Realme 7 review

A budget quad-camera setup

The Realme 7 has four rear cameras, and they are similar to what you'd find on the Realme 6 and 7 Pro - a high-res primary snapper, an ultrawide shooter, a 2MP macro cam, and a 2MP depth sensor. There is a LED flash around, too.

There is one major difference between Realme 6, Realme 7 for Asia, and the Realme 7 Pro. The global Realme 7 model has a 48MP primary camera instead of 64MP. Other than this downgrade - everything else is the same.

So, the Realme 7 has a 48MP Quad-Bayer sensor for its primary camera behind an f/1.8 26mm lens. Phase-detection autofocus is available for this camera only.

Next is the 8MP shooter behind an f/2.3 16mm lens for ultrawide photos. The focus is fixed at infinity.

Then there is a 2MP macro camera with an f/2.4 lens. This snapper has its focused fixed at 4cm distance.

And finally - there is a 2MP mono camera serving as a depth sensor and contrast enhancer for your portrait photos.

The selfie camera over at the front packs a 16MP Sony IMX471 sensor with what seems to be a Quad-Bayer filter and f/2.1 aperture. The focus is fixed.

The camera app is the familiar Oppo/Realme one with a few tweaks for the latest version. There are fewer menus - most of the modes are now on the main rolodex, which is good. It offers Chroma Boost - it's like an advanced HDR mode, which may stack several images to further improve the dynamic range. Still, the most prominent "improvement" is the higher color saturation. Sometimes - way too high.

In the Expert mode, you get to tweak exposure, white balance, manual focus, and exposure compensation. The exposure controls include ISO (100-6400 range) and shutter speed (1/8000s-32s range).

The Expert mode is available only on the primary camera. It can do digital zoom, and you can even shoot in RAW.

Camera UI

Photo quality

The primary camera shoots 12MP images by default, and they are with inconsistent quality. We usually take four shots of each scene, and as it turns out, the Realme 7 often saves two over-sharpened and two soft images.

The first photo is always oversharpened and with limited dynamic range. This is the reason we chose to show you these images first.

So, the resolved detail is nothing impressive, but it is enough for this budget class. The sharpening is quite extreme at times, though, while the dynamic range is somewhat limited. The colors are a bit warmer than they were in reality. Finally, noise is present in areas of uniform color like the sky.

Main camera, 12MP

Here, you can compare the sharpened photos with the soft ones. We are not sure if the processing just couldn't catch up with our shooting and left those untouched, or it did an HDR (we shot on HDR Auto, but it triggered only on two occasions). There is no visible improvement in the dynamic range, just a minor change in contrast.

The reality is that if you take just one photo - you will get the over-sharpened one. But if you shoot two or three samples - the chance is that you will get at least one of each type.

Sharp • Soft • Sharp • Soft

Chroma Boost is available, of course, and it saves a natural-looking photo as far as sharpness and detail are concerned. The colors are over-saturated (this is what Chroma Boost does), and the contrast is somewhat unrealistic. But Realme is advertising this mode a lot, and we think a lot of people out there may like the photos even if they are over-processed.

Main camera with Chroma Boost, 12MP

A supposedly full-res 48MP mode is available, but while it will provide you with a 48MP image - it's just a simple upscale on the default 12MP image.

Main camera, 48MP

Realme 7 offers 2x and 5x zoom toggles on the viewfinder, but the zoom is purely digital. And since there is no real demosaicing 48MP mode, shooting in 48MP and then cropping its center won't yield better results than the ones you see below.

Main camera 2x zoom, 12MP

The Realme 7 captures portraits with its primary camera with the help of the 2MP so-called portrait camera. The company claims this tiny camera is not just a depth sensor but also used to enhance the portraits' contrast, but we know better than falling for this marketing trick.

Still, the Realme 7 takes good portraits with competent (for this class) subject detection and convincing background blur. Stray hair and complex backgrounds are always a challenge and will cause imperfections, but overall, the shots are incredibly good for this class.

Main camera, portraits

The 8MP photos from the ultrawide camera are good for this class - the dynamic range is wider than usual as the Auto HDR did trigger often, the contrast is pretty good, too. The colors are lively even if a bit warmer than they should be. The detail is nothing impressive but in line with the budget 8MP ultrawide shooters.

Ultrawide camera, 8MP

Here, you can compare the HDR with the non-HDR samples. The HDR processing brings more detail but also - more noise.

HDR • no HDR • HDR • no HDR

Realme 7, just like many of the recent Realme phones, offers a 2MP macro camera with fixed focus at 4cm distance. You should be indeed close to the subjects, precisely 4cm way, but even then, the detail isn't that great, and the photos are a bit dull.

Macro camera, 2MP

When the light is low, the main camera shoots good even if noisy photos with good contrast and okay exposure. The detail is not that much, but thanks to the gentle noise reduction - we are left with more detail than we expected and a lot of noise, of course.

Main camera, 12MP

Night mode is present on the Realme 7, and it dramatically improves everything, including the exposure. Now we have more resolved detail, less noise, and even better colors and contrast. Overall, the photos taken with Night Mode are noticeably better, and the only cost you'll pay is the 3-second wait for the Night Mode to do its magic.

Main camera with Night Mode, 12MP

The 8MP ultrawide camera should be used at nighttime only on some in some extreme cases. Usually, you will get underexposed shots with plenty of noise and little detail.

Ultrawide camera, 8MP

Night Mode is available on the ultrawide snapper, too, and it makes for brighter and less noisy pictures. The photos are still relatively mediocre, though.

Ultrawide with Night Mode, 8MP

Once you're done with the real world samples, head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the Realme 7 stacks up against other phones.

Realme 7 against the Realme 6i and the Realme 6 in our Photo compare tool

Selfies

The Realme 7 has a 16MP (probably Quad-Bayer) f/2.1 selfie camera with fixed focus. On the software side, there are all sorts of beautification enhancement options like skin smoothing and eye enlargement and face thinning, and whatnot.

When there is enough light, you'll get good selfies even though they are not very detailed. The colors are nice, and the contrast is excellent. The third selfie was shot in HDR.

Selfie camera, 16MP

The 4MP selfie portraits (Quad-Bayer confirmed?) are surprisingly good - they are detailed with proficient separation, nice blur, and lively colors. There is no HDR in portrait mode.

Selfie portraits, 4MP

Video quality

The Realme 7 captures videos with its main camera and ultrawide snappers. The main camera records video up to 4K at 30fps, and there's 1080p at both 30fps and 60fps. The ultrawide shooter is limited to 1080p@30fps video capturing.

You get the option to choose between the h.264 and h.265 codecs.

The Realme 7 is very generous with the bit rates it uses to encode videos. 4K footage gets 50Mbps, while 1080p/30fps is allocated at 16Mbps when using the h.264 codec. The audio bitrate is 150kbps, and the sound is stereo.

The 4K clips from the main camera are shot without Realme's forced electronic stabilization (as was the case with the Realme 7 Pro). And probably because of that - they are rich in detail, unlike the ones we took with the Realme 7 Pro. Other than detailed, the 4K footage also presents excellent dynamic range and superb contrast.

Unfortunately, there is a pretty noticeable reddish tint that may not be everyone's cup of tea.

Electronic stabilization works on both snappers when they are shooting at 1080p at 30fps. And while it does a nice job stabilizing the picture, it ruins the video quality for the ultrawide camera.

Here's a glimpse of how the Realme 7 compares to rivals in our Video compare tool.

2160p: Realme 7 against the Realme 7 Pro and the Realme 6 in our Video compare tool