As you say, lease these days is used to cover the three main types of secured car financing. For the OP/anyone not sure:
PCH = Personal Contract Hire or a "proper" lease - you'll pay monthly but have to give the car back and never own it.
PCP = Personal Contract Purchase - you'll pay monthly still, but will own at the end of the term, though usually after a big balloon payment (at which point lots of people give the car back to dealer to start a new PCP etc. etc.).
HP = Hire Purchase - you still pay monthly, but you pay off the entire cost over the hire period (so no balloon payment at the end, sometimes a nominal £1 option-to-purchase fee), and own at the end. This is usually what dealers give you when you purchase a used car on "finance".
With PCH and PCP, you will have annual mileage limits and have to pay more money if you go over them; with HP you won't.
General rule of thumb would have the ascending order of overall costs as: cash < personal loan (not secured against car) < PCP < HP < PCH. Sometimes the lease deals would bring down PCH to be around the same as a personal loan or even cash when you amortise all the payments, but very recently they haven't been. Plus at the end of a lease you have to look for another car and may have to choose a car you don't like as much if there's a really good deal on it etc. So while it is convenient (and indeed nice) to have a new car every 2/3 years, it's actually somewhat inflexible unless you're happy to pay.
To OP, get cost options for all the above and work out the total cost of each option. Lower monthlies don't necessarily mean you're getting a better deal. At the time I bought my current car in 2019, I'd forgotten to get myself on the electoral register and I was being offered upwards of 9% on a personal loan, but ended up getting a HP deal at 5.9% (I was happy with the total cost - I was picky to the extreme about the spec of the car and there was usually only one or two in the country that had the particular options and equipment level I wanted, and yes that's silly to some when it's a Ford Focus) so that was cheaper for me at the time with a failing 11 year old Fiesta.
