Apple iPhone 17e Review: MagSafe Makes a Difference

Perfectly great performance. Reliable day-long battery life. Solid camera. Now has MagSafe. Improved screen durability.

Screen stuck at 60 Hz. Still no ultra-wideband chip. Single rear camera is limiting.

Would you rather buy a brand-new MacBook Neo—a whole computer—or Apple's cheapest iPhone 17e smartphone for the same amount of cash? It feels weird that a laptop could cost as much as something so small, but I'd argue that smartphones have a bigger job in being more versatile.

It needs to be connected to the internet everywhere you go, and the iPhone 17e even adds Emergency SOS via Satellite for extra peace of mind. It needs good enough cameras to snap pics of everything important—your dog, that sunset, those receipts for your expenses—and a selfie camera that looks good on FaceTimes and Zooms. The battery needs to run all day, it needs GPS for navigating, and NFC for mobile payments. The list goes on.

The iPhone 17e can do all of this fairly well for $599. Heck, truth be told, the iPhone 16e could too. But there are a few upgrades on the latest model that help make it worth the $599 price. If cost were the only factor, Google's Pixel 10a is $100 cheaper with extra niceties—it should absolutely be at the top of your list. But no. You want an iPhone. If you're not interested in the refurbished or used market, then the iPhone 17e is a respectable choice.

MagSafe Magic

The worst omission from last year's iPhone 16e was MagSafe. For more than five years, the iPhone has built an ecosystem of excellent MagSafe accessories that let you magnetically attach various items, like wireless power banks and magnetic wallets, to the back of your iPhone. Yes, it means faster and more efficient wireless charging, but MagSafe even makes it far simpler to mount the iPhone to anything, using a MagSafe tripod or even a car mount.

Upgrading to an iPhone without this accessory system feels … wrong, even if you're coming from an iPhone 11 that never had the capability. It's one of my favorite iPhone features, and I consider it a must-have, which is why I view its inclusion in the iPhone 17e as a big value boost.

Other upgrades in this model include Ceramic Shield 2, Apple's proprietary glass mixture that makes the display more durable. It's what's available in pricier iPhone models, so it's nice to see it here on the cheaper phone. (Anecdotally, I have found far fewer scratches on my iPhone 17 Pro since launch than previous models.) You also get higher base storage starting at 256 GB, and Apple's custom C1X modem means cellular connectivity is faster and more energy efficient (though remember, it still only supports sub-6 5G, and not mmWave).

While Apple has stuck with the standard notch design, I don't find it as big a deal, even if I do enjoy the Dynamic Island on the pricier iPhones. What is a little more problematic is the lack of a 120-Hz screen refresh rate. Unlike almost every smartphone sold at this price, Apple still uses a 60-Hz refresh rate, meaning the screen displays an image 60 times per second rather than 120, which is now the standard in the smartphone world. It may not be obvious to some, but the smoother screen is one of those things that's hard to appreciate until you experience it. After you do, it's hard to go back.

Performance is hard to complain about. You get Apple's latest-generation A19 chip, with one less graphics core than the A19 on the iPhone 17. That means a small hit to graphics performance, but I didn't find it too lacking. I loaded up Genshin Impact, a demanding mobile game, and ran it with only a few stutters. I was playing on the game's default settings, but surprisingly, even after maxing out the graphics, the gameplay was still fairly smooth. You'll feel a bottleneck the longer you play, though, since the iPhone 17e doesn't dissipate heat as well as the iPhone 17 Pro.

Battery life has been reliable for me. Even on heavy days of use where I'm navigating, streaming music, snapping videos and pictures, the iPhone 17e lasts a full day with around 20 percent left before bedtime. With lighter use, you can probably extend it to two days on a single charge.

The last omission that may annoy some is the lack of the ultra-wideband chip. This is what Apple uses to help you precisely locate AirTags after you've misplaced an item. Without it, you'll see vague instructions on where your lost item is. It's weird that this iPhone doesn't support an important capability of Apple's widely popular tracker.

Lone Camera

I know several people who do not care about the camera on their smartphones. They rarely take pictures, and I imagine their phone library is just full of receipts and other mundane documents they've tried to scan. If that's you—no judgment—then the iPhone 17e will serve you well. For everyone else, it's a different story.

Buy a very cheap phone, and you'll probably see that it has three cameras on the back. Two of them are probably useless, and the main camera is passable. Apple's approach is to stuff one very good 48-megapixel camera, which is great if this phone were $429 like the iPhone SE of yesteryear. No, at $599, you should absolutely expect at least two cameras on the back of your iPhone. (This was also a big problem with the $999 iPhone Air.)

A single camera is just too limiting, even if it's adept at snapping pics. I had a water leak on Friday and had to take a picture of my utility closet, but with no ultrawide camera (unlike the Pixel 10a), I had to awkwardly stand far back and angle the phone up high to get everything in the shot. Maybe you want to take a wider group shot or a gorgeous ultrawide close-up of a cathedral's entrance. Well, you can't with the iPhone 17e. You can tap the 2X zoom option to get a decent digitally zoomed close-up, but when Samsung offers a solid 3X optical zoom on the Galaxy S25 FE (frequently sold for under $500), it's hard to understand why Apple can't match.

One new perk over the iPhone 16e, driven by the A19 chip, is the ability to turn on or off Portrait blur for photos after you've captured them. So, if you wish you snapped a photo in Portrait mode, you can enable it after the fact. Speaking of, Apple's Portrait photos look more realistic and natural than the results from the Google Pixel 10a, though the Pixel triumphs in low-light scenes.

Low light generally is one area where this iPhone struggles compared to its peers. Not necessarily in sharpness, but when there's any motion. I tried to snap a picture of my brother's cat indoors, and Night mode kept kicking in, and I ended up with a long-exposure photo of a blurry cat. The Pixel 10a better understands when there's motion and doesn't kick in its night mode as often, so my cat photos were impeccably sharp.

Overall, whether it's day or night, the iPhone 17e sometimes delivers sharper photos than the Pixel 10a, but the color temperature tends to be warmer. The Pixel 10a can sometimes match it in image quality, though contrast is lacking, or the color temperature is a little too cool. Still, I find the Pixel is generally more reliable in low light, and selfies were sharper and better exposed. Video performance fared better for the iPhone—I shot a whole video on the 17e, and while the quality wasn't as sharp or smooth as what I could get from the iPhone 17 Pro, it was more than adequate.

Don't get me wrong, you can snap some nice photos with the iPhone 17e. You'll just run into its limits far more often than you would on an iPhone 17, which has a larger sensor for its primary camera.

The iPhone 17e is still a little overpriced compared to the competition, but I think it's a perfectly fine choice for anyone who wants to buy a basic iPhone without going through the used market.