The Realme 8 offers a seamless 5G experience and other great features, all at a reasonable price. It’s the perfect phone for people who want to get into the world of 5G without breaking the bank.
Design
🎨 The Realme 8 5G comes in Blue or Black variants with a glossy back, which is, unfortunately, a magnet to fingerprints, but this can and by most of the users will be solved by putting on the protective silicon case.
The Realme company given the 8 5G a pretty classic design that they have had used in other models – the bottom side contains a USB-C port and a 3.5mm jack together with a small speaker, while on the left side, we can find a slot for a pair of nanoSIM + microSD card as well as a volume control button. The power button with included fingerprint scanner is standardly on the right side. The well-sized fingerprint reader has good accuracy while unlocking the phone.
The frame of the phone fits nicely with its glossy back, and the rectangular camera module doesn’t particularly stick out. If you place the smartphone on a flat surface and tap the top left corner, it will wobble, but it’s definitely not something downright distracting.
The Realme 8 5G looks solid enough, even though it doesn’t feature any increased durability. The novelty in its segment doesn’t surprise but doesn’t disappoint either. The absence of a huge logo as in the case of the Realme 8 Pro can also be considered a good thing.
See also: Realme Buds Air 2 Neo: Surprisingly good, very affordable earbuds – Review
Realme 8 5G Display: high-quality IPS LCD with 90 Hz
📱 In the case of Realme 8 5G, the manufacturer bets on a 6.5-inch IPS LCD screen with quite sufficient Full HD+ resolution and average wide frame with a bit wider “chin”.
The flat display pleasantly surprises and the so-called IPS glow is hardly noticeable here, except a being slightly glowing near the bottom edge (if you focus enough on it). The IPS glow is a common ‘drawback’ of some of the IPS screens where you can notice excessive light passing through the panel on its sides, especially in low light conditions.
The screen also has sufficient brightness for outdoor use (up to 600 nits) as well as a pretty nice customizable colour representation. It’s disappointing that the Realme 8 5G doesn’t have a notification LED.
Realme 8 5G Sound: Not a stereo
🔈 There is only one loudspeaker at the bottom side of the Realme 8 5G with an average sound quality that more or less matches the competition in the same price segment. Good news for wired headphones advocates as Realme has included the 3.5mm audio jack here.
See also: Realme Buds Q2: New affordable wireless earbuds for 2021
Hardware performance: the processor won’t be a problem
⚙ The 7nm MediaTek Dimensity 700 5G processor gives the phone enough power for normal use, multitasking and possibly gaming. The configuration with 4/6GB of RAM and 64/128GB of storage is already an average in its class. Buying the 6GB/128GB version is advisable as you might hit some limitations with the lower specs version. Of the 128GB of storage, roughly 110GB remains available to the user after the initial start-up, with the rest of the memory being locked for the operating system. If needed, the memory can also be extended with the MicroSD slot that can be used with up to a 1TB card.
Realme 8 5G Battery life: up to two days
🔋 The Realme 8 5G features quite a large 5,000mAh battery with 18W wired charging support that will easily provide one day of use, and with a little effort, you can easily get to 1.5 to 2 days of use on a single charge. The charging speed won’t impress and cannot be considered as a fast-charging. The full charge from 0 to 100% takes about two hours. Wireless charging, unsurprisingly, is not supported here.
Realme 8 5G: NFC and 5G
📶 In terms of connectivity, the Realme 8 5G has nothing to be ashamed of, offering time-tested “classics” in the form of Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.1, as well as support for GPS, GLONASS, BDS, QZSS or the European Galileo system. As the additional equipment, you can also use the NFC for contactless payment or fast pairing and, of course, support for 5G networks with smart switching between 5G/LTE and Wi-Fi, which should also have a positive effect on the overall battery life.
Realme 8 5G Camera: only for the modest
📷 The Realme 8 5G has a total of four cameras – a 16Mpx selfie camera and a trio of sensors in the rear photo module.
Two of them are 2Mpx for black-and-white portrait shots and macro shots, but the resolution is so low that their contribution is highly questionable as the sensor is hardly usable.
Quite startling is the “AI” inscription in one of the rings that normally houses a sensor.
The main 48MP camera, which normally stacks four pixels into one, takes 12MP images. Thanks to its high resolution, it can also deliver a solid 2x (digital) zoom, and the f/1.8 aperture isn’t bad either. With at least a little light available, the camera can take quite good photos (considering the price). If you, however, going to take some pictures in the complete darkness, don’t expect miracles as activating the night mode will have almost no effect.
Daytime photos are very saturated and colours are sometimes unrealistically highlighted, but the images don’t look completely bad and with a bit of luck you can capture a really nice photo. On closer inspection, you can notice unnecessarily artificially sharp edges and sometimes poorly adjusted exposure, which ultimately doesn’t look very good.
However, for a modest user who takes a photo once in a while, the phone will suffice. The fact that the Realme 8 5G is not aimed more at skilled photographers is also indicated by the maximum Full HD resolution at 30 FPS for video. The quality of the selfie camera images also fails to impress as the photos come out too ‘soft’ and lack detail.
Software: Realme UI with Android 11
Where Realme has been doing well lately is its custom Realme UI extension, which recently underwent an extensive redesign which made the UI look fresher, while still offering enough visual customisation options and, for example, a game mode. The only problem some may have is I have is that Realme is only guaranteeing one major operating system update. This should not affect security updates as the company has released a couple of security patches in March.
Realme 8 5G: What’s in the box
In addition to the phone, the box also includes an 18W power adapter and a USB-A/USB-C cable. The manufacturer also includes a practical protective silicon cover.
Realme 8 5G Price
The Realme 8 5G is starting its sales from 20th May 2021 and will come in two different configurations and two colours. The first model with 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage costs £199, and the second (recommended) model with 6GB of RAM and double the storage at 128GB for a price of £249.
The phone will be available via major retailers and the official Realme store.
Verdict
The Realme 8 5G targets users who seek the benefits of 5G connectivity but also don’t want to / or can’t spend too much. If we look at the phone via this angle, some flws such as the inferior photo equipment, the guarantee of only one operating system update, or even just one speaker may be forgiven.
See also: Motorola Moto G50: A possible Realme 8 5G alternative
As for the good things, we could consider the advantage of the high-quality 90Hz IPS LCD panel that does not suffer from significant glare, a sufficiently powerful chipset and long battery life. If you want 5G and your budget ends at £200, this is also probably the most affordable 5G smartphone today.
✅ What do we like
| Enough performance | Long battery life | microSD for up to 1TB cards |
| 5G | main 48MP camera | Smooth Realme UI extension |
⛔ What we don’t like
| Poor selfie and rear camera during low light conditions | Only 30fps video support |
| Only Mono speaker | No fast charge |
| lack of LED notification |
