For a long time, Xiaomi is the most prominent brand when it comes to smartphones with powerful specs and soft prices. However, Xiaomi’s throne is now under heavily competition from Realme, Oppo's new brand with a similar product strategy. In just over a year, this brand has launched four smartphone generations from Realme 1, 2, 3 and more recently Realme 5 / 5 Pro. As a result, the product life cycle is shortened to 4 months for a new version, not half a year like Xiaomi and others.

Realme 5 Pro price in India is set at Rs. 13,990 for the 4GB RAM + 64GB storage model while the 6GB RAM + 64GB storage and 8GB RAM + 128GB storage are retailed at Rs. 14,990 and Rs. 16,990, respectively.

Realme 5 Pro: Display

The screen specs of the Realme 5 Pro include a size of 6.3 inches, an IPS LCD panel with Full-HD+ resolution, a 19:9 aspect ratio, a pixel density of 409 PPI ... similar to the Realme 3 Pro, perhaps having the same display. However, it is still a good one to use.

The colors are tweaked by the manufacturer a bit darker but still retain natural, not boosted. The maximum brightness is quite high, over 500 nits and viewing angles are wide as well. When shooting photos outdoors, the screen brightness is sufficient so that you can clearly see the viewfinder image. Reading, surfing or playing games are also comfortable.

In the settings, the Realme 5 Pro allows users to customize the color temperature, including cold, default and warm. Color temperature at default looks balanced, so the user probably doesn't need to bother changing to other modes.

Realme 5 Pro: Performance

Realme 5 Pro uses the new Snapdragon 712 chip, which is an overclocked version of Snapdragon 710 used on the Realme 3 Pro. Compared to Snapdragon 710, the Snapdragon 712 has an additional 0.1GHz clock speed on a high-performance 2-core cluster. Specifically, Snapdragon 712 has 8 CPU cores, including 2 high-performance Kryo cores (cortex A75) clocked at 2.3GHz and 6 Kryo cores (cortex A55) clocked at 1.7GHz.

The GPU on the Snapdragon 712, according to Qualcomm, also gets a 10% performance increase, although it is still Adreno 616 like the Snapdragon 710. In addition, the rest of the components in the Snapdragon 712 and 710 are the same including the image processor (Spectra 250 ISP), integrated 4G wave modem (X15 LTE) and 10nm LPP manufacturing process.

On performance measurement apps, the Snapdragon 712 chip has shown significant improvements over the Snapdragon 710 on the Realme 3 Pro. The overall performance score and graphics processing power of Realme 5 Pro (8GB RAM version) are both about 15-20% higher than its predecessor Realme 3 Pro and much higher than its rivals like Samsung Galaxy A50.

The Realme 5 Pro performs very well in gaming compared to smartphones in the mid-range segment. It is powerful enough to comfortably play graphics-heavy games on Android today. Compared with the older Realme 3 Pro, the device also has significant improvements in smoothness and fps stability during gaming sessions.

When measured by GameBench, Realme 5 Pro achieves good smoothness and fps stability in games with quite heavy and very heavy graphics like Dead Triggers 2 and PUBG Mobile. All games ran at the highest graphics level.

Dead Triggers 2 ran very smoothly at 60 fps and 95% stability. The device only used 8% of the CPU and 418MB of RAM to achieve that performance.

Realme 5 Pro also handles PUBG Mobile quite well, with 40 fps, but frame stability is no longer maintained as high as Dead Trigger, only 85%.

Overall, the Realme 5 Pro offers an impressive performance experience in the mid-range segment, especially the very powerful graphics capabilities that help this phone smoothly run most games available. Of course, with the top graphics games like PUBG Mobile, the device can’t achieve as good performance as top-end smartphones.

Realme 5 Pro: Battery life

Realme 5 Pro has a 4,035 mAh battery that supports VOOC 3.0 fast charging via USB Type C charging port. Using the included 20W fast charger, it takes about 30 minutes to charge 50% of the battery and about 85 minutes to fully charge it.

In our regular tests, the device lasted 17.5 hours of watching movies, more than 10 hours of web surfing, and 5.5 hours of graphics-heavy gaming. This result is slightly better than Realme 3 Pro, especially for surfing the web and watching movies. This may come from power management optimizations of the 10nm Snapdragon 712 chipset, which is already optimized in power consumption. Compared to other phones in the same price range, the Realme 5 Pro has a very beefy battery, which can be used comfortably all day with most users.

Realme 5 Pro: Camera

Realme 5 Pro is the first Realme product to have four rear cameras including a 48MP main camera using Sony's IMX586 sensor, an 8MP ultra wide-angle camera, a 2MP macro camera for taking close-up photos with 4cm focal range and a 2MP camera to capture portrait shots. On the front, the device has a 16MP camera for taking selfies and video calling.

Photos taken in day-light scenes are quite average. The main camera is very snappy with no discernable shutter lag while taking photos on the go. It also captures good sharpness and detail, but colors seem to be boosted a bit too much. Dynamic range is great, capturing as much highlights and detail  in shadows as possible. 

The ultra-wide camera not only offers a wider viewing angle, but is also capable of retaining the color parity with the main camera. Of course, dynamic range and focusing are a tier below the main one, but that is understandable with the f/2.25 aperture. In low-light scenes, the outcomes are significantly darker and need a more stable handling.