It’s $200! Good performance. Nice screen. Two-day battery life. Solid camera. Includes 64GB of storage and a microSD card slot, plus a headphone jack and NFC for contactless payments. Runs the latest version of Android and will get two OS upgrades and four years of security updates. Works on all major US networks.

But it has no IP rating and mono speaker isn’t great.

It’s the cheap phones that have had my eyes. It’s remarkable seeing what features are trickling down from the high end, and how rapidly these handsets are improving. This is nowhere more evident than with Samsung’s Galaxy A14 5G.

This US$200 unlocked Android phone is, frankly, phenomenal. For two Benjamins, you can get a smartphone that can handle most day-to-day tasks without acting frustratingly slow, a surprisingly decent camera system, a lengthy software update cycle, plus more than two-day battery life. The crazier thing is that Samsung manages to improve on the flaws of the A14’s predecessor — the Galaxy A13 5G—while cutting the price by US$50. Consider my mind boggled.

The A14 5G looks a little plain, but it has a textured back that gives it a little more character than most budget phones. It certainly doesn’t feel as cheap as it is. The plastic rear design means that’s one less glass surface area you have to worry about. The only hardware flaw? This phone doesn’t have an IP rating, so it’s not dust or water resistant. You’ll want to be careful with it in the rain, near a pool, and at the beach.