Realme X50 Pro 5G: the complete Review

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Last year, we criticized Realme for releasing too few smartphones in Europe. A year later, the Chinese brand seems to have listened to us a little too much. The latest addition to the BBK Electronics group (which also owns Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus) is multiplying its references and flooding the market at the risk of confusing consumers. It is indeed difficult to find yourself in the Realme range of smartphones, given the number of devices launched in recent months. Realme 6, 6 Pro, 6s, 6i, 5, 5 Pro, 5i, C2, X2, X50… Good luck to understand anything if you are new to the matter, especially as the price differences between these devices are often around twenty euros.

Regardless, a smartphone blithely stands out in this large family: the Realme X50 Pro 5G. Announced in China several months ago, this device aims to be the “cheapest high-end smartphone on the market”. Marketed from 599 euros (the version we tested, the most expensive, costs 749 euros), the Realme X50 Pro has everything to make you want to take out your wallet.

A thick but successful smartphone  

For the second time, Realme is therefore attacking the category of "flagship killers". Abandoned by OnePlus which is now interested in the ultra high-end, this very special section of the market offers premium devices at a low price. Manufacturers generally make a few concessions on design in order to cut prices, for example by eliminating waterproofing. The Realme X50 Pro 5G is therefore not IP68 certified and takes the risk of displeasing by a thickness greater than that of most of its competitors (9.9 mm, which makes it one of the ten thickest smartphones in the past three years). In hand, it's embarrassing at first but you get used to it. The Realme X50 Pro isn't as thin as we would have hoped, but it's not really a big flaw. The curvatures of his back even perfectly match those of the palm of your hand, which is quite pleasant.

After these details, the rest of the design of the Realme X50 Pro 5G has little to envy to competing devices. Its 6.44 inch OLED screen has very few borders, benefits from high maximum brightness (748 cd / m2 according to our laboratory measurements), has a refresh rate of 90 Hz and intelligently uses a double-punch to hide its two front cameras. Of course, Realme skips the curvature of the slab … but is it really a fault?

In terms of color fidelity, Realme could have done better. By default, this is really very average as confirmed by our laboratory with a measured Delta E of 4.73 (the more this value moves away from zero, the less the colors are correct). By choosing the display settings for "soft" mode, you get a slightly more satisfactory Delta E of 3.93. We are far from the excellence of an iPhone or Galaxy.

Ultra wide-angle selfies

In 2018, Google had tried ultra-wide angle selfies. The Pixel 3 sported two front cameras, which allowed it to take group selfies with many more participants than any other smartphone. This idea was abandoned the following year, with the Pixel 4, to our great despair.

At a time of social distancing, Realme is betting on giving ultra wide-angle selfies another chance. The X50 Pro 5G sports two front cameras (main sensor of 8 Mpix, ultra wide-angle sensor of 32 Mpix). See the result, we really save space. Take into account an important point: the ultra wide angle is of lower quality. For photos that are important to you, it may be best to avoid them.

A competition smartphone

Equipped with the Snapdragon 865 processor, the Realme X50 Pro 5G is a powerhouse. This chip, which is the most powerful on the market for an Android smartphone, also powers other star devices like the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro or the OnePlus 8 Pro. For a price below 600 euros, Realme strikes hard. The smartphone is also compatible with Wi-Fi 6, 5G, supports two Nano SIM, has 8 or 12 GB of RAM and even has stereo speakers. Its characteristics are really superb. We are even entitled to a system of haptic feedback.

On the software side, the Realme UI overlay (which is a fork of Oppo's ColorOS) is pleasant without being perfect. He is accused in particular of some (rare) translation errors (“é” instead of “er” for example) or some too complicated sub-menus in the settings like “Smart services” or “Practical tools”. The presence of some preinstalled software, such as Opera, also surprises at the first configuration. For the rest, there is not much to blame him for, Realme UI does the job.

35 minutes to recharge  

The other strength of the Realme X50 Pro 5G is its SuperDart technology … which is actually Oppo's SuperVOOC 2.0. Thanks to its 65W charger, the smartphone is fully charged in a record time of 35 minutes. 11 minutes are even enough to recover 50%, which is a real luxury. Another advantage, to extend the life of its smartphone, Realme opted for two batteries. This makes it possible to remain at low voltage during the entire recharging time, by dividing the emitted power in half.

Unfortunately, there is no wireless charging on this Realme X50 Pro 5G. At such a price, it is not really surprising.

Good autonomy … but not very correct tricks

With a total capacity of 4200 mAh, the two batteries of the Realme X50 Pro allow it to greatly exceed the day of use even if the refresh rate of 90 Hz of the screen is activated. On the other hand, we must admit very surprised by a strange practice of Realme. During each of our laboratory tests, the smartphone turned off when it had 5 or 6% of battery left. Bug? Voluntary behavior? We can imagine that the smartphone voluntarily inflates its battery percentage to reassure you … which is not very correct.

All this is all the more strange since, according to our measurements, the Realme X50 Pro has a very good autonomy. The device withstood 3:41 p.m. in our versatile autonomy Review and 11:17 p.m. in communication. However, and this is surely a problem of software optimization, the device did not particularly shine in video streaming. After 10h23 of reading, it goes out. We imagine that a software update could improve all that.

A slightly low fingerprint sensor  

To unlock your Realme X50 Pro, you have two options. We can either use an ultra-fast facial recognition system (but not ultra-reliable, we managed to make it work with a mask several times), or the fingerprint sensor hidden under the screen. The second option is the more secure of the two but, it is rare enough to emphasize, its location is not very practical. Very low, this sensor will only appeal to people with a flexible thumb. Depending on how you hold your smartphone, this device is even occasionally inaccessible. One wonders how the engineers at Realme did not notice this defect.

A good camera

The Realme X50 Pro 5G shows good versatility in photography. Its camera module contains a main lens with Samsung 64 Mpix sensor, a telephoto lens with x2 optical zoom attached to a 12 Mpix sensor and an ultra wide-angle lens attached to an 8 Mpix sensor. There is also a sensor dedicated to the embellishment of portrait mode but, let's be honest, it should not be used for much… It is especially for Realme to be able to claim a "quadruple camera module" on the technical sheet of the smartphone.

During the day, the smartphone camera does pretty well … provided you don't zoom in too much. There are smoothing effects and areas that lack clarity in the background. At night, this phenomenon is amplified. The photos are often blurred and lack light… These faults have already been noted on previous Realme devices, which suggests that this is a recurring problem with the brand's smartphones.

With ultra wide angle and telephoto, the picture is similar. The result is correct during the day, much more disappointing at night. This is no surprise, the opening of these camera modules is smaller and lets in less light.

In photo, the Realme X50 Pro 5G is therefore good … nothing more. Not enough to panic, not enough to do long photo shoots either.

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