realme 13 Pro+ 5G Review

This 2024, realme 21 Philippines is on a roll with the launch of several new models. One of the first smartphones they launched this year was the realme 12 series. I tried out the realme 12 Pro+ 5G, and I thoroughly enjoyed using it. Specifically, I enjoyed the cameras that came with the phone.

It wasn’t perfect, but given how well-packaged the realme 12 Pro+ was, its successor will definitely have big shoes to fill. Now, realme Philippines has launched the realme 13 series, and in this article, we’re going to be looking at the realme 13 Pro+ 5G in particular.

On paper, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of changes with the realme 13 Pro+. It features the same Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset, a very capable triple camera system, and a slightly larger battery. With that, the question remains – is it worth the upgrade? A question especially true for those that just bought the realme 12 Pro+. Well, let’s find out.

Design and Construction

In terms of design, realme made minimal changes to the realme 13 Pro+ especially compared to its predecessor. It still features a similar design with a large circular camera island at the top center. I’m also glad that realme didn’t get rid of the fluted bezel design, which gives it similar vibe to that of luxury watches.

What realme did get rid of is the zipper-like design that runs the entire length of the back panel, which was something I never was a fan of. With that, the phone is no longer finished in a leather-like material. Instead, the back panel is now made of frosted matte glass, giving the phone a more premium look and feel. It’s also quite smudge-resistant given its matte finish.

The frame is still made out of plastic though, but it feels nice and durable holding it. It’s still slim and light measuring only 8.2mm thin and weighing just around 190g.

Like before, the volume rocker and power button are located on the right side, while the left side is left clean. At the bottom, you’ll find the USB-C port, one of the two loudspeakers, and the dual-sim card slot. At the top, there’s the other loudspeaker and the secondary microphone.

Despite the change to a glass back panel, the realme 13 Pro+ is still very durable. It comes with an IP65 rating for dust and water resistance, but of course, you should avoid dropping it on purpose.

Overall, the design changes realme made to the 13 Pro+. It looks classier and the clean back panel gives it a more premium feel. The only issue I have is that it looks almost too identical to the realme 13 Pro. The only distinguishing difference between the two are the lenses on the camera island.

Display and Multimedia

It’s one thing to have a great looking phone, but it’s another to have one with an equally matching display. Thankfully, the realme 13 Pro+ doesn’t disappoint in this aspect either. It features a 6.7-inch curved OLED panel with FHD+ resolution (2412×1080).

This being an OLED panel, the display is capable of producing 1 billion colors and has 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut. Not to mention there are even ultra-thin borders all around. If you’re outdoors, there’s no need to worry about seeing things on screen since the phone does have a maximum peak brightness of 2000 nits.

As a result, you get deep hues and beautiful colors, and the viewing angles are great. You wouldn’t mind binge watching movies or series on this phone, which I certainly did.

For the gamers, you also have a 120Hz adjustable refresh rate. Paired with the nice OLED panel, and you have an enjoyable gaming experience. Even if you’re not playing games, you also get smooth buttery animations when you’re just watching videos or even going through the menu.

The display also supports Pro-XDR, which analyzes the contents of photos taken by the camera and adjusts brightness to help improve dynamic range, lights, and shadows for a more realistic image when being viewed. Given how capable the cameras are, I’m sure you’ll be doing this a lot but we’ll talk more about the cameras later.

While there is no 3.5mm audio port, you do get dual stereo speakers which are Hi-Res certified. They’re not the best, but they do sound better especially compared to its predecessor. The speakers are quite loud too, and you have a decent sound stage when the phone is in front of you. But it still lacks bass for my liking.

In the worst-case scenario when you drop your phone, there’s no need to worry about the screen too much. It is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i.

Cameras

Perhaps the main highlight of the realme 13 Pro+ are the cameras. On paper, it seems like realme didn’t change much on this phone compared to the realme 12 Pro+. It still uses a triple camera system with a 50MP main shooter, a 50MP telephoto, and an 8MP ultrawide.

However, what realme did change are the sensors used. For the main shooter, it now uses Sony LYT701 1/1.56-inch sensor with support for OIS or Optical Image Stabilization and 2x in-sensor zoom. Meanwhile, the 50MP periscope telephoto uses Sony’s LYT600 camera with a 1/1.95-inch sensor with 3x Optical Zoom and up to 6x In-sensor zoom. As for the selfie cam, it’s a Sony IMX615 sensor.

If you know your smartphone cameras, you know these are very capable sensors. Some of which are even used by near-flagship-level smartphones.

Given how capable the lenses are, you take photos of essentially all subject matters – street photography, night photography, portrait, and more. And as you would expect, the camera captures images really well.

One of my favorite features though is the 120x Super Zoom. Yes, you have up to 120x zoom on this phone, which is at par with flagship smartphones. Granted the images come out very pixelated at 120x zoom, but it’s still a great feature to have at your disposal.

Together with the long zoom, you also get realme’s AI Image Algorithm. Together with the lenses, the AI algorithm does most of the editing and post processing, and the results speak for themselves.

During the day, you can capture very sharp and vivid images with decent contrast. Even without using portrait mode, you can get some nice bokeh using either the main or telephoto lens. Despite the AI processing, the photos come out looking very natural, balancing out the lighting very well.

Even at night, you don’t have to worry about low-light conditions. The AI algorithm does a great job of enhancing the image quality and reducing grain, giving you clear images. Even if you have shaky hands, the built-in stabilization helps a lot too, clearing up the image and enhancing it to reduce blur.

The only drawback of this phone is the ultrawide lens. Compared to the main camera and the telephoto, you will notice that the quality isn’t that great. This is especially true when shooting at night or in low-light conditions.

As for videos, it is capable of shooting at 4K@30FPS maximum. While there is an ultra steady mode, it is limited to just 1080P@60FPS. The video quality is quite decent even when you’re shooting at just 4K, and there does seem to be a form of stabilization as well. When shooting at 1080P, I do find it a bit lacking, but you should be good when shooting in 4K.

Just check out the gallery below to see the content were able to capture using the realme 13 Pro+ .

OS, Apps, and UI

On the software side, the realme 13 Pro+ runs on Android 14 skinned with realme UI 5.0. Of course, you have the usual Android 14 stuff like split view and floating window. If you’ve ever used a realme phone before, you will feel right at home.

In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of changes on the software side. You still get a bunch of bloatware preinstalled, which I did end up deleting immediately to free up storage space. However, the newest addition to this phone are the AI features such as AI Boost, AI Screen Recognition, and AI Smart Loop.

I didn’t use these feature too much, but out of the bunch, perhaps the most useful is AI Screen Recognition. To use this feature you need to turn it on in the settings then just long press with two fingers and the phone scans information on the screen allowing you to interact with text and images. This allows you to save the text into File Dock or save the images themselves.

If you’re not going to use these AI features, you can just leave them off in the settings. Also don’t forget to add the app where-in you will be using these features too.

Performance and Benchmarks

Under the hood, the realme 13 Pro+ uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset with 2.4Ghz clock speeds with an Adreno 710 GPU. Unfortunately, it is the same chipset as the one found on the realme 12 Pro+, which we tried out earlier this year. I was expecting it to use the newer 7s Gen 3, but maybe they’re saving it for the realme 14 series?

Depending on the variant you pick, you can get it with up to 12GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD storage. There’s no option to expand storage further, but 512GB is already more than adequate for all the content and apps you will be storing on this phone. As for the RAM, this phone supports up to 12GB of Dynamic RAM Expansion or Virtual RAM for a total of 24GB.

Despite being an older chipset, the realme 13 Pro+ did handle everyday tasks easily. You can browse chrome with several tabs open then watch YouTube, and leave other apps running in the background, and you will still be fine.

The same can be said about playing games – both light and graphic-intensive titles. I mainly used the phone to play Genshin Impact, and I did not encounter any issues. It was also able to run Zenless Zone Zero on medium settings. However, the phone did heat up while playing Genshin after an hour, but it didn’t impact performance nor did we see any framerate drops.

We’ve run our benchmark scores too, and you can check them out below.

Battery and Connectivity

One change realme did make on the 13 Pro+ is the battery. It now uses a slightly bigger 5200 mAh unit compared to the 5000mAh battery pack on the realme 12 Pro+. The increase in battery size might be small, but the difference it made really surprised us.

We ran PCMark’s battery test, and we were able to get a result of 19 hours and 58 minutes, which is an amazing score. For reference, the test was done at 50 percent brightness, airplane mode, and zero volume. While gaming, after an hour of playing Genshin Impact my battery went from 99 percent to 80 percent.

Again battery life is very dependent on the user, but one thing is for sure – you won’t be disappointed by the battery life of the realme 13 Pro+. Capture all the content you want, play games, and more.

By the time you do need to recharge, you have a fast charger as well. It’s no longer a slow 50W charge speed, and instead, the realme 13 Pro+ comes with 80W SuperVOOC fast charging. This allows the phone to recharge from 0 to 50% in 19 minutes and 100% in 49 minutes when using the provided power brick and cable. It’s still not as fast as the 100W charge speed of the realme 11 Pro+ we tried out last year though.

For connectivity, you have the usual suite of features including 5G, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, and GPS. No NFC for local models, unfortunately.

Conclusion

Overall, the realme 13 Pro+ definitely lived up to the expectations I had especially compared to the realme 12 Pro+. It might have the same chipset, but the cameras have definitely improved a lot It looks a lot better too, and I wouldn’t mind using this phone without the provided case.

Still, the question remains, how much does it cost now? Well, the realme 13 Pro+ 5G is still an affordable smartphone with a starting price of PHP 28,999USD 494INR 41,892EUR 471CNY 3,599 for the 12GB+256GB variant. If you want the same 12GB+512GB variant, you will have to shell out a bit more at PHP 31,999USD 545INR 46,226EUR 519CNY 3,971.

It’s a lot more expensive than before since the realme 12 Pro+ retailed at PHP 25,999USD 443INR 37,558EUR 422CNY 3,226. Honestly, the trade-up is worth it if you really want to capture nice photos. But if you’re not going to use the cameras too much, then you can stick to the realme 12 Pro+ since the chipset is still the same.

For those that do want to venture into content creation on a budget, the realme 13 Pro+ won’t let you down.

What we liked:
* Amazing cameras
* Beautiful display
* Nice, classy design

What we didn’t like:
* Bloatware
* Uses the old chipset

realme 13 Pro+ specs:
6.7-inch FHD+ AMOLED display
120Hz refresh rate
Corning Gorilla Glass 7i protection
Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2
4x Cortex-A78 @ 2.4GHz
4x Cortex-A55 @ 1.9GHz
Adreno 710 GPU
8GB, 12GB RAM
256GB, 512GB internal storage
50MP Sony LYT-701 main camera
50MP Sony LYT-600 telephoto camera
8MP ultrawide lens
32MP front camera
Dual nano-SIM
USB Type-C
5G
realme UI 5.0 (Android 14)
5,200mAh battery, 80W SUPERVOOC fast charging
IP65 rating for dust and water resistance
Emerald Green, Monet Gold (colors)