Realme 8 Pro hands-on review | Laptop Mag

Our Verdict

The Realme eight Pro commits to a stellar main camera at the sacrifice of whatever improvements elsewhere on the phone. It'due south a decent upkeep phone, just at that place are improve options for this cost.

For

Gorgeous 108MP camera quality
Skillful bombardment life
3.5mm headphone jack
Value for money

Against

Cheap design
Ugly "dare to leap" branding
No performance upgrades
Disappointing 60Hz display
No wireless charging
Better options at similar price

Laptop Mag Verdict

The Realme viii Pro commits to a stellar master camera at the sacrifice of any improvements elsewhere on the phone. It's a decent budget phone, but there are better options for this price.

Pros

+
Gorgeous 108MP camera quality
+
Practiced battery life
+
three.5mm headphone jack
+
Value for coin

Cons

-
Cheap design
-
Ugly "cartel to leap" branding
-
No performance upgrades
-
Disappointing 60Hz brandish
-
No wireless charging
-
Amend options at similar price

Budget smartphones are all virtually balance and compromise — going big on the specs where they thing, and cutting corners where you hope users either won't notice or intendance. That is a tightrope Chinese smartphone maker Realme has been walking for a few years at present.

So what is the Realme viii Pro's political party trick? It'southward unproblematic. Think that 108MP sensor you meet in the Samsung Galaxy S Ultra line? Y'all can find one of those in this phone.

While Realme has successfully invested tons of resources into the rear shooter, that atypical dedication has resulted in an unfortunate touch on on the residual of the experience.

Realme viii Pro: Price and configurations

The Realme 8 Pro is available in one configuration, with 8GB of RAM and 128GB storage for £279. It is available either direct from Realme or from Amazon UK.

Your only color choices are Space Blue (the version we tested), Space Black and Punk Black.

Realme 8 Pro: Design

There aren't any surprises with the Realme design if you already own a modern phone.. The Realme 8 Pro sports all the common design trends including a flat edge-to-edge brandish with a hole punch camera (admitting with a slightly larger chin), a big quad camera bump that volition give anyone with trypophobia serious nightmares, and a slim, curved profile to fit your paw.

Speaking of hand experience, this plastic back feels somewhat cheap to the bear on, but it contributes to a sleeker eight.1mm thickness and an ultimately lightweight 176g device that does not effect in finger aching over long periods of use.

As for the back and sides, I really like the 2-tone blue finish, which gives it a premium metallic look. But there is i trouble: the branding. Disrupting the cleanliness of the dorsum with "Cartel To Leap" emblazoned across it is divisive at best and an eyesore at its worst.

If you lot await at this and think "hey, that'due south pretty swell," then you become, Glen Coco! Just personally, this is the equivalent of your Aunty plastering "alive, laugh, love" on their living room wall thinking that makes their house more "modernistic" and "inspirational," but really, your relatives are cringing hard.

Realme 8 Pro: Display

The half dozen.4-inch AMOLED brandish packs a 2400 x 1080-pixel resolution. With a claimed superlative brightness of 1,000 nits, the panel is piece of cake to see in direct sunlight and has a decent xc.viii% screen-to-body ratio. And so far, so expert, correct?

Well, frustratingly, we're still stuck with a 60Hz refresh rate, when enough of other phones at this price range have made the bound to higher screen refresh rates. The Redmi Note 10 Pro, for example, non only has amend luminosity with HDR10, just also a 120Hz refresh rate. Why could Realme not do the same?

For most people, this won't be a problem. iPhones are yet using 60Hz screens, which to us just seems unforgivable, only nobody else has a problem with it. Because of the pedestrian refresh charge per unit, the picture isn't as buttery polish as we would have liked.

Realme 8 Pro: Sound

Calls are loud and articulate, both for myself through the earpiece and the microphone for the person on the other stop of the line. The dual mics do a overnice job of suppressing background racket and speakerphone calls are pumped out loudly through the single speaker.

Yep, unfortunately, that is a single speaker. This corner cutting results in a disappointing lack of stereo sound. The single speaker on hither is a little on the tinny side and tin can distort at higher volumes.

If yous're spending most of your time wearing headphones, and then this isn't such a problem, but information technology tin make playing games and watching YouTube clips a lop-sided feel.

Rebelling against the ongoing trend of removing ports, Realme stands potent by keeping the three.5mm headphone jack on the 8 Pro. That gets a big thumbs upwards from me and my Sennheiser cans!

Realme 8 Pro: Operation

Let'south run down the spec list. Nether the hood, in that location's a Snapdragon 720G processor with Kryo 465 CPU, Adreno 618 GPU and a 5th Gen Qualcomm AI Engine. Multitasking is handled with 8GB of RAM and you've got 128GB on board storage (expandable with a micro SD card slot). Plus, for international travel, the dual SIM support is warmly welcomed.

Merely haven't we heard this before? Except for the camera, everything inside this phone is identical to the Realme seven Pro. Given the scrap upgrades seen in competing budget phones, such equally the Snapdragon 750G in Samsung'due south Galaxy A52 and the Snapdragon 765G in Oppo's X3 Find Lite (both of which are 5G-capable likewise), this is disappointing.

The Realme eight Pro is fine for coincidental usage with occasional dull downs here and there, simply its efforts to get difficult on upgrading the camera makes the residual of the experience feel neglected.

Realme viii Pro: Battery Life & Charging

Much like the silicon inside, the battery remains the same with a 4,500 mAh capacity that lends itself to an all-day lifespan. Plus, the 50W SuperDart charger in the box tin can charge this telephone to l% in around 20 minutes and to 100% in 50 minutes.

Moreover, Realme has made some of import tweaks to its software for what is chosen "all scenes battery optimisation," including quick freezing apps when not in use, a super power saving mode, and a night charge guardian (to protect your telephone from overcharging).

Simply all of this is only talk. In real globe testing, I easily fabricated it through a day of regular utilize (12 hours of listening to podcasts, playing games, watching some YouTube videos, spider web browsing, social media use and photography) with about 20% of the bombardment remaining. If you're conscientious with your app usage, yous can easily squeeze out 2 days.

Realme 8 Pro: Cameras

Now for the make or pause moment of this phone; Realme has placed a large focus on the camera — but is information technology any skillful?

Around back, the Realme 8 Pro has a 108MP primary shooter on its quad photographic camera setup, alongside an 8MP ultrawide, 2MP Macro and a 2MP monochrome lens.

Let'south start by getting the easy part out the way showtime. Those last three cameras are the pinnacle of fun gimmickry. You volition probably utilise them once, then never again.

The macro lens is fun to use to snap a close upwardly of your constitute when yous're first testing it, the mode lens makes yous feel like an edgy lensman capturing your bailiwick with a pop of colour and rendering the background in black and white, and tilt shift makes yous chuckle by making the globe exterior your window look modest. Simply all of these novelties quickly fade away.

However, all of that is forgiven past the main photographic camera. Realme opted for Samsung's third generation 108MP ISOCELL HM2 sensor (only one generation removed from the current HM3 sensor used in the Galaxy S21 Ultra) with an f/ane.88 aperture and a 6-element lens. And, as you lot can judge for yourself, the item captured is crazy good. It's fifty-fifty more impressive when you remember this phone costs under £300.

Realme skipped a dedicated telephoto and opted for a 3x sensor zoom, which at a 12MP crop, gives you substantially an optical-esque zoom in a digital ingather.

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Realme 8 Pro camera test — (Image credit: Laptop mag)

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In archetype Realme fashion, colours are heavily additional, which is a personal preference matter. I prefer more truthful-to-life colours, simply most people I know similar a more vivid picture. Even in low light, the detail is crisp and the pictures are impressive thanks to the smart ISO.

At present, what about video? Information technology is capable of up to 4K/30fps or upward to 1080p/120fps (if y'all prefer faster frame rates over resolution). Every bit is the case with near budget Android phones, video quality is boilerplate. Autofocus is wearisome and epitome stabilisation struggles in whatever kind of move. But it's sharp, clear and fine for the quick clips with friends and family.

Likewise, in that location'southward a 16MP front-facing camera capable of capturing a decent corporeality of detail, and the software does a good job of blurring the background in portrait way around effectively details like hair.

Realme 8 Pro: Realme UI two.0

This skin on top of Android 11 is Realme'south UI 2.0, which offers a decent level of customisation and efficiency improvements to make everything zippy.

The Deepsea Privacy Program offers an extra shield on acme of the security features of Android 11, including password-protected apps and files, aslope pseudo site blocking and an app permission monitoring system.

Merely, as with near budget phones,bloatware is a problem. With more than 10 pre-installed apps, Realme definitely has an agenda to get you to utilise its own stuff. Moreover, some of the apps can be removed in favour of what you lot actually want to utilise (Chrome over Yandex, for example), though some you'll want to keep.

That means y'all are stuck with the likes of Realme'due south own music player, video histrion and atmospheric condition app. Information technology's frustrating and an unnecessary consumption of your on-lath storage.

Overall, if you tin can ignore this big blotch, the experience is fine. The one simple question I tin can't answer correct now is what the future of software support looks similar for the 8 Pro.

Outlook

In isolation, in that location is plenty to like about the Realme eight Pro including its stellar 108MP camera, beefy bombardment, decent operation and lightweight construction in a bundle costing less than £300. But these gains are harmed past Realme standing still on whatever real internal upgrades, and the company has shot itself in the pes with that divisive "Dare to leap" branding on the back.

Take a step back and look at the competitive upkeep smartphone market place, and information technology becomes harder to recommend the viii Pro. There are similarly priced phones with better internals; for case, the Redmi Annotation 10 Pro sports the same photographic camera with a improve processor and screen.

If you alive and breathe Realme, then this is a good phone. But don't do yourself a disservice past non looking at what else is in the market.

Jason brings a decade of tech and gaming journalism experience to his function every bit a writer at Laptop Mag. He specializes in finding the all-time deals to make certain you never pay more than you should for gadgets! Jason takes a particular interest in writing and creating videos about laptops, headphones and games. He has previously written for Kotaku, Stuff and BBC Scientific discipline Focus. In his spare time, you'll discover Jason looking for adept dogs to pet or thinking nigh eating pizza if he isn't already.