Realme dare to leap. Realme 8 Pro review: a cheap phone with a decent camera

Realme 8 Pro review: a cheap phone with a decent camera

From its impressive battery life to good point-and-shoot photography, for such an affordable phone, the Realme 8 Pro has a lot to shout about. It may not have the fastest speeds but it certainly is fantastic value for money.

• Fast charging and long-lasting battery
• Comfortable to hold
• Good camera overall
• – Ultrawide photos weren’t very detailed
• – Display lacked a little clarity
• – Fell down in performance

Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

All the best features, news, tips and great deals to help you live a better life through technology

Thank you for signing up to T3. You will receive a verification email shortly.

There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.

By submitting your information you agree to the Terms Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

Realme 8 Pro. key specs

Dimensions: 160.6 x 73.9 x 8.1mm Weight: 176g Screen: 6.4 inches AMOLED CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G GPU: Adreno 618 RAM: 8GB Storage: 128GB Rear cameras: 108MP, 8MP, 2MP, 2MP Front cameras: 16MP Battery: 4,500 mAh OS: Android 11 / realme UI 2.0 5G: No

Let’s get straight to the point of this Realme 8 Pro review: it’s the perfect example of an affordable smartphone that doesn’t make big sacrifices on the camera or battery life.

A relatively new but fast-growing name in smartphone manufacturing, Realme is largely geared towards young people looking for the best cheap handset, their brand pillars ‘Young, Stylish, Real, Outstanding’ are what defines their phones. With a strong FOCUS on photography, the Realme 8 Pro is their first smartphone with a 108MP camera, and at the time of writing is the highest megapixel camera available on a phone. Up from the 64MP on the Realme 7 Pro, it should be able to produce much finer detail.

For such a low price, there has to be a catch. In this Realme 8 Pro review, I’ll explain what that catch could be, as well as where this smartphone excelled.

Realme 8 Pro review: and availability

In the UK, the Realme 8 Pro is available for pre-order now. You will be able to buy it from realme.com or Amazon UK on the 31st March for £279. In Australia, the Realme 8 Pro will be coming soon. As things stand, you can’t buy Realme handsets in the US, but there have been suggestions they might take that leap in 2021.

Realme 8 Pro review: design and display

Coming in two main colourways, Infinite Blue and Infinite Black, the Realme 8 Pro has a simultaneously matte and glossy finish on the back of the phone. Despite having a slightly plastic feel to it, it does look Smart. The quad-camera system is placed in a square notch in the top left corner. On the right-hand side ‘Dare to Leap’ is written vertically in large capitalised lettering, it blends in well to the casing but personally, I would have preferred it without the slogan. I’ll leave you to decide if you like that or not. For those who would rather not have it, they’ve also launched a Punk Black handset that leaves it out.

The Realme 8 Pro has a 6.4inch AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 90.8%, it stretches across almost the whole front of the phone. The 2400×1080 FHD resolution and 1,000 nits brightness give an air of vibrancy to the handset, though I did notice that it lacked the clarity of more expensive devices.

Incredibly lightweight, the Realme 8 Pro only weighs 176g, which alongside the slim 8.1mm thickness and matte finish makes this phone comfortable to hold without the fear of it slipping out of your hand. To unlock the display, you can opt to use the in-display fingerprint sensor, admittedly it was a little slow and often took a couple of attempts to successfully recognise my finger.

In the Realme 8 Pro box, you get a USB-C cable, 65W charging adaptor, a film screen protector, a clear protective case and the quick start guide.

Realme 8 Pro review: camera system

The Realme 8 Pro has a quad-camera system that includes a 108MP main camera with a large Samsung HM2 sensor, an 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens, a 2MP black and white portrait lens as well as a 2MP macro lens. On the front is a 16MP selfie camera, that will be convincing to anyone who wants good quality shots for social media.

You’ll easily get great point-and-shoot photos from the Realme 8 Pro. In most cases, shots looked bright and sharp. Although not quite matching the standard of high-end smartphones, it still manages to hold its own quite well. In natural light, it produced lovely, vivid colours too. However, that was on a bright day. When I tried it out on a dreary day, photos lacked oomph and it struggled to cope with darker areas. I also found the ultra-wide photos lost a lot of detail from the scene, a shame considering the standard of the main camera. Take a look at the gallery below to see some shots taken on the Realme 8 Pro.

As long as you keep a steady hand, the macro mode picks up a fair amount of intricate detail, with fine lines and true-to-life colours. I have seen better macro modes, but rarely on a handset at this price. Despite not being that sharp, it did take nice selfies, aided by the comprehensive beauty mode allowing you to tweak individual settings like face size and skin smoothness.

Other camera modes included are the Starry mode which takes 16 photos every 15s over the space of 4mins, the algorithm then combines them into a final picture. To be honest, there’s rarely going to be a time when you would actually use that, or have the patience to wait 4 minutes but it’s a nice feature to try out once or twice. There’s also a Tilt-Shift mode, giving objects a miniature effect, as well as a Nightscape mode brightening up the image when it’s dark.

You can film video in resolutions up to 1080P at 30fps, there are also a few handy video modes like Ultra Nightscape video, time-lapse, tilt-shift video and starry time-lapse too.

Realme 8 Pro review: performance and battery

Powering the Realme 8 Pro is a mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G chip and an Adreno 618 GPU, with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage with a MicroSD card slot to expand it.

On Geekbench 5, it scored 569 in single-core and 1,691 in multi-core, similar scores to the OnePlus Nord or TCL 10 5G. At the beginning of this Realme 8 Pro review, I mentioned there might be a catch and this is it. Performance is clearly an area the company has saved some cash on. In use, you could feel it was slower than other handsets, there was sometimes a slight delay in opening apps and it was clearly struggling to cope with more demanding games like Call of Duty: Mobile. Unfortunately, you do get what you pay for when it comes to speed. There’s no 5G capability on the Realme 8 Pro and it hasn’t managed to fit in Wi-Fi 6 either, so you won’t get top tier web browsing, likely another area that helps keep the price so low.

Thanks to the 4,500mAh battery, the Realme 8 Pro has a remarkably long-lasting battery life, even in comparison to expensive flagships. Over two hours of video on full brightness, it only dropped by 10 per cent, so would last an impressive 20 hours of video all-in-all. The 50W SuperDart Charge means you can go from empty to 100% in less than an hour, in just 47 minutes to be precise. It does lack extra fancy features like wireless charging or reverse charging, but you can’t expect those at this price anyway.

The Realme 8 Pro uses Realme UI 2.0 which is based on Android 11. Nothing is going to feel as nice to use as pure Android, but it is simple and user friendly. And Google apps are pre-installed which saves a lot of time.

Realme 8 Pro review: verdict and price

For £279, the Realme 8 Pro is jammed packed with impressive specs like the 108MP camera, bright display, large 4,500mAh battery and a decent amount of storage. It was inevitable that the phone would have to fall down in a couple of areas for the price to make sense, and it did. It didn’t quite hit the mark when it came to speed and the clarity of the display. But having said that, for this price I was impressed with almost everything else.

To summarise this Realme 8 Pro review, you’ll be hard pushed to find a better phone with excellent battery life and a decent camera for less than £300. You can get slightly better budget handsets but they are likely to cost you a little more, like the Google Pixel 4a which will set you back around £349. So if you are on a tight budget and willing to sacrifice on a couple of areas, this is a top choice.

Realme 8 Pro review

The Realme 8 Pro is a superb phone for its price, which is to say, it’s surprising that it only costs this much. Compared to its rivals it feels snug in the hand, takes impressive photos, and charges really quickly.

Cons

Why you can trust TechRadar

We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Two-minute review

While Realme isn’t currently a huge name in the West, if it keeps putting out phones like the Realme 8 Pro, we can’t see that remaining the case for much longer – it’s a fantastic affordable phone, and one which Motorola, Nokia and Redmi should take note of.

Launching alongside the Realme 8 in early 2021, and following on from 2020’s Realme 7 series, the 8 Pro is likely to be the top affordable phone from the Chinese brand in 2021.

It would be most accurate to class the Realme 8 Pro as a ‘premium budget phone’ like the Moto G9 Plus or Redmi Note 10 Pro – while it sits just above the cut-off point for our ‘best cheap phones’ list in terms of price, it’s still definitely a low-cost handset.

The Realme 8 Pro doesn’t feel like it belongs at its price tag, however, and if it had launched with a higher price we wouldn’t have batted an eye – it has a super-high resolution main camera and incredibly fast charging, and it looks great too.

Our favorite aspect of the phone is its design – where most low-cost phones are relatively thick, hard to hold in one hand, and clad in cheap-feeling plastic, the Realme 8 Pro is slender, easily-holdable, and has a lovely rear textured effect.

This is also possibly one of the best budget camera phones on the market, thanks in no small part to the main snapper with its whopping 108MP resolution. This takes super-high-res photos that give you plenty of scope for subsequent editing and cropping.

There’s 50W fast charging here too, which powers up the battery in what feels like no time at all, and much quicker than most other budget phones. The battery will also reliably last a day between charges.

These positive points all highlight ways the Realme 8 Pro beats its competition, while it matches some similarly-priced phones in other ways: its processing power and display are all on par with Redmi and Motorola competitors. There are no departments in which this phone is significantly weaker than its competitors.

What gripes we do have with the phone are incredibly minor: there’s no wireless charging or 5G connectivity, and the silicone case which comes with the phone is so tight it’s hard to get on the phone – and in the grand scheme of things, they’re barely problems at all.

So the Realme 8 Pro is the affordable phone we’ll be comparing all other premium budget phones to in 2021. than that, though, it’s a good reason to pay attention to Realme as a phone brand, and it gets us excited for future devices from the brand.

Realme 8 Pro price and availability

The Realme 8 Pro launched in many regions around the world, including the UK, but not the US or Australia. Realme doesn’t sell its phones in the States, so don’t expect to see it there, but an Australia launch is possible.

The phone costs £279, which converts to around 390, AU500, which puts it in what we’d broadly term the ‘premium-budget’ category.

For some context, the Moto G9 Plus, and the 128GB model of the Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC, both cost £250 (around 325 or AU460), and they’re arguably the Realme 8 Pro’s closest competitors.

Design

Though it’s certainly not a compact phone, the Realme 8 Pro feels pretty small compared to its competitors, and that’s a great thing for people who don’t want a giant smartphone. It’s relatively thin and light, and has a smaller body than we’re used to.

This body is clad in plastic, but with a textured layer that both looks and feels better than a ‘standard’ plastic rear. The rear has the words ‘Dare to Leap’ – Realme’s motto – emblazoned across it in rather large capital letters, which some may find garish, while others may not mind.

The phone has a USB-C port and 3.5mm headphone jack, and its volume rocker and power button are both situated on the right edge of the phone. Thanks to its size, and the button locations, the Realme 8 Pro felt easy to use one-handed.

Display

The Realme 8 Pro’s screen is 6.4 inches across, which makes it a touch smaller than many other similar-price phones, and it’s interrupted by a punch-hole cut-out for the front camera at the top left.

The display has a 1080 x 2400 resolution, which is pretty standard for… well, for any smartphone. It’s the same resolution as most games, apps or streaming services you’ll be using, though lower than the resolution of most top flagships.

The refresh rate is 60Hz, which is generally standard for handsets at this price, though some push it up to 120Hz. If you’re bothered about having a high refresh rate, you should shop around.

We found the screen looked quite good, with nice vibrant colors, which is to be expected since it’s an AMOLED display. Now and then auto-brightness was a little off though, causing us to have to manually change how bright the display was.

Surprisingly for a phone of this price, there’s an in-screen fingerprint scanner here, which we found to work well. It was fairly fast to use and barely ever failed to pick up our thumb on our first attempt to unlock.

Cameras

The Realme 8 Pro has a 108MP main camera, and it’s not the first low-cost phone to have such a high-res main camera, with the Redmi Note 10 Pro beating it to the punch. That’s joined by an 8MP ultra-wide, 2MP depth-sensing and 2MP macro camera, with a 20MP front-facer.

‘High-res’ doesn’t always equal ‘good-looking’ when it comes to smartphone cameras, but we were impressed by the photo chops of the Realme 8 Pro. In well-lit environments, pictures looked good, with rich detail and fair contrast. This was the case for vistas and closer subjects too.

Thanks to being so high-res, we could easily download photos from the Realme 8 Pro onto a computer and edit and crop them, without ending up with a low-res or messy-looking snap.

Not everyone will care to take 108MP pictures though. they take up a lot of storage space, and some low-res cameras have bigger sensors, which ‘see’ more light. But in well-lit settings this is great.

The ultra-wide camera also performed quite well, though colors looked noticeably different than on the standard camera. We actually preferred the color profile of ultra-wide snaps, as they were richer and a bit darker, but that’s just preference.

We sound like a broken record on this point, but 2MP auxiliary cameras rarely add anything to smartphones, and that’s the case here too. Macro snaps were so noisy as to be practically unusable.

Thanks to having a high-res main sensor, the Realme 8 Pro is afforded up to 20x digital zoom. as that’s just cropping in on pictures. though we wouldn’t recommend going this far, as pictures get hideously noisy. Pictures up to 5x zoom are fine, though.

We’ve got to commend the front-facing camera, as selfies looked great. they were full of light and color. Portrait mode was surprisingly accurate when it came to adding background blur and tweaking a picture’s settings.

Video recording here goes up to 4K at 30fps or 1080p at 60fps. There’s a novelty camera mode called AI Mixed Portrait, which lets you video a landscape and then yourself, and stitch them together. it’s not exactly a professional-grade mode but it’s fun to play around with.

Realme 8 Pro Review

A good value phone with a strong primary camera and fast charging, but not the strongest all-round Android at under £300.

Cons

Key Specifications

The Realme 8 Pro is an affordable phone with a 108MP camera and fast charging. These three factors sum up the appeal here.

Forget the rest. The price is low, the primary camera is good and the charge speed is excellent. This is very much deserving of its place among the best cheap phones you can buy.

Other factors are much less remarkable. This means phones like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro and Realme X50 5G will be better buys for many. It doesn’t have advanced extras like a high refresh rate screen, a glass back or 5G either.

However, this phone sits in a class of Android where value is king. The aim is to make phones like the iPhone 12 and Samsung Galaxy S21 seem a flat-out bad deal. The Realme 8 Pro does just that, and is a solid choice if you want an Android with a mid-size screen at a reasonable price.

Realme 8 Pro Price and Availability

The Realme 8 Pro was announced in March 2021 and costs £279 (around 380). At this price you might consider the Pixel 4a or Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro instead. Or perhaps Realme’s slightly older, and still great, Realme X50 5G.

This newer phone doesn’t actually have all that much new 2021 tech to separate it from Realme’s last wave of phones. But very fast charging and a relatively new Samsung sensor should lure at least a few of you away from competitors.

Realme 8 Pro Design and Screen – Plastic provocation

The Realme 8 Pro is an attention-grabbing phone that can look alluring in photos, if the giant “dare to leap” slogan on the back doesn’t make you want to bring up your lunch. Its finish glints in the light, and the colour gradient — blue to silvery grey here — is pretty.

However, the Realme 8 Pro isn’t quite as impressive in person. This is an all-plastic phone. The textured glass the back tries to emulate is one of the best finishes seen in phones, but you don’t mistake this homage for anything but plastic when you pick it up.

The Realme 8 Pro’s sides are plastic too, not aluminium. It isn’t as impressive a presence as the Realme X50 5G, one of my personal favourites of the last 12 months, which has a glass back.

However, the Realme 8 Pro is of a good size and weight. Many affordable phones from value-packed brands like Xiaomi/Redmi and Realme use fairly large screens to offer more overt value per pound. But it means many of them are slightly too large for comfort for some. The Realme 8 Pro’s size is a near-perfect balance. Its screen isn’t small but the frame is not too wide either.

Realme uses an in-screen fingerprint scanner in the 8 Pro as part of its attempt to wow us with advanced tech at a low price. This is far from the best I’ve tried. It’s slower than those of mid-range and high-end phones, and does tend to fail to recognise your finger/thumb fairly regularly. It’s a bit like stepping back a couple of years to the early days of in-screen scanners. I’d rather have a more reliable side or rear scanner.

The Realme 8 Pro also lacks stereo speakers, which is a shame when Realme has used them in other budget phones. Sound quality is only fair, lacking the extra mid and bass bulk finally trickling down to some sub-£300 phones.

However, you do get a headphone jack, two SIM slots and space for a microSD card. Most of us probably won’t even need to consider a card as the phone has 128GB storage. The Realme 8 Pro does not have 5G, though, one of the key things to consider. Several phones at a similar price do have it, including the Realme X50 5G.

The Realme 8 Pro has a 6.4-inch OLED screen of 2400 x 1080 pixels. That’s a good size, just slightly smaller than some Oppo and Xiaomi alternatives, and it has high enough pixel density to make everything appear sharp.

High refresh rate is what it lacks. This is a 60Hz screen. I switched from a 90Hz Android, the Oppo Find X3 Neo, before this review. The downgrade was obvious. Your app drawer doesn’t scroll as smoothly, neither do web pages or your feed. However, after 24 hours or so it is not something I kept thinking about.

90Hz and 120Hz refresh rates are nice, but I don’t think they are essential yet, particularly in entry-level phones. The iPhone 12 Pro Max is still at 60Hz, remember.

The Realme 8 Pro also has the classic benefits of OLED: superb contrast and bold colour. That said, I prefer the phone’s less saturated “gentle” mode, as the vivid one doesn’t look that well calibrated. It has that slightly sickly, ultra-saturated appearance that used to be common in older OLED phones.

This is backed up by the Display Tester app I sometimes use when reviewing phones. It does not recognise the Realme 8 Pro’s screen as a wide colour gamut display, suggesting the amped-up modes are just that.

Brightness is the screen’s most notable characteristic. It is one of the cheaper phones I’ve seen that has enough power to deal with very bright days. Realme says it can hit 1000 nits. I measured 530 nits. Not 1000, but still good considering the cost, and this is likely because the peak brightness varies depending on the on-screen content.

Realme 8 Pro Camera – 108MP camera is a winner, the rest is less strong

The Realme 8 Pro’s camera is the key draw. We are meant to be wowed by the 108 megapixel count of the main sensor, and how the quad-camera array looks just like that of a phone three or four times the cost.

Here’s the reality. The Realme 8 Pro has one good rear camera. The rest are fairly poor.

These other three are an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 2MP macro and a 2MP depth sensor. Load the camera app and you might guess the Realme 8 Pro has a zoom, as it has 3x and 5x presets. But it doesn’t.

Let’s start with the weaker parts. The macro, like every 2MP macro I have used, is rubbish. While it lets you FOCUS much closer than the main camera, image quality is bad and close-up photos are barely worth taking.

The 2MP depth camera is handy in that it lets you take background blur photos of any subject, not just people. Its depth maps are quite basic, so parts that shouldn’t be blurred are. However, to give credit to Realme, the way it handles the Portrait mode reduces how obvious these errors are in some shots, by softening blur transitions.

Cheap sensors used to bump a camera up to four rear cameras are the norm in phones like this. That the wide is also quite poor is the only notable disappointment here.

The Realme 8 Pro’s ultra wide camera is an obvious step down in quality from the main sensor. Its photos are relatively soft, lower in contrast, and fine detail ends up looking mushy, particularly in darker parts of the scene. It’s your standard just-OK budget wide-angle camera.

The ultra wide isn’t great either

Much of this is redeemed by the Realme 8 Pro’s primary camera. It takes clean-looking, detailed shots with good dynamic range. Rich colour and punchy contrast means they can compete with those of phones twice the price. And often don’t look that much worse than high-end phone camera pictures.

But things get a lot better with the main camera

I even like the Realme 8 Pro’s 3x zoom images. You might think “of course 3x zoom shots look good, it has a 108MP sensor”. But this is a quad bayer array sensor, which means the actual pixel structure is designed for 12MP images. To get anything approaching 108MP output, you need to reverse engineer it.

And, the real hit, the Realme 8 Pro’s 3x zoom images look far better than a crop of the phone’s 108MP mode. Some real work has been put into the faux zoom here. I wouldn’t be surprised if the phone merges multiple exposures to enhance detail — a technique Google introduced (using OIS, which the 8 Pro doesn’t have) a few years ago.

It may be a digital zoom, but it’s a pretty damn good one, particularly for a budget phone. 5x is a step too far for the Realme 8 Pro, as fine detail looks like it has been painted in brush strokes, but is still worth trying out.

We don’t see quite the same great progress in the Realme 8 Pro’s night images. The phone does have a proper night mode, one that takes a couple of seconds to shoot a bunch of frames to make up the final image. We get a significant improvement to brightness and dynamic range, but not the kind of forensic shadow detail boosting of phones, say, twice the price or more.

Video quality is good, with some caveats. The Realme 8 Pro shoots video at up to 4K resolution 30 frames per second. But this is unstabilised (or virtually unstabilised, as I noticed no smoothing) so you may want to drop down to 1080p. Thankfully you get stabilisation at both 30fps and 60fps when using 1080p capture.

The Realme 8 Pro also has two “ultra stable” modes. One uses the main camera still, and the same field of view as standard stabilisation — suggesting it just uses a different profile that minimises camera movement. The second “max” mode switches to the ultra-wide camera, resulting in a major drop in image quality. Avoid that unless you need powerful stabilisation and a fairly wide field of view.

The Realme 8 Pro’s selfie camera has a 16-megapixel sensor that uses 4-in-1 pixel binning for better low-light clarity. Photos end up at 16MP resolution regardless, but tend to look like they have about four megapixels’ worth of detail.

Selfie image quality is solid within that limit, and the Realme 8 Pro uses a lot of dynamic range enhancement to make sure backgrounds don’t look too washed out.

Performance – Mid-tier performance, pleasant interface

The Realme 8 Pro is a 4G phone, and has one of Qualcomm’s 7-series mid-range processors, the Snapdragon 720G. It’s paired with 8GB RAM, as much as you could ask for, and 128GB storage.

In the past I have said some of these mid-range Snapdragons get you day-to-day performance very similar to top-end processors. The Realme X50 5G was actually one of the first to trade on that appeal.

The Realme 8 Pro isn’t quite at that level. I noticed a drop in responsiveness, switching from the Oppo Find X3 Neo, which has the older Snapdragon 865 Qualcomm flagship processor. Still, general performance is solid. The one thing that may slow you down slightly is the in-screen fingerprint scanner, which does fail to register your finger/thumb more often than most.

Games run well enough too. The Snapdragon 720G is part of Qualcomm’s gaming series of processors, with slightly better graphics performance. Fortnite plays at 30fps, Medium visuals, with occasional noticeable drops in frame rate that may encourage you to play with the game’s dynamic resolution slider a bit.

A Snapdragon 765G phone like the Realme X50 5G will perform slightly better, but this sort of gaming ability seems fine given the Realme 8 Pro’s price.

Realme’s custom Android 11 interface is also one of the more appealing around, as its look and layout are so similar to Google’s Android norm. Icons are round, the app drawer is a simple scroll of icons. Dig into the Realme 8 Pro’s customisation options and you can change the icon shape and size too.

Smart Assistant is the one notable add-on feature. This is a home screen feed of widgets for things like your step count, calendar events and the weather. It’s inoffensive and customisable.

Realme 8 Pro Battery life – Fast charging and good stamina is a great combo

The Realme 8 Pro also has above average battery life, even if its 4500mAh battery capacity doesn’t sound all that special among affordable Chinese phones, where batteries of 5000mAh and above are common.

This phone isn’t a two-day charger for me, but it will be for some of you. And I always have a big chunk of charge left by the end of the day – usually between 30% and 40%.

You can be pretty lazy about how you change the Realme 8 Pro too, as it has 50W fast charging. That is twice the power transfer rate of the Galaxy S21.

It takes you from, for example, 50% charge to 72% in just 10 minutes. Realme calls its charging standard SuperDart, and says it gets you from flat to 50% in 17 minutes.

Realme 8 Pro Conclusion

A good value phone with a strong primary camera and fast charging, but not the strongest all-round Android at its price. The highlight is the 108MP camera and it is certainly among the best camera phones if you’re looking in the budget market.

The Realme 8 Pro misses out on two of the key pieces of tech that have just come to more affordable phones, including 5G and a high screen refresh rate. This is a 60Hz, 4G phone. You can get 5G or 90/120Hz models at a not-too-dissimilar price. If either of those are important to you, then you’re best of looking elsewhere.

You should buy the Realme 8 Pro if…

Eye-catching specs like 108MP cameras should always be approached with caution, but the Realme 8 Pro’s primary camera is genuinely good. It captures great images, for the money, at its 1x view, and even does a decent job of faking a 3x zoom thanks to Realme’s intelligent image processing.

The Realme 8 Pro is slightly smaller than some of the high-value alternatives, but does not sacrifice battery life as a result. This is a good combo, as both the shape and longevity add to the phone’s all-round accessibility.

You shouldn’t buy the Realme 8 Pro if…

The Realme 8 Pro misses out on two of the key pieces of tech that have just come to more affordable phones. These are 5G and a high screen refresh rate. This is a 60Hz, 4G phone. You can get 5G or 90/120Hz models at a not-too-dissimilar price.

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

realme born with Dare to Leap spirit has ranked 2nd in Malaysia and achieved 50million sales

According to Counterpoint’s Q3 2020 smartphone shipment report two weeks ago, young brand realme grew 132% QoQ in Q3 2020, becoming the world’s fastest brand to hit 50million shipments since inception. The youngster-focused and online-centric brand, realme has grown rapidly in South East Asia since it entered the market in Q4 2018. In the SEA region, realme grew by 196% YoY and 47% QoQ, demonstrating clear leadership in key countries including the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam, solidifying its top-5 position in the region. The Counterpoint’s Q3 2020 Quarterly Smartphone Market Monitor has reported that the team in realme Malaysia achieved 50% QoQ growth and ranked as Top 2 Smartphone Brand in Malaysia market compared to other SEA countries.

“realme has been winning tens of millions of fans globally and has become a leading choice smartphone brand for many younger consumers. Inevitably, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused negative effects to the global smartphone industry, such as supply chain disruption, delayed market demand, and reduced consumer confidence. During this period, we expect consumers to shift more towards the mid and budget smartphone segments, opting for value-for-money products. This is the price range where realme has a clear competitive edge with strong product offerings,” commented by Flora Tang, Research Analyst at Counterpoint on realme’s significant growth in Q3.

Flora added that, “According to our observation, realme continued the aggressive product launch plan in 2020 despite the pandemic’s shadow, bringing fresh air to the market with realme 6/6 Pro/6i series, realme X3/X3 SuperZoom, the new narzo series, and various models within the realme C series. These models, with premium features such as multiple cameras, AI-capable chipsets, long battery life, and stylish form factors, have received positive feedback among consumers from various SEA countries including Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and more”.

“According to the recent 2020 e-Conomy report launched by Google, Bain and Temasek, more than 1 in 3 digital service users are new because of the pandemic. And we expect Malaysia’s Internet economy to grow 3X to reach 30B in 2025. Mobile connectivity will serve an important role to our economic trajectory, and I am pleased to see realme Malaysia continuing to be an important enabler in this ecosystem by launching delightful products on their YouTube channel. As recently as September and October, realme phones were one of the top 10 trending Google searches in Malaysia in those months. Thank you realme Malaysia and congratulations on an amazing milestone to be proud of,” said Marc Woo, Managing Director of Google Malaysia.

realme Malaysia caters the demand of online purchase while practising contactless delivery through its e-commerce platforms during the pandemic period. Last week, realme has just recently achieved tremendous sales growth as compared to Double 11 in 2019.

It has been a pleasure to witness how realme has further widened its digital presence in Lazada Malaysia and become one of the fastest-growing LazMall brands this year in the Mobile Tablets category. We look forward to continuing to achieve new milestones together!” said Sherry Tan, Chief Business Officer, Lazada Malaysia.

Regional Managing Director of Shopee, Ian Ho also mentioned that “We are honoured to be realme’s trusted e-commerce partner of choice. From smartphones to wearables, as well as health products and lifestyle offerings, realme’s wide range of products are loved by many Malaysians who shop on Shopee. This makes realme one of the best-selling mobile and gadget brands on the platform. Shopee congratulates realme on this new milestone that they have unlocked, and we look forward to exciting times ahead”.

realme Malaysia would like to thank all the fans for their unconditional support and the team will keep the strong growth momentum by developing more products in various ranges for Malaysians to live a smarter lifestyle.

realme, a young and trendsetting technology company, has just been named by Counterpoint’s Q3 2020 smartphone shipment report to be the fastest growing brand to reach the 50 million smartphone sales milestone surpassed Apple, Samsung and Huawei. Channeling the energy of youths and young professionals, who form the bulk of its fans and customers, realme leapfrogged global competitors to this achievement in merely nine quarters. In addition to this milestone, realme also recorded a history high level of quarterly shipments of 14.8 million and is the world’s fastest-growing brand in Q3 as it grew 132% QoQ for the quarter. gaining momentum and surpassing analysts expectations.

According to Counterpoint, realme’s growth rate in shipments volume represents “the strongest growth momentum among major global OEMs”. realme accelerated to 50M sales because it enjoyed great success with youths and young people all over the world, with this segment of users making up most of its customer base. realme has gained a niche following amongst youths globally, given how diverse this user group is across countries and cultures. “realme grew to become one of the top 5, or even top 3, brands in its key markets, including India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Philippines and some other Southeast Asian countries”, says Research Analyst Abhilash Kumar at Counterpoint. realme may shake up the position of the global top six industries players and become the industry’s biggest dark horse with the fastest growing rate in the world.

Source : Counterpoint Q3 2020 Global Smartphone Shipments Report

Source : Counterpoint Q3 2020 Global Smartphone Shipments Report

realme, whose slogan is ‘Dare to Leap’, adopts a strategy of selling leapfrog performance and trendy design-driven quality products that resonate with its young crowd at affordable and attractive price points. “With its efforts to bring the affordable yet premium-like products to consumers, as well as its ability to offer smooth digital shopping and after-sales services in different countries, realme has emerged as the most resilient brand during and after the pandemic crisis”, Research Analyst Abhilash Kumar commented on realme’s performance. realme’s trendsetting image and product reputation has contributed to building customer trust and brand awareness.

“At realme, we live out our philosophy, which is to dare to leap into the forefront of innovation, design and product value, which is something young people can identify with,’ says Sky Li, realme’s CEO. Though young, realme has won five top international design awards and collaborated with world-class notable designers on its products through the realme Design Studio.

realme has also delivered on technological innovation, being one of the first companies to utilize the Snapdragon 865/765G processor and introducing the 64MP camera on a phone. importantly these innovations have enabled realme to introduce 5G-enabled smartphones to youths and young consumers, increasing its popularity and reputation in Malaysia and internationally.

realme’s international team and DNA has enabled the company to grow quickly. Just like its young clientele, realme has taken risks to expand quickly to over 61 markets globally and is amongst the Top 5 brands in over 13 markets globally in just two years, ranking seventh globally. For young consumers, realme has expanded quickly to offer a variety of AI of Things (AIoT) products such as Smart audio, visual and lifestyle products to complement their increasingly digitally connected lives.

These products have also quickly become popular. In India, realme sold over 1 million Smart individual audio devices, reaching first spot in market share in Q2 2020. So far, realme has released over 50 AIoT products in 2020, with plans to double it in 2021. Through realme, young people can dare to leap into the future, well-equipped to live life to the fullest.

Apart from that, realme Malaysia’s latest product line ‘realme by narzo’ has achieved its first amazing result on Lazada’s 11.11 Biggest One-day Sale. The latest realme narzo 20 with the mission of “Entertainment for You” was ranked as No. 1 Best-selling New Smartphone in Lazada 2020 (1 Jan. 11 Nov 2020) and The Best-selling Smartphone Series in Lazada 2020 (1 Jan. 11 Nov 2020).

The total unit of realme smartphones sold yesterday has also led them to be the Top 4 Best-Selling Smartphone Brand on Lazada 11.11.

realme Malaysia also received tremendous results on Shopee as its sales growth has increased 5053% as compared to the Double 11 sales in 2019.

This 11.11, realme was crowned No 1 for the following categories during Shopee 11.11 Big Sale as of 1 Jan until 11 Nov 2020:

realme, a trendsetting brand is also recognised as the Top 4 Best-selling Health Care Brand with its realme Smart Scale that was launched in October.

The outstanding sales results of realme is a solid proof from Counterpoint Q3’s 2020 smartphone shipment report where realme was named as the fastest growing brand to reach 50 million smartphone sales milestone.

“We are truly grateful for the love and support from realme fans who dare to leap with us and contribute to the remarkable sales achievement of realme in both e-commerce platforms throughout the year. We are proud to announce that realme narzo 20 has achieved two best-seller titles on its first sale during Double 11 with Lazada. It is indeed a good start for realme narzo 20 series and we are committed to strive for the best and serve you better despite the pandemic and a challenging year for all of us,” said Tiffany Teh, Brand Manager of realme Malaysia.

realme also recently recorded a history high level of quarterly shipments of 14.8 million and is the world’s fastest-growing brand in Q3 as it grew 132% QoQ for the quarter. gaining momentum and surpassing analysts expectations.

To find out more about realme’s events and promotions, do follow realme page as well as