We've tested an £89.99 Prime Day bargain smartphone - and it blew us away

With premium smartphones such as Samsung's Galaxy S25 Ultra and Apple's iPhone 16 Pro Max costing more than £1,000, you might think it's silly to expect anything impressive from a smartphone costing less than £100.

But, oh, how wrong you'd be. There are a range of smartphones now that fall into the budget end of the market and, truth be told, they're all pretty mediocre at best. But I've been living with the Honor X6C for a few weeks, and I'm staggered at how good it is.

Cards on the table, it is not a patch on a flagship. I'm not about to ditch my Google Pixel 9 Pro XL for it, but what you get for your money with Honor's cheapest handset is absolutely remarkable.

It normally costs £129.99, but it's Amazon Prime Day week, so you can save a very decent 31% off that price and bag it for £89.99, if you catch the deal before the end of Friday.

And for that £89.99, you get a 6.61 inch 120Hz display, Android 15, an Octa-core processor, 6Gb of ram, a 5,300mAh battery, a fingerprint sensor and 35 watt fast charging.

And then there's the camera setup. Its twin lenses can capture up to 50 megapixels, with a f/1.8 wide mode, and a trick AI system for enhancing each image. There's an LED flash, a panorama mode, and it supports HDR and 1080p video at 30fps.

These are all things that simply shouldn't exist on a smartphone costing less than £100, so you'd expect it to feel flimsy and flaky in the hand - but it doesn't. It feels every bit as robust as the Honor Magic 7 Pro I've also got in to test at the moment.

It doesn't have a Gorilla Glass screen, and it doesn't have comprehensive water resistance, and it doesn't have wireless charging, or face recognition, but the camera performance is staggering at this price point, the processing power is enough to handle beefy games, and battery life is brilliant.

Honestly, this is a piece of tech that doesn't just punch above its weight, it steps into the heavyweight ring and knocks seven bells out of everyone, including the referee.

The fact you can buy one for £89.99 if you catch the Prime Day deal just makes it one of the tech bargains of the year.

It's an ideal second phone for people who might want to keep their posh Samsung somewhere safe while they go off paddleboarding, or rock climbing, or something, or perhaps a perfect starter phone for a youngster who hasn't owned one before.

Or maybe it's just a way to beat the system, escape the absurd prices we have to pay for mobile phone contracts at the moment, and to go SIM-free without hefty monthly bills.

Whatever you do with it, you'll love the Honor X6C. Sure, it's not as good as a £1,000 flagship, but it's so much better than it should be for a tenth of that price.