The Smartphone industry in India is booming, especially in the budget segment, specifically in the sub Rs. 20,000/- price bracket. This space has been constantly witnessing a lot of contenders and Realme with its competitive products and pricing is making a huge mark in the Indian smartphone market.
The Realme 5-Series are very worthy successors to the Realme 3 Pro and the Realme 3. They offer better hardware and Quad camera setup. I have been using the Realme 5 Pro for a significant amount of time now and in fact, I took it along with me to use it as a primary snapper during my recent motorcycle ride to Ladakh. So how is the Realme 5 Pro in real life and is it worth it to place your money on it? Read on to find out.
First things first, the Realme 5 Pro is aimed truly at the budget buyers who do not wish to spend more than Rs. 20,000/- on buying a smartphone It comes in three variants and prices start from Rs. 13,999 to up to Rs. Rs. 16,999.
Looks, Design and Hardware
Crack the box open and it is all the regular things inside. Of course, you get the Realme 5 Pro smartphone, a TPU case, sim ejector tool, manuals, a 20W VOOC charger and USB Type-C cable. Coming to the phone, it looks very good and the Sparkling Blue colour theme with patterns on the back of the phone makes it look quite premium. Realme calls the back as Holographic Gradient back and whatever the name could be, I am pretty impressed by the design in the back.
The phone is made out of polycarbonate and has a smooth glass finish. The overall footprint of the phone isn’t too large which makes it easy to hold in the hands. The side of the Realme 5 Pro is made of plastic and you can see the ride side which has the power button and the left side houses the volume rocker buttons and the sim-card tray. The buttons are firm and offer good tactile feedback.
The four-camera setup at the back has a slight bump but nothing to worry about as you can use a case which will not allow the camera hump to rub against any surface when placed on its back. The capacitive fingerprint scanner is placed right beside the camera setup making it easier to operate when holding the phone. On the bottom, you get a Type-C charging port, the headphone jack and the single speaker grille. The phone pretty solid in hands and the front is protected by Gorilla Glass 3. There is no IP certification for the Realme 5 Pro but Realme claims splash resistivity.
Now coming to the display, it is a 6.3-inch FHD+ screen with 19:9 screen ratio and over 90 per cent of the screen to body ratio. The phone does have bezels but they are thinner on the sides and slightly bigger at the chin area. The screen is an IPS LCD panel which might seem a bit dull. Turning it on to full brightness shows its vivid nature and warm colours. Reading the screen outdoors is a bit of an issue but Realme had to cut some corners and the display is one of them.
To back the nice physical appearance, the heart of the matter for the Realme 5 Pro is the Snapdragon 712 which is clocked at higher core speed. Paired with it, you get the option of 4GB, 6GB and 8GB of RAM and 64GB or 128 GB of internal storage. What makes the LPDDR4X RAM better is the pairing with the UFS 2.1 storage for faster read-write.
Performance and Camera Quality
During the time I have used the Realme 5 Pro, it was a very good performer with most of the applications and multitasking. It did not face any lags or stutters as it is the case with some budget-oriented smartphones. The ample amount of RAM on the 8GB 128 GB variant made it easy to multitask with most of the things thrown at it. Gaming was a breeze on the Realme 5 Pro and the Game Boost is present to optimize the performance. Titles like PUBG and Asphalt 9 – Legends had no issues or frame drops while playing.
On the OS front, it runs ColorOS 6 which comes with several features just like any other Android-based operating system. However, I would prefer a much cleaner user experience with minimal changes to the original android. I hope smartphone makers think about giving a true android experience or at least optimize their OS to the finest levels to allow a much better experience of using their phones.
Now the most important of the bit is the Quad camera setup. The combination consists of a 48 MP Sony IMX56 sensor, 8-MP ultra-wide, 2 MP Macro camera and 2 MP portrait sensor. On the front is a 16 MP selfie snapper housed within the display notch. The 48 MP primary sensor comes with f/1.8 aperture and uses Pixel binning to produce sharp and vivid 12MP images. The colours seem to be quite accurate and the camera attains focus in very less time. HDR will sort of boost the images, especially the ones in tricky lighting situation. The images are slightly warm and have plenty of details and the quality is up to the mark. The edge detection of the portrait mode is quite accurate as it is able to mask out the background from the subject quite effectively. The 16 Mp front camera does the job it has been hired for and the selfie images and videos seem quite nice out of the camera.
Finally, it is time to look into the power source of the Realme 5 Pro which is a 4035 mAh battery. It is able to deliver a day’s worth of power with all the regular multimedia and app browsing. The cherry on the top is actually the bundled 20W VOOC 3.0 fast charger which charges the phone from zero to full in little more than an hour. At this price point, you have nothing much to nitpick.
Verdict
So, here comes the final question of whether you should buy the Realme 5 Pro or not? Well for this price, it is a good buy, especially the 8 GB RAM variant which is quite snappy with the performance bit. Gaming too is a charm on the Realme 5 Pro but I wish, Realme would have chosen a better display for this one. In case you think you are not convinced, you can always spend some more and get the Realme X or the even better Realme XT.