“Budget” used to mean genuine compromise. It mostly doesn’t any more — but the two phones below still represent two different philosophies of budget, and picking the wrong one for your actual use case is an easy mistake. Here’s the real difference.

Specs, side by side

Where the Poco M7 wins

Price, plain and simple, and battery capacity relative to that price — 5,160mAh is a genuinely large battery for £180.95, and for calls, messaging, social media, and video streaming, it’ll comfortably get most people through a full day and then some. If a phone is purely a communication tool for you, or it’s a second/backup phone, this is hard to beat at the price.

Where the Redmi Note 15 Pro wins

Almost everywhere you’d actually notice day to day. The AMOLED display is a real step up over the Poco’s LCD panel — deeper blacks, better outdoor visibility at 3,200 nits peak brightness. The 200MP main camera with optical image stabilisation is a genuinely capable camera for the price bracket, not just a spec-sheet number. Charging is more than twice as fast (45W against the Poco’s unspecified standard charging), the battery is larger still despite the faster charging, and it carries a proper IP68/IP69K water and dust resistance rating, which the Poco’s listing doesn’t specify at all.

The bottom line

If price is the only thing that matters and the phone’s job is simple — calls, texts, browsing — the Poco M7 does that reliably for under £185. If you can stretch to £316.95, the Redmi Note 15 Pro genuinely feels like a phone worth more than its price tag, with a display and camera that don’t feel “budget” at all. For most people reading a buying guide rather than hunting for the absolute floor price, the Redmi is the one we’d point you to. Browse both, and the rest of the range, in our Mobile Phones category.