Realme 12+ review

A modern triple camera setup

As per Realme's marketing, the company is rather proud of the camera setup on the Realme 12+. Particularly the main 50MP camera, which, according to Realme, is the first in the segment to offer a Sony sensor. The Sony LYT-600 is part of the company's relatively new LYTIA line of image sensors. These seem to generally target more budget smartphones while offering some interesting features. The LYT-600, for instance, has all-pixel autofocus and is OIS-enabled. It is a 1/1.953-type sensor with 0.61 µm pixels.

Realme is also proud of its MasterShot Algorithm, which claims to offer flagship-grade quality. The Realme 12+ also advertises an optimized NightEye Engine, particularly meant to deliver optimized bokeh to low-light portraits. FlashSnap and a new Street mode for clearer action shots and a trio of movie-inspired camera filters - Journey, Maverick and Memory.

• Wide (main): 50 MP Sony LYT-600 f/1.88, 26mm, 1/1.953", 0.61µm, PDAF, OIS; 2160p@30fps
• Ultra wide angle: 8 MP, f/2.2, 16mm, 1/4", 1.12µm; 1080p@30fps
• Macro: 2 MP, f/2.4
• Front camera: 16 MP, f/2.5, 24mm, 1/3"; 1080p@30fps

There is nothing particularly interesting or different about the camera UI. It is well-organized, though, with a rolodex of modes on the right-hand side and quick toggles for things like filters and beauty modes. Most important settings get quick access shortcuts on the left-hand side with a pull-out hamburger-style menu for additional settings.

The Realme 12+ does get a Pro mode. It offers manual focus, though without focus peaking. An ISO slider that goes from 100 to 6400, shutter speed between 1/8000 and 30 seconds, white balance and exposure compensation.

Daylight photo quality

Main camera

The main 50MP camera captures 12.5MP shots by default due to pixel binning. These generally look alright, but we can't offer much praise beyond that. The details aren't bad, but they could be a bit better. The contrast is okay, and so are the colors, though the latter are pretty saturated and far from true-to-life.

Realme 12+: 12.5MP main camera samples

There is some noticeable noise, especially on uniform surfaces. Dynamic range is not great with both clipped highlights and crushed shadows.

You can force the main camera to capture in its full 50MP resolution, and you get finer details as a result, with less aggressive processing. You do have to deal with larger file sizes, though.

Realme 12+: 50MP main camera samples

The Realme 12+ lacks a dedicated telephoto camera, but the main shooter has plenty of resolution to pull off some nice-looking 2x zoom shots. These practically have the same quality as their 1x counterparts.

Realme 12+: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom samples

The Realme 12+ does pretty well with human subjects. Though still a bit saturated, the skin tone comes out looking good. Skin texture does come through, though it could be better. As a result, we kind of like the portrait shots, for the most part.

Realme 12+: 12.5MP main camera portrait samples

Subject detection and separation are decent but could still be better. The phone does occasionally trip up, especially in busier backgrounds. The quality of the background blur is pretty good.

Ultrawide camera

The 8MP ultrawide camera is nothing to phone home about. It captures decent photos with enough detail and good contrast.

Realme 12+: 8MP ultrawide camera samples

Dynamic range is pretty narrow, though, and the colors are even more saturated than on the main camera.

Macro camera

The 2MP dedicated macro camera does alright, given its resolution limitations. It's more of a "stocking filler" that is meant to bring the total camera count up for the PR department more than anything else, but it is still sort of usable.

Realme 12+: 2MP macro camera samples

The focus is fixed here, so you do have to be careful, but the focal plane is decently deep and forgiving.

Selfie camera

The Realme 12+ has a pretty mundane fixed-focus 16MP selfie camera. Nothing really that special. Quality-wise, we can probably best describe these selfies as harsh and rather overprocessed. Sharpening is quite aggressive, and saturation is cranked way up high. We don't particularly like the look, personally.

Realme 12+: 16MP selfie camera samples

Low-light camera quality

The main camera captures decent low-light photos but nothing spectacular. There is enough detail in the frame, though there is also quite a bit of aggressive sharpening. Colors are pretty saturated, but that's arguably less noticeable in the nighttime.

Realme 12+: 12.5MP main camera low-light samples

The dynamic range is decent, and the darker areas are well developed, though they are a bit noisy. Light sources are handled competently.

The Realme 12+ applies automatic night processing in its default photo mode. There is a dedicated night mode beyond that. However, we didn't really notice any significant difference between the two.

Zoomed 2x photos from the main camera look almost identical in quality to 1x ones. Perhaps a bit more sharpened here and there.

Realme 12+: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom low-light samples

The ultrawide camera is pretty unimpressive in low-light conditions. There isn't a lot of detail captured, and what is there is mostly recovered and sharpened up quite aggressively and artificially by the algorithms.

Realme 12+: 8MP ultrawide camera low-light samples

Surfaces often look blurry and soft. Dynamic range is poor, and light sources are blown out. In case you were wondering, using night mode on the ultrawide doesn't help in any noticeable way.

Low-light selfies are decent but largely unimpressive. Everything looks kind of soft and muddy, and there isn't a lot of skin texture.

Realme 12+: 16MP selfie camera low-light samples

You should definitely use the dedicated night mode for selfies. It balances skin tones a lot better and restores some much-needed skin texture.

Realme 12+: 16MP selfie camera night mode samples

Video capture quality

The realme 12+ can capture video at up to 4K@30fps on its main camera and 1080p@30 on both the ultrawide and the selfie. By default, video capture is done with a standard AVC/h.264 video stream at around 50 Mbps at 4K and 20 Mbps at FullHD, as well as a stereo 48 kHz AAC audio track inside an MP4 container. There is also the option to record in HEVC/h.265 to save some space.

The main camera captures decent but largely unimpressive 4K video. The detail is there, and contrast is also good. Noise is practically non-existent as well. Unfortunately, dynamic range is kind of narrow, with both clipped highlights and crushed shadows. Also, colors are extremely saturated. It just looks very unnatural.

At 2x zoom, you lose some quality, and there are obvious signs of oversharpening as the phone tries to compensate. The ultrawide camera captures pretty disappointing 1080p videos. Everything looks soft and muddy, and there is quite a bit of noise and oversharpening artifacts.

Video sample playlist

You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.

Full HD video from the selfie camera is not particularly impressive either. There isn't a lot of detail, and everything looks rather soft. Contrast and dynamic range are not ideal.

The Realme 12+ has EIS called Ultra Steady. It works at 1080p and can be applied to the main camera at 60fps or the ultrawide and selfie cam at 30fps. While it definitely smooths out most of the bumps and shakes, the downgrade in quality on the main camera coming down from 4K is just too great for us to recommend using the mode.

Low-light videos are pretty disappointing all around. Even the main camera captures muddy and soft video with a stark lack of detail. At least light sources are handled reasonably well. Interestingly enough, the 2x videos are sharper than 1x ones on average, but it's an artificial kind of sharp. Ultrawide video is very dark and barely usable.