Realme 5 and 5 Pro hands-on review

Introduction

Hard to believe that Realme turned 1-year-old just three months ago. The company is already on its fourth major generation of phones and it seems that it has finally found its identity - photography, performance and a trendy design, all punching above the aggressively-low pricing.

The Realme 5 and Realme 5 Pro are the first quad-camera phones to reach the Indian market. The two new phones use different main and selfie cameras, but the quad camera setup follows the same formula: main, ultra wide, macro, depth sensor.

These two quad cameras represent a major leap for Realme, we'll talk about that in a minute. First, a quick introduction of the two new handsets. The Realme 5 Pro actually borrows a few features from the Realme X, which is the most premium model the company has released yet. The Realme 5 is the biggest phone in the main series - it matches the X in terms of screen size and has the largest battery of any Realme phone.

Realme 5 Pro specs

• Body: Gorilla Glass 3+ front, polycarbonate back
• Screen: 6.3-inch, 19:9, 1080p+, LCD
• Rear camera: Primary 48MP Quad Bayer 1/2" sensor, f/1.8 lens; 119° ultra wide-angle 8MP camera; 2MP macro camera; 2MP portrait camera; LED flash; 2160p@30fps video recording, EIS
• Front camera: 16MP Quad Bayer sensor, f/2.0 lens; EIS
• Chipset: Snapdragon 712: octa-core CPU (2x2.2 GHz Kryo 360 Gold & 6x1.7 GHz Kryo 360 Silver), Adreno 616 GPU
• Memory: 4/64GB, 6/64GB or 8/128GB; UFS 2.1 storage; dedicated microSD slot for up to 256GB expansion
• OS: Android 9.0; Color OS 6.0 on top
• Battery: 4,035mAh, 20W VOOC 3.0 charging
• Connectivity: Dual SIM (4G), Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, USB-C
• Colors: Crystal Green, Crystal Blue
• Misc: Rear-mounted fingerprint reader

Realme 5 specs

• Body: Gorilla Glass 3+ front, polycarbonate back
• Screen: 6.5-inch, 19:9, 720p+, LCD
• Rear camera: Primary 12MP, f/1.8 lens; 119° ultra wide-angle 8MP camera; 2MP macro camera; 2MP portrait camera; LED flash; 2160p@30fps video recording
• Front camera: 13MP sensor
• Chipset: Snapdragon 665: octa-core CPU (4x2.0 GHz Kryo 260 Gold & 4x1.8 GHz Kryo 260 Silver), Adreno 610 GPU
• Memory: 3/32GB, 4/64GB or 4/128GB; dedicated microSD slot for up to 256GB expansion
• OS: Android 9.0; Color OS 6.0 on top
• Battery: 5,000mAh, 10W charging
• Connectivity: Dual SIM (4G), Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Micro-USB
• Colors: Crystal Blue, Crystal Purple
• Misc: Rear-mounted fingerprint reader

Realme knows its audience - all of its phones have a 3.5mm headphone jack. And all except the X are dual SIM phones with a dedicated microSD slot. We're not as fond of microUSB as the company seems to be and if you're like us, you'll be glad to hear the Realme 5 Pro has a USB-C port (but not the vanilla Realme 5).

Before we spend some one on one time with each phone, we should say that despite their names the two aren't strictly comparable. The Realme 5 has a larger screen but it's 720p+ and a larger battery, but without fast charging.

The Realme 5 Pro has the 1080p+ screen and 20W fast charging, plus it also upgrades both the main camera on the back and the selfie camera on the front. But both the screen and battery are smaller while the price is (naturally) bigger. These are essentially two different devices targeted at different customers.

So let's have a closer look.