Realme 10 Pro review

Proper LCD panel

The Realme 10 Pro is built around a 6.72-inch IPS LCD panel with a standard 1080 x 2400px resolution and runs at 120Hz. Since it's an IPS display, there are no HDR capabilities, but Widevine L1 is supported and thus, Netflix streaming in 1080p is possible.

Even though Realme used a high-quality IPS LCD panel, it's still at a disadvantage compared to some rivals offering far superior OLED screens. You won't be getting those deep blacks, but at least backlight bleeding is almost non-existent. There's just a little hue around the selfie camera but that's only noticeable on a bright or white background.

In our testing, the display did pretty well. Realme advertises 680 nits of maximum brightness in Auto mode, but we only got up to 619 nits, while in manual mode, that value is 590 nits. We will give Realme the benefit of the doubt and it's highly likely that the non-commercial unit we got is just a lemon.

Either way, outdoor use is mostly comfortable and you can easily browse or text on a bright sunny day.

Color accuracy, on the other hand, is abysmal as there's no escaping the blue-ish and purple-ish, whites and grays. Even in the so-called Natural color preset, the whites and grays are straight-up purple. There's a color temperature slider if you want to go for a warmer hue, but it still doesn't fix the color inaccuracy.

HRR control

The HRR control is pretty simple - if you don't touch the display, the system will tone down to 60Hz. Video player apps such as YouTube and Netflix will run at 60Hz by default. That's in Automatic mode and there's also the 60Hz and 120Hz modes, which are pretty self-explanatory.

We tried a couple of third-party apps and all system menus and didn't find an app that didn't utilize the maximum 120Hz refresh rate, including Chrome, which can often misbehave with HRR displays.

Battery life

Battery life is, as usual, excellent. The Snapdragon 695 SoC plays well with the 5,000 mAh cell and as we expected, the overall endurance score isn't too far from Realme 9 Pro's. After all, they both share largely the same hardware. The most notable difference is in the video playback time and although still impressive, the 10 Pro falls behind the 9 Pro in this regard.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. More details can be found here.

Compared to its rivals, the Realme 10 Pro edges out with a slightly better overall endurance score.

Video test carried out in 60Hz refresh rate mode. Web browsing test done at the display's highest refresh rate whenever possible. Refer to the respective reviews for specifics. To adjust the endurance rating formula to match your own usage patterns check out our all-time battery test results chart, where you can also find all phones we've tested.

Charging speed

Just like the Realme 9 Pro, the 10 Pro features the same 5,000 mAh cell that supports 33W DartCharge with the provided 33W-rated charger, it's no surprise that the results from the charging test are almost identical. In the first 30 minutes, the phone replenished 54% of its battery capacity while a full charge took about 1 hour and 12 minutes.

30min charging test (from 0%)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  100%
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G (Boost OFF)
  100%
• OnePlus Nord 2T
  99%
• Realme 10 Pro+
  86%
• Realme 9 Pro+
  77%
• Poco X4 GT
  75%
• Realme 10 Pro
  54%
• Realme 9 Pro
  52%
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  45%
• Google Pixel 6a
  42%

Time to full charge (from 0%)

Lower is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  0:16h
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G (Boost OFF)
  0:22h
• OnePlus Nord 2T
  0:32h
• Realme 10 Pro+
  0:41h
• Realme 9 Pro+
  0:49h
• Poco X4 GT
  0:57h
• Realme 10 Pro
  1:12h
• Realme 9 Pro
  1:14h
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  1:24h
• Google Pixel 6a
  1:51h

Although that's far from impressive given today's fast charging standards, the Realme 10 Pro stacks well against its competitors, offering just about average charging speed. Still faster than its Motorola and Samsung peers.

Speakers

This time around, Realme managed to fit a set of stereo speakers into the budget. As usual, the main one is at the bottom side of the frame, while the secondary acts as an earpiece as well. But we have some good news and some bad ones.

The good news is that the setup can get pretty loud, reaching -24.4 LUFS. The bad news is that the speakers are quite imbalanced. The top one is so quiet that the other one completely takes over.

Sound quality is also unimpressive. Tracks sound a bit too flat due to the lack of bass and mids, while the highs start to ring at higher volume levels. We noticed that the distortion mainly comes from the top speaker.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.