Realme X – The gaming beast on a budget- Review

Realme X, the mobile that is currently making waves across the globe is finally here for review. Realme is a spin-off brand from the house of Oppo and they have been consistently offering mobiles with great value for money. Realme mobiles are competing for space with Redmi mobiles.

If you look at the chart above, Realme has a crowded presence under Rs 10000, while Xiaomi his most crowded under 15k segment. This clearly shows that Realme is fiercely competing with Redmi to provide similar mobiles at lower price. Within a short period, the brand Realme has seen phenomenal growth mainly because of its killer instincts and aggressive pricing. They have launched the Realme X as a competitor to Redmi K20. Let us check out in this review, if the Realme X is worth the price and if it offers a good value proposition.

In the Realme X Box††† (Standard Edition)

• Realme X mobile
• Plastic / TPU hybrid clear back case
• Manuals
• 20W Vooc Charger
• USB C Cable
• SIM tray eject tool

Design

Realme X is made of good quality plastic. It is shiny at the back. The Master edition (Onion and Garlic gradient) has a matte finish. But the Polar white, space blue, and spiderman edition mobiles are glossy. The glossy finish attracts fingerprint smudges, but it is less visible in the white edition. But due to the nature of the materials, the devices can get scratched easily. The back has a nice curve which makes it comfortable to hold and handle. The mobile is lightweight and has an even weight distribution.

It has a 3.5mm jack and a USB C port. The mono speakers are loud but the sound quality isn’t impressive. But the audio out of the 3.5 mm jack is of rich quality. The device does not have any kind of waterproofing or water repellant coating. It does not support SD card for memory expansion. It has a pop-up camera and hence a true full view display. The fingerprint scanner is under the glass display. Fingerprint scanner and face unlock via pop up camera is fast, accurate and reliable. It is a sensibly designed device. Though it is not a head-turner like the Redmi K20’s Aura glow design, it looks stylish and practical.

Display

Realme X has a 6.53″ inch AMOLED Full Screen with Screen-to-body ratio of 91.2%. The display has an aspect ratio of 19.5:9 and supports FHD+ resolution. It is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5. The AMOLED panel has spectacular color contrast and good brightness. It is visible under direct sunlight as well. It is a bit reflective, but the no-notch experience makes it a charming device to consume media and play games. The mobile does not have a notification LED. But it has always-on-display weirdly named as “off-screen clock” which gives you calls and messages notifications. It does not have supports notification from 3rd party apps as of now. If every device in the market makes AMOLED full-screen display like in Realme X, as gold standards for mobile screens, the world of mobiles will be a pleasant place to dwell.

Camera

The rear camera on the Realme X has a dual-camera setup. The primary camera is a 48 MP Sony IMX 586 sensor with f/1.7 aperture. The 5 MP sensor is a depth sensor. The front camera is a 16 MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture which also works under pixel binning principle to click 4MP shots and later interpolate it to 8 MP shot. Also, Realme X interpolates 120 fps slow-motion shots to 960 fps.

The quality of output is good, which is what matters at the end of the day. Chroma Boost is a feature that bumps up the saturation of the shots. I like to keep it natural, but for some, it may serve their liking and taste. Generally, the shots out of the rear camera are impressive. It has good details and sharpness. The exposure levels are accurate and the color saturation is natural. The 48 MP shots have more details and look natural than the processed 12 MP shot. The edge detection and background blur on the portrait shots are natural and smooth. The front camera can click sharp selfies under most light conditions. It has multiple portrait mode styles. Check out the camera samples below.

Realme X can shoot videos in resolution up to 4k at 30 fps and the HD 1090p videos can go up to 60 fps. Electronic image stabilization works best on the 1080p video to give smooth footage. Focusing is fast and live exposure adjustment also fast.

Software

Here is where Realme X lags behind the competition. Color OS on Android 9 has a host of useful features. But it still feels immature. The icons size, font hierarchy and globalization of labels feel like a hurried job not well done. Also, the mobile comes with about 10 pre-installed apps. A few can be uninstalled, but the Oppo app-store keeps annoying you with notifications. I managed to disable notifications, but still, the app-store and a few other apps were persistent. Once I managed to clean the bloatware, I installed over 45 apps and 10 games on this mobile. The mobile UI handled them with ease. There was no lag in opening apps and multitasking between apps. It has smooth performance, but the UI needs to be cleaned up. I hope Realme is reading this and takes it as feedback to improve the OS UX in the future.

Hardware Performance

Realme X has the seasoned, tried and tested Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 AIE 10nm processor. It has Adreno 616 for GPU. It comes in 2 DDR4 RAM variants: 4 GB and 8 GB. Both the variants have an internal memory of 128 GB in UFS 2.1 configuration. But as SD 710 does not support dual-channel memory, it works only on UFS 2.0 speeds. Also, I wish there was a 6 GB RAM variant as 4 is too less and 8 is too high.

But with what we have the performance of the mobile is remarkable. It can play PUBG or Fortnite at high graphics mode with 25-30 fps. The gaming mode utilizes their Hyper boost 2.0 technology o improve the performance. There is mid heating after 60 min of gameplay but that is felt due to the plastic material used. The device shows no signs of throttling. There was no lag or frame drop. During gameplay the mono-speaker is mediocre, but the Dolby sound out of the earphones makes up for it. I would say that Realme X is a gaming mobile on budget. I am impressed with its performance.

Battery

It has 3765 mAh battery and it is charged from 10 to 100% in 75 minutes by the proprietary Vooc charger. Any other charger on the mobile delivers only 10W power. Once charged the mobile can last for well over 24 hours of moderate usage. It gives a screen on time of about 5 to 5.5 hours. But with Vooc charger by the side, I would not worry about the battery on the Realme X.

Verdict

Redmi K20 is a bit more expensive than the Realme X. But it is a much more premium device than the Realme X. The older processor on the Realme X still holds good and beats the competition by a wide margin in terms of price to performance ratio. At about 17k, the Realme offers great display, pop-up camera, slick gaming performance, and a super-fast charger. I hope the ColorOS matures fast to cater to a wide audience and improves user experience. Otherwise, I would highly recommend the Realme X if you are looking for a gaming mobile with a sharp camera for under 20k.