Best premium all-rounders 2024 - buyer’s guide

Despite facing heavy competition, the Xiaomi 14T is an easy recommendation in our books. The handset covers all bases with a good display, adequate chipset, fast enough charging and nice-sounding speakers. What we would like to see improved is battery life. Also, excluding the charger from the box doesn't sit well with us, given the fact that the phone supports proprietary fast charging.

Even though it offers lackluster selfie camera, the Xiaomi 14T stands out from the crowd with excellent camera performance - day and night, stills and videos. We are even surprised by how good the 4x zoom mode is!

When you factor in 4 years of major OS updates, the Xiaomi 14T becomes an excellent all-rounder and a great recommendation from launch. As the price settles with time, the handset will become even more lucrative.

The Pixel 8, priced €600 or less, offers a great compact screen, excellent camera experience, faster charging, 7 years of software support, and timely major OS updates.

Let’s not forget the Pixel camera, which is a huge standout feature and the sole thing that easily sells this Pixel. And it delivers for another year, of course.

But the Pixel 8 isn't without its flaws. For instance, a 3x telephoto unit would have been greatly appreciated as well wider availability for its smart features. After all, many of Pixel’s clever software features can't be utilized to its fullest in many markets. Charging and battery life aren't particularly impressive either, although somewhat okay in Pixel terms. We also wonder why Google decided to skip the autofocus feature on the selfie camera and the support for Pro camera mode on the smaller Pixel.

Bottom line, the Pixel 8 is an easy recommendation because, despite its issues, it's a significant upgrade over the previous generation and manages to pack competent hardware into a compact body.

Apple's smartphone ecosystem is mostly an isolated island at this point, with few people jumping ship from or to Android. As such, it makes sense to mostly analyze the iPhone lineup in isolation, more or less. The vanilla iPhone definitely has its place in said lineup. It likely won't be the hottest seller among its siblings, but the regular iPhone has become something of a "commodity" product. It's the one you get when you simply want "an iPhone," and since it just happens to be the cheapest of the latest bunch, it gets a lot of attention on that front as well.

Plus, as far as innovations go, the iPhone 15 brings much more to the table than its predecessor. The all-new and incredibly bright OLED display is a great step forward, and we appreciate Apple finally unifying its design with Dynamic Island across all models. And speaking of unification, Type-C was a long-overdue change. The other major novelty this year must be the new 48MP main camera. We found it to be excellent all-around and a noticeable improvement over last year's 12MP cam.

All things considered, the vanilla iPhone 15 brings a lot to the table and will get you most of the way there to the full iPhone Pro-level experience. Apple has again managed to strike the delicate balance between familiarity and meaningful innovation - enough to justify an upgrade to the iPhone 15 from an older vanilla iPhone model.

The OnePlus 12R is an excellent offer pricer around €600. It’s a premium smartphone with a large Fluid AMOLED screen with 1B colors, 120Hz refresh, and Dolby Vision. It also packs flagship-grade Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset with proper cooling solution that helps for good sustained performance.

The OnePlus 12R's specsheet already revealed some of its key weaknesses. The lack of wireless charging and the IP rating that doesn't promise submersion survival will possibly disqualify it for some potential buyer. More limiting, we reckon, is the camera system that features a so-so ultrawide and is missing a zoom unit - that's the weak point that rivals can readily exploit. After all it is not a cheap phone.

That said, stills performance is superb on the main camera and not half bad on the ultrawide, with both excelling in the dark - that's anything but a disappointing performance, if you don't particularly care for video. Add to that a wonderful display, class-leading battery life, and charging speed that's also among the best (in any class), and the 12R isn't looking too shabby, all things considered.

Ultimately, whether the OnePlus 12R is merely good enough or just great for you will be decided on exactly how much you want to be zooming in or out on your cameras. For everything else – it is a fine flagship killer specimen.

The Galaxy Z Flip6 is not a substantial upgrade over the previous generation - faced with limited opposition, Samsung is doing a bit of coasting with its foldables this year. That said, the Flip6 in particular does bring a few improvements that make it more competitive in a field where it doesn't necessarily need to compete harder. Alternatively, it could be argued that the Flip6 is only getting the bare minimum of updates to keep the flame goin.

We do appreciate the new camera - it's not the dramatic improvement we wished it would be (against our better judgment), but it does push the Flip's versatility up a bit. The increase in battery life is similarly not a gamechanger, but more is always welcome. But argubaly its key advantage remains One UI for all of its features and refinement. The close cooperation with Google on the AI stuff can be another selling point for the right buyer.

The Z Flip6's only glaring omission is a sensible charging solution - not only was it never fast, but it's not getting any faster either. The cover screen could be sexier and more useful like on some competitors, too. Overall, it is a great compact phone, one of the best, but maybe you should consider our top pick first, and the Z Flip 6 – second.

The Nothing Phone (2) is an excellent sequel and a tempting offer in a pretty over-saturated market, especially around the €600 range. The phone has something that no other phone, well, except Phone (1), has, and that's the Glyph UI. Even better, the LED functionality has been expanded, and it's a really cool and convenient way to see what's happening on your phone without looking at its screen.

The Phone (2) has a larger and brighter LTPO OLED display, with a much more adaptive refresh rate, a welcome update over the Phone (1). The most notable upgrade is the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 flagship chipset, which makes working with the Phone (2) a breezy experience, gaming included.

Then there is the improved battery life. The richer audio from the stereo speakers. And better photo and video quality across the board. Let's not forget the faster 45W charging speed.

The Nothing Phone (2) also impressed us with the fluidity of its Nothing OS 2.0 - it's so clean, simple, and fast.

The Nothing Phone (2) is not without its issues, though. First - it does not support High Frame Rate gaming, which is a bit disappointing considering the capable hardware platform. The Phone (2) is still not water-resistant despite the now higher ingress protection rating.

The Glyph UI remains the most important thing of any Nothing Phone. You either love it and use it, or you don't, and then the Phone (2) becomes an offer like any other. If you have no use for Glyph, we've explored plenty of alternatives and are sure some will fit your needs and budget.

But if you do, or you just want a breath of fresh air, an innovation of sorts in an otherwise boring market, the Nothing Phone (2), or (1), will not disappoint you. On the contrary, the Phone (2) offers a thoughtful pick of features with a pinch of premium and two of innovation, and that's why we do recommend considering the Phone (2) and even buying it. Because "they just don't make them like the old times" does not fully apply here.

Realme bets on design and camera experience with the 12 Pro+. Battery life is considerably above average too, and so is the charging speed. You also get а very competent 3x periscope telephoto camera.

The display, while of good specs, is largely as it falls behind the competition in terms of max brightness. Some more powerful chipsets are also available, though we found the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 good enough for most tasks excluding high-end gaming.

One usually gets this Realme 12 Pro+ for its premium design, imaging skills and battery life. Those are enough to put it in this shortlist, though users looking for maximum performance should shop elsewhere.

The €550 Realme GT 6 is a great premium smartphone with a well-rounded set of features. It has a potent main camera, good zoom camera, snappy chipset, flagship-grade LTPO OLED panel, fast charging, excellent battery life, blazing-fast charging and loud and good-sounding speakers. In a sense, the GT 6 covers all the bases.

Perhaps the biggest missteps of GT 6 are the ultrawide and selfie cameras. The competition has moved away from the dated 8MP ultrawide unit, and Realme should too.

But if you are in the market for a phone in this ‘like a flagship’, then the Realme GT 6 is an outright recommendation for its premium all-round feature set.

The Honor 200 Pro is an impressive smartphone with a €700 price tag that matches its high aspirations. It has an attractive design with splash resistance, an excellent display, powerful hardware, good battery life, fast charging, loud speakers. The camera quality and its versatility are great, and its focus on Portrait mode is commendable.

There is a lot to like about the 200 Pro, including the highly customizable software and its iOS-like Magic Capsule. The fast wired, wireless and the option for reversed wireless charging are very much appreciated.

There were a couple of things that rubbed us the wrong way, though. Let's start with the pill-shaped notch, which is not that of an eyesore as the iPhones', but a big one if you are used to small punch holes. The lack of autofocus for the otherwise amazing selfie camera is another moment.

Most importantly, the highly advertised portrait mode, while producing great photos, is a mixed bag as it doesn't always produce accurate bokeh, or bokeh at all. And the camera is reluctant to remember our preference of having Night mode on by default.

Overall, the Honor 200 Pro steps in an over-saturated market and price segment, but it can score easy wins with its great cameras, screen and gaming performance.