Realme has made a very good impression since its launch, and despite being a sub-brand of OPPO, the two companies have different directions in launching new products. With Realme, the company has been offering phones with a high performance / price ratio.

So is Realme 6i. This is a device located in the budget segment as it is priced at around Rs. 12,000. There is also a Realme 6i model in India, but it has a pretty different set of specs compared to this one, so we will review it in a different article.

Realme 6i: Design

This is a pretty sizable device coming in at 6.5-inches. It’s got some heft to it probably due to its massive battery but is still comfortable to hold thanks to the curved sides and matte finish on the back.

As mentioned in our previous hands-on, the back of the Realme 6i is the work of Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa, probably most known for his huge contributions to Muji items. The somewhat holographic vertical lines along the Green Tea colorway are nice to look at and may remind you of a Rimowa suitcase. Here at the back are the quad rear camera module, LED flash, and capacitive fingerprint scanner.

Checking out the front, we get pretty slim bezels on the sides with a thicker bottom bezel. It uses a waterdrop notch design to maximize the screen-to-body ratio. The notch houses the front-facing camera and call speaker. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a notification LED here.

Realme 6i: Display

The Realme 6i has a large 6.5" IPS LCD screen with a waterdrop-shaped notch at the top. The resolution is rather low at 720 x 1,600 pixels. With a density of 270ppi - the sharpness on paper is not ideal for sure, but still usable for this class and won't get in the way of reading or gaming.

The display is protected with a Gorilla Glass 3, but there is also a factory-applied screen protector. You decide whether to keep it or not.

The good news is that all text is sharp enough and we saw no pixelization whatsoever. Realme has reworked the UI, and it is optimized for the 720p resolution, and nothing is visibly blurry as was the case on the Realme 3 and 5.

The color rendering is average - the screen offers accurate enough colors, and we measured an average DeltaE of 6.1 towards the sRGB color space. The representation of the white and gray colors is colder than it should be, and a blue tinge is noticeable all the time.

Realme 6i: Performance

The Helio G80 chip, which comes with 4GB RAM and a host of smart software optimization features like HyperBoost, promises a better gaming experience, and with Realme 6i this is true. If measured by benchmark apps, this Helio G80 has the same performance as Qualcomm's Snapdragon 730, while the price is a lot cheaper.

Tested with PUBG Mobile, Realme 6i gave a not very high frame rate, only about 20fps but was very stable, there was no sudden lag or slow touch, so it did not affect the general experience.

And this is the scoring in a few popular Benchmark applications for anyone who is interested.

The Asphalt 9 game has a very high frame rate, but each race is sometimes stalled 2 or 3 times in about half a second. In general, although the lag is slight, it is definitely not the reason you lost the game, but this is also a bit annoying.

Realme 6i: Camera

Realme 6i packs a quad-camera setup on the back, with a similar arrangement to the Realme 5 cameras. Top to bottom you'll see an ultrawide shooter, the primary camera, then comes the depth sensor, and the last one is a macro snapper.

The main camera uses the 48MP 1/2.25" (probably Sony) sensor with 0.8µm pixels and Quad Bayer filter and sits behind an f/1.8 28mm lens. It's meant to shoot in binned 12MP mode, and this is what you get as a default output.

The 119-degree ultra-wide-angle camera has an 8MP sensor (1.12µm pixels) with an f/2.3 aperture - and this camera seems to be identical across all recent Realme phones. There is automatic distortion correction applied when necessary.

The 2MP monochrome unit is called "Portrait camera," rather than just a depth sensor. It certainly helps with the bokeh rendering, but allegedly, it's also used to enhance the contrast of the final photo.

Finally, there's the 2MP macro camera (the pixels on the sensor are quite large, 1.75µm). Its lens has fixed focus at 4cm away so that you can get really close to your subjects.

Let's talk about the image quality now. The 48MP main camera saves 12MP images by default, and the photos look good. There is enough detail, though not exemplary, contrast is great and the colors are accurate. The noise seems pretty low in such bright sunny days, and the dynamic range is wide enough for us never to trigger HDR manually.

Just like with previous Realme snappers, here the foliage rendering is far from ideal and could use some enhancements in the processing.

The photos from the ultrawide camera are quite good for this class - the dynamic range is wider than usual, the contrast is great and the colors - lively - even if a bit over-saturated. The detail is nothing impressive, but in line or even better than many competitors from the same class.

Realme 6i: Battery

Just listen to the parameters, everyone understands, buy Realme 6i and don't worry about "hugging the power outlet" everyday. With a battery capacity up to 5000mAh, energy-saving Helio G80 chip and IPS LCD screen with HD + resolution only, Realme 68i has more than enough capacity to comfortably use for 2 consecutive days to recharge. Screen brightness time, if used at 50-70%, can be up to 7-8 hours per charge, almost twice as much as about 4-5 hours.

In addition to good hardware, the Realme 6i also comes with lots of software features to improve battery performance.

Try playing for about 30 minutes of PUBG Mobile at a high level of graphics, turn on effects and screen brightness 70% over Wifi, the device only consumes 6% of the battery. Meanwhile, if playing Asphalt 9 max configuration, it only consumes about 2% battery for a 2 - 3 minute race.

Overall, you can be assured of taking the Realme 6i for at least a full day.

Battery charging speed is "off the table". Although the charging capacity has been reduced to 18W, but this is still a commendable number because it saves a lot of time waiting for the battery to be full.