Realme X3 SuperZoom review: 120Hz screen, 6 cameras, good performance and battery life Review

Chinese handset maker Realme hasn’t been energetic in the United kingdom for prolonged, but it has created a serious splash. The very first Realme handset I reviewed, the X50 Professional 5G was a serious head-turner — a properly specified cellular phone at a very good price. Now we have the firm’s get on excessive zooming in the condition of the six.six-inch Realme X3 SuperZoom. Regardless of the evident emphasis on digicam ability, there is a lot a lot more on give right here, such as a high-end processor, loads of memory and storage, and extraordinary battery lifestyle, all for £469 (inc. VAT). 

The X3 SuperZoom has a neat and tidy industrial layout. At its internet site, Realme emphasises the glass which is used both entrance and again. But appear cautiously and you can see that the sides of this cellular phone are created from plastic. It does a very good job of seeking like metal, and is not in any way a offer-breaker, but it is noteworthy simply because plastic use is a person of the means Realme has saved on output costs.

My review handset was the Arctic White variant — a type of creamy white which is variously rippled with shades of blue, environmentally friendly, orange, mauve and pink as it displays gentle. It truly is eye-catching and diverse, but if you favor, there is also a Glacier Blue selection.

The soft-contact end is commendably resistant to fingerprints, and also usually means that the cellular phone feels relaxed in the hand — while it was continue to fairly slippery on soft furnishings.

The quad digicam array sits in a vertical lozenge that protrudes substantially from the again of the handset. This had the regrettable impact of leading to the cellular phone to go around — fairly noisily — on a desktop when I prodded at the screen.

The fingerprint sensor is developed into the electricity button on the suitable aspect of the cellular phone. I’m not the biggest admirer of this area, while I’ve developed used to it by means of different opinions. Positioning apart, the X3 SuperZoom’s fingerprint reader performs properly.

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The remaining edge of the handset residences a pair of quantity buttons, and on the base is the speaker grille, SIM caddy (which accommodates two SIMs), and USB-C cost slot. There is no 3.5mm headset jack, and no formal IP rating for dust and h2o resistance.

The show is flat, created from Gorilla Glass five and has a pre-fitted screen protector. There is a sizeable bezel at the base edge, and the other a few bezels are barely negligible. Nonetheless, the six.six-inch screen suits into a neat chassis which is 75.8mm huge by 163.8mm deep by 8.9mm thick and weighs 202g. Realme statements a screen-to-body ratio of 90.five%, while we estimate it at eighty four.8%.

The leading remaining of the screen has a lozenge-shaped punch-gap for the twin entrance cameras. This is fairly distracting at very first, but I soon obtained used to visually blanking them, and the screen alone has some nice plus factors.

SEE: 5G smartphones: A cheat sheet (absolutely free PDF) (TechRepublic)

The six.six-inch screen is IPS Liquid crystal display fairly than AMOLED, but the colours are continue to pretty sturdy. The resolution of two,400 by one,080 pixels (399ppi) is perfectly very good plenty of for video viewing, electronic mail, web browsing and ebook reading through. The screen has a flagship-course 120Hz refresh fee, which you can manually scale again to 60Hz alternatively, you can allow for the handset to decide on the refresh fee automatically.

It truly is a disgrace the mono speaker is a bit of a enable-down, supplied the top quality of the screen. There is loads of quantity — a lot more, in point, than lots of handsets control — but it is limited on bass tones and is fairly distorted at the best degree. It truly is very good plenty of for radio listening, but when keeping the cellular phone in landscape method to observe video I had to get care not to cover the speaker with my palm.

The X3 SuperZoom has 6 cameras, two at the entrance and a quad-digicam array at the again. The entrance cameras are 32MP f/two.five huge-angle (eighty.4°) and 8MP f/two.two ultra-huge angle (105°). It could seem like overkill to have twin entrance cameras, but the ultra-huge angle selection is actually pretty practical for group photographs, or when you want to body a person or a lot more individuals towards a backdrop.

The quad-digicam array at the again is as follows: 64MP f/one.8 huge angle (78.6°) 8MP f/two.3 ultra-huge angle ( 119°) 2MP f/two.4 macro (4cm aim distance) and 8MP f/3.4 periscope telephoto (5x optical zoom).

This is an exceptional specification, but there are restrictions. The macro lens usually takes a reasonably very good-top quality shot, but the optimum focal distance of 4cm is limiting. There is no zoom on the macro, so you’re remaining with shifting the handset toward and absent from the subject. Each small bug I tried to photograph in my locked-down garden flew absent as I approached it. Fortunately my cat was a lot more docile. In the serious earth, I would get pretty frustrated, pretty rapidly.

On the zooming entrance, 5x and 10x photographs had been of fair top quality, but when you get earlier the incremental screen taps that get you to 10x it is a issue of pinching at the screen to zoom even further, and frankly the rewards are not truly worth the trouble. What did impress me was the colour fidelity: these flowers are a brilliant, surprising pink, and the X3 SuperZoom will get as near as any cellular phone digicam I’ve tried.

I’ve previously pointed out that the SIM caddy supports two SIMs. There is no facility to boost the inside storage by using MicroSD, but which is not really desired. There is 256GB installed, of which 18GB is used out of the box, leaving 238GB absolutely free. That storage is UFS 3., and it is speedy. This, along with 12GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 855+ chipset, usually means the Realme X3 SuperZoom really zips along. 

The Geekbench five CPU take a look at reported extremely respectable ordinary scores of 786 (single main) and 2440 (multi main). Established it towards the OnePlus 8 Professional with its leading-end Snapdragon 865 chipset, which achieved 907 and 3375 respectively, and you can see the variance. Nevertheless, the OnePlus handset costs £899 for the exact RAM/storage mix, and I did not uncover that the £469 X3 SuperZoom ‘s performance held me again in any way.

Battery lifestyle is extraordinary much too, with the 4,200mAh battery lasting for seventeen.five several hours less than the Pc Mark Operate two. benchmark. Additional anecdotally, my mainstream utilization pattern ordinarily saw me end the day with involving 70% and 55% of a whole cost remaining. Acquiring to a whole cost isn’t much too a great deal of a trouble, possibly, as the 30W ‘Dart’ charger ought to get you from zero to whole in 55 minutes.

Android 10 comes with a couple of added attributes courtesy of the Realme UI overlay. The Clever Sidebar, which is a staple of Realme handsets, presents a customisable shortcuts bar you can pop out by sliding inwards from the screen’s suitable edge this element is also on Oppo handsets, wherever it is identified as Brief Equipment. Realme apps include things like a new music player, picture viewer, weather application, compass, file supervisor, and different other extras. Third-party choices, which include things like Facebook and Opera, can be removed if you will not want them.  

Conclusions 

Realme has delivered an extraordinary set of specifications in a sub-£500 handset, with compromises created in all the suitable places. A high-top quality screen with a speedy refresh fee, loads of RAM and inside storage, very good battery lifestyle, and a layout that appears to be distinct are all plus factors.

In point, it is a disgrace that Realme puts so a great deal retail store on the camera’s 60x zoom ability, simply because this only will not reside up to the promise. SuperZooming apart, however, this is continue to a extremely capable smartphone for the cash.

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