Realme GT 7 review

Display

The global GT 7 model has a few downgrades in the display department compared to the Chinese one, but nothing too major. The display is slightly smaller, but still plenty large, with a 6.78-inch diagonal. It has a 120Hz refresh rate, instead of 144Hz like the Chinese variant, and it advertises 6,000 nits of peak brightness, instead of 6,500 nits. Both are obviously very impressive figures, though.

The screen also features 2600Hz peak touch response rate as well as 2160Hz high-frequency PWM dimming.

We ran our standardized display tests and measured 578 nits of maximum brightness on the slider. Beyond that, the phone also has an "extra brightness" toggle that extends the slider further and results in around a max of 953 nits according to our measurements.

Finally, in bright light, the GT 7 can auto boost its brightness to around 1,451 nits. That's plenty for the phone to be perfectly legible and comfortable to use outdoors.

The display on the GT 7 certainly has enough brightness to pull off some excellent HDR video performance. Thankfully, the phone is certified for both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. The hardware decoder can handle HDR10, HDR10+, HLG and Dolby Vision. The phone also has the highest possible Google Widevine L1 DRM certification.

The refresh rate situation is interesting. The phone reports that it supports 60Hz, 90Hz and 120Hz modes. However, while using the phone, its refresh rate frequently drops to 30Hz and even down to 1Hz. That leads us to believe that the GT 7 actually has LTPO tech. There are three refresh rate modes to choose from. You get a locked 60Hz mode and two different high refresh rate modes that behave quite similarly in practice.

Naturally, we tried high refresh rate gaming as well. Unfortunately, we didn't have much luck with any of our usual game titles. Realme has its own list of titles whitelisted for 120fps framerate gaming, and it includes PUBG, BGMI, MLBB, Block Blast, Subway Surfers, Clash of Clans, Call of Duty: Mobile, Hunter Assassin, Brawl Stars, Blood Strike FPS for all, League of Legends, Wild Rift, Clash Royale, Worms Zone, Standoff 2, Chess Play and Learn, SCHOOLBOY RUNWAY STEALTH, Gossip Harbor Merge & Story, Honor of King.

Battery life

The Realme GT 7 has a large 7,000 mAh Si/C battery on board. It is not quite as big as the 7,200 mAh unit in the Chinese version, but it is large nonetheless.

We ran our standard set of endurance tests and can say with confidence that the GT 7 has excellent battery life. It did particularly well in the online video streaming test and managed a total Active Use Score of 21:06 hours.

Charging speed

The Realme GT 7 comes with a 120W SuperVOOC charger in the box. Realme says that users can expect to charge the extra-large 7,000 mAh battery inside the phone from 0 to 50% in just 14 minutes, while a full charge should take 40 minutes.

We did our own charging testing, and we managed to get from 0% to 56% in just 15 minutes on the charger. A 30-minute charging session resulted in a 91% charge, and a full top-off took exactly 36 minutes.

As already mentioned, both the charger and the accompanying USB Type-A to Type-C cable are proprietary, so you need to keep track of both.

In case you prefer to prioritize battery longevity over fast charging speeds, you can disable Rapid charging altogether. Alternatively, via the so-called Smart charging toggle you can have the phone pick up your usage habits and only charge the remaining 20% to full shortly before you will need it. And finally, you can set the battery to always charge only up to 80% of its capacity, which might come in handy if you often keep your phone fully charged and hooked to a charger for longer periods of time.

Another feature offered here is near-zero heat generation bypass charging, which allows the phone to get just enough power to keep running without using the battery charge. This is useful when you want to avoid the heat generated from charging the battery in high heat-generating scenarios such as gaming or use in high-brightness mode out in the sun.

Speakers - loudness and quality

The GT 7 has a hybrid stereo speaker setup with one speaker on the bottom and another one up top. That second one has a slit above the display for earpiece duty, but also an opening on the top portion of the frame, so it can output sound in more directions.

The top speaker gets the left channel track in portrait orientation, and the phone will assign the tracks depending on how it's positioned in space in landscape mode. Either way, both speakers will play back both channels' audio, only the 'opposite' channel's level will be lower.

The GT 7 earned a 'Very Good' rating for loudness in our test, same as the GT 7 Pro, GT5 Pro and the Xiaomi 14T Pro. Mids are clear, and so are highs, with very little distortion.

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.

Connectivity

The Realme GT 7 is a dual Nano-SIM device with simultaneous SA/NSA Sub-6 5G connectivity on both cards. There is eSIM support as well. In case you were wondering, the SIM slot is not a hybrid one, so there is no microSD card support.

The phone supports GPS (dual-band L1+L5), GALILEO, GLONASS, BDS and QZSS for location. Local connectivity is covered by Wi-Fi 7, but only dual-band. There is no support for 6 GHz Wi-Fi.

Bluetooth is version 5.3, and there is 360-degree NFC on board. No 3.5mm audio jack or FM radio is present, but the addition of an IR blaster is a nice touch.

The Type-C port on the GT 7 is backed up by a simple USB 2.0 data connection, which means a theoretical transfer rate limit of 480 Mbps. There is Host/OTG support, but nothing fancier like video output.

In terms of sensors, the GT 7 has a bosch bmi2xy accelerometer and gyroscope combo, an akm09919 magnetometer and compass combo, an OPLUS Fusion Light Sensor and an ams tcs3720 hardware proximity sensor. There is no barometer.