realme narzo 30A First Impressions | Powerful Gaming on A Budget

First introduced late last year, the narzo line from realme focuses on delivering mobile gaming satisfaction without the need to shell out a lot of money. The narzo 20, a relatively powerful entry-level smartphone had gamers in mind when it was formulated.

Moving into the latest iteration, the narzo 30A aims to deliver the same experience but wants to offer this to a wider audience than before.

To truly create a distinction between the realme main line and the narzo sub-brand, realme decided to do away with the traditional realme yellow box and instead swap with a more streamlined box design rendered in a cool blue hue.

Now, just because realme opted for a new box art, and the narzo 30A is ideally a much budget-friendlier option than its predecessor, it doesn’t mean that the phone design will be anything but basic.

True to realme’s penchant for quirky smartphone rear cover designs, the narzo 30A is no exception. In fact, this is one of the quirkiest we’ve seen on an entry-level gaming phone. The diagonal lines cutting through the entire lower half of the phone case reminded us of the ever pervasive streetwear brand by Virgil Abloh called Off-White – or a Rimowa case with diagonal stripes instead of vertical ones.

The realme narzo 30A also comes in two stunning colors. A cooler verdant blue hue called Laser Blue and an almost gun-metal black Laser Black one.

With a 6.5-inch IPS LCD display, the narzo 30A produces decent visuals even though the device clocks at 720 x 1600 resolution.  This large screen display will definitely help when you consume your favorite media be it in the various YouTube videos that you play on a daily basis, the occasional Netflix anime marathon or when you start using the realme narzo 30A for what its intended for: gaming.

With a MediaTek Helio G85 chipset and 4GB of RAM powering the narzo 30A, being able to play a variety of games comes pretty easy especially for a smartphone of this price category.

We were able to try a few quick games on the narzo 30A and particularly for MOBA fans and Call of Duty Mobile fans, we’re happy to report that the narzo 30A can easily accommodate these games without much hiccups.

League of Legends: Wild Rift is particularly well optimized on this phone. So much so that we have been running the game on high to ultra-high mode.

For more demanding game titles like Genshin Impact, you will have to clock the game at its lowest graphic setting just for the phone to be able to run the game decently.

Audio fidelity on the narzo 30A is quite strong as well which was a surprised for us considering this is an entry-level offering from realme. That being said, the camera did take quite a dip as compared to its previous iteration. With just having a 13MP wide and 2MP black and white rear camera instead of the 48MP triple camera setup of the realme narzo 20, the narzo 30A really is hyper-focusing itself on the multimedia playback and gaming aspect of the machine.

But that doesn’t mean the scaled down optics are terrible. They’re not. They’re actually quite decent especially if you have ample lighting.

For those who may need to turn on the selfie cameras for zoom calls or just want to document their day via a daily selfie proof of life photo, the realme narzo 30A is equipped with an 8MP front-facing camera that pretty much can do the job for that.

While the narzo 30A may seem like a step-down from the first narzo line that we were introduced with, we also have to remember that this most likely will cost far less than the initial SRP of the realme narzo 20. While we have no idea what the local pricing is yet, given that the focus for the narzo 30A is to make it far more accessible to a wider audience, we’re projecting this would probably sit somewhere close to the 6-7 thousand Pesos price range.

The realme narzo 30A will officially launch on March 25, 2021 online and will exclusively be available at realme Philippine’s Lazada Official Flagship Store.

realme narzo 30A specs

• MediaTek Helio G85 Processor (12nm)
• Mali-G52 MC2
• 4GB RAM
• 5-inch IPS LCD HD+ (720 x 1600) with mini drop notch
• 64GB Storage (expandable to 256GB)
• 13MP f/2.2 wide + 2MP f/2.4 Black and White double-rear camera setup
• 8MP f/2.0 front camera
• 3G, LTE, Dual SIM
• WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, fingerprint scanner (rear), USB Type-C
• 6000mAh battery with 18W fast charge support
• Android 10 with realme UI will be updated to Android 11 with realme UI 2.0 this Q3
• Laser Black, Laser Blue