The best gaming phone 2024 — I tested them all to crown a winner

I've been testing games on smartphones for over five years, so I feel well-qualified to tell you what the best gaming phone for your needs will be.

Our top pick at the moment is the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro, with the iPhone 16 Pro Max coming in a close second. Both are phones with powerful chipsets and excellent displays - the two basic things you want in a gaming phone. The ROG Phone 8 Pro then offers tonnes of gaming features and customization on top, while the iPhone 16 Pro Max focuses on camera quality, pro-grade photography and videography features and AI features.

Which one is right for you is going to depend on how devoted you are to your games. But of course there are also others worth considering if you are looking for something cheaper, or with specific features like a cooling fan or a foldable screen.

I'll explain more below about what makes these phones uniquely suited to high-performance games, plus test results to back it all up. So let's check out the best gaming phones right now so you can get into the action ASAP.

The quick list

Richard Priday

I'm lucky enough to try out all the latest smartphones, and of course part of my testing involves playing games on them. I've reviewed roughly a phone per month since joining TG in 2018, and tried plenty more on top of that. I've seen how mobile gaming has quickly developed to rival console-level experiences in that time, and the phones I've put on this list will make sure you aren't left behind as this part of the gaming world continues to change.

The best gaming phone overall

I never doubted Asus' ability to make a good gaming phone, but it's the ROG Phone 8 Pro's all-round quality that has ensured it the top spot on this guide. Even when I wasn't playing on it, I didn't find myself wishing I had another phone in my pocket since it covers all your needs quite well. Even though the Asus has far from the best cameras on a smartphone, the fact it now offers a telephoto camera means it covers the same photo bases as other flagship phones.

I also absolutely love how good the ROG Phone 8 Pro's battery life is - it got the best ever result on the TG custom battery test. And its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, coupled with up to 24GB RAM (that's more than my actual laptop!), makes even the most demanding in-game action look easy. Plus you can make things more to your liking with the ROG Armory Crate app, which enables features like the capacitive triggers on the right edge of the phone, the rear lighting panel and a hub for all your games.

All that said, I can't recommend picking this phone up without some serious thought. At $1,199/£1,099 for the standard model, this is the same price as you'd pay for a more rounded Ultra or Pro-grade phone. While I think this is the best job Asus has ever done at making its gaming phone a more regular flagship phone, this is probably one for the enthusiasts only.

Read our full Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro review.

Best gaming iPhone

Apple doesn't focus on gaming in the way some of the other companies on this list do, but this is still a great phone to play games on. It's the phone I currently play on the most, due in part to its other qualities, but with the might of its A18 Pro chip and newly-enlarged 6.9-inch display, there's not much more I'd ask for.

Between rounds and races, there's a lot I can appreciate about the iPhone 16 Pro Max, like its strong battery life, and the slowly-developing Apple Intelligence suite of AI features. The real highlight is photography though, with the new Camera Control helping me quickly adjust and take shots, the Photographic Styles aiding in finding the right look for each image, and the advanced abilities like Audio Mix or 4K slo-mo for video.

This is another expensive phone to be sure, and the large flat-sided design makes it a little hard to handle. Plus charging's pretty sluggish compared to the competition, which could be an issue if you run the phone down to 0% battery and need a quick refill. But the iPhone 16 Pro Max is still a phone I'd recommend to almost anyone who has enough money to spend, be you gamer or not.

Read our full iPhone 16 Pro Max review.

Best value gaming phone

I'd have preferred to have a a cheaper phone as our best gaming phone value pick. But believe me that the OnePlus 12R is worth your money, and offers only minimally less gaming power than the other phones on this list that cost up to twice as much. The cheapest $499 model isn't available to U.K. readers, but the $599/£649 model with more RAM and storage is still a well-priced pick.

I was so happy when OnePlus announced it was bringing its first R-series device to the global market, as these slightly modified flagship phones do a great job of balancing cutting-edge tech with the phone's total price. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip inside is close to two years old at this point, but it's still able to deliver smooth and beautiful gameplay, depicted in detail by the large and smooth display. I barely noticed a difference between playing on the OnePlus 12R and on phones with newer chips inside, so hopefully you won't either. Just be aware that the software update window for this phone is quite short at 3 years full/5 years security, so you won't get as many new features to download over time as other devices in this guide.

Perhaps the biggest reason I can recommend this phone is its battery life. It's the second-longest-lasting phone the TG lab's ever tested (no.1's the ROG Phone 8 Pro from earlier in this list) and a phone you can easily leave for a couple of days without charging if you're careful with your usage levels. So if the length of your gaming sessions matters more to you than the overall quality, and your budget's on the tight side, the OnePlus 12R might be the phone you'll want to game on.

Read our full OnePlus 12R review.

Best gaming phone cooling tech

RedMagic may not be a name you're familiar with, but it's still the first brand I'd recommend for anyone wanting a great phone that really focuses on gaming without breaking the bank.

With its side triggers and gaming software, the RedMagic 9 Pro covers your basic needs well, but where it goes above and beyond is with its built-in RGB cooling fan that enables automatically when you open a game, or manually as you wish. I've had great whipping out the RedMagic to start up the brightly-glowing fan in public --- it shows you really mean business when it comes to gaming.

Battery life is strong on this phone too, and it's backed up with a speedy 65W charger. Plus its chip is the same as you'll find in the list-topping ROG Phone 8 Pro, so you won't be wanting for processing power. Where it does lack however is photography, with its two disappointing rear cameras and fuzzy-looking selfie shots from its under-display front camera. My biggest pet peeve with this phone is its software. It's very poorly translated in places, and has been for several generations, so at this point I've given up on RedMagic ever improving it.

If you can handly some clunkily-worded settings and less than stellar cameras, then I have no qualms in recommending the RedMagic 9 Pro to you, or the upgraded but slightly more expensive RedMagic 9S Pro. It's perhaps the purest distillation of a gaming phone on this list, for better and for worse, which is why I'm making it hang out here rather than higher up the list.

Read our full RedMagic 9 Pro review.

Best foldable gaming phone

I can't personally recommend gaming on a foldable phone. The outer display's usually a little too small for my liking, and because the inner screens are much squarer than the typical 16:9 aspect ratio that mobile games are designed for, you end up with a weird view of the battlefield. Nonetheless, if you want a foldable phone for gaming, I still think the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is your best option.

The main reason for this is its chipset. With the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy on the inside, you get noticeably better in-game performance than any other foldable you can buy right now. As our Global EIC Mark Spoonauer wrote in our review: "Even with a ton of enemies on screen the action stayed steady as I unleashed my blades and special attacks on bosses, wolves and spiders." And having played Grid: Autosport and Genshin Impact on the Z Fold 6 myself, I can vouch for that.

Sadly for gamers wanting a foldable, these are still some of the most expensive phones you can buy right now, with the Galaxy Z Fold 6 starting at $1,900, a lot more than anything else on this list. It's also got a smaller battery, and therefore a weaker battery life, than the other devices we recommend too, since the folding mechanism takes up space you'd otherwise stuff with battery capacity. I was disappointed with how quickly the Z Fold 6 needed refuelling between play sessions, even if you stick to the smaller outer display.

But to boil all this down, there's no better way to get the most expansive gaming experience possible in your pocket than the Galaxy Z Fold 6. You're just going to have to accept some limitations other phones don't have in order to enjoy that big flexible screen.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review.

Best gaming phone: Other phones we tested

Not every phone can make it onto our shortlist, but there are plenty of other phones to pick from if you're prioritising gaming performance.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (★★★★☆)

The Samsung Galaxy S24 series, for example. Offers strong specs, including a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and some brilliant cameras and display tech. That's not even mentioning all the Galaxy AI features. But on the Android phone side it gets beaten by the ROG Phone 8 Pro for overall performance, and the OnePlus 12R and RedMagic 9 series on value.

Read our full Galaxy S24 Ultra review.

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How to choose the best gaming phone for you

When picking out your gaming phone of choice, the first thing to look for is the chipset. All the phones on this list either use up-to-date Snapdragon 8 series chips or the Pro version of Apple's latest A-series chip, which guarantees best-in-class performance, the optimal starting point for gaming on a phone.

The next point on your list should be display quality. You can classify that in a number of ways, like overall size, resolution, refresh rate, color quality and accuracy. There's no one ultimate phone for this, so compare the specs and our test results (see below) to see which meets your needs the best.

After that, it's time to think about additional features you may want. That could include extra gaming-focused ones like capacitive triggers or cooling systems, a long battery life for the longest-possible play sessions between charges, or more general ones like excellent cameras or smart AI features. Going all-in on gaming may mean sacrificing other parts of the basic smartphone experience, so choose wisely and consider everything you use your phone for before you end up limiting yourself.

How we test gaming phones

In order for a smartphone to make any of our best phone lists — gaming phone or otherwise — it needs to excel on several tests that we run on every handset. We perform some of these tests in our labs and some in the real world.

When it comes to performance, we rely on such synthetic benchmarks as Geekbench 6 and 3DMark to measure graphics performance. These tests allow us to compare performance across iPhones and Android devices. We also run a real-world video transcoding test on each phone using the Adobe Premiere Rush app and time the result.

To measure the quality of a phone's display, we perform lab tests to determine the brightness of the panel (in nits), as well as how colorful each screen is (DCI-P3 color gamut). In these cases, higher numbers are better. We also measure color accuracy of each panel with a Delta-E rating, where lower numbers are better and score of 0 is perfect.

One of the most important tests we run is the Tom's Guide battery test. We run a web surfing test over 5G or 4G at 150 nits of screen brightness until the battery gives out. In general, a phone that lasts 10 hours or more is good, and anything above 11 hours makes our list of the best phone battery life.

Last but not least, we take the best phones out in the field to take photos outdoors, indoors and at night in low light to see how they perform versus their closest competitors. We take shots of landscapes, food, portraits and more, and also allow you to be the judge with side-by-side comparisons in our reviews.

Our look at how Tom's Guide tests and rates smartphones has more on the overall testing process.