Moderators at OzBargain are now running yearly polls to decide the best products in popular categories that get asked repeatedly in the forum. Our aim is to have a central thread where users can vote on the items, suggest options and also change their vote throughout the year. For more information on how these polls work, or if you want to suggest a new poll that isn't covered already, please refer to our announcement thread here.
Question
What is the best budget smartphone under $300 in 2023?
Once again we'll discuss options and recommendations for smartphones in the budget category. We asked the question last year and the winner was the Poco M4 Pro 5G with 71 votes. 2nd place was the Motorola Edge 20 Fusion and 3rd being the Vivo X50 Lite.
I suspect we'll see Xiaomi / Pocophones take the top spot again this year.
Remember: You can change your votes at anytime, and suggest more than 1 product over the course of the poll.
How do I suggest products to What Should I Buy polls?
If you have a product that you would like to suggest for the poll (that is currently not in the Poll Options), you'll need to make a top-level comment (i.e. not replying someone else's comment) and fill up "Suggestions" text box just above your comment:
Do try to make a sensible suggestion (e.g make sure the phone is still available to purchase) and include a brief argument as to why you would recommend the product. You can only suggest 1 product at a time.
The Moto G62 5G is probably the cheapest phone you can buy that supports 5G (which many of you may not care about). It comes equipped with a Snapdragon 480, NFC for contactless payments, a paltry 4GB of RAM and 128GB storage with dual physical SIM slots, 3.5mm audio jack and 120hz IPS 1080p-class display.
It's currently on sale for $249 at Officeworks and has also been at this price at JB HI-FI.
Runs Android 12 out of the box but gets a final update to Android 13 over the air. It has a total of 3 years of security updates (phone was released 2022, June 28.)