realme 13 5G: Gaming with Speed and Success

The realme 13 5G is the base model of the realme 13 Series 5G. While it’s the youngest sibling of the bunch, it still offers reliable performance, great battery life, and consistent speed.

This is largely credited to its MediaTek Dimensity 6300 chipset, hefty 5,000mAh battery, and Vapor Chamber Cooling System. Plus, it also has some software tweaks that enable it to do so much more than it should.

To give readers a better look at the device, we’ll be diving into what makes the realme 13 5G tick. This includes a quick look at its chipset, tests for gaming and battery life, and how software plays into performance.

Now then, let’s get to brass tacks and unpack what the realme 13 5G offers as your next gaming smartphone.

Chipset

For those that weren’t aware, chipsets manage how data flows between the different components in your phone. Basically, it’s a traffic enforcer that guides the processor’s cores, graphics card, memory, and storage.

Going back, the realme 13 5G is equipped with a MediaTek Dimensity 6300 based on 6nm process technology. This chipset is optimized for power efficiency, equipped with two performance cores and six power-efficient cores:

• Two (2) ARM Cortex-A76 performance cores running up to 2.4GHz
• Six (6) ARM Cortex-A53 power-efficient cores running up to 2GHz

For storage configurations, our review unit came with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. It also offers up to 14GB of extended RAM via virtual memory expansion under settings.

The Cortex-A76 performance cores power the device’s active apps and games along with the ARM Mali-G57 MP2 GPU. Meanwhile, the Cortex-A55 power-efficient cores run the background apps to consume less power.

To sum this segment up, the parts making up the realme 13 5G provide reliability and consistency. Not only that, it also offers flexibility in how much memory you need, depending on the game or task.

Gaming and Overall Performance

The realme 13 5G can handle gaming pretty well, and doesn’t even heat up for the most part. I say this, because users should feel a bit of heat from the camera module.

To be fair, it isn’t that noticeable or concerning. I’ve experienced this even with realme’s GT Mode toggled on, but we’ll get to that later.

Most smartphones produce heat from the back panel, but this device doesn’t at all. This is largely credited to its vapor chamber cooling system, keeping it at leveled temperatures even on extended gaming sessions.

From experience, I’ve also tried three games that rise in terms of how much processing power it needs. These include Teamfight Tactics (low), Mobile Legends (moderate), and Genshin Impact (high).

Playing TFT was a breeze, as it isn’t too graphics-hungry and needs only 30 frames to run. Meanwhile, Mobile Legends was surprisingly pleasant and offered a smooth experience as far as MOBA games go. Aside from the absence of heat, I was able to enjoy playing at the highest settings.

Lastly, I also tried playing Genshin Impact. Of course, the game is set to the lowest graphics settings upon booting up. I’ve tried raising the settings up until the highest to good results.

It warns you that the phone is overclocked, even at medium graphics. However, it didn’t seem to matter that much. At the highest settings enabled, I noticed a slight dip in frames, but felt rather inconsequential either way.

Full disclosure, I’d say this is a phone to pick up if any readers play MOBA games. This includes Mobile Legends, League of Legends: Wild Rift, and the newly-released Honor of Kings.

Users can even pick up games like Honkai: Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero, PUBG Mobile, and COD Mobile. Among these, I’ve played PUBG with some good experiences as well.

For those curious, we’ll also leave readers with our synthetic benchmark scores on the realme 13 5G below.

realme GT Mode

The phone runs on realme UI 5.0 based on Android 14 out of the box. Aside from the virtual RAM expansion feature, the realme 13 5G offers the flagship GT Mode toggle.

Users may find the GT Mode toggle under the phone’s battery settings. Turning this on will enable the device to offer better performance, higher frame rates, and higher graphics resolution.

Of course, this comes with the tradeoff of increasing power consumption. Then again, it also doesn’t feel problematic from experience. Users should keep this in mind prior to hopping on a game, as it makes the experience significantly better.

This mode can help users make the most out of competitive matches where performance and speed matter. For readers that play MOBAs/shooters, this mode enables smooth gameplay that could help you rack up wins for ranked matches.

Battery Life

Last but certainly not least, we’re going to unpack how the realme 13 5G fares with battery life. The device packs a sizable 5,000mAh battery with support for 45W of SUPERVOOC fast charging via USB Type-C.

Like most of our reviews, we took some practical tests with the realme 13 5G which include mixed usage variables. In PCMark’s Work 3.0 Battery Life test, our review unit pumped out 18 hours and 2 minutes of activity.

As for our video loop test, the device provided an insane uptime of 24 hours and 4 minutes. Video playback included playing a full HD movie at 50% brightness and in airplane mode.

For our gaming test, we found that the phone can offer up to 14 hours and 17 minutes of gameplay. This was conducted with brightness and volume set to 50% over a Wi-Fi connection.

Needless to say, the realme 13 5G can provide insane numbers under different conditions. This is why I felt like the tradeoff for toggling on GT Mode felt alright. The phone doesn’t use up as much power as I expected it to.

I believe this all goes back to the chipset, where the power-efficient cores are putting in a ton of work.

Final Thoughts

The realme 13 5G is a great device that balances speed and performance. This is only complemented by software integrations and impressive battery life.

A ton of factors come into play with how the device performs. While the chipset plays an important role, realme’s work on its cooling system and GT Mode definitely stands out.

Now then, for the elephant in the room. The realme 13 5G is available for PHP 16,999USD 290INR 24,557EUR 276CNY 2,110. If you’re looking for a smartphone that’s primed for gaming (with a modest price), then this should be on your list.

Readers can get it at PHP 1,400USD 24INR 2,022EUR 23CNY 174 off at realme’s official TikTok shop here for those interested. For readers that want a detailed look into the device, our review is also available here.