Realme X7 Pro Review: Most Feature-Packed 5G-Ready Smartphone In Sub 30K

 

Realme X7 Pro Design- Same Old Chassis With Some New Touches

Realme does a lot of tweaking to its phones' looks without changing the overall design. The same has been done with the X7-series. While the base design is almost identical to the Realme 7-series, the X7 Pro and the X7 bring new colors and gradient finishes along with some bold branding that might not please everyone out there. If you prefer subtlety, just go with the Mystic Black color variant of the X7 Pro. The 'Fantasy' color variant with the brand's slogan 'Dare To Leap' is too loud for my taste; however, it's a personal opinion and you must check out both the color options before making a final purchase.

Realme X7 Pro Ergonomics- Sleek And Handy

The X7 Pro is a big phone but thanks to its sleek and light chassis, and curved back panel, you can comfortably use the phone with one hand. It weighs 184 grams and has a thickness of 8.5mm. The sleek and lightweight body is the result of a modest 4000mAh battery cell which is supported by crazy-fast 65W fast-charging. It is disappointing to find out that the X7 Pro lacks the two most basic features- the 3.5mm headphone jack and the microSD card slot.

The X7 Pro is a fingerprint magnet, especially the black color variant under testing. The glass back picks up smudges as soon as you start using the device. The phone's polycarbonate frame feels sturdy and the physical buttons offer good tactile feedback. The front of the device flaunts a Corning Gorilla Glass 5 layer.

6.5-inch 2400x1080 FHD+ 120Hz Super AMOLED Display

The X7 Pro flaunts one of the best displays in its respective price bracket. It's a big 6.5-inch FHD+ AMOLED panel with excellent brightness levels, good contrast, and vivid color reproduction. The HDR support makes it a great overall screen for video playback and gameplay. And thanks to the best-in-class 120Hz refresh rate, the display is also extremely fluid and responsive. The phone can sense the app you are running and switches the refresh rate to 60Hz when required to preserve the battery.

Good Viewing Angles And Excellent Brightness Levels

The E3 AMOLED panel on the X7 Pro gets fairly bright to offer a comfortable user-experience even under bright sunlight. The brightness levels are adequate to read text, browse web pages, and useful information even if you are using the handset under direct sunlight. With 4096-level brightness adjustment points, the display offers 800nits brightness under sunlight and has a native peak brightness of an impressive 1200nits.

The display also houses a new (6th gen.) in-screen biometric scanner. It is fast and accurate than the previous Realme smartphones. Overall, Realme has offered one of the best displays on the X7 Pro for the phone's price. It's big, bright, fluid, and vivid.

64MP Quad-Lens Rear Camera Configuration

The camera performance on the X7 Pro is a mixed bag. The performance is more or less similar to the Realme 7 Pro, which also has the 64MP quad-lens camera but with a Sony IMX682 sensor. The IMX682 is now swapped with the IMX686 sensor, which when combined with the MTK Dimensity 1000+ SoC enables 4k 60fps video recording support. However, it is only the 64MP primary camera that can record 4k 60fps videos.

As far as the remaining camera configuration is concerned, it's the same old 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens (FOV 119°, f/2.25, 5P lens), 2MP macro lens (4cm focus, f/2.4), and a 2MP B&W Portrait Camera with narrow f/2.4 aperture.

Camera Performance- Fast And Accurate Autofocus

The new 64MP sensor has a very fast and accurate sensor. The camera locks the face instantly while taking pictures, even portraits, and while recording videos. It keeps the focus locked even when you are moving the phone or the subject is moving swiftly. The 64MP shots look crisp and have a wide dynamic range. Colors look natural and can be vivid by simply switching on the AI Scene Enhancement mode.

The 16MP pixel-binned daylight shots also look pretty good. The HDR works well in handling different exposures and mostly gives good results. The 4k 60fps videos are very clean and full of details. The selfie camera clicks good images. Selfies show lots of resolved details and natural skin tones, provided that you haven't enabled filters and skin smoothening features.

Average Wide-Angle And Macro Camera Performance

The Realme X7 Pro's camera fails to improve on the wide-angle and macro camera performance. The 8MP wide-angle images show high distortion at corners and also lack details and a wide dynamic range. The images look even worse in low-light. You can set the aspect ratio to the full-screen while clicking wide-angle shots to reduce some distortion around the corners. Similarly, the macro sensor isn't going to blow your mind. Images lack both details and dynamic range. You should capture macro shots in daylight to get some good results.

Low-Light Camera Performance

The Realme X7 Pro captures decent low-light shots if there's some amount of light in the frame. Similar to daylight results, the low-light shots also have a wide dynamic range and good details. The camera struggles in minimal lighting. Pictures come out soft and lack details. The darker areas show heavy unwanted noise. Enabling Nightscape mode helps to some extent but the overall results could have been better.

Hardware Performance- Excellent Day-To-Day Performer

The Realme X7 Pro delivers flagship-grade performance, thanks to MediaTek's latest flagship CPU- Dimesnsity 1000+ which is no slouch and makes for an excellent day-to-day performer. The smartphone smoothly sails throughout the day with light and heavy tasks. It doesn't heat up to a point where it becomes difficult to continue using the handset for extended video playback or long gaming sessions.

The 7nm chipset is paired with 8GB LPDDR4x four-channel RAM and 128GB UFS 2.1 storage. The X7 Pro lacks microSD card expansion so you have to manage only with the available built-in storage. The Mali-G77 MP9 GPU renders graphics on the AMOLED panel and it does a great job. Even the most demanding games ran smoothly on the X7 Pro with no frame drops or lags.

The video playback and gaming experience are further enhanced by stereo speakers which support Dolby Atmos and produce a loud and clear sound. You can enjoy movies, series, and gameplay even if you don't have earphones handy. Moving on, the Realme X7 Pro also has a very effective tactile engine. The phone offers precise and subtle haptic feedback, which is very crucial for a good user-experience.

The smartphone runs on Realme UI 1.0 (based on Android 10). It is smooth and feature-rich but it would have better to see the device running the latest Android 11 version.

4,500mAh Battery And 65W Fast-Charging Support

I think the 4500mAh battery and 65W fast-charging is the sweetest spot. The battery can get you through a day and can be recharged from 15% to 100% in less than 30-minutes. It's a better bargain than a 6000mAh battery and a 15 or 25W fast-charging support, something Samsung offers with its Galaxy series devices. Realme ships the 65W SuperDart charger in the box along with USB Type-C charging cable and a crystal clear silicone case for the X7 Pro.

As far as connectivity is concerned, the smartphone supports Bluetooth 5.0, 2.4/5 GHz Wi-Fi 6, and all major audio codecs including SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD, and LDAC. I did not experience any connectivity-related issues on the handset. The smartphone supports Dual Channel Acceleration + Dual Wi-Fi Acceleration for better network stability and AV1 video decoding format.

Verdict

The Realme X7 Pro is the most feature-packed 5G-ready value flagship smartphone you can buy in India today. The flagship-grade chipset, 120Hz refresh rate display, stereo speakers and the insane 65W fast-charging makes for an excellent overall package. It would be difficult to ask for more from a sub-30K smartphone. Some compromises come in the form of an average camera, boring looks, and no microSD card slot. If you want to explore the market, the OnePlus Nord, Xiaomi Mi 10i, Moto G 5G, and the Vivo V20 Pro are some good alternatives in the sub 30K price bracket.