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Nothing Phone (4b) at £299: Strong Value, One Awkward Problem

By Alex Turner • 6 October 2026 • 6 min read

Nothing’s budget line has quietly become one of the better places to spend under £300, and the Phone (4b) continues that. It has a big, bright 120Hz screen and a battery that outlasts phones costing three times as much. The problem is not the phone — it is where Nothing has put it in its own range.

What you get for £299

A 6.77in 120Hz AMOLED at 2344 x 1088 is a genuinely large, genuinely smooth screen at this price, and the 5,200mAh battery is bigger than anything in the current flagship class — larger than the Pixel 10’s 4,970mAh and substantially larger than the iPhone 17’s 3,692mAh.

Nothing’s industrial design also still stands out. In a category where most phones are anonymous black slabs, that counts for something.

The awkward problem

The Phone (4b) sits between the Phone (3a) Lite below it and the more capable Phone (4a) above it, and reviewers have struggled to explain who it is for. 9to5Google’s hands-on described it as awkwardly positioned between the two — cheaper than the 4a but not by enough to make the compromises obviously worthwhile.

That is a range problem rather than a phone problem, but it matters when you are spending your own money: before buying, check what the Phone (4a) actually costs on the day. If the gap is small, the 4a is the better buy.

Where it genuinely compromises

The Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 is a mid-range chip and behaves like one. It is fine for messaging, browsing and video; it is not a gaming phone.

The 8MP ultrawide is the weakest part of the camera system and will show it in anything other than good light. The 50MP main is the one to use.

UFS 2.2 storage is slower than the UFS 3.1 and 4.0 you get higher up the market, which shows in app install times and large file transfers rather than day-to-day use.

Three years of OS updates is the real limitation. Google and Samsung now offer seven on their flagships, and even at £299 three years is short — it means this phone stops receiving Android versions in 2029.

Worth knowing: it is already below RRP

Our own Live Deals Radar picked the Phone (4b) up at £269 on Amazon UK — £30 under the £299 launch price. Budget phones discount quickly and unevenly, so the RRP is rarely what you should pay.

Check the live price rather than the launch price. That is true of every phone, but it matters most at this end of the market where £30 is a tenth of the cost.

Our take

At £269 the Phone (4b) is a sensible buy for anyone who wants a big screen and long battery life and does not care about raw speed. At the full £299 it is harder to recommend over its own stablemate.

If three years of updates feels short to you — and it should — it is worth stretching to something with a longer commitment, because a phone that stops getting Android versions is a phone you will replace sooner.

Check Nothing Phone (4b) price on Amazon UK →

Price and specifications sourced from 9to5Google at launch. Retail prices change frequently — always check the live price before buying. We have not independently tested this device; any measured figures are attributed to the publication that recorded them. We may earn a commission from links on this page.