Realme 5 review

A low-res yet massive display

The Realme 5 has a 6.5" IPS LCD screen with a waterdrop-shaped notch at the top. The resolution is rather low at 720 x 1,600 pixels and so is the density of 269ppi - that's not an ideal sharpness, but still quite usable for this class. These specs make for a wide 20:9 screen aspect ratio.

The display is protected with a Gorilla Glass 3, but there is also a factory-applied screen protector. Whether to keep it or not - that's up to you.

The text is sharp enough though minor pixelization is visible here and there. The icons on the homescreen are somewhat blurry because of the low resolution, too. But while the screen isn't obviously sharp enough to compete with the best, it's sharp enough for this entry-level class.

The Realme 5's display has a maximum brightness of 485 nits - a very good one for an LCD panel. The black levels turned out quite deep and so the Realme 5 screen scored an excellent contrast ratio of 1400:1.

For those following our tests closely - the lower brightness we could achieve on the Realme 5 is 1.8 nits, which is dim enough for comfortable use in the dark.

The color rendering is average - the screen offers accurate enough colors and we measured an average DeltaE of 6.5. The representation of the white and gray colors is way colder than it should be (DeltaE of 10).

If you opt for the Warm color saturation from Settings, the blue tinge is suppressed a bit, and the average DeltaE drops to 5.8.

Battery life

The Realme 5 is powered by a massive 5,000 mAh battery - that's the largest we've seen in a Realme so far. The battery supports regular 5V/2A charging and the bundled 10W charger restores about 21% of the battery in 30 minutes. Not exactly fast, but as fast as you can expect in this price segment.

The Realme 5 scored an outstanding result in our battery test with a 144-hour Endurance rating - that's the fourth place in our all-time chart. It did an excellent job across all test scenarios - video playback, calls, web browsing and even stand-by performance.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating above denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the Realme 5 for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern so that our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritty. You can check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.

Speaker

The Realme 5 has a single bottom-firing speaker. It scored an Excellent mark in our loudness test, though unpleasant high-pitched tones are common and probably responsible for the deafening Ringing Phone tone and hence the Excellent mark. In fact, when playing music from YouTube, the speaker sounds (subjectively) quieter than suggested by the score.

Indeed, Realme has always tuned its speakers for mid-tones and the Realme 5 seems no different - when playing music you'll hear the vocals crystal clear, but the music itself will be a little bit on the quieter side.

Audio quality

The Realme 5 performed impressively with an external amplifier, delivering output of perfect accuracy and very high loudness.

It wasn’t quite as hot with headphones, which caused the stereo separation to decrease significantly, while our equipment also detected some intermodulation distortion. The frequency response was also no longer stellar, while volume dropped to average. Hardly a disastrous showing, but not one that will earn the Realme 5 bonus points either.

Realme 5 frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.