Kirin 659 system-on-chip (an octa-core chip featuring 4x Cortex-A53 cores running at 2.36GHz frequency and 4x Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.7GHz frequency), a Mali-T830 MP2 GPU, and up to 4GB of RAM, the Honor 7X offers a great software experience that you might not necessarily expect from a phone in its price range. While an increasing number of budget phones pack middle-of-the-road MediaTek processors, Honor stuck with an uncompromising processor with superior performance. Games and apps launch quickly and exhibit little-to-no stuttering, and the phone’s 3GB of RAM keeps things humming along smoothly even when multiple apps run in the background..

The Honor 7X packs a 3,340mAh battery that’s compatible with Huawei’s fast charging (5V/2A) technology, and its got a 3.55mm jack that packs Huawei’s HiSten 3D Hi-Fi sound. Other specs include a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, Bluetooth 4.1, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n (2.4GHz), a micro USB port, and a microSD card slot.

Display

The Honor 7X features a 18:9 display with a 1080 x 2160p resolution.

One of the Honor 7X’s headliners is the screen. It’s where most budget phones fall seriously short, but the Honor 7X bucks the trend — it has the best display you’ll find for $199. It’s the first phone from Honor to feature a full screen HD+ display, and it looks really good.

The 18:9 aspect ratio makes a huge difference when watching movies on your phone. Most use an anamorphic aspect ratio such as 21:9, and when a 21:9 video is squeezed into a conventional 16:9 smartphone display, letterboxing — the black bars on the top and bottom of your screen — occurs. The Honor 7X’s 18:9 display makes that ugly phenomenon a thing of the past — you’ll find that videos fill much more of the phone’s screen real estate, resulting in a bigger picture and that shows you more of the action.

We captured a few screenshots from the Honor 7X to highlight the difference. Check out this YouTube trailer from the 7X:

The Honor 7X’s aspect ratio doesn’t just deliver a better movie-viewing experience. When the phone’s in portrait mode, you’ll find that taller screen makes a big difference. We found browsing the web to be noticeably better with the larger screen.

Arguably just as important as the screen’s aspect ratio is its alignment with the phone’s body, which has the potential to impact its reflectivity and brightness. Luckily, the Honor 7X gets it right. The top and bottom bezels are the exact same size, drawing attention to the screen’s perfectly centered alignment on the phone’s front. It’s the optimal viewing angle, and it builds on the phone’s symmetry very pleasantly.

While the corners of the phone are rounded, the edges of the display are squared off to ensure that every last bit of the face is dedicated to the display. Honor didn’t mess around..

The display on the Honor 7X is centered in the body of the phone, making the top, bottom, and side bezels mirror their proportions exactly.

Camera

Honor 7X	Camera
Main	16MP RGB shooter + 2MP secondary shooter, PDAF, LED flash / 1080p 30FPS
Selfie	Front camera: 8MP, 1080p

The dual-lens camera on the Honor 7X consists of 16MP (with phase detection autofocus) and 2MP rear sensors and an 8MP selfie camera, and they don’t disappoint — the phone takes great pictures and impressive video. Additional goodies include portrait mode, “Beauty Mode” for those that need a little help in the skin complexion department, and gesture controls.

The default camera app is just as impressive. Honor goes a bit farther than most other OEMs — it tries to fit tons of shooting modes and effects in a single menu. There’s something for everyone..

Shot with wide-aperture mode to blur the background and focus on the foreground

Edited with color splash effect

Shot with one of the default filters

Price

After using the Honor 7X for a while, you’d expect a sky-high price tag. But the Honor 7X retails for just $199 in the USA and is available for pre-order now, a bargain by any stretch. Simply put, there are few phones you can get in this category that come close to comparing, and that’s why the Honor 7X is our pick for the best budget phone of 2017. The USA version gets you 3GB of RAM and 32GB ROM. The rest of the world pays about $50 more, but that gets you 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM. In both cases you can expand storage via microSD.

The Honor 7X comes in three colors, Aurora Blue, Gold, and Black, and is on sale in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Ukraine, Turkey, Russia, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Malaysia, and India. It’s available at brick-and-mortar stores and online today.