realme 10 Pro Review - Power and 5G for under PHP 18K?
After using the realme 10 Pro as our daily driver, we share our thoughts and experiences.
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| realme 10 Pro |
To recap, the realme 10 Pro features a 120Hz 6.72-inch LCD screen. Inside is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 octa-core processor, LPDDR4X RAM, UFS 2.2 storage, and a 5,000mAh battery with 33W SuperVOOC fast charging.
At the back of the phone is a 108MP dual camera setup while in front is a 16MP selfie shooter.
The phone is priced at PHP 16,990 in the Philippines.
Let's dive into the review!
Multimedia Experience
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| Front screen |
In front is the 6.72-inch LCD screen with a 2400 x 1080 resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a 240Hz touch sampling rate. Around the panel are slim bezels with the chin bezel being thicker than the rest.
Fast, vibrant, crisp, immersive!
The panel is fast, bright, vibrant, and crisp just as what you would expect from a 1080 panel. It isn't the brightest display in its price range but it is readable under direct sunlight.
It supports 10 points of multitouch which results in responsive and accurate taps and gestures.
There is no mention of any form of glass protection. But again, it does have a pre-installed screen protector.
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| Top and bottom |
For audio, the realme 10 Pro is equipped with a stereo set-up that is made up of the main bottom-firing speaker and an earpiece that doubles as the second channel. The sound produced is heavy on one side whereas the larger speaker produces the majority of the volume. The second channel improves overall quality but some people may care about balanced channels.
The maximum volume is loud enough to fill a small room but both speakers can easily get muffled when our fingers were placed directly on top.
The stereo speakers at native 100 percent are already loud, but the 200 percent does boost volume but trades it for sound quality. It also doesn't sound twice as loud as 100 percent.
We used our pair of earphones to try and test its 3.5mm headphone slot. The sound from the speakers is good but the headphones offer a better experience.
The microphones pick up sounds from a meter away. It does a decent pick-up of sound while the noise-cancellation for calls is decent.
Cameras
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| Rear cameras |
As mentioned earlier, the back camera module is made up of a 108MP f/1.75 ProLight camera, and a 2MP f/2.4 Portrait camera with an LED flash.
The stock camera app comes with the following modes: Photo, Video, Street, Night, Portrait, 108M, Pro, Pano, Movie, Slo-Mo, Time-Lapse, Dual-View, Text Scanner, Group Portrait, and Tilt-Shift.
The Pro mode comes with controls for ISO (100-6400), Shutter Speed (1/8000-30 secs), EV (+-2), Focus, White Balance, and zoom (1x, 3x). The 3x zoom is digital where the app crops in to make it look like it is zoomed in.
Rear Camera Samples
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| Daylight 1x |
The primary camera can capture with the full width of the sensor and with a crop that simulates 2x. Both the 1x and 2x are sharp and detailed with good color reproduction but the contrast is stronger than we would like.
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| Rear camera close-up |
The depth of field that is in focus is very shallow which gives a pleasing natural bokeh with the close-up shots. The areas that are in focus are tack sharp too. Our issue is the white balance where the image is warmer than we would like.
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| Rear camera Indoors |
Indoors, the images retain the quality of daylight with good sharpness and a decent amount of detail. The colors are vibrant but tend to skew warmer than we would like.
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| Rear lowlight |
For low light, the images are surprising. There is a minimal amount of noise and the image is sharp with a decent amount of detail. The image is vibrant but like the rest of the images tends to skew warmer than we would like.
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| Rear camera night mode |
The Night mode further decreases the amount of noise while improving the brightness and sharpness. Unfortunately, the image is brighter than we would like and it looks over-sharpened.
Night mode is decent, but the overall white balance needs improvement. Software update, please!
Overall, the rear cameras' software needs tweaking in the color temperature and in the night mode's brightness and sharpening.
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| Selfie camera |
On the punch hole is the aforementioned 16MP selfie camera.
Only the Photo, Video, Portrait, and Night modes are available for the selfie camera.
Selfie Camera Samples
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| Selfie daylight |
The selfie camera takes images with vibrant colors and deep contrast. It is sharp enough but there are phones with sharper cameras in the price range. These are more than good enough for daylight.
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| Portrait selfie |
The edge detection of the portrait mode is good but struggle with individual hair or fibre strands.
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| Selfie indoors |
Indoors, it is similar to daylight with good sharpness and contrast. However, we did notice the increase in grain or noise and was warmer than we would like.
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| Selfie lowlight |
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| Selfie night mode |
In low light, the selfie camera's images have lost their sharpness and detail to the increase in noise.
Both the low light and night mode selfies tend to skew to the warmer side but the night mode did improve dramatically the sharpness, contrast, and detail of the image.
Overall, the front cameras produce images with good color and contrast but struggle with low light. The white balance could be improved by lessening its tendency to take warmer images.
The realme 10 Pro's rear camera can capture up to 1080 at 30 fps while the selfie camera can capture up to 1080p at 30 fps only. Both cameras take a noticeable crop of the image sensor when turning to video from the photo mode.
The footage is similar to the photos where the sharpness, detail, and contrast are fine in daylight but will struggle with white balance and low-light scenes. There is no option to change frame rates.
Performance
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| AnTuTu and GeekBench |
To recap, realme 10 Pro has a 2.2GHz 6nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 octa-core processor, Adreno 619 GPU, 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB of UFS 2.2.
The phone also features RAM expansion where when there is a surplus of storage, the phone cause up to 8GB to expand the RAM. In our experience, it helps a little in making the phone a bit smoother when opening many apps. But, do not expect it to perform as well as its primary physical RAM. So far we have yet to run a workload heavy enough to utilize it.
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| 3DMark and CPDT |
realme 10 Pro benchmarks:
- AnTuTu - 419,628
- Geekbench 5 - 690 (single-core), 2,017 (multi-core)
- 3D Mark WildLife - 1,217 at 7.30 average fps
- CPDT - 314.68 MB/s sequential read speeds and 285.62 sequential write speeds
The realme 10 Pro's scores are good but may fall behind its peers in its price range. The storage read and write speeds are what we expect from UFS 2.2.
Good enough for casual users, but it may fall behind the competition...
During the benchmark run, the phone did warm up but by under 2.5 degrees only while losing only 3 percent of battery. Very Impressive.
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| realme 10 Pro Genshin Impact graphics |
It managed to unlock the low graphics settings of Genshin Impact as the default. The gameplay is mostly smooth until the screen fills up with objects and animations. The phone stayed cool for the first 30 minutes of gameplay but slowly warmed up. It maintained a warm temperature and never got alarmingly hot.
For security, realme 10 Pro has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor and face unlock. Initial set-up and subsequent uses are almost instantaneous. The face unlocks only struggles when the camera is dirty or when we are wearing a mask and sunglasses. The sensor only struggled when our fingers were filled with dirt.
Regarding connectivity, we have the following: WiFi 6, 5G, 4G LTE, Bluetooth 5.2, OTG, FM Radio, GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, and dual SIM. Having WiFi 6 is nice in supported locations.
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| Battery Benchmark |
Inside the phone is a large 5,000mAh battery. It lasted 12 hours and 26 minutes with our usual PCMark battery benchmark.
In our daily use, it managed to last for more than 5 hours of on-screen time.
The massive battery charges via USB-C with the 33W charger. It takes around 60 minutes to charge from 0 to 100 percent.
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| realme UI 4.0 |
It is running on realme UI 4.0. The UI has been a staple for over a few years now. It remains visually similar to past versions but with the new features of the latest version of Android 13.
There is a number of pre-installed apps and services that can be uninstalled. It adds to the initial setup. Some apps can only be disabled which was the only way to stop the annoying notifications.
Pros - Eye-catching design, lightweight and solid body, 120Hz LCD panel, 33W fast charging, 5G, WiFi 6
Cons - White balance and low light images could be improved (the night mode is good though), no ultra-wide camera, competition is fierce
realme 10 Pro Specs
Display: 6.72-inch LCD screen w/ 120Hz refresh rate, 240Hz touch sampling rate, FHD+ 2400 x 1080 resolution at 392 ppi
CPU: 2.2GHz 6nm Snapdragon 695 octa-core processor
GPU: Adreno 619
RAM: 8GB LPDDR4X RAM
ROM: 128GB UFS 2.2
Back Camera: 108MP f/1.75 ProLight Camera + 2MP f/2.4 Portrait Camera + LED flash
Selfie Camera: 16MP f/2.45
Battery: 5,000mAh w/ 33W SUPERVOOC
OS: Android 13 w/ reaIme UI 4.0
Connectivity: WiFi 6, 5G SA/NSA, 4G LTE, Bluetooth 5.1, OTG, GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, dual SIM
Sensors: Accelerometer, light, orientation, proximity, gyroscope, sound, magnetic
Others: Side-mounted fingerprint sensor, stereo speakers, Hi-Res Audio, USB-C, Colors: Hyperspace Gold, Dark Matter, Nebula Blue
Dimensions: 163.7 x 74.2 x 8.1 mm
Weight: 190g
Price: PHP 16,990
Verdict
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| Web surfing |
realme 10 Pro offers a robust collection of near-bleeding edge technologies in an eye-catching package.
You can now get a smartphone with a 108MP camera, 8GB native + 8GB extended RAM, 5,000mAh battery, and WiFi 6 under PHP 18K. Though there are other competing smartphones with similar features, it is good to know that Filipinos have options.
The fast refresh rate display is bright and has a sharp 1080p resolution. It has decent battery life too.
Our main gripe is the lack of the ultra-wide camera at the back and that the camera software needs tweaking to improve white balance and to improve low-light images. Lastly, there are phones priced lower with similar performance.
We recommend it for fans of realme that would benefit from its key features.
What do you think guys?
Build/Design - 4.25
Multimedia Experience - 4.25
Cameras - 4
Performance - 4
Average - 4.125/5
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