realme has built a good reputation for offering budget oriented handsets that can pack a punch.
In this review, we have the realme 11 Pro 5G, one of their latest handsets released in 2023.
Is it good enough for you to purchase it?
–Let’s find out.
Table of Contents
Design and Construction
In a very crowded space of consumer electronics, brands like realme always-usually find a way to creatively carve-out new design aesthetics for that rectangle we keep with us every day.
–The realme 11 Pro 5G is no exception.
Our unit is in this Sunrise Beige colorway and it’s quite the looker! But if this colorway doesn’t float your boat, it’s also available in Oasis Green and Astral Black.
We get a tastefully gold aluminum frame that surrounds the device. Its power button and volume rocker can be found on the right side.
A punch-hole selfie camera can be found embedded under the display at the top center.
The display is of the curved variety but the panel is only “curved enough” to stray away from unwanted accidental-touches.
Up top, we get a noise-cancelling mic for speaker and video calls, as well as one out of two stereo speakers.
Found at the bottom, is a dual nano SIM card tray (with no support for storage expansion), a USB Type-C port (2.0), and the second stereo speaker.
Move to the rear where most smartphone designs pop, and we are introduced to a nice feeling vegan leather panel.
With the absence of glass, this panel can easily repel smudges and fingerprints. Nonetheless, this beige colorway may be the hardest to keep clean without a case.
So if you do see yourself having trouble keeping this clean, consider the aforementioned alternative color variants.
An orange and gold accented line goes down the middle of the rear panel with false-stitching embossed around everything in the center, highlighting symmetry in their design language.
We also get polished-silver realme branding on the bottom right, which I do think should have been gold for this colorway.
The star here in the rear is that massive circular camera module that houses the dual-camera setup and is accented gold around the main sensor and the whole module itself.
To the left of the main sensor is machining for where the ultrawide sensor found on the Pro+ model should be.
Overall, it’s a nice and refreshing design in sea of glass or glass-like panels.
Display, Multimedia and Biometrics
For display, the realme 11 Pro 5G sports a 6.7-inch 120Hz AMOLED Curved Vision display.
It features a resolution of 2412 x 1080 (394 ppi) pixels and support for HDR10+, and full coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut!
Making consuming any content on this device appear accurate and just as the creator intended.
The 120Hz refresh rate panel also gets a touch-sampling rate capable of up to 1,260Hz.
Which makes gaming on this display even more awesome for better response times.
The realme 11 Pro 5G also features dual stereo speakers that offer a substantial soundstage with Dolby Atmos support.
This translates to good audio immersion when streaming content or listening to your favorite tunes on this device.
The stereo speakers aren’t the absolute best out there, but it’s more than sufficient for all the concerts you perform in your shower.
Cameras
The realme 11 Pro 5G features a dual-camera setup in its main camera module. It’s comprised of a 100MP [f/1.8] OIS ProLight main sensor, and a 2MP [f/2.4] depth sensor.
In front it features a 16MP [f/2.5] camera for selfies.
In general, photos taken on the realme 11 Pro 5G look great. Realme’s image processing tends to boost saturation and contrast right out the gate.
But overall, photos come out sharp and clear with good detail. Its portrait mode cut-outs aren’t half-bad either with the inclusion of the 2MP Portrait or Depth sensor.
(Just make sure they’re smudge-free for optimal results.)
Images taken with the selfie camera in varying lighting conditions, come out very usable, especially for social media use and chat messaging.
Videos taken with the main camera can be shot at a max resolution of 4K at 30fps. Shooting at 60fps is possible at 1080p, and even 120fps slow motion.
There’s also an Ultra Steady feature that can rid your shaky handheld footage in exchange for a max resolution of 1080p and a bit of a crop.
On the front-facing side of things, the selfie camera can shoot at a max resolution of 1080p at 30fps.
OS, Apps, UI
On the software side of things, the realme 11 Pro 5G gets realme UI 4.0 based off Android 13 out of the box.
It’s one of the most stable versions of realme UI I have personally gotten to use and it’s much appreciated. I still prefer stock android or One UI accessibility shortcuts, but if you are someone who doesn’t even know what I’m writing about, it’s a non-issue.
What I liked about realme UI 4.0 on the realme 11 Pro 5G was just how smooth everything felt, it’s as if realme realized what they were doing with their interface was good enough so far, and finally got to their refinement stage.
No lags or stutters with interface animations and overall it’s just very stable.
Performance and Benchmarks
For hardware, the realme 11 Pro 5G gets a Mediatek Dimensity 7050, a 6nm chipset that features an octa-core processor, and a Mali-G68 MC4 GPU.
Our unit is also configured with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage.
In a nutshell, the device handled most of our day-to-day tasks with relative ease. Yes I mentioned that this is one of the most stable releases of their interface, but there can be occasional stutters with way too much running apps in the background.
For gaming, it handled most of our playthroughs with Mobile Legends and Genshin Impact with general ease. For the most stable frame rates we recommend playing at the lowest graphic settings, as Genshin recommends low by default.
For the most part, this was a non-issue for us.
A notable (not new) software feature we really appreciate is “Wise Charging”, a feature that smartly charges your device based on the time you leave it charging. At night, it trickle charges the 11 Pro to 80% to prevent battery bloating.
For those of you interested in synthetic benchmark scores, check them out below:
| Device: | realme 11 Pro 5G |
|---|---|
| Chipset: | Mediatek MT6877V Dimensity 7050 |
| RAM | 8GB |
| Antutu v10.0.7 | 532,345 |
| Geekbench Single-Core | 948 |
| Geekbench Multi-Core | 2,388 |
| Geekbench OpenCL | 2,333 |
| Geekbench Vulkan | 2,360 |
| 3DMark Wild Life | 2,289 (13.7 avg FPS) |
| PCMark Work 3.0 | 10,150 |
Battery and Connectivity
The realme 11 Pro 5G features a pretty-massive 5,000 mAh lithium-ion cell with support for 67W SuperVOOC fast charging.
Our PCMark Work 3.0 battery test resulted in 15 hours and 9 minutes.
And in real-world use, we can get it to last for about a full 24-hour day with moderate to average use.
The realme 11 Pro 5G also features WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, 5G connectivity, and all standard GPS connections.
Conclusion
In conclusion, with an official SRP of PHP 19,999 (8GB RAM | 256GB ROM), the realme 11 Pro 5G is good mid-ranger that sports a fantastic display, design, and battery life.
A very stable realme UI is no slouch either, but will a future firmware update screw this up?
Let us know what you think of the realme 11 Pro 5G below.
What we liked:
• Design.
• Display.
• Battery Life.
• Affordability.
What we didn’t like:
• Chipset.
• No ultrawide.
realme 11 Pro 5G specs:
6.7-inch AMOLED display @ 1080 x 2412 pixels
120Hz refresh rate, HDR10+, 950 nits (peak)
MediaTek Dimensity 7050 chipset
Octa-core CPU, up to 2.6GHz
Mali-G68 GPU
8GB/12GB RAM (Virtual RAM: up to 8GB)
256GB/512GB storage, no card slot
100MP f/1.8 (wide), PDAF, OIS
2MP f/2.4 (macro)
LED flash, HDR, panorama
4K@30fps, 1080p@30/60/120/480fps, gyro-EIS video
16MP front-facing camera
GSM / CDMA / HSPA / CDMA2000 / LTE / 5G
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC
USB Type-C 2.0
Fingerprint (under display, optical), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
Android 13, Realme UI 4.0
5,000 mAh Li-Po battery, 67W wired charging
Gold, Green, Black
Dimensions: 161.7 x 73.9 x 8.2 mm
Weight: 183 g
