It’s surprised that the Realme 8 Pro costs this much because it’s an excellent phone for the price. It shoots amazing pictures, charges really fast, and feels comfortable in the hand compared to its competitors.
Realme 8 Pro Design
For those who do not desire a large smartphone, the Realme 8 Pro feels relatively modest in comparison to its rivals, even if it is by no means a compact phone. It has a smaller body than we are accustomed to, and it is comparatively light and thin.
Unlike a “normal” plastic back, this body has a textured layer that improves both appearance and feel. Realme’s motto, “Dare to Leap,” is displayed across the back in quite huge capital letters. While some may find this gaudy, others may not mind.
The phone’s power button and volume rocker are located on the right edge, and it features a 3.5mm headphone jack and USB-C port. The Realme 8 Pro felt simple to use with one hand because of its size and button placements.
Realme 8 Pro Display
The Realme 8 Pro’s screen measures 6.4 inches wide, making it slightly smaller than many phones of a similar price. At the top left of the screen is a punch-hole cutout for the front camera.
With a resolution of 1080 x 2400, the display is rather typical for—well, any smartphone. Although it is lower than the resolution of the majority of top flagships, it has the same resolution as the majority of games, apps, and streaming services you will use.
Although some push it up to 120Hz, the refresh rate of 60Hz is often conventional for phones at this budget. You should compare prices if having a high refresh rate bothers you.
As can be expected from an AMOLED display, we thought the screen looked really decent, with rich, vibrant colors. However, occasionally the auto-brightness was a bit off, so we had to manually adjust the display’s brightness.
We found the in-screen fingerprint scanner to be surprisingly effective for a phone of this price. It was easy to use and almost always picked up our thumb when we tried to unlock it for the first time.
Realme 8 Pro Cameras
With a 108MP primary camera, the Realme 8 Pro is not the first low-cost phone with such a high-resolution primary camera; the Redmi Note 10 Pro outperforms it. A 20MP front-facing camera, an 8MP ultra-wide, a 2MP depth-sensing, and a 2MP macro camera join that.
When it comes to smartphone cameras, “high-resolution” does not necessarily translate into “good-looking,” but the Realme 8 Pro’s photographic capabilities impressed us. Images displayed nicely in well-lit areas, with fair contrast and rich detail. This also applied to closer subjects and views.
Because they were so high-resolution, we could quickly transfer pictures from the Realme 8 Pro to a computer, edit, and trim them without getting a grainy or low-resolution image.
Some low-resolution cameras have larger sensors that can “see” more light, but not everyone will want to shoot 108MP photos because they take up a lot of storage space. However, this is excellent in well-lit environments.
While colors appeared notably different than on the normal camera, the ultra-wide camera also did fairly well. Since ultra-wide snaps had a deeper and slightly darker color profile, we actually liked it better, but that’s just our taste.
We may sound like a beaten record, but smartphones rarely benefit from 2MP auxiliary cameras, and this is also true in this instance. The noise level of macro photos was so high that they were nearly useless.
Although we wouldn’t advise going this far because images become unbelievably noisy, the Realme 8 Pro’s high-resolution primary sensor allows for up to 20x digital zoom, which is essentially pinching in on images. However, images with a 5x zoom are OK.
The front-facing camera deserves praise because the selfies were vibrant and full of light. When it comes to adjusting a picture’s settings and applying background blur, portrait mode was surprisingly accurate.
This video captures at up to 1080p at 60 frames per second or 4K at 30 frames per second. AI Mixed Portrait is a novelty camera mode that allows you to record a landscape and then oneself, then sew the two together. It’s not quite a professional-grade mode, but it’s entertaining to experiment with.
Specs and performance
Although the Realme 8 Pro isn’t exactly a computational powerhouse—it features the mid-range Snapdragon 720G CPU and 8GB of RAM—we never noticed any slowness.
The Realme 8 Pro achieved a respectable mid-range multi-core score of 1679 on the Geekbench 5 benchmark test. That is just a bit less than the 1690 of the Moto G9 Plus and more than the 1600 of the Google Pixel 5.
If you’re switching from a super-premium flagship to the Realme 8 Pro, you’ll find it great. We didn’t have any problems with the phone for gaming because, although it didn’t always default to the highest graphical settings in games, it was always snappy while in games and rarely lagged or stuttered. The same is true when navigating the phone, whether that’s opening and closing apps or scrolling through social media.
Realme 8 Pro Software
The Realme UI overlay runs on Android 11 and is strikingly similar to Oppo’s ColorOS on the Realme 8 Pro. This “coincidence” may be explained by the fact that Realme and Oppo are siblings.
The primary distinction from “stock” Android is the color scheme; in Realme UI, the default program icons and wallpapers are extremely vibrant. While we found this appealing, some users might not, and fortunately, you can alter it. A wide range of customization choices are available, including the fingerprint scanner icon and app icon shapes.
When we initially turned on the phone, we saw that the home screen was a little disorganized, with programs like “File Manager,” “Game Space,” and “Phone Manager” taking up space. However, there aren’t any third-party programs installed by default, and it’s easy to place these extra apps in their own small folder, which we immediately ignored.
Realme 8 Pro Battery life
With its 4,500mAh battery, the Realme 8 Pro effortlessly lasted us a day, even when we were playing a lot of games or going on a quick picture session. However, unless your use is extremely limited, a second day of use appears unlikely.
At 50W, charging is quick, and we were able to fully charge the phone in less than an hour. For a phone at this price range, wireless charging is not available, but that’s to be expected.
Fast charging for low-cost phones is something Realme excels at, so 50W is not shocking, but it is still appreciated. However, it’s important to note that the Realme 7 Pro reached 65W.