Realme 11 Pro+ 5G Review: The Yin and Yang Smartphone

The Realme 11 Pro+ 5G aims to outperform the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G in terms of camera and design while improving performance, battery life, and charging. It is probably one of the best-designed phones in this category, with a terrific multimedia experience and a long battery life.

The Realme 11 Pro+ 5G is an intriguing device with many strengths and faults, making it an appealing choice for many people. The phone’s camera is at its weakest point. While the main camera performs well in daytime, I cannot say the same for low light, and post-processing is inconsistent. The software is also somewhat disorganized. While the Realme UI has a lot of capabilities, the bloatware and adverts spread across the interface are annoying and detract from the overall user experience.

REALME 11 PRO+ KEY FEATURES

Realme’s series 11 has been official for a month, but until recently, it was only available in China. That is now gone, as the Realme 11 Pro and Realme 11 Pro+ will be available in India and Europe shortly. And we begin our Realme series 11 research with the most powerful model – the Realme 11 Pro+.

We’re delighted to see Realme return to the mid-range segment, given their last official global smartphones were from the Realme Series 9. While Series 10 was theoretically worldwide, the Pro variants were never offered outside India.

The Realme 11 Pro+ is a small and curved smartphone with a quality vegan leather back panel with stitching and a unique zipper-like split in the middle. The camera enclosure has also been entirely overhauled, and it now resembles something you’d find on a Huawei phone. The new design screams luxury, but it doesn’t appear overdone, and we appreciate the modifications, at least on paper.

This design is available on the Realme 11 Pro+ green and gold models, however the black model has been left out of the fashion loop for those searching for something less trendy.

The latest model has a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen and a slew of premium features like a 120Hz refresh rate, 10-bit color depth, 360Hz touch response, and 2160Hz PWM dimming. It works on the MediaTek Dimensity 7050 5G chipset and now has 256GB of base storage.

The Dimensity 7050 5G chipset is relatively new, although it is nearly equivalent to the Dimensity 1080 in the Realme 10 Pro+ and the Dimensity 920 in the Realme 9 Pro+. And given that the AMOLED screen is the same as on the Realme 10 Pro+, we can understand if the new 11 Pro+ does not feel like a significant upgrade. However, keep in mind that the 10 Pro+ was not a truly worldwide phone.

There is only one thing we believe the Realme 11 Pro+ lacks: splash resistance. Xiaomi has been producing IP53-rated smartphones for years, and we anticipate Realme to do the same. Regardless of how simple this protection is, it provides some peace of mind when it rains outside or when you have your phone in the same room as you shower.

REALME 11 PRO+ UNBOXING

The Realme 11 Pro+ comes in a conventional black/yellow paper package. The retail bundle includes a 100W GaN power brick and a 10W USB-C-to-A cable.

There is also a paper container with a soft clear shell to provide extra protection. And, like most mid-range smartphones, the Realme 11 Pro+ comes with a thin anti-scratch film on the display. This basic guard, however, is a massive smudge magnet, so we chose to remove it on day one.

CAMERA

The Realme 11 Pro+ 5G features a triple camera arrangement on the rear. It has a new 200-megapixel Samsung ISOCELL HP3 sensor with an f/1.69 aperture and claims to support up to 4X lossless zoom. There’s also an 8-megapixel ultra-wide and a 2-megapixel macro camera.

The primary camera catches good details in daylight, however, the colors are a little oversaturated. The dynamic range performance is likewise quite good. While it normally exposes the image well and provides superb clarity in highlights and shadows, it causes the night sky to appear very blue rather than gray or black, as it should.

Realme’s claim of 4X lossless quality holds as long as you shoot in well-lit conditions. However, if you put the camera in a difficult situation, it will lose some details when zooming.

In Photo and Portrait settings, the primary camera performs inconsistently with human skin stones. Several times, I noticed that the camera made the skin appear red in images. Furthermore, 2X portrait mode provided consistent background blur compared to 1X, which frequently blurred out areas of the subject’s face.

The color temperature of images taken with the ultra-wide camera differs from that of the primary camera. That being said, the dynamic range performance is satisfactory.

The front camera performs well in terms of skin tone accuracy and dynamic range. However, it occasionally obscured my ear or hair in portrait mode images.

DESIGN AND SCREEN

The Realme 11 Pro+ 5G comes in three colors: astral black, oasis green, and sunrise beige. The green variation we have features imitation leather on the back, which appears to be a new trend. I don’t have any issues here because it feels more quality than standard plastic panels and helps to prevent fingerprints and smudges. The beige color also features a faux leather back.

Both weigh around 189g and, because of their textured surfaces, provide a superb grip and in-hand feel. The back panel also features a stitch-like design that runs vertically through the center, giving the impression that the phone is wearing a trendy leather jacket. If you prefer a more plain design, the black option is always available, and it is also slightly lighter at 183g.

The plastic frame has a glossy finish and holds the power and volume controls on the right, while the bottom edge houses the USB Type-C connector, primary speaker grille, and hybrid SIM slot.

Things haven’t changed much on the front of the Realme 11 Pro+ 5G compared to the 10 Pro+ 5G, which isn’t awful. The 11 Pro+ 5G features the same 6.7-inch curved-edge AMOLED display with full-HD+ resolution and a refresh rate of 120Hz. The display provides an excellent multimedia experience, with vibrant colors and adequate brightness for outdoor use. There is an HDR10+ playback certification, which was compatible with YouTube at the time of this review, but Netflix would not recognize it. Despite the display’s curved borders, I had no issues with accidental contacts.

HOW’S THE PERFORMANCE?

The Realme 11 Pro+ is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 7050 5G 6nm chipset with a Mali G68 GPU. Our review machine also has 12GB of RAM, which can be practically increased by another 12GB to a total of 24 GB. It also has 512GB of internal storage, which is quite large given the phone’s specifications. However, there is no microSD card slot to increase storage capacity further.

Overall, the hardware makes this phone quite smooth to operate, with no lag even when numerous programs are running in the background. It also makes multitasking easier, which is ideal if you want to use your phone for work.

Because it has a MediaTek Dimensity 7050 chipset, the phone can run and play your favorite games like Mobile Legends and Call of Duty: Mobile.

It can also run Genshin Impact without issue, however you must adjust the graphics settings to ensure that the game runs smoothly. Not only that but playing Genshin for a lengthy amount of time causes the phone to heat up.

However, as with other Realme phones, there is a large amount of bloatware pre-installed that is neither from Google nor Realme. It’s not as awful as other mid-range smartphones, but it’s still inconvenient because you have to delete each program manually.

One feature I liked was the always-on-screen option available on the Realme 11 Pro+. It can display normal content, such as the time, date, notification icons, and battery. You can also use floating windows and split screens, as previously mentioned.

Buy it if...

• Unique fashion design.
• Excellent OLED; quick, bright, and color-accurate.
• Excellent battery life and super rapid charging.
• The main camera captures flagship-quality photographs and videos.
• A good ultrawide and selfie experience.
• Adequate performance, no throttling, and 256GB of basic storage.
• 5G, dual SIM, NFC, dual speakers, and two major Android updates are all guaranteed.

Don't buy it if…

• The selfie camera is not centered within the punch-hole.
• There’s no splash protection.
• No EIS for 4K video.

FULL SPECIFICATION