October 17: We’ve just added the iPhone 16 Pro Max as our new top iPhone for gaming, and made a few format changes to make this guide more helpful.
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. There are others worth considering if you are looking for something cheaper or with specific features, but the bottom line is these two are what you want to be playing on right now.
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
The ROG Phone 8 Pro has introduced some flagship phone comforts while still remaining incredibly powerful, offering a great suite of gaming features and the best battery life in the business.
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The ultimate gaming iPhone right now is the iPhone 16 Pro Max. With the largest display on an iPhone yet, Apple’s best chip and excellent battery life, it’s got all you need for a good time gaming. Plus its cameras beat everything else on this list with barely an effort.
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3. Motorola Edge Plus (2023)
The Edge Plus offers the same chipset and display refresh rate as the top performers on this list, along with a long-lasting battery of its own. Just be aware of its curved display causing mis-touches.
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You get the best flagship features for less with the OnePlus 12, making it ideal if you want the maximize the power your money will get you.
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You can’t get much better cooling for a phone than having a fan built-in, and that’s been RedMagic’s thing for a while now. Don’t worry, you still get the display you want for the price, and plenty of performance too, especially if you pick up the 9S version.
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The best gaming phone overall
By adding in some features normally found on non-gaming flagship phones, Asus has made the ROG Phone 8 Pro a far better-rounded product while keeping true to its gaming focus.
The phone’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, joined by up to 24GB RAM, offers the best performance you can get on an Android phone right now, while its capacitive triggers and customizable gaming software add-ons let you reach even more of your playing potential. And when you’re done gaming, you can appreciate the 3x telephoto camera Asus has added, and the fact the phone’s now waterproof, meaning less risk of catastrophic damage.
Just prepare to spend a lot of money to get the ROG Phone 8 Pro: $1,199 minimum. Also while we are happy to see a camera upgrade for this phone, its images still don’t match up well with more photo-focused phones. Plus we wish Asus offered more than two years of software updates in a world where four years or more is becoming the norm.
That said, this is a gaming phone that’s still a practical choice when the time comes to use it for more productive purposes. And that counts for a lot.
Read our full Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro review.
Best gaming iPhone
I’ve had some great times gaming on the iPhone 16 Pro Max, and it surprises me how much it’s improved from the already strong iPhone 15 Pro Max for three main reasons.
First off, the 6.9-inch display is larger than any previous iPhone, and bright, smooth and colorful to boot. Perfect for viewing all kinds of content, including gaming. Then there’s the A18 Pro chipset, which offers a big increase in CPU and GPU performance, and the enlarged battery, which has helped the iPhone 16 Pro Max become one of the longest phones we’ve tested in 2024.
Obviously, this is still an expensive phone, and it’s still an iPhone, which I appreciate won’t be appealing to the Android faithful (just as well there’s plenty of choice elsewhere). Then there’s the size of this phone. I did consider swapping to the 6.3-inch iPhone 16 Pro when I first tried the Pro Max, but have since gotten used to it. A narrower or curved display, available on other phones on this list, may be a safer pick for users who want something easier to handle.
Also, Apple’s still holding back on increasing charging speeds, boosting wireless charging slightly but leaving wired charging a lot slower than any competitor, which is personally the worst part of my experience with the iPhone 16 Pro Max. But given how long and how well this phone plays games, I am still more than happy to recommend it as a gaming phone, especially if you’re already an iPhone user. Just remember to always charge it overnight!
Read our full iPhone 16 Pro Max review.
Best value gaming phone
You don’t have to pay top dollar for top-of-the-line Android performance. The Motorola Edge Plus (2023) features the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset found in leading Android phones like the Galaxy S23 series and the OnePlus 11, but at $799, it’s a much more affordable option than a lot of competing devices. Throw in a 6.7-inch display that can offer a 165Hz refresh rate, and you’ve got a phone that mobile gamers will certainly find appealing.
Don’t worry that a drained battery will cut short your gaming sessions. The Motorola Edge Plus held out for more than 15 hours on our battery test — one of the best times we’ve seen posted in the last 18 months. Even when the screen was set to its maximum 165Hz refresh rate, the phone still lasted more than 13 hours, which is an outstanding result. Motorola may not be the first name you think of when it comes to gaming phones, but all the features you’d want are certainly there in the Motorola Edge Plus.
Read our full Motorola Edge Plus (2023) review.
Best value gaming phone for performance
Another great gaming phone that doesn’t shout about it, the OnePlus 12’s standout feature is its price. It’s a Galaxy S24 Ultra/iPhone 15 Pro Max rival that costs the same as the entry-level versions of those phones, and boasts higher storage and/or RAM than both.
As well as using the same chip as the current top-flight Samsung phone, the OnePlus 12 does a decent job of challenging its photography credentials with OnePlus’ best camera system to date. It’s not quite up there with the best camera phones, nor does the OnePlus offer quite as many software and AI-powered features as its rivals, but you’ll happily forgive that in exchange for the hundreds of dollars or whatever your local currency is that going for the OnePlus 12 will leave in your bank account.
Read our full OnePlus 12 review.
Best gaming phone cooling tech
It’s hard to find more a gaming-focused phone than the RedMagic 9 Pro. It’s got its own RGB cooling fan built-in, what else do you need to know?
Well, there are a few things. First, it uses a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with up to 16GB RAM to run your games smoothly and sharply, a huge 6,500 mAh battery with 80W charging, and more software to help you play. With the flick of a dedicated switch, you can enable capacitive triggers, change your RGB lighting settings or just quickly access your games.
Sadly RedMagic still struggles to translate its software to English, so it’s sometimes a bit confusing when you’re trying to alter specific settings. Plus the dual rear cameras do not produce particularly strong photos. But then when you look at how little this phone costs, maybe you’ll forgive the RedMagic 9 Pro for not being a master photographer as well as a performance machine.
Note that as of August 2024, there’s now a RedMagic 9S Pro, which is identical to the 9 Pro except it uses a more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading Version chipset and an updated cooling system.
Read our full RedMagic 9 Pro review.
How to choose the best gaming phone for you
As with all things, choosing the right gaming phone is a matter of priorities. If you’re after the best performance — and you likely are if you’re reading this — you’ll want a phone with a Snapdragon 8-series chipset or Apple’s A-series silicon. Emphasis on the Snapdragon, as Qualcomm’s best silicon for Android phones is available in devices from a number of manufacturers.
But what about high refresh rates? That’s something you’ll only find on the more expensive end of the market, though it’s a feature that will surely descend to more modestly-priced phones over time. Panels rated at 90Hz and above offer smoother scrolling and overall graphics than conventional screens, making you feel as if every swipe, tap and action is eliciting a response with no delay. If you’re an especially serious competitive gamer, higher refresh rates will ensure you won’t miss any of the action.
Of course, the more a device is geared toward gaming with the appropriate features, the more phone makers ignore other considerations. While battery life is central to gaming (because games consume a lot of power), you’ll have a tougher time finding gaming phones with great camera hardware and software, or perhaps conveniences like wireless charging and water resistance. If those things are important to you, you may want to focus your search on the more powerful handsets on this list that aren’t strictly intended for gaming but can still very much hold their own, like the OnePlus 11, Galaxy S23 Plus and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
If you plan to stream games to your phone, consider one of our picks for the best wireless gaming mouse. And if you’re curious how a foldable phone performs, here’s why the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 falls flat as a gaming phone.
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 5 and GFXBench 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.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 | Geekbench 6 (single-core / multi-core score) | Wild Life Extreme Unlimited (score / fps) |
| Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro (X Mode enabled) | 2,249 / 7,079 | 5,196 / 31.1 |
| iPhone 16 Pro Max | 3386 / 8,306 | 3,822 / 22.9 |
| Motorola Edge Plus (2023) | 1,965 / 5,204 | 3,658 / 21.9 |
| OnePlus 12 | 2,188 / 6,525 | 5,073 / 30.38 |
| RedMagic 9 Pro | N/a | N/a |
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.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 | Peak brightness (nits) | DCI-P3 color gamut coverage (percent) | Delta-E color accuracy score (lower is better) |
| Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro | 1,637 | 112.4 | 0.31 |
| iPhone 15 Pro Max | 1,553 | 80.9 | 0.26 |
| Motorola Edge Plus (2023) | 1,027 | 137.3 | 0.39 |
| OnePlus 12 | 1,115 | 78.9 | 0.20 |
| RedMagic 9 Pro | N/a | N/a | N/a |
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.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 | 100 – 0% time on TG battery test (hours:mins) |
| Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro | 18:48 |
| iPhone 16 Pro Max | 17:35 |
| Motorola Edge Plus (2023) | 15:47 |
| OnePlus 12 | 17:17 |
| RedMagic 9 Pro | N/a |
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.
