iPhone 17e review: All the basics you need in smaller, lighter form

When the iPhone 17e launched, it was largely overshadowed by the MacBook Neo, which came just days later, and the all-powerful iPad Air M4. However, the iPhone 17e stands as an equally important product among these three, and shares more than you might think with the iPad and MacBook.

First of all, all three products offer a more affordable option to top-spec versions. Both the MacBook Neo and the iPhone 17e are entry-level models, and while there are cheaper iPad products – the iPad Mini and iPad A16 – the Air is still an affordable option. In fact, the iPad Air is exactly the same price as the Neo and iPhone 17e. Three products, covering three sectors, all priced from £599 / $599.

Being able to buy an iPhone for the same price as an iPad or a MacBook might not sound all that impressive, but at this price point it means you can buy an iPhone and MacBook or iPad pair for under £/$1200 – or all three for under £/$1800. In fact, if you instead bought the base-level iPad (A16), you could have that and an iPhone 17e for under a grand.

So, can this budget iPhone, which is a full £/$200 cheaper than the iPhone 17, still deliver what you need? I swapped over from my iPhone 17 Pro for a few weeks to see how the iPhone 17e really holds up. Aside from a few small points, I was pleasantly surprised, and I believe for many users it’s all the iPhone they'll really need.

How much is the iPhone 17e?

First announced on 2 March 2026, the iPhone 17e went on sale on 11 March, priced from £599 in the UK and $599 in the USA. In Europe, that comes in at €699, while in Australia it is priced at AU$999.

The phone comes in a choice of three colours: soft pink, white and black. As standard, it features 256GB capacity, but it is also available with a larger 512GB storage (for £799 / $799). That might feel like a big jump – especially as the iPhone 17 starts from £799 / $799 – but all of the iPhone 17 series have the same price increase for the larger capacity.

For an iPhone at this price, starting with 256GB storage is quite impressive – the iPhone Air starts with just 128GB. It also provides a nice scale of products, going up to the 17, iPhone Air and then the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max.

I suspect many buyers coming into a store to buy an iPhone 17e will end up buying the iPhone 17, and that those coming in for the iPhone 17 will be tempted by either the Air or the Pro model. However, there could be buyers who opt to buy the iPhone 17e alongside a new iPad or MacBook, due to its affordability.

Design and features

The iPhone 17e offers a relatively small upgrade from the 16e in many areas. It features the same 6.1-inch Super Retina display, the same 12MP TrueDepth front camera, and just a single camera on the rear providing 48MP for 1x and 2x zoom.

However, there are significant improvements elsewhere. Firstly, the new Ceramic Shield offers 3x better scratch resistance, it now supports MagSafe wireless charging at up to 15W, and has the latest A19 processor to make it work faster than ever.

While the dimensions remain the same as the 16e, the handset is fractionally heavier – by 2 grams (0.08 ounces). That’s still notably lighter than the iPhone 17 and significantly lighter than the 17 Pro. The one thing I noticed when I picked up my 17 Pro again was how heavy it felt after using the 17e. It’s not that the 17e feels lightweight; in fact, it feels very solid in the hand, but it makes the 17 Pro feel really weighty.

Like the previous 16e model, it features a customisable action button on the side, which, by default, switches between the ring and silent functions. Within the settings, though, you can assign a wide range of tasks to this button, from opening the camera or torch function to the visual intelligence tool, translate functions or any of your shortcut functions.

Notably, there’s no Camera control button on the 17e as there is on the 17 and 17 Pro. I don’t feel it particularly misses this, though, especially as you can set the Action button to open the camera and the ‘down volume’ button to take a picture.

As with all iPhone 17 series devices, the 17e is IP68-rated, for splash-, water- and dust-resistance at a maximum depth of six metres for up to 30 minutes.

Display

The display is an area of significant difference from the iPhone 17, and one that unfortunately hasn’t progressed from the 16e. The difference here is that when the iPhone 16e launched, the iPhone 16 had a very similar display. Today, the iPhone 17 offers ProMotion technology with up to 120Hz refresh for smoother visuals, while also offering an always-on display.

That means that there is a significant difference between the displays on the 17 and the 17e. That said, the 17e display still looks great. This 6.1-inch Retina XDR display has a 2532x1170 pixel resolution – the same 460 pixels per inch as the 17 and 17 Pro models – a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and a P3 wide colour display. Photos, movies and games look extremely detailed, with bright and punchy colours here.

Watching Apple TV shows like the new season of For All Mankind, look incredible, as do films like F1 The Movie – though the notch does get in the way of full cinema format trailers (not that the films are impacted).

There’s also a difference in brightness between the 17e display and the 17, with just 800 nit max brightness in typical conditions compared to 1000 nits, and 1200 nits peak brightness for HDR (high dynamic range) content compared with 1600 nits. The 17 also offers a 3000 nits brightness for outdoor use, which the 17e doesn’t have. That said, I still found the 17e screen plenty bright enough for use indoors and outdoors.

Unlike the iPhone 17, the 17e features a notch at the top of the display for the camera and FaceID sensors, rather than the Dynamic Island feature. Unlike the Dynamic Island, this doesn’t show live notifications from your apps, either.

Camera and Video

Aside from the lack of an always-on display and Dynamic Island, the downside of the 17e is that it has just a single rear camera. This is a 48MP fusion camera that can deliver either full-resolution 48-million-pixel images or use the Photonic engine to deliver 24MP images that combine multiple frames to achieve the best dynamic range. It can also use the central 12 million pixels of the sensor to deliver the equivalent of a 2x zoom.

In that way, it offers two focal lengths: the standard 26mm-equivalent at either 24MP or 28MP; and a 52mm-equivalent at 12MP. This is the same as the iPhone Air, and for the main camera on the iPhone 17 – though that model also includes a 48MP Ultra Wide camera.

So, the main difference is the wide-angle option of a 0.5x (13mm equivalent). Whether you will miss having such an ultra-wide option will depend on what you like to photograph, and how. Personally, I do use the ultra-wide camera on my iPhone 17 regularly, for dynamic portraits and cityscapes. However, some users might not miss it, especially if they tend to just take portraits.

There’s certainly no disputing the quality of the images from this single camera unit. Among my test shots were a few low-light images from concerts and events, some still lifes and landscapes. All of these looked incredibly detailed, well-coloured and free of image noise. Where it did suffer a little was when using the digital zoom to 10x and the front camera.

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The front camera is another area where the iPhone 17 had a huge upgrade, while the 17e offers the same 12MP TrueDepth camera as the iPhone 16e. It’s a perfectly adequate camera, but the 18MP Centre Stage camera on the iPhone 17 is noticeably better.

For video, the iPhone 17e offers the same 4K Dolby Vision recording at up to 60fps as the rest of the iPhone 17 range. It also provides the same slo-mo video at 1080P at 240fps. I used the 4K recording for some sample videos – and it looks as good as on my iPhone 17 Pro.

It also benefits from the Audio Mix function, which uses Spatial Audio to adjust the mix between standard, In-Frame, Studio and Cinematic modes. This allows you to focus on just the voices on camera, deadens the sound like a recording studio, or captures everything but mixes the positioning so that all sounds are correctly placed.

What it doesn’t have is the cinematic mode to provide that shallow depth of field effect – again, something that more advanced users might miss, but your average user won't. It also lacks Action mode, which gives you seriously impressive stabilisation with a 2.8K recording – probably not something your average iPhone 17e user will miss, but a shame all the same.

Software – iOS26

Thanks to the A19 chip in the iPhone 17e, it can run all the advanced features of iOS 26. This includes Apple Intelligence features such as the Visual Intelligence, which allows you to perform actions or searches from any app by taking a screenshot; Genmoji to create your own emojis; and Live Translation in messages, FaceTime and phone calls.

The only features missing here are the live notifications that come with the Dynamic Island and ProMotion display. Otherwise, you still get the new liquid glass design, the fully customisable layouts and spatial photo wallpaper options.

All apps load up instantly, and operation is smooth throughout. In terms of usability, there’s no difference here from any of the other 17 series models.

Performance and Battery

The iPhone 17e runs on an Apple A19 chip, though this is slightly different from the A19 in the iPhone 17, as it has a 4-core graphics processor rather than a 5-core one. This potentially means that it won’t offer quite the same level of graphics performance when pushed.

To get an idea of the true performance, I ran the Geekbench 6 app on the phone, which performs standard benchmarking to allow direct comparison with other models. In the CPU tests, the iPhone 17e scored a 3,647 single-core and 9,001 multi-core score, which are roughly in line with the iPhone 17. These figures also outperform the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max models of last generation.

When it came to graphics performance, it scored 31,276 in the Metal test, which was just below the iPhone 17 score of 37,196. For reference, though, this graphics performance is still faster than iPad Pro or MacBook Air models running the M1 chip.

Performance, of course, isn’t just about the speed of the processor, it’s also about how the apps perform, and that includes data transfer. The iPhone 17e uses the newer C1X modem, created by Apple, which not only uses less energy than the C1 used in the 16e, but is also twice as fast. There’s also the ability to send messages via satellite, using SMS or iMessage, should you be stuck without cell service.

Battery life remains the same as on the previous model, though. This is listed as up to 26 hours for video playback or 21 hours for streaming content. This is less than the iPhone 17, which took a huge jump in battery life from the iPhone 16, but is still respectable. When using the phone, I found the battery held up well to heavy usage and always lasted through the day.

Should I buy the iPhone 17e?

The iPhone 17e is a great little phone that, for the most part, performs admirably. Everything it does, it does well; it just misses a couple of features that you might expect, even from an entry-level phone.

The fact that this phone is £/$200 cheaper than the iPhone 17 justifies some of its feature trimming, though. Much like the MacBook Neo, costs have been saved by not including some features that the prospective buyer wouldn’t miss. If you just want a basic iPhone at the lowest price, you will be more than happy with this handset.

The only slight issue is that other handsets at similar prices do offer more features – albeit not on Apple's iOS platform, should you be seeking one of the best Android phones instead (which probably isn't the case, if you're already in Apple's ecosystem).

Spending extra for the full-fat iPhone 17 may seem more appealing to many, too. The benefits in the camera setup, screen and battery life could see people opt for the 17 once presented with both options. That’s perhaps no bad thing for Apple, or the buyer – if you want the better features, you pay the difference.

That makes scoring the phone slightly more difficult, as yes, it’s a great phone and probably the one I’d recommend to buy for youngsters, older parents, or those just wanting a solid second phone. However, as the best mid-price option for most T3 readers, I would still suggest paying the extra for the iPhone 17.

Also consider

As mentioned: the most obvious alternative to the 17e is to step up to the iPhone 17. It's pricier, but brings a better screen, better cameras and better battery life – making it worth the extra spend.

The older iPhone 16 is another option, which also costs a little more. There are fewer benefits and some downsides – the battery life isn’t as good, the chip is older, and the base storage is only 128GB – but you do get the all-important second rear camera. So if photography is a key part of your buying decision, the 16 is worth considering.

Those not tied to the Apple ecosystem may also want to consider Android handsets around the same price, and here there is definitely a lot of choice. Perhaps the best option right now is the Google Pixel 10, which offers a 6.3-inch 120Hz OLED display, the latest Google Tensor G5 processor, and a triple camera array on the rear.