LG Stylo 2 Plus here, and I heartily agree on going with mid-range (and I prefer phablets as well). There's a Stylo 3 Plus now, which fortunately still has the headphone jack, bumps the SOC from a 430 to a 435, and the display to 1920x1080. Neither have the fastest SOC out there, but still plenty for my needs, and both have an SD slot.

So far, I've been very happy with my Stylo 2 Plus. Battery life is amazing (the battery is usually at about 75% when I plug it in for the night), the screen is sharp in spite of being 720p, and plenty bright. I can't see spending more than $250 on a phone these days, except for bragging rights.

Me too. Other than the mediocre camera I've been really happy with it.

Another vote for the G5 here. It's a little larger than I'd like, but other than that it's been perfect for me.

How regular is Motorola/Lenovo regarding security updates?

Pretty regular, I will say they haven't seemed to put forth a patch for WPA2 yet, but I'm also unsure how fully vulnerable it is mostly because Android can be such a customized beast.

I wish there was more Android One devices in North-America. Cheap, good, "stock Android" + garanteed updates.