realme C67 Review

When it comes to affordable and well-packaged smartphones, realme knows how to them. This January alone, they just launched the new realme Note 50, which is a great budget smartphone. Now, we’re checking out another budget-friendly smartphone from the brand – realme the C67.

Globally launched last late December 2023, the realme C67 is finally in the Philippines. As with most realme phones, it’s affordable, it has good specs and a great camera. But is it a phone you should consider buying this early 2024? Read on to find out.

Table of Contents

Design and Construction

The realme C-series lineup always had a very colorful design, helping it stand out, and the C67 is no exception. The back panel features a radiant color-shifting design, depending on how the light hits it.

If you look closely when there’s light, you’ll also notice the individual stripes, which are a nice touch. Best of all, you won’t leave any nasty fingerprints even if you have sweaty hands. So yes, you can use this phone without a case.

For reference, our review unit is in the Sunny Oasis colorway, which helps it stand out even more. A Black Rock color is also available for users who want a more sedate look. Whichever color you choose, you wouldn’t think this a budget phone based on the styling.

At the top left corner of the back panel, you’ll find the dual-camera system with a black housing. Each lens housing also features a shiny ring, which I feel doesn’t match the color unit we have. The camera housing does protrude quite a bit, which makes it quite sensitive to scratches.

In terms of ports and buttons, you get a USB-C at the bottom along with a 3.5mm audio jack. The volume rockers and power button are found on the right side, while the dual-sim and microSD slot is on the left. Surprisingly, you also get dual-loud speakers which are a nice touch.

One thing to note about the C67 is the size. It’s relatively slim, measuring only 7.59mm. It’s a bit heavy given how thin it is though, with the phone weighing 185g. Still, you won’t have a hard time carrying around.

Display and Multimedia

Flip it over, and you’re greeted by a large 6.72-inch display. It’s not an IPS display, instead it’s only an LCD. But despite that, the colors are relatively decent. Of course, you do have to set your expectations, especially if you’re used to the more vivid and vibrant colors of an IPS display.

It’s more than adequate for watching videos, whether alone or with friends, or playing games even with only a 90Hz refresh rate. There are also slim borders all around as compared to the thick borders of usual budget smartphones. I had no issue using the realme C67 under heavy sunlight either since the phone has a maximum of 800 nits of brightness.

The front camera has a circular punch out as compared to older dew-drop notch top housing, which looks dated. It’s also here where you’ll find the new Mini Capsule 2.0, which is realme’s version of Dynamic Island.

As mentioned earlier, you get stereo loudspeakers on the realme C67. They’re decent at best, but at least you have dual-speakers at this price point. But if you want a better listening experience, you can just plug in your earphones into the 3.5mm audio jack or pair your Bluetooth earphones.

Camera

The highlight of the realme C67 is the camera system. The rear dual-camera system features a 108MP main shooter paired with a 2MP depth sensor. As for the front camera, you get an 8MP shooter.

As someone who’s very picky with cameras, I was quite surprised by how capable the rear camera of the realme C67 was. In well-lit environments, you get really crisp and sharp images. The colors are quite vibrant too, and they’re accurate as well. Just let the phone’s Auto HDR do it’s thing, and you’re bound to capture great photos.

When shooting in Hi-Res mode, you get to maximize the full 108MP of the main shooter. It’s not great for shooting moving subjects, but perfect for landscape shots.
In fact, I prefer using Hi-Res mode over zooming-in since you get to capture more details.

At night, the quality of the photos does go down, but that’s to be expected. It becomes somewhat filtered and the details are smoothened out to reduce grain. With that, the camera on the C67 works best in bright environments.

You can check out some of the images we were able to take in the gallery below.

As for video, the C67 captures video at a maximum of 1080P@30FPS. Like the camera it’s really good in well-lit environments. It even comes with in-body stabilization called ultra steady mode. It’s not perfect since you still get camera shake when walking, but it helps a lot if you want to capture content.

Like the photos, the quality goes down at night, similarly, you lose the sharpness and detail as compared to shooting in bright areas. But it’s still decent enough to work with it.

OS, Apps, and UI

The realme C67 runs on Android 14 skinned with realme UI. It’s a relatively simple skin, and looks almost identical to the stock Android system. As expected, it does come with bloatware and several pre-installed apps. Some of these are useful, but I ended up uninstalling most of them either way.

In addition to the Play Store, there’s also an App Market app that allows you to install suggested apps. However, the Google Play Store is still the way to go. If you’re relatively new to Android, you might confuse it with the actual Google Play Store.

As mentioned earlier, you also have the realme’s version of the Dynamic Island called Mini Capsule 2.0. It pops up when you’re playing music and you use gestures to control it. It also shows up when charging the battery, and many more, and it’s a nice feature to have.

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering the realme C67 is a relatively dated Qualcomm Snapdragon 685 chipset with an Adreno 610 GPU. Our review unit comes with 8GB orfRAM, which is virtually expandable by another 8GB along with 256GB of storage.

It’s enough for the usual day-to-day tasks without lagging or slowing down. Even with several apps running in the background, you can still browse social media or watch videos on YouTube and Netflix without any issues.

When it comes to gaming, you can run most games without any issues, but you will have to set them to low for smoother gameplay. Surprisingly, it was able to run Genshin Impact with the lowest settings, but the phone did heat up a bit. Lighter games such as Mobile Legends should be easier on the phone. This isn’t a gaming phone after all, but you can still play on it.

To give you a better idea of how the phone performs, check out the benchmark scores below.

Antutu – 312826
Antutu Storage Test- 13185
S.Read- 3415
Speed: 297.7 MB/s
S.Write- 3132
Speed: 273.0 MB/s
R.Access- 6638
R.Speed: 56.0 MB/s
W.Speed: 140.0 MB/s

3D Mark wildlife- 644

Geekbench 6
Single: 474
Multi: 1513

Geekbench 6 GPU OpenCL- 378

PC Work 3.0 performance- 6161

Connectivity & Battery Life

As with most phones in the segment, the realme C67 packs a 5000mAh battery pack. During my time with the realme C67, it lasted more than a day of use when going through the usual routine of browsing social media, watching videos, and checking emails. I didn’t even have to recharge the phone overnight, and I still had juice left in the morning.

Based on PCMark’s battery life test, we were able to get 18 hours and 1 minute of battery life, which is a great result. Should you need to recharge, the C67 comes with 33W charging when using the provided cable and brick. It’s not the fastest, but given the long battery life, you won’t really need to recharge that often.

Conclusion

Overall, the realme C67 is a decent phone in terms of specs and performance as compared to other models in the same segment with its starting price of PHP 9,999USD 170INR 14,445EUR 162CNY 1,241 for the 8GB+128GB variant. But the only aspect where it stands out is in the camera section. For the price, it’s one of the better smartphone cameras I’ve tried, making it a great choice for budget-conscious buyers who want to take nice photos and videos.

If you want more performance to play games, a better display with higher refresh rates, then there are others out there for you. But if capturing content is your main focus, then you can’t go wrong with the realme C67.

For those interested, the realme C67 is now available in the Philippines, and you can order yours through the realme online store, physical store, or their official Shopee and Lazada pages.

What we liked:

• Nice camera
• Long battery life

What we didn’t like:

• Performance could be better
• Lots of bloatware

realme C67 4G specs:
6.72” FHD+ IPS LCD
1080*2400 pixels, 90Hz refresh, 950 nits (peak)
Qualcomm Snapdragon 685
6nm, 8-cores, up to 2.8GHz
8GB LPDDR4x RAM (+8GB extended memory)
128GB, 256GB storage
Expandable up to 2TB via microSD (dedicated slot)
Dual rear cameras:
– 108MP f/1.75 Samsung ISOCELL HM6 zoom camera (3x in-sensor zoom)
– 2MP f/2.4 depth
8MP front-facing selfie shooter
Dual nano-SIM
4G LTE
Wi-Fi 2.4GHz/ 5GHz
Bluetooth 5.0
GPS / GLONASS / GALILEO / Beidou / QZSS
USB Type-C
3.5mm audio jack
Side-mounted fingerprint sensor
IP54 splash and dust resistance
realme UI (Android 14)
5000mAh battery
33W charging (SuperVOOC)
164.6 x 75.4 x ~7.59mm
~185g
Sunny Oasis, Black Rock