Review: realme 10

To welcome the spirit of the holiday season, realme introduces the dazzling member of its new number series lineup — the realme 10. It dons an eye-catching Light Particle Design that easily blends well with the Christmas decors. More importantly, it receives a few hardware upgrades that make it even more enticing beneath the surface. 

Design and build

For those who have a perky personality, the festive design of the realme 10 in Clash White will go with your high spirits all year round. It has an iridescent hue that predominantly appears in glittering gold, but gradually shifts to a myriad of colors. For a more subtle glow, you can opt for the Rush Black colorway. 

Since it comes in glossy finish, you can expect that the rear will attract fingerprints. Nonetheless, I still commend the trendy, boxy frame that the realme 10 came in; and on top of it, the large camera module design. To add to that, its frame makes it easier to grip, coupled with a lightweight (178g) and slim body (7.95mm). 

Display

One of the strongest points of the realme 10 is its 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display. Not only will you be greeted by rich and vibrant colors, you’ll also receive a warm welcome from the snappy and responsive interface thanks to its 90Hz refresh rate. Thus, it’s a good device to cling to for entertainment purposes when out and about. 

Watching scenes from the Sandman series made me appreciate the screen quality even more, as it exhibits great contrast ratio and deep blacks. Accompanying its strong visuals is the 200% UltraBoom speaker. Worth noting is how it’s able to sustain clarity and detail of mids and treble even in louder volume settings. That said, you can enjoy listening to your favorite playlist on Spotify. 

Camera

At the rear you’ll find the 50MP main camera and 2MP depth camera. Despite having a lower resolution than its predecessor, which had 108MP, you’ll realize that there are other important aspects at play in achieving quality photos than just high megapixels, such as type and size of lens. 

Taking shots in favorable lighting with the main sensor produced images with sharp details and vivid colors. Even zoomed in photos still showcased adequate details. I was also impressed with shots taken in harsh lighting as it still retained the details of the photos — not overexposed or washed out. 

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Propped up in front is the 16MP front camera. Similar to the rear setup, selfies have enough detail as well. 

Performance

Powered by the MediaTek Helio G99 chipset, it fared pretty well in gaming scenarios. I didn’t encounter any lags while playing Mobile Legends nor while launching several apps at once. It also runs on 8GB + 8GB Dynamic RAM, which I can attribute for the smooth experience as well. Therefore, it’s safe to assume that everyday tasks such as loading apps, internet browsing, and multitasking will go without a hitch. If you look at the bigger picture, you’ll see the impact of having low latency. 

As for its memory, you can take advantage of its large 256GB storage. Living in the era of “pics or it didn’t happen,” it gives me the peace of mind to shoot as many photos and videos as I like. Additionally, you won’t hesitate to download several apps — from gaming to photo editing. 

Battery

Charging time from 0 to 100% took me about 75 minutes with the 33W SUPERVOOC charger. It’s a little over an hour so it’s still a relatively short downtime. Since it’s packed with 5000mAh, you can maximize its use for more than a day with light to moderate use. 

Verdict

The realme 10 shines literally and figuratively with its stunning aesthetics and all-around features. Significant upgrades mainly involve performance, and if this is what you’re after, then it will be a worthy purchase at PHP14,999 for the 8GB+256GB variant and P12,999 for the 8GB+128GB variant.