realme 11 Review | Geek Lifestyle

This year’s been quite the show of force for realme with a sweet lineup of devices released in 2023, it’s interesting to see if they actually plan to take a break. By the looks of things, they don’t plan to slow down anytime soon with the surprise release of the realme 11 smartphone. Coming in a couple of months after the realme 11 Pro and Pro+ 5G, the entry-level variant sports a different aesthetic, a handy, compact size, and a more affordable price considering its premium appearance.

As Q4 is in full swing, we might just be looking at realme’s last major smartphone release for the year, so we were curious to see just how it stacks up as 2023’s supposed swan song. Does it cross the finish line with pomp and circumstance or do they end the year, not with a bang, but with a whimper? Read on to know more of our thoughts on the brand-new realme 11.

Geeksthetic

The realme11 comes in two colorways, Glory Black, and Glory Gold, the latter being the unit in our possession. The backside sports a sweet light effect with what’s labeled as a Starlight Texture finish, all thanks to realme’s special Gradient Gold Plating Process. The large camera module houses a powerful 108MP camera and a 2MP depth lens with some nice design around the edges. The 7.95mm Ultra-Slim “Glory Halo” Design just screams luxury—which is pretty much how it feels in your hands. Coming in at just about 178 grams, it’s lighter than your usual. As we’ve mostly been handling flagships and upper-midrange smartphones as of late, it’s nice to tinker with something more lightweight.

Up front, we get a 6.4” Super AMOLED display with a decent 90Hz refresh rate. The 84.4% screen-to-body ratio shows that there’s not much of a chin with this bad boy—and, this bad boy does come protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5, Up on the corner, we have a punch-hole camera equipped with a 16MP selfie lens which we’ll be playing around with later.

Binge-Watching Factor

The realme 11 sports a beautiful, and fairly large Super AMOLED Display. With a maximum brightness of 1000 nits, you can watch just about anything regardless of your lighting situation. The generous 6.4 inches of real estate helps you—appreciate the tasteful, cultured content that we know you have on-screen. So, whether it be streaming your favorite anime or your favorite K-pop group choreography, best believe you’ll have your eyes wide open.

As for volume concerns, the 200% UltraBoom downward speaker is fine-tuned to produce louder audio with more clarity both on treble and bass. As tested personally, with everyone still in the room, the noise never got to annoying levels, and there weren’t any crackles and pops to be found. Overall, you’ll get a comfy, cultured binge-watching experience.

Gaming Prowess

Speaking of not going out much, let’s talk gaming. The realme11 is powered by a MediaTek Helio G99 chipset coupled with a Mali-G57 MC2 GPU. Since we’re working with a dedicated gaming processor with some flagship-tier power efficiency, the most demanding games to date weren’t too much of a hassle. Of course, we had to work around a few things to make everything run smoothly.

We got some smooth gameplay under medium to high settings. There were a few stops and jitters at first, but once we tweaked all the settings, running Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail was a breeze. It’s worth noting that these titles usually set phones on fire, so it’s nice to see that turning off motion blur and dropping to 30 fps makes everything work. The 90Hz refresh rate was also a factor in maintaining smoothness.

You also get 16 GB of RAM courtesy of dynamic expansion, so you won’t have any trouble going back and forth between gaming sessions. With 256GB of storage, you can play all the games you want. If that’s not enough, you can expand that storage up to 1TB via a micro-SD card.

Geek Photoshoot Capabilities

The realme11 comes with a sweet 108MP ProLight Camera equipped with a Samsung HM5 Sensor. Go hi-res with one big picture, or shoot at will with up to 3X zoom. More pixels means more ways to crop a photo. Or, you can just shoot to your heart’s content. Regardless of the subject, you’ll get some really nice shots under good lighting. And hey, even under—dimmer circumstances, photos still come out fine. As for portrait shots courtesy of the 2MP depth lens, it’s nice to see that the AI isn’t aggressive to the point where it’s eating up whatever you’re shooting. Street Mode also makes an appearance, giving you the capability to take 24mm, 72mm, or even 480mm shots if you wish. And just to be clear, no, you don’t HAVE to be on the street to use it.

: 108MP night mode

: 108MP daylight

: 108MP daylight

Street Mode also makes an appearance, giving you the capability to take 24mm, 72mm, or even 480mm shots if you wish. And just to be clear, no, you don’t HAVE to be on the street to use it.

: X1 Zoom

: X3 Zoom

: Street Mode

: Portrait Shot – Daylight

: Portrait Shot – Low Light

: Portrait Shot – Low Light

As for selfies, the 16MP front camera gets the job done. You get some nice photos, especially if you’re more good-looking than this guy. As for selfie portraits, you pretty much get the same experience as the main camera. Decent bokeh, and decent shots. Both the main shooter and selfie camera can shoot videos at 1080p 30fps, which produces some clear enough clips

: 16MP Selfie

: 16MP Selfie Portrait

Everyday Reliability

To start off a busy workday, the realme 11 comes with some snappy face and fingerprint biometric sensors, ensuring that you’re safe and sound before you even head out. As for efficiency while working, realme UI 4.0 makes sure to sort things out, especially if you’re into multi-tasking.

If you happen to be worried about running out of juice while doing everything mentioned above, then maybe a beefy 5000 mAh battery will put your mind at ease. Not needing to charge for more than a day really helps in taking away those worries. But if you do manage to drain everything, the 67W SUPERVOOC fast charging will get you right back into action in just 45 minutes.

realme 11 – Final Verdict

The realme 11 had quite an unexpected release right before the year entered its last month. Still, it’s a very welcome surprise as it sports a premium aesthetic and capable features all at the affordable price of PHP 13,999 (8GB+256GB). This price becomes even more affordable as the launch also came with a few sweet online early bird offers.

Until November 17th, you can get a PHP 2,000 discount from realme’s official TikTok Shop and E-store. On the other hand, you can get PHP 1,700 off from realme’s Shopee flagship store. As for Lazada, you can get a PHP 2,000 discount up until November 13.