My experience has been the complete opposite. I've had a couple Xiaomi/Samsung phones in the 300$ range. They all worked like crap. The midrange chips were fast for about one year, and then kept heating and dropping frames in the simplest animations even in custom OSes. The cameras took really awful photos. The batteries degraded really quickly. The displays weren't bright enough, the vibration motors felt bad after a while. Even some of the little things like the touch response, raise to wake, double tap to wake or auto brightness never worked well on any OS. My Pixel 6 Pro refurb for 330$ US felt COMPLETELY different. It was such a big upgrade, the screen was so much better than the shitty LCD/OLEDs on budget phones. It was brighter, faster, more responsive to touch. The build quality is honestly excellent. This phone feels great to touch and hold. The glass doesn't scratch nearly as easily too. The cameras are amazing. And my god, all the little things like auto brightness, raise to wake, tap to wake just freaking works. And the vibration motor is honestly just freaking amazing. There is no way I'm buying new phones again from now on. The smartest move for me is to get a two-year old Pixel for like 350-400 US and flash GrapheneOS on it. In 3 years, when I get rid of my 6 Pro, I can get a 9 Pro and use it for like 5 years and it's going to be better than any budget phones I can get for the same price.