Realme 6 review

Display

The Realme 6 packs a large 6.5" IPS LCD display of extended 1080p resolution. The high-res screen was previously reserved for the Pro models, but now the 720p screen was given to the Realme 6i, while the regular 6 model not only gets high resolution but a high refresh rate as well.

Indeed, the 6.5" LCD panel on the Realme 6 is capable of 90Hz refresh rate, and you can switch between 60Hz and 90Hz from settings or leave it on Auto and let the software decide. Realme UI runs incredibly smooth at 90Hz, and it is a joy to work with.

The actual screen resolution is 2,400 x 1,080 pixels making for 20:9 aspect ratio and 405ppi density. There is a punch hole at the upper left corner making way for the selfie camera.

The Realme 6 has Gorilla Glass 3 in charge of screen protection, but the maker also applies a thin screen protector in its factories for some extra peace of mind.

The Realme 6's display has a maximum brightness of 450 nits - an average one for an LCD panel. The black levels turned out quite deep and so the Realme 6 scored an excellent contrast ratio of 1315:1.

The lower brightness we could achieve on the Realme 6 is 2.6 nits, which is dim enough for comfortable use in the dark.

The color reproduction is decent out of the box with lively though not super accurate colors. We measured an average deltaE of 4.9 and a maximum deviation of 8.8 at point Cyan. Indeed, the white and gray hues visibly shifted towards blue in the default display setting.

There is a Color Temperature Adjustment slider in Display Settings that is set to the 'Default' middle position with 'Cooler' and 'Warmer' at the extremes. Setting this slider to the warmest option yields slightly better results - average deltaE of 3.5 and a maximum of 7.3.

Battery life

The Realme 6 is powered by a 4,300 mAh battery and it supports 30W VOOC Flash Charge 4.0. Realme is shipping the 6 with the said 30W charger and its enhanced USB-C cable, which is really nice to see happening for such a budget device.

The Realme 6 30W charger replenishes about 70% of its depleted battery in 30 mins, while a full charge happens in 51 minutes.

The Realme 6 scored a brilliant result in our battery test with a 106-hour Endurance rating. It did an excellent job across all test scenarios - video playback, calls, web browsing and even stand-by performance.

We tested the screen-on-tests on both 60Hz and 90Hz and the endurance in both cases is the same.

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 6 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 6 has a single loudspeaker firing down from the bottom, and it posted an 'Average' result for loudness in our seven-track music test. It lacks a low-frequency thump, but it handles vocals pretty well.

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.