IPhone Se (2022) Storage: Are 64Gb Enough? Are the 128 and 256Gb Models Worth It?

The 2022 iPhone SE starts at $429 for the 64GB model. The 128GB variant costs $50 more, and the 256GB model is priced at $579. Since the operating system takes up about 10GB, the actual space you have available for your apps, games, photos and videos will be less. As always, iPhone storage cannot be expanded with a memory card, though there's always the option to offload some of your files to the cloud.

Are 64GB enough for the iPhone SE (2022)?

The short answer: yes, it is possible to survive with a 64GB iPhone SE if you're a casual user – the kind of user this phone is made for. 64 gigs are enough to comfortably hold an arsenal of popular apps, a small collection of mainstream games, and thousands of pictures. What helps the iPhone SE is the range of optimizations build into iOS. For example, photos and videos are captured using high-efficiency codecs, allowing for better compression and up to 50% smaller files. Still, if you shoot a ton of video, a 64GB iPhone might not be for you.

Some challenges you might run into include storing lots of heavy games, as some titles eat up over a gig or two after they're installed. Storing offline shows and movies could also prove problematic, as an hour of Netflix HD video takes up about 1.5GB of space.

Is it worth getting a 128GB iPhone SE?

Absolutely! For just $50 extra, the 128GB iPhone SE gives you a lot more space – with peace of mind sprinkled on top – which makes it the variant we'd recommend to most people.

To put the numbers into context, a 128GB iPhone SE can comfortably hold 2000 songs, 10 hours of Netflix HD video, a dozen of heavy games, a bunch of popular apps, 10,000 of your photos, and a couple of hours of 4K video – with plenty of room to spare.