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Realme 7 5G review: 5G and 120Hz for less than 300 euros

Realme 7 5G test header
Picture: TechnikNews
(Post picture: © 2021 TechnikNews)

5G has been reserved for more expensive smartphones in recent months, but that seems to have gradually changed. More and more devices, such as the Realme 7 5G, offer 300G for less than 5 euros.

Otherwise, the Realme 7 5G can convince across the board on the data sheet. Among other things, the customer is offered a smooth refresh rate of 120 Hertz and a huge 5.000 mAh battery. You can find out in the following lines whether the smartphone was also convincing in everyday life.

Haptics, design & processing

With dimensions of 162,2 x 75,1 x 9,1 mm, the Realme 7 5G is one of the larger smartphones and is therefore very difficult to operate with one hand. Nevertheless, the smartphone is quite comfortable in the hand due to the rounded edges on the back. The weight of 195 grams, on the other hand, is completely okay.

If we take a closer look at the back of the smartphone, the dark blue color is immediately noticeable, which always looks a little different depending on the incidence of light. It is matt and therefore fingerprints hardly leave any traces. Unfortunately, the back is made of plastic, which doesn't feel particularly high-quality. For the price offered, I don't want to complain too much about that, because almost all competitors in this price range from 200 to 300 euros only have a plastic back. At the top left of the Realme 7 5G, there is space for the four cameras, together with an LED, in a rather conspicuous camera hill. If we turn the device to the side, the matt plastic frame is used, which has a slight color gradient from light to dark blue. A huge display dominates the front, which is only interrupted by a small punch hole in the upper left corner. The edges around the panel are pleasantly thin.

There is no reason to criticize the workmanship. The smartphone is superbly made, the buttons are bomb-proof in the case, but the pressure point could be a little better.

Display - nice and smooth

The Realme 7 5G has a 6,5-inch LC display with a pleasantly sharp resolution of 2.400 x 1.080 pixels. As a special feature, the panel supports a fluid refresh rate of 120 Hertz, which makes scrolling and animations look extremely fluid.

Realme 7 5G display

The large display is only interrupted by a small punch hole. (Image: TechnikNews)

Otherwise, the panel is only average. The color rendering is good, even if this is similarly expensive Little X3 and above all that Live Y70 are visibly better. The black value can be improved even for an IPS display and the white value looks slightly reddish. In direct sunlight, it also becomes difficult to read, even if I do this Proproblem with many other smartphones in this price range. Finally, I would like to mention the viewing angle stability, which is okay, although the colors change visibly at extreme viewing angles.

In conclusion, it can be said that the panel in the Realme 7 5G is okay for less than 300 euros, the competition from Xiaomi and Living but is one step further.

Software - Realme UI

The software uses the in-house user interface Realme UI, based on Android 10. The software is very similar to Oppo's ColorOS and is relatively colorful, but resembles stock Android in some respects. An app drawer, a very good night mode and excellent gesture control are available on request. Furthermore, Realme integrates the popular Google Discover feed on the left side of the home screen. Bloatware is down to Facebook and a few other apps that are out there procan be uninstalled without problems, hardly available.

As additional functions, the user can, for example, configure the icons of the apps, change the navigation and there are screen-off gestures (gestures for the switched-off display). Furthermore, the device can be woken up by tapping twice on the switched-off display and switched off again by tapping twice on a free space. How do I find a very useful and practical feature that I used very often in everyday life.

Performance - very fast and fluid

Under the hood is the 5G-capable Dimensity 800U from MediaTek, which does not have to hide from the Snapdragon 765G, at least on paper. To the side are 6 GB RAM and 128 GB flash memory, which can be expanded with a micro SD card.

The everyday performance is at an extremely high level. Apps start and close very quickly, you won't find any major stuttering or delays here, and overall the Realme 7 5G runs very smoothly and consistently. Only with the Snapchat app there were occasional stutters, but to be honest, I also have that with more expensive models. And the fact that you can get 300G for well under 5 euros is really great.

Battery - very difficult to get empty

Inside is a 5.000 mAh battery that simply cannot be empty in a day. It can be charged in about an hour using the 30 watt power supply supplied. This is a very good value for the middle class.

In my everyday use I always came proproblem-free for a day and even 1,5 to 2 days were not Proproblem At the end of the day, with a screen-on time of around 5-6 hours, I still had 50 left Procent battery left. But that always depends on how you use the smartphone. If the device is mainly used in WLAN, it lasts noticeably longer than in 4G or 5G operation.

Camera - solid, but with room for improvement

The camera hill of the Realme smartphone is positioned at the top left on the back. It contains a total of four sensors, including a 48 megapixel main camera, an 8 megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera and two more sensors with 2 megapixels each, which are responsible for macro shots or black and white effects. The front camera has a resolution of 16 megapixels.

Realme 7 5G camera

The Realme 7 5G's quad camera. (Image: TechnikNews)

The main camera records with 12 megapixels as standard in order to shoot the best picture. There is also an option to take photos with the full 48 megapixels, but I would advise anyone against it, as the images start to rustle faster.

Color representation and contrast values ​​are good and the dynamic range is okay, but could be a little better here and there. In terms of sharpness, I would have expected a little more, and I noticed that the software sometimes sharpened much too much. As soon as the lighting conditions become more difficult, the image quality of the Realme 7 5G also suffers. Although the night mode brings visible improvements, the recordings are still far too blurry and there is extremely noisy, especially at the edge areas. For 279 euros I would have expected a little more, because the cheaper Poco X3 NFC delivers similar, sometimes even slightly better results.

If you want to capture a little more with your camera, you should switch to the ultra-wide-angle camera. This takes beautiful pictures in daylight with good color rendering, decent sharpness and a solid dynamic range. For the price, that's good, even if the Poco X3 mentioned above is slightly better here.

Unfortunately, I have to disappoint anyone who hoped that the macro camera would be convincing. She takes blurry and far too pale photos. It is better to use the main camera here and then zoom into the picture. The front camera takes good pictures, but faces often look much too soft.

Test photos of the Realme 7 5G

Let's take a look at a few more test photos. The following images are unprocessed, but compressed without loss in order to keep the loading times and memory consumption of the website low.

Comparison with the Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC

Let's compare the camera in different situations with the Poco X3 NFC, which is offered a little cheaper.

The quality of both smartphones is on a similar level, but I think the Poco has a slight advantage in poor lighting conditions. The same goes for the ultra-wide-angle camera, which takes slightly sharper images with a better dynamic range.

Other - extremely fast fingerprint sensor

Last but not least, let's take a look at the vibration motor, speaker and fingerprint sensor. The latter is located on the side of the smartphone and unlocks the device extremely quickly and reliably. I haven't had such a good fingerprint sensor for a long time, big praise Realme.

I found the speaker to be rather average. Although it is loud enough, it sounds rather tinny. The manufacturer would have liked to have built in stereo speakers here. The built-in vibration motor couldn't really convince me in my test either.

Conclusion

The Realme 7 5G offers a good overall package for 279 euros, starting with the smooth refresh rate of 120 Hertz, the performance and the excellent battery life. Not to be forgotten is the real highlight of the smartphone, namely the 5G capability for such a low price. Unfortunately, there are also a few weaknesses, such as the display and the camera, which are by no means bad, but simply cannot quite keep up with the competition.

I can therefore recommend the Realme 7 5G especially to those who are looking for a smartphone with excellent battery life and future-proof performance with 300G for less than 5 euros. However, if you value an OLED panel more, you should reach for the Vivo Y70 or Galaxy A71. However, if the camera in a smartphone is very important to you, you should rather go to the Xiaomi MiNote 10 Lite grab or for a Pixel 4a take a little more money in hand.

Buy Realme 7 5G

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Fabian Menzel

Fabian has been part of since mid-September 2020 TechnikNews and regularly supplies the site with various news, but also with some test reports on smartphones. He's having so much fun and is extremely grateful to have such a great team by his side. In his free time, he enjoys listening to music and occasionally taking photos with his Huawei Mate 50 Pro.

Fabian has already written 300 articles and left 24 comments.

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