The realme 11 Pro+ 5G is a smartphone that many Android fans have anxiously been expecting to launch. With a mid-range chipset and a relatively affordable price, this smartphone promises an elegant design, a beautiful display, incredibly fast charging, and an excellent camera. I received it in testing a couple of days before its official launch, and now I’m excited to tell you all about it. Scroll down and read this review to find out why this might be the Android smartphone for you:

realme 11 Pro+ 5G: Who is it good for?

The realme 11 Pro+ 5G is an excellent choice if you:

• Want a stylish Android smartphone
• Fancy a smartphone that’s great for photography and video recording
• Are looking for a phone that can charge extremely fast
• Want a well-rounded mid-range device at a reasonable price

Pros and cons

These are the things I like most about the realme 11 Pro+ 5G smartphone:

• Elegant design and beautiful body
• Outstanding when it comes to photography and video recording
• 100W super-fast charging and large battery
• Bright and colorful screen
• Able to deliver excellent performance in daily tasks and casual games
• Generous storage space
• Competitive price

There are a few things that can be improved:

• The macro camera is underwhelming
• No certification for protection against dust or water
• Plenty of bloatware preinstalled

Verdict

The realme 11 Pro+ 5G is an amazing Android smartphone. With a beautiful and elegant design, this phone impressed me in many regards. First of all, I’m at a loss for words when it comes to its cameras. Except for the macro one, the other cameras offer outstanding quality, both in terms of photography and video recording. The main camera is what I’d expect to see on a flagship device, not on a mid-range Android. Then, there’s also the elegant design of the phone, its beautiful screen, the blazing-fast charging, and the large battery. Though its chipset is a mid-range one, it’s not shabby at all, and the generous amounts of RAM and storage help it deliver excellent performance in daily activities. In my opinion, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is a great Android smartphone that I have no reluctance to recommend to all our readers.

Unboxing the realme 11 Pro+ 5G

The realme 11 Pro+ 5G comes in a relatively large box painted in the company’s brand colors: bright yellow for the background and dark black for the text and accents. It looks good, and the cardboard used to make it is of good quality. The top cover of the box showcases the name of the smartphone and hints at its 5G capabilities, while the bottom side holds a couple of details about its specs and features.

The box of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G

Inside the package, alongside the smartphone, you find a rather generous bundle: a 100W fast charger together with a detachable USB-C cable, a transparent silicon case for protecting the phone, a SIM card tray eject tool, the user manual, and warranty details. Furthermore, the smartphone also comes with a pre-applied screen protector, which is a nice touch.

Unboxing the realme 11 Pro+ 5G

Unboxing the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is a pleasant experience. Unlike other smartphone manufacturers, realme bundles a very fast charger (100 Watts) and a protective case. Also, the packaging looks nice and robust.

Design and build quality

The realme 11 Pro+ 5G seems to be the company’s proposition for the Android mid-range device of the year 2023. It’s been a while since I’ve seen or tested a mid-ranger from realme, and the 11 Pro+ managed to impress me right from the start, especially in terms of design. As soon as I took it out of its box, I enjoyed the way it looked and how it felt to hold it. 🙂

The smartphone was created in collaboration with Matteo Menotto, a prints and textile designer who worked for Gucci. As realme states, Matteo Menotto “has created a print that incorporates a Milan urban fashion aesthetic into the design of the realme 11 pro series.” And yes, the looks of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G are distinctive and attractive. The back of the device is covered in vegan leather with a texture that feels great to the touch. The camera system ring found towards the top is huge and looks premium and stylish, and from top to bottom, the back of the phone is vertically divided by a zipper-like section with fake embossed stitches that add to the general impression that you’re holding an elegant device in your hand.

The back of the phone is covered in vegan leather

realme offers the 11 Pro+ smartphones in three color versions: Sunrise Beige, Oasis Green, and Astral Black.

The colors available for realme 11 Pro+ 5G

The model I tested was the beige one, as you’ve probably noticed in the previous pictures. As a side note, you should know that the Astral Black version is 0.5 mm thinner and 6 grams lighter than the other color models.

The Sunrise Beige color version

The front side of the smartphone is all about the 6.7” display, which goes from side to side, ending in very thin bezels. Protected by 0.65 mm double-reinforced glass with slightly curved edges, the only thing that breaks the screen’s surface is a small cutout in the top-center area, where the selfie camera resides.

realme 11 Pro+ 5G features a 6.7-inch display

The realme 11 Pro+ 5G is built upon a plastic frame with a reflective surface. Just like the back of the phone, the edges look elegant, but unlike the vegan leather, they are a magnet for fingerprints. The left side lacks any features: all the buttons, speakers, ports, etc., are found on the other edges.

The left side of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G

The power button and the volume rocker are on the right side, in the upper section. Though they lack any special texture, these extremely thin buttons are slightly protruding, so it’s easy to find and press the one you want without having to look at the phone.

The right edge of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G

The top edge of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is home only to the secondary microphone and a grille that allows for the earpiece speaker to spread sound when watching videos, playing games, or simply listening to music on the phone.

The top side of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G

On the bottom side of the smartphone, you find the SIM tray, a small hole where the main microphone is hiding, the USB-C port, and the main speaker.

The bottom edge of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G

Unfortunately, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G doesn’t possess any certification for protection against water or dust.

The design of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is sufficiently different and unique for a flagship device. I like the fact that realme didn’t settle on classic materials and textures, opting instead for an eco-friendly and, at the same time, visually appealing design.

Hardware specifications

The realme 11 Pro+ 5G is powered by the new MediaTek Dimensity 7050 chipset, which is almost identical to the MediaTek Dimensity 1080 seen on a Samsung Galaxy A34 5G that I’ve just finished testing a week ago. The SoC (System on a Chip) is built on a 6-nanometer manufacturing process and features an octa-core processor (two Cortex-A78 cores running at 2.6 GHz and six Cortex-A55 cores running at 2.0 GHz) and a Mali-G68 MC4 GPU (graphics processing unit).

This phone uses a MediaTek Dimensity 7050 chipset

In terms of storage and memory, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G smartphone is available in various configurations with 8 or 12 GB of RAM and 128, 256, or 512 GB of internal storage space. The sample I received for this review had the higher-end configuration: 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of ROM flash storage. Out of the entire 512 GB of internal memory, roughly 26 GB were occupied by the operating system and the unavoidable preinstalled apps.

realme 11 Pro+ 5G: Tech specs

The realme 11 Pro+ 5G is a dual SIM smartphone, accepting two nano-SIM cards that can work simultaneously in dual stand-by mode. However, the phone doesn’t have a micro-SD card slot, so you won’t be able to expand its storage capacity. Thus, when you decide to buy this smartphone, make sure you choose a model with enough storage for your needs.

realme 11 Pro+ 5G is a dual-SIM phone

The large 6.7-inch screen of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is based on an AMOLED panel with 2160 Hz PWM ultra-high frequency dimming. This means that it should be able to maintain color accuracy and avoid flickering even in low light when the screen’s brightness is dimmed. With an FHD+ resolution of 2412×1080 pixels and a 20:9 screen ratio, the display has a high ppi density of about 395 pixels per inch. In addition, it also offers a high 120 Hz refresh rate and a 360 Hz touch sampling rate, it can show over 1 billion colors (100% P3 wide color range), deliver a maximum peak brightness of 950 nits, and it also holds an HDR 10+ certification. For a mid-ranger, all these specs are quite impressive.

realme 11 Pro+ 5G has an AMOLED display with a 120 Hz refresh rate

In terms of cameras, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G offers a triple-camera setup on its rear and a single selfie camera on its front:

• The primary wide camera has a 200-megapixel sensor (Samsung ISOCELL HP3 Super Zoom Edition), an aperture of f/1.7, and support for phase-detection autofocus (PDAF) and OIS (Optical Image Stabilization).
• The second ultrawide camera is based on an 8-megapixel sensor with an f/2.2 aperture.
• The third is a macro camera with a 2-megapixel sensor and an f/2.4 aperture.
• On the front, there’s a 32 MP selfie camera (Sony IMX615) with an aperture of f/2.5.

The main rear camera supports 4K video recording at 30 frames per second and 1080p at 30 or 60 fps. On top of that, the main sensor can do lossless 2x and 4x zoom. The selfie camera video recording is limited to 1080p resolution and 30 fps. The realme 11 Pro+ 5G also includes an LED flash on its back.

The smartphone's main camera system

Regarding connectivity, besides being compatible with LTE and 5G mobile networks, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G also offers support for Bluetooth 5.2 and dual-band Wi-Fi 6 (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax) on the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies. It has an NFC chip too, plus a whole range of other sensors, such as an optical fingerprint reader under the display, an accelerometer, a proximity sensor, a gyroscope, and a compass sensor.

The fingerprint reader is under the display

The electrical energy required by the realme 11 Pro+ 5G to operate is dispensed by a large 5000 mAh non-removable Li-Po battery. Its capacity should be enough to keep the phone running for at least a full day before requiring you to charge it. The extremely good news is that charging is very fast. The smartphone supports 100W fast charging, and the appropriate charger is bundled in its box. According to the company, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G can achieve 100% battery capacity within 26 min of charging and 17% capacity within 3 min of charging. These are very impressive numbers: I’ll get back to them in the next section of this review.

Details about the smartphone's battery

If you’d like to get into detail about all the features and technical specifications, check out realme 11 Pro+ 5G’s official webpage.

The technical specs of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G paint the picture of a powerful mid-range Android smartphone with a lot of amazing features. Though the chipset is not the most powerful one you can get, it should deliver outstanding performance in daily activities. And apart from that, you get extremely fast charging, a large battery, an awesome display, and last but not least, some promising cameras.

Now, let’s see how the realme 11 Pro+ 5G performs in real life. On the next page, you can find out what to expect in daily use, see what this phone’s cameras can do, the software you get on the phone, and what benchmarks say about the realme 11 Pro+ 5G.