Last week I looked at the 'best' Windows Phone, without specific merit given to price, but here I want to look at the options for someone on a budget. Say anything available on pay-as-you-go or SIM-free under £150? In the UK, obviously, though most of these models are also available around the world and at comparable local prices. Is there an outright winner? Well, yes, but it's almost cheating - happily there's a great choice in the middle of the range and an even better one coming up on the rails...

In addition to a clutch of Lumias, I wanted to also represent the clutch of new budget Windows Phone 8.1 devices, all based on the same Qualcomm reference design, that have launched around the world. As it turns out, Rafe has tried a few of these and he felt the bizarrely named Yezz Billy to be the best of the bunch, so that's the one that makes the cut here. Though if a different 'sister' devices is available in your country (i.e. from someone other than Microsoft) then it'll be in much the same boat in terms of the comparison below.

The Lumia 535 had to be included here, if only because it personifies the 'budget champion' idea - even though it's not actually on sale yet! See the comments below, anyway.

As before, my approach here - and at this point I have to apologise to anyone viewing this feature ON a Windows Phone - is unashamedly table-based, something which is handled very poorly in the combination of AAWP's dynamic content resizing and Internet Explorer on a phone. Instead, anyone doing such a thing should switch over to a laptop, tablet or even a large screened Android phone, in order to see the whole table. Sorry about that, but hopefully the result is worth it. If you really must view the table on your Windows Phone right now, tap here!

In a tweak of my usual comparisons in tabular form. I've marked devices in each aspect with 'red' for especially poor and 'green' for especially good, to get a visual sense for how they're doing. And no arguments on my ratings, please - they're unashamedly subjective!

NB. The Lumia 625 and 1320 were also initially considered but it turns out that both devices are now hard to find on pay-as-you-go in the UK, though available here and there SIM-free if you hunt hard enough. Still, you can't really recommend them to the mass market in a 'budget' feature if not readily available....

As a rough metric - and I mean very rough(!) - counting green as +1 and red as -1 gives us a significant win for the Lumia 735 (here's our review), at +6, which is possibly not at all surprising, since the 735 is right at the top end of my stated £150 limit - the 735 is a really well made and well thought out mid-ranger, with the crazy omission of Glance screen the only blemish in my eyes.

Of the rest, the Lumia 630/635 (here's our review) is the only one (currently available) that even comes out with a positive score (+1) and is the pick of the true 'how low can you go' Windows Phones by quite a way. It's true that you might have to shop around a bit - in my research, I saw the 630 and 635 listed at prices from £79 up to £149 - so quite a range. Shop around, but if you can get close to the target price here then the 630/635 are quite a bargain. The difference between the two devices boils down to the presence or absence of dual SIM slots (630) and 4G (635), by the way.

The new OEM devices like the Yezz Billy promise much, but early reports are that they often cut corners in terms of components, as you might expect from small players in the industry. For example, the Billy 4.7 is said to be underpowered - the combination of a lowly Snapdragon 200 and a full 720p screen is just bizarre.... (Note that the Lumia 535 above juggles in a qHD screen instead, presumably for the exact reason that Microsoft determined that the chipset couldn't drive 720p properly.)

As mentioned in our review, the new Lumia 530 is, quite simply a bunch of compromises too far. Trying to live with this device day to day will be an exercise in frustration, except for the most undemanding users.

The Lumia 535, under the full-on Microsoft banner, of course, is perhaps the one to watch, when it arrives - sometime in December, in theory, with a +2 score above and a price which will start on pay-as-you-go at less then £100 and come down to near the £60 mark in time, yet with a full 5" screen, surprisingly good cameras and good enough performance. 

Recommendations

In the meantime though, if your wallet is feeling bare then it's worth looking slightly above the very cheapest device and plumping for a 630 on a good pay-as-you-go deal. But if you can possibly stretch to it, at the top end of my price range, the Lumia 735 is an almost perfect package - spend the extra and I guarantee you won't regret it.