Realme GT Master review

2+1 camera on the back and high-res selfies

The Realme GT Master is equipped with a triple camera setup on its back, of the 2+1 variety. There's a 64MP primary camera, joined by an 8MP ultrawide, and the +1 is the 2MP macro. Meanwhile, on the front, you're getting a 32MP unit for selfies.

The various hardware info apps we use don't specify the make and model of the sensors used in the GT Master. Realme's specs list a 1/2" sensor for the main camera, and that points in the direction of the Samsung Tetrapixel unit with 0.7µm pixel size. That's similar in principle too, but smaller than the 1/1.7" 64MP sensor used in the GT 5G.

The lens on this one has a 25mm equivalent focal length and an f/1.8 aperture, and is missing optical image stabilization.

The ultrawide camera is based on an 8MP sensor paired with a 16mm equivalent lens with an f/2.3 aperture. There's no autofocus on this one.

The 2MP macro camera has an f/2.4 aperture lens and a fixed focus distance of 4cm.

The front-facing camera uses a 32MP Sony sensor (this one is explicitly listed in the specs) with a 24-ish millimeter lens with an f/2.5 aperture. This one is fixed-focus, too.

The camera app of the GT Master is very similar to other iterations we've seen on previous Realmes, with a few minor touches here or there. The overall layout is fairly simple, with menus hidden from view. A lot of the main modes are on the main rolodex, which is good, but there's a host of extra ones in the More tab.

The Street mode is a key addition and one that Realme is trying to force on users since it's the mode the camera app opens to if you have the volume button shortcut enabled. In Street mode, you get millimeter markings for the zoom level as opposed to the usual 'x' designation, a RAW toggle and a shortcut to enable manual focus.

The settings menu is quite straightforward. Getting to it, however, has its peculiarities. If you're in Photo mode, you tap on the cog wheel at the far end of the viewfinder, simple enough. However, if you're in video mode, you need to pull on the tab in the middle of the top edge of the viewfinder to expose a 'settings' button. That tab itself is somewhat unintuitive UI element, but it does only hold secondary stuff like a self-timer and aspect selector, which you may never need in the first place.

Another oddity is related to Expert mode. Switching between cameras in Expert mode is handled in a truly bizarre way. You get the familiar 1x-2x-5x selector, but that doesn't operate the actual cameras - it's a digital zoom from whichever camera you've picked from the tree selector on the opposite end of the viewfinder.

Indeed, the trees switch cameras, and once you select a module from there, no focusing distance considerations will auto-switch it - that's good. That's how Realme's been doing this, and that's how it's going to do it, apparently.

In Expert mode, you get to tweak exposure (ISO in the 100-6400 range) and shutter speed in the 1/8000s-32s range, 2s for the ultrawide), white balance (by light temperature, but no presets), manual focus (in arbitrary 0 to 1 units with 0 being close focus and 1 being infinity) and exposure compensation (-2EV to +2EV in 1/6EV increments).

Camera UI

Daylight image quality

Images out of the GT Master's main camera in the default 16MP mode are very good, though they probably won't please purists. They are very... expressive - saturation is dialed up pretty high, and so is contrast, so if you're into more neutral photos, you might raise an eyebrow looking at these.

Detail is excellent, a noticeable step up from the 12MP of the bulk of phones in circulation. It's also rendered with fairly restrained sharpening, so the more conservative folk have something to like here as well. There's more noise than usual - it is a fine grain, admittedly, but more than what we're used to seeing lately.

Daylight samples, main camera (1x)

Enabling the AI scene enhancement will get you a further increase in saturation. Basically, regardless of the specific scene mode the phone chooses, you can expect deeper blues in the skies, lusher greens and fiery reds. That's a bit much even for us here.

Daylight samples, main camera (1x), AI scene enhancement on

The full-res 64MP mode can extract more detail from a scene, but it has two distinctly different processing approaches, and only one of them delivers results worth having. Some scenes get one, others get the other, and sometimes consecutive shots of the same scene are rendered differently. Compare these two shots of the snail, captured mere moments away.

Daylight samples, main camera (1x), 64MP: Detailed • Soft and oversharpened

It's worth pointing out that global properties like color and dynamic range appear unaffected by the pixel-level rendition. Mind you, this behavior is not dependent on enabling the AI toggle (it was off for both these shots). There's no HDR toggle in 64MP mode either, for that to be the culprit.

Consequently, if the scene gets the good treatment, you'd get some extra detail (to do whatever it is that you want to do with more than 16MP). Otherwise, the image will have that heavily processed upscaled-from-16MP-and-then-sharpened look.

Daylight samples, main camera (1x), 64MP: Good • Good • Good • Bad

The GT Master may not have a zoom camera, but since the zoom selector has the presets for 2x and 5x zooming, we went ahead and snapped a few shots at those magnifications as well.

At 2x, we got very decent images of most scenes we tried, certainly detailed enough for the class to make a dedicated 2x camera redundant.

Daylight samples, main camera (2x)

At 5x zoom, you're better off just looking at the images at fit to screen magnification, for which they're generally good enough, though noise is readily apparent even then. 1:1 examination is best avoided. At both 2x and 5x, we had the occasional missed focus, so it's worth double-checking on site.

Daylight samples, main camera (5x)

The modest 8MP ultrawide doesn't impress - dynamic range is fairly limited, and the 8MP resolution doesn't capture that much intricate detail. Sharpness is good, though, the distortion correction works great, and colors are likeable.

Daylight samples, ultra wide camera (0.6x)

Low-light image quality

Low-light photos from the GT Master in regular Photo mode from the main camera are relatively soft and noisy. Dynamic range is limited too, though colors don't suffer from much loss of saturation.

Low-light samples, main camera

Night mode makes a dramatic difference and results in superior images. Tonal extremes get much better development, meaning fewer clipped highlights, as well as brightened-up shadows and lower mid-tones. Detail is improved throughout, as well.

A peculiar flaw we observed with the Night mode images in this one particular scene (the fifth sample below) are the blobs of extra brightness around moving cars. We didn't encounter it in other scenes, but it wasn't a one-off in this scene either - all samples we have from it exhibit it to some extent.

Low-light samples, main camera, Night mode

As a side note, if you have the AI scene enhancement enabled in Photo mode, the phone will engage a version of Night mode, but with some scene-specific touches, it deems appropriate, which may or may not result in a similar image to the one you'd get from the Night-Night mode.

Low-light samples, main camera, AI scene enhancement On

The ultrawide camera, rather predictably, fares poorly in low-light situations. You'd be getting dark, underexposed shots in Photo mode, yet ones with blown highlights as the dynamic range is pretty narrow. The photos aren't very sharp either.

Low-light samples, ultra wide camera

Again, Night mode brings significant advantages. Exposure and dynamic range are vastly improved, and the images also have superior sharpness and detail. Overall, another win for Night mode.

Low-light samples, ultra wide camera, Night mode

Once you're done with the real-world samples, head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the Realme GT Master stacks up against the competition.

Realme GT Master against the Poco X3 GT and the OnePlus Nord 2 5G in our Photo compare tool

Portrait mode

Portrait mode on the GT Master generally delivers good results. Subject detection is fairly competent unless you torture-test the phone - the lantern in the 4th shot is neither sharp nor blurry, and the usually confusing wood paneling on our walls confused the Realme.

In simpler situations, we had no issues with subject isolation - no clipped ears or messy clothes outlines. Colors are spot on and the dynamic range is excellent.

Portrait mode samples

Macro

The 2MP 'macro' camera of the Realme GT Master is only marginally better than having none at all. 2MP isn't a lot of detail, dynamic range is narrow, colors are muted, and the fixed focal length is limiting.

Close-up samples

Selfies

The 32MP selfies out of the Realme GT Master are overkill in terms of the sheer number of pixels. We reckon they could have come up with a downsampling algorithm to output 12MP images, at least as an option somewhere in the interface, and kept the 32MP number for promo materials only.

Anyway, selfies have excellent detail, a wide dynamic range, and pleasing colors.

Selfie samples

Portrait selfies retain all that's good about the regular shots, including the HDR treatment, so backlit portraits are great. Subject detection has its flaws, but if you keep a neat hairstyle, you'll do better than us in these samples.

Selfie samples, Portrait mode

Video recording

The GT Master records video up to 4K30 with its main camera and 1080p30 with the ultrawide. You can choose between the default h.264 and the h.265 codecs. Stabilization is available in all modes and can't be switched off.

4K videos from the main camera (50Mbps bit rate) are low on detail for the nominal resolution but also excessively oversharpened - we'd say the GT Master is one of the worst offenders in this respect that we've seen. The colors are on point, and there's a good contrast, but the dynamic range is limited.

The ultrawide camera's 1080p footage (14Mbps bit rate) is about as basic as it sounds - you'll get a video with a wide field of view, but it won't be special. The ultrawide exposes brighter than the main camera, and its colors are a bit off, but the detail is good for a 1080p clip.

Electronic stabilization does an okay job on the main camera at 4K, but it's not too adept at removing walking induced shake - such videos will remain wobbly. It is good for simply pointing in one direction, and pans are trouble-free too.

Stabilization is similarly good on the ultrawide if you stand in one place, but walking shake makes for annoying wibbly-wobbly areas of the frame.

There are two Ultra Steady modes on the GT Master - a regular one uses the main camera and records in 1080p60 and Ultra Steady Max that shoots in 1080p30 on the ultrawide. The regular mode does help with the walking shake on the main camera, but it does limit you to 1080p, while the Max mode doesn't do anything for the jelloing on the ultrawide.

Here's a glimpse of how the Realme GT Master compares to rivals in our Video compare tool. Head over there for the complete picture.

Realme GT Master against the Poco X3 GT and the OnePlus Nord 2 5G in our Video compare tool