Realme 6 Pro hands-on review

Design and handling

As we already pointed out, there aren't many design differences between the Pro and the non-Pro Realme 6, but there are some key disparities design-wise. First off, the Realme 6 Pro doesn't feel cheap at all and offers a slightly better feel than the vanilla model, and that's mostly because of the glass back panel. Yes, the Pro swaps the plastic back for a glass one, while the front bumps up the Gorilla Glass version to 5. The middle frame remains plastic and Realme doesn't say if there's any protection on top of the back glass, so we assume there's none.

Interestingly enough, Realme goes into detail about the waterproofing of this phone and makes us wonder if it's in any way different than the vanilla Realme 6. Allegedly, the phone relies on three different layers of waterproofing - first, there's glue that protects the internal components; secondly, there's silicone gel sealing all the holes around the phone; and finally, waterproof rings tightly seal the SIM card slot. Again, the phone doesn't have any official IP rating so Realme can only confirm that the phone would do just fine under the rain or when splashed.

What gives away the Realme 6 Pro the most is the dual punch-hole on the front and the gradient of the back glass sheet. Since the Pro has a standard wide-angle and ultra wide-angle selfie cams, it requires a bigger punch-hole positioned in the upper-left corner of the display. And as for the gradient, Realme calls it Lightning Blue, in our case, but there's also the Lightning Orange and Lightning Red. The standard Realme 6 comes with the Comet gradient.

Realme 6 (left) and Realme 6 Pro (right)

What's interesting is that this particular color or material has the fingerprints and smudges less visible than on the standard Realme 6. Perhaps the glass here is somewhat more resistant to smudging.

The side-mounted fingerprint reader is a new thing for Realme, and it appears that they've nailed it the first time. The power button has the fingerprint reader embedded, and it's comfortably positioned on the right. However, left-handed users would have to either unlock the phone with their right hand, rely on the face unlock or do some finger gymnastics with their middle or index finger on the left hand.

We need more time with the device to form a more objective opinion, but at a glance, the Realme 6 Pro looks and feels like a well-built device with minor issues like wobbling when placed on a flat surface due to the camera bump. Although, once you put on a case, it goes away.

Hardware and features

Even though the Realme 6 Pro uses a different panel than the Realme 6, it feels a lot like the same one in terms of brightness, contrast, and color calibration. The diagonal is 6.6" this time around and still offers a 90Hz refresh rate. We haven't tested the brightness of the panel, but it looks sufficiently bright on a sunny day. Realme promises at least 400 nits of maximum brightness, and we suspect it can go beyond that in Max Auto mode.

Qualcomm's latest mid-range solution, the Snapdragon 720G, is driving all those pixels. Judging by the numerical branding, it should stand right between the Snapdragon 730G and the Snapdragon 712 in terms of raw performance. It's built on the 8nm manufacturing process and employs an octa-core CPU consisting of 2x 2.3GHz Kryo 465 Gold cores and 6x 1.8GHz Kryo 465 Silver cores. The GPU is the same as on the Snapdragon 730, so we know what to expect in terms of graphics performance.

Here are a couple of benchmarks to see how it stacks against the competition and some of its siblings. Unfortunately, it appears it would be hard for this GPU to drive any heavy gaming titles higher than 60 fps to really take advantage of the high-refresh rate display.

GeekBench 4.4 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Realme 6
  7779
• Realme 6 Pro
  7130
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  7008
• Realme X2
  6926
• Realme 5 Pro
  6106
• Realme 5s
  5596

GeekBench 5.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Realme X2
  1750
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  1692
• Realme 6 Pro
  1677
• Realme 6
  1654

AnTuTu 7

Higher is better

• Realme 6 Pro
  226652
• Realme 6
  223580
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  218200
• Realme X2
  215578
• Realme 5 Pro
  182765
• Realme 5s
  139103

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• Realme 6
  290051
• Realme 6 Pro
  283363
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  272229
• Realme X2
  257443
• Realme 5s
  168635

The camera hardware is mostly the same as well with the notable inclusion of a proper telephoto camera. The main sensor is still 64MP paired with an f/1.8 aperture. The 12MP telephoto with f/2.5 replaces the depth sensor on the Realme 6 while the same 8MP ultra-wide camera with f/2.3 aperture and 2MP macro snapper are on board.

The UIS and UIS Max gimbal-grade video stabilization modes are also at hand using the main and the ultra-wide cameras, respectively. The Realme 6 Pro also adds a live bokeh video effect. We've seen this implementation with the current Samsung Galaxy flagships, so it's going to be interesting to see how it works on lesser hardware.

Realme 6 Pro (left) and Realme 6 (right)

Realme also highlights the new Nightscape 3.0 mode, and it's now smart enough to detect if the phone has been placed on a tripod in which case it would use a 50-seconds long exposure to capture more light. There's also an additional Ultra Nightscape mode for stills in extremely dark environments.

And as for the selfie cameras, the main one is 16MP with f/2.1 aperture and an 8MP ultra-wide one with f/2.2 aperture.

A 4,300 mAh battery is keeping the lights on - the same one as on the smaller Realme 6. We would assume that it would have shorter battery life than the vanilla 6 given the bigger screen, but there are more factors at play here like the chipset. Still, the same 30W VOOC Flash Charge 4.0 is capable of charging up the battery from 0 to 100% in less than an hour.

And perhaps this is the place to say a few words about the fingerprint. It works great - it's fast and reliable and offers a pretty useful setting, which we haven't seen on other smartphones with the same fingerprint reader design. There's an option in the menu that lets you unlock the phone with a light touch or with a more firm one. The latter, however, seems to be working only if you press the power button all the way. It's a cool feature to have if you find yourself unlocking the device by mistake all the time.

Other notable features include a dual-frequency GPS ensuring better accuracy overall, a dedicated microSD card slot while memory variants start at 6GB/64GB going up to 8GB/128GB and a Super Linear Speaker supporting Dolby Atmos Hi-Res Sound Quality.