The best-sounding smartphones of 2023

The top speakers among midrangers

Picking out our favorites among what we loosely defined as midrange smartphones was a tough one. We had to sift through many more devices until we arrived at the shortlist below.

The top device must be the Xiaomi 13T. It has an output identical to that of the more expensive sibling - the Xiaomi 13T Pro - but we thought that one was way too expensive to be mentioned in the midrange category. Especially since you get virtually the same audio output for less with the non-Pro model.

The Samsung Galaxy A34 and A54 have quite identical outputs, so they share the second spot in this category.

Finally, the third spot is also shared between two devices - the OnePlus Nord 3 and the Poco X5 Pro. The two would trade blows depending on which test track you are listening to.

It was surprising to see or rather, hear, how good of speakers something like the OnePlus Nord N30 gets. We guess it helps that it's not really priced that cheap despite being essentially a budget device (on the North American market). The lack of competition is rarely a good thing, but in this case, OnePlus has delivered a nice-sounding smartphone, so it gets an honorable mention.

Join us on the next page, where we discuss the best speakers among the compact flagships - the shortlist there is much shorter to begin with, but there are some great entries nonetheless.