5 Best Verizon Smartphones [March, 2014]

Those looking for a brand new smartphone on Verizon in the month of March won’t be able to get their hands on the Samsung Galaxy S5 or the Nexus 6 but there are plenty of other big name devices that should appeal to consumers in need of a new device.

The beginning of the year has been slow. We simply haven’t seen the same volume of smartphone launches that we’ve seen in years past and that means that carrier lineups in the United States are dominated by devices from last year. As we’ve pointed out numerous times, last year’s crop was one of the best ever, and that makes this drought much more tolerable.

The nation’s largest 4G LTE carrier, Verizon Wireless, has been largely quiet save for one key device that arrived back in February. Other than that, Verizon’s stable of smartphones has remained virtually unchanged.

Again, this isn’t a bad thing. Verizon, like other U.S. carriers, boasts an extraordinary amount of smartphones, many of which are top-of-the-line devices. Of course, the sheer number of devices makes it difficult for the average consumer to nail down the best of the best but that’s why we are here.

Picking a smartphone is an extremely challenging process. Carriers like Verizon offer a ton of options to consumers and those who haven’t done their homework will find that selecting one can be problematic. There are a lot of variables to consider.

Well, we want to do the heavy lifting for you. Every month we offer our opinion on the first best smartphones for all four major U.S. carriers. Because Verizon is the largest, we typically start there.

When deciding on the smartphones that make this list, we take a number of things into consideration including hardware, software, age, and price. The devices that make the final cut are the devices that we consider to be the best all-around devices on a given network.

That said, for those who are in the hunt right now, we present the devices we consider to be the five best Verizon smartphones for the month of March, 2014.

[slides]