Review: Realme 7 Pro Smartphone- High-end tech in a low price range

Review: Realme 7 Pro Smartphone – The Realme 7 Pro is the flagship model for the 7 series that offers ultra-fast charging 65W, fingerprint sensor under the screen and OLED screen… The characteristics of the Realme 7 Pro do not really correspond to its price. At 329 euros, this smartphone necessarily calls out.

Only a few months after a relatively critically acclaimed Realme 6 range , the Chinese manufacturer Realme is already back with a family of products stamped Realme 7. In addition to a very classic entry-level mobile, the brand sells the Realme 7 Pro, a mid-range 4G smartphone at 329 euros. Its spec sheet is quite impressive, but is it enough to make it one of the best devices on the market?

Technical details

Ultra-fast charging at a low price

Since 2018, several Chinese manufacturers have tried “ultra-fast charging”. Their goal is to break speed records and allow you to recover maximum range in minimum time. Oppo, which belongs to the same group as Realme, is a pioneer and continues to break records every year.

While it only seems equipped with a single 4,500mAh battery (Oppo smartphones typically use two batteries to charge at low voltage and extend the life of their devices), the Realme 7 Pro nevertheless charges in one. express time. Thanks to its 65W charger, it only takes 37 minutes to go from 0 to 100%, impressive! In 5 minutes, 25% of the battery is recovered. In short, the smartphone is very aggressive. We are still skeptical about the use of a single battery which, in the long term, could have a negative impact on the life of the device. Will its autonomy be as good in 3 years? 

And an autonomy of competition

Let’s talk about the autonomy of the Realme 7 Pro. The 01net.com laboratory has carried out its traditional tests on this device and appreciates the velocity of the smartphone, at least for its first months of life. 6:19 pm in versatile autonomy, 1:29 pm in video streaming, 29:20 in a row in communication… There is nothing to say, the Realme 7 Pro holds up. On a daily basis, we only had to recharge it once every two days with moderate use.

Good processor, good equipment and good screen

Among the other qualities of this Realme 7 Pro, it is impossible not to mention its 6.4-inch AMOLED screen. In this price segment, too many manufacturers still abuse the LCD today, a panel with an infinite contrast ratio is therefore excellent news. Hallmarked at the top left, the latter has a rather satisfactory maximum brightness (537 cd / m ²according to our laboratory) and displays colors relatively faithful to reality (Delta E of 4.89 by default, 2.33 when setting the display to soft). In both cases, we are far from excellence but we should meet the needs of most users without too much difficulty. It’s only in areas where shade is scarce that the brightness of the Realme 7 Pro can be a bit limited, especially if you hang it up on your bike and try to view your route.

Under the OLED screen of the Realme 7 Pro, there is a fingerprint sensor. Again, it’s a good surprise. The latter is clearly not the fastest on the market, but its presence on a device priced at less than 350 euros is quite pleasing, competitors generally prefer a back or side sensor. A 2D facial recognition system is also proposed.

On the processor side, Realme has chosen to sacrifice 5G with this device. Let’s be clear, this is not at all a fault. This network is almost non-existent in France and the modems currently used by manufacturers (except those from Huawei) still consume too much energy. Realme is right not to rush.
In terms of performance, the Snapdragon 720G SoC found in this smartphone is up to all your daily tasks and most games, even if some slowdowns are sometimes annoying. System animations tend to slow the device down, possibly due to a lack of software optimization. Hopefully Realme plays the game and updates their devices regularly, with stability fixes. By the way, let’s mention a curious bug that we noticed. In some cases, when plugged into a computer, the Realme 7 Pro turns into an external battery and powers your PC. Cannot charge the phone or exchange data without changing the cable. 

Finally, we appreciate the presence of stereo speakers in this Realme 7 Pro even if they are of average quality. The smartphone also has a jack plug in addition to its USB-C port and can expand its internal memory by 128 GB with a Micro SD card. Realme ticks almost all the boxes, except waterproofing.

… But a disreputable design

Unfortunately, not everything could be perfect. Aesthetically, we have a hard time appreciating the Realme 7 Pro. Its plastic back is extremely “cheap”, its border at the bottom of the screen is very thick and, overall, its grip really gives the feeling of handling an entry-level device. The Pixel 4a , our favorite at 350 euros, is prettier and easier to handle.

More anecdotally, we find the volume and power buttons of the Realme 7 Pro of very poor quality. Another complaint, the phone’s vibrator is quite violent and lacks finesse.

Camera: Realme must do better

On the back of the Realme 7 Pro, there is a fake quadruple camera module. Why wrong? Quite simply because, as usual, Realme tries to confuse consumers with a very large number of cameras when only two are really useful on the back of this device. So let’s forget the poor macro sensor of this smartphone and its depth sensor. They are useless. 

Thus, the Realme 7 Pro only has a dual camera module. We first have a 64 Mpix sensor attached to a lens opening at f / 1.8 (based on the pixel binning model , which gives us 16 Mpix images) then an 8 Mpix sensor attached to an ultra wide-angle . A very classic formula therefore. 

What we can see is that the Realme 7 Pro tries to sublimate what it is really capable of. By day, we would almost let ourselves be taken in. The autofocus is fast, the sharpness is satisfactory and the colors are almost faithful to reality (although there is a bit of a paint effect in some cases, as if the smartphone is trying too much to improve reality). At night, it’s suddenly less good. To avoid falling into complete darkness, the Realme 7 Pro takes extremely grainy photos. At 329 euros, it is doing more than honorably but, facing rivals like the Pixel 4a, it comes far behind. 

Regarding the quality of the front camera of the Realme 7 Pro (32 Mpix), we were surprised to see it make faces bigger. To attract young people, Chinese manufacturers have yet made a habit of adding a lot of artificial filters to make people thinner than they really are. This choice is therefore surprising. 

Conclusion – Realme 7 Pro