‘The best cheap phone I’ve tested in years’: the Motorola Edge 60 just earned a spot in our best cheap phones guide – here’s why

If there’s one buying guide on TechRadar that I spend more time updating than any other, it’s our best cheap phones^[1] guide.

There are so many great sub-$499 / £499 / AU$699 options available in 2025 that I’m constantly swapping out one affordable phone for another, which can’t be said for our more fixed ranking of the very best phones^[2] money can buy.

My current roundup features well-known (and very good!) models from big-name manufacturers like Samsung^[3], Apple^[4], and Google^[5], but I was glad to add a more offbeat option, the Motorola Edge 60^[6], to the list in my last update.

Now look, I know Motorola is not an ‘offbeat’ brand in terms of name recognition (the “Hello Moto” ringtone was everywhere in the early noughties), and the company continues to produce some of the best foldable phones^[7] around.

But Motorola has certainly fallen behind in the flagship race in recent years, and it can be hard to keep track of which lower-end Motorola phones are released – and which market they’re released to – in any given year (there’s the Edge family, the G family, the E family, and so on).

The Motorola Edge 60, however, caught my attention immediately – not least because, in his Motorola Edge 60 review^[8], my colleague called it “the best cheap phone [he’s] tested in years” and “as good as the most expensive phones” in many areas. High praise indeed.

Before I explain why the Edge 60 is such good value, it’s worth saying that it’s currently exclusive to the UK. But fear not! The US-exclusive Motorola Edge (2025)^[9] is more or less the same phone. It uses a marginally more powerful chipset and has wireless charging capabilities, but otherwise, it’s an identical handset. It’s also just $550.

Let’s start with cameras. The Motorola Edge 60 boasts a 50MP main camera, a 50MP ultra-wide camera, a 10MP telephoto camera (with 3x optical zoom), and a 50MP selfie camera. You won’t find equivalent photographic hardware in any device costing less than the Edge 60’s £379 starting price (or indeed the $550 price of the US version), and in fact its more expensive sibling, the Motorola Edge 60 Pro^[10], gets the very same camera setup.

This isn’t to say that the Edge 60 can take flagship-level pictures. As noted in our review, “photos taken on the main camera look decent, as they’re clear and bright, although they’re not especially vibrant in terms of color.” The 50MP ultra-wide, too, falls squarely into the ‘good, not great’ category.

But having the option of 3x optical zoom is a real rarity at the lower end of the smartphone market. It lets you get closer to details or create a nice depth of field for close-up shots, and you usually have to spend a lot more money to gain access to this sort of versatility on a smartphone.

Other specs for the Edge 60 include a 6.67-inch, 120Hz FHD display, a Mediatek Dimensity 7300 chipset, an IP69 water resistance rating, 68W wired charging, and a long-lasting 5,200mAh battery. The phone’s design, too, is incredibly premium-feeling, though there’s only one color option (Gibraltar Sea) available at the time of writing.

All of these features make Motorola’s latest mid-ranger a well-heeled smartphone for 2025 wants and needs, and while that Mediatek Dimensity 7300 chipset won’t deliver standout performance – the A18-equipped iPhone 16e^[11] is a better fit for keen mobile gamers – the lesser-known Edge 60 is definitely one of the best-value smartphones we’ve tested this year.

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