Realme 14 Pro+ review

Android 15 with Realme 6 on top

The Realme 14 Pro+ boots Android 15 with Realme UI 6 (an alter ego of Color OS 15). The update policy for the global model is yet to be announced, but in India, Realme has committed to 2 major OS upgrades and 3 years of security patches for the 14 Pro+.

In more recent times, both Realme UI and Oxygen OS by OnePlus have become just another reincarnation of Oppo's Color OS, with only minor stylistic tweaks here or there - a brand-specific font and some color accents, really. The AI features are largely shared between the brands.

The notification and quick settings are now split, change that was not yet available on the GT 7 Pro.

Realme UI 6

Realme UI 6 comes with Google's Circle to search feature built-in. Also included is the Gemini AI assistant.

Circle to search • Gemini

The Smart Sidebar feature for floating apps is available, as it was before on previous Realme phones. The Realme lab section offers dual audio (wired and wireless headphones), heart rate measurement via the fingerprint scanner, and water ejection from the speaker via a specific sound.

Features

Some additional gestures are also at hand - such as Air gestures. These leverage the front-facing camera for palm recognition - you can for example answer or mute calls, open the smart sidebar for easier multi-tasking, or scroll through pages.

Air Gestures

There are two AI features that can be found in the in-house Photos app - AI Eraser and AI Ultra Clarity. We have already experienced those on the Realme 13 Pro+, with questionable results and overall utility that don't necessarily go beyond the level of a gimmick. Plus, often they just do not want to work for unknown reasons.

AI Editor

Performance and benchmarks

The Realme 14 Pro+ is the second device we meet running on the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 SoC, with the first being its direct competitor - the Redmi Note 14 Pro+. The chip is a direct successor to the SD 7s Gen 2 (Realme 13 Pro+ and Realme 12 Pro+) and sits under the SD 7 Gen 3 and SD 7+ Gen 3. It promises a significant leap in CPU, GPU and AI performance compared to its predecessor.

This 4nm-based chip employs an octa-core CPU with 1x2.5 GHz Cortex-A720 & 3x2.4 GHz Cortex-A720 & 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A520 clusters and a 940MHz-clocked Adreno 710 GPU.

The Realme 14 Pro+ is available with 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB, 12GB/256GB in India. Our review unit comes with 12GB LPDDR4X RAM and 512GB storage. The storage tests we ran point to UFS 3.1 storage being used with twice the read/write speeds compared to something like the Redmi Note 14 Pro+.

The Poco X7 Pro is a disruptor in this price category with its flagship Dimensity 8400 Ultra chipset.

Going by the scores, the Realme 14 Pro+ CPU offers a small bump in performance compared to the previous model. But there are noticeable jumps when it comes to GPU, NPU and overall performance.

UPDATE, 30 Jan: Since publishing the review, the Antutu and Geekbench benchmark scores below have been increased after re-testing with a new firmware.

The Realme 14 Pro+ offers outstanding sustained performance and stability - it scored 88% on the CPU and 99% on the GPU stress tests!

CPU test • GPU test

The Realme 14 Pro+ offers excellent performance and stability for the class, and it is a powerful AI machine. And if it weren't for the Poco X7 Pro, which costs the same but offers far superior power, we would have thought of the Realme 14 Pro+ as perfect. Now, it is "just" very good.