In this video I put the Redmi Note 15 5G (around £179–£199 / ~$250 on release) up against a £500-ish Xiaomi 14T Pro and a £1,000 OnePlus 13 to see what a proper budget phone looks like in 2026. I go through the big stuff people actually care about: the 2K displays (brightness and refresh rates), real-world performance with Geekbench scores, cameras (selfies, main shots, macro, and video), plus battery and charging. The headline is simple: the OnePlus wins the display battle and the Xiaomi sits comfortably in second, but I still think it’s impressive the Redmi even has a 2K 120Hz panel at this price. Performance-wise there’s a massive jump from $250 to $500, but not a huge jump from $500 to $1,000 in benchmarks. Camera-wise, the Xiaomi and OnePlus are better overall mainly because they’ve got dedicated telephoto lenses, but the Redmi’s 108MP main shooter can genuinely go toe-to-toe for still photos. My biggest complaint is the baked-in apps and the insane amount of pop-ups and notifications out of the box—most can be removed or muted, but it’s still a pain.