realme 10 Pro 5G Review: Affordable 5G with Premium Design, Capable Camera

The realme 10 Pro 5G is getting a lot of attention among the local releases this season. The smartphone offers several upgrades from the model it replaces including a fresh take on the phone's design, a better display, a more powerful camera, and more. With its asking price of Php 16,999, the 10 Pro 5G could be in a sweet spot in terms of providing better value to customers.

realme 10 Pro 5G Review

The handset has large shoes to fill given that the realme 9 Pro had a lot of fanfare. On top of that, the standard realme 10 is still very relevant at this point, so where will the 10 Pro 5G fit in? Or the better question is: who is it for? Let's find out in this review.

Affordable 5G smartphone with Premium Design, Capable Camera

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Design

The realme 10 Pro 5G updates the curved backing of its predecessor into a flatter back and angled edges. The chassis of our Nebula Blue unit features a brushed design and - in line with realme's design philosophy - also exudes a tint of pink and gold when seen in oblique angles.

realme 10 Pro 5G Review

This 190-gram phone dons a slim body which makes it easier to use. It's not slippery and easily rejects fingerprints. On the front, it has a very functional design with 6.72-inch "Boundless Display" as characterized by its ultra-slim 3-sided bezels. Yes, it still has a considerable chin but it's thinner than most phones in this segment. Likewise, the phone features an all-plastic build which makes it easy to use due to the trimmed-down weight and matte texture.

realme 10 Pro 5G Review: Affordable 5G Pro Smartphone

When it comes to the buttons and ports, you find them in the plastic side railings. The volume rocker and power button are on the right side, while the left side has the SIM tray. The bottom side houses the USB-C port, primary microphone, speaker grille, and 3.5-mm audio jack. There's also a secondary microphone on the top side.

In terms of design, the realme 10 Pro 5G has a functional build and offers great ergonomics. I love the placements of buttons especially the volume rocker which you can use when taking selfies and photos in general. The fingerprint sensor is also very conveniently embedded in the power button.

Display

The realme 10 Pro 5G frames a 6.72-inch IPS LCD panel with 1080 x 2400p resolution. On top of the wide display, the handset also employs the 120Hz refresh rate in this panel. Looking into the display, it makes me wonder why realme settles with LCD on this one whereas its closest competitors are rocking OLED panels. However, I figured that this LCD is of high-quality standard the first time I used it. You may not be getting deep blacks and bright whites, but the panel is good enough for most users.

realme 10 Pro 5G Review: Boundless Display

The panel has good contrast and color accuracy, even in the section where the front camera is located the quality is preserved. Using this for quite some time made me realize that I don't need an OLED panel at all. The brightness could crank up to 680 nits, and this phone is pretty usable outdoors.

The 10 Pro 5G also employs an HRR control wherein the refresh rate will be trimmed down to 60Hz when you're not touching the display. The panel is also capable of pausing your media when it detects that you're not on front of the screen; this feature is very neat. 

Performance and Multimedia

There's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 chipset that powers the realme 10 Pro 5G. For sure, this SoC is becoming very popular for this segment this year. The chip is developed under 6nm manufacturing process and features a 5G connectivity. The phone could do most of the tasks thrown at it.

realme 10 Pro 5G Review: Premium Display, Affordable Price

In gaming, popular MOBA gaming title like Mobile Legends: Bang Bang run smoothly with the device without any heating issues. Genshin Impact is also playable; we suggest you settle on its default graphics. Other graphic-intensive titles can run with the smartphone, but there are occasional frame drops.

realme 10 Pro 5G Review: Midrange Performer with 5G

One thing's for sure, the realme 10 Pro 5G is a multimedia consumption powerhouse. With its larger and capable display, it's a great device for streaming shows online. On top of that, realme also designed the phone with stereo speakers. The speakers have a capable volume level and passable sound quality; it needs more bass and Mids.

If you're keen on synthetic benchmarks, here are the scores we got for the realme 10 Pro 5G:

Antutu Benchmark
Score: 413732

Geekbench 6
Single Core: 892
Multi-core: 2042

Camera

The area where the realme 10 Pro 5G shines the most is the camera. For starters, we have a whopping 108MP main sensor - that's not common in this price point. It is coupled by a 2MP depth sensor. The main camera is gearing up with some muscles with its f/1.8 aperture and 0.64um pixel size. In fact, the primary snapper is the same sensor you'll get from the more expensive realme 10 Pro+.

realme 10 Pro 5G Review: Capable Camera

There are lots of ways that realme could add more gimmicks by adding an ultrawide or another 2MP macro camera; but instead, it went for the non-BS route. Just the straight-out camera you'll need in this price point. On top of that, there's a 16MP f/2.5 selfie camera for capturing selfies. The camera app is also easy to use with virtual buttons and modes on their familiar places.

realme 10 Pro 5G Review: Camera Performance

Photos in daylight have great amount of detail, contrast, and colors that do tend to oversaturate. The main camera also offers high dynamic range, sharpness, and color accuracy. Check out our sample photos below:

realme 10 Pro 5G: Sample Photos

realme 10 Pro 5G: Sample Photos

realme 10 Pro 5G: Sample Photos

realme 10 Pro 5G: Sample Photos

In low-light conditions, the camera surprisingly works well with noise at very low levels, on point details, and color accuracy. We also observed based on our outputs that this camera phone has good consistency when it comes to photo quality.

realme 10 Pro 5G: Sample Photos

In case you wanted to spice your night photography a bit, you can use the dedicated night mode which basically overexpose some areas in the frame to capture a good-looking shot.

realme 10 Pro 5G: Sample Photos

realme 10 Pro 5G: Sample Photos

There's a dedicated 108MP ProLight setting that you need to activate if you wanted to have the highest resolution photo possible with this device. The phone also supports what realme calls the NanoPixel Plus Technology which basically allows pixel binning for enhanced low-light photography. Moreover, the camera app includes a 3x zoom function which takes lossless photos in bright environment. In our actual testing, details are quite muted with this zoom function but it's still a very handy feature in our camera app. 

Selfies look good especially if you prefer more beautification filters on your face. They are great for social media sharing and wide enough to fit more people in one frame.

realme 10 Pro 5G: Sample Shots

Software

Out of the box, the realme 10 Pro 5G boots with realme UI 4.0 based on Android 13. For the most part, the new version of the skin looks like the one it replaces. There's the new Aquamorphic theme that has been a trademark of realme UI. On top of that, the interface is now cleaner and more refined with better animations, dynamic widgets, and improve notification shade with control center.

realme 10 Pro 5G: realme UI 4.0 based on Android 13

Of course, you can still personalize the software to your liking with a wide range of wallpapers, icon packs, toggle shapes, fonts, and more. The launcher and task switcher are also straightforward to use. You'll also have the option to use the app drawer by swiping up from the homescreen. Overall, the new realme 4.0 interface is easy to use. It's clatter-free and comes with minimal bloatware.

Battery

The realme 10 Pro 5G packs a 5000 mAh battery. In our PCMark Work 3.0 Battery Life test, the phone scored 12 hours and 54 minutes. The phone also supports 33-watt fast charging in which a complete charge (based on our actual charging test) will take 1 hour and 16 minutes. This charging speed is quite competitive in this segment.

realme 10 Pro 5G: Battery Review

Verdict: Should You Buy The realme 10 Pro 5G?

The realme 10 Pro 5G comes in at Php P16,999 with 8GB + 256GB storage. The new handset is wonderfully priced in this segment with a solid set of features like the large 6.72-inch display with 120Hz refresh rate, no-nonsense 108MP main camera, and stunning design. It's also one of the smartphones that comes with the latest version of Android; and the Snapdragon 695 processor is quite dependable with 5G connectivity. If you're someone who's looking for a smartphone with a balanced set of features, this handset is a great purchase.

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