realme 11 Pro+ 5G review: Amazing camera in a beautiful package

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.

The smartphone experience on the realme 11 Pro+ 5G

Using the realme 11 Pro+ 5G daily was a satisfying experience for me. I like the way it feels in the hand, although I do have to mention that I’ve used the smartphone without its protective cover. The vegan leather is soft, and its 3D texture provides both a good grip and the sensation that you’re holding an expensive device. But, in order to get that, you need to use the phone without its protective silicon cover, which may not be a good idea if you have a history of dropping your smartphone. 🙂 The realme 11 Pro+ 5G is a beautiful device I also like the screen a lot. It’s large and bright, and you can read what’s displayed on it even under direct sunlight. Plus, its colors are vivid, and everything looks very much alive. Although in my case, the phone’s size is not an issue, for some people (like children or women with smaller hands or short fingers), the width and height of the screen may mean that they will have to use two hands to navigate it properly. Using the smartphone with one hand Regarding the most basic use of a smartphone, which is phone calls, I can say that the realme 11 Pro+ 5G works just as expected. To make it clear, it’s been quite a long time since I’ve had to complain about a smartphone in terms of phone call quality or signal reception. And the realme 11 Pro+ 5G did not disappoint here either. Speaking to my family and friends over the phone proved to be a good experience, with clear and crisp voices. Neither I nor the people to whom I’ve talked had anything negative to say about that. Phone call quality is excellent Handling, screen, and phone quality aside, the overall performance offered by the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is also good. I had no issues with daily tasks or media playback; all of that was easily handled by the smartphone. Gaming was decent, too, especially for casual games. As long as you’re ok with using medium or, in some cases, low graphics quality, any higher-end game will also run smoothly on this device. Gaming on the realme 11 Pro+ 5G The stereo speakers deliver a good audio experience for a smartphone. However, although I didn’t notice any distortion, and while the maximum volume is quite high, don’t expect powerful lower frequencies (bass). The fingerprint reader is quite accurate and pretty fast too. I’d go out on a limb and say that it’s actually better than the fingerprint reader found on 90% of all the smartphones I’ve tested in the last few years. For as long as I had the realme 11 Pro+ 5G in testing, it only failed once or twice in reading my fingerprint correctly from the first attempt. The fingerprint reader is fast and accurate The battery easily got me through the day, and unless you’re an avid gamer or someone who uses their phone 8 hours a day, two days of battery life are perfectly achievable. Charging the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is blazing-fast. Coming from a smartphone that only supports 25W charging, the 100W fast charging offered by the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is like switching from a steam-powered car to a fire-spitting turbocharged V8 monster. Charging from 1% to 100% took just 26 minutes! realme 11 Pro+ 5G: Charging time Overall, using the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is a fine experience: you get a premium-looking phone with an excellent screen, good battery life, and super fast charging. Furthermore, the performance in daily activities is up to the mark.

The camera experience on the realme 11 Pro+ 5G

NOTE: The pictures in the article are resized for optimization purposes. You can find pictures and videos captured by the realme 11 Pro+ 5G in the gallery below: The realme 11 Pro+ 5G boasts a triple-camera setup that includes a 200 MP main camera, an 8 MP ultrawide camera, and a 2 MP macro camera. The main camera uses a Samsung ISOCELL HP3 Super Zoom Edition sensor that delivers high-resolution images with rich details and colors. The ultrawide camera has a 112° field of view that lets you fit more scenery or people in your shots. The macro camera allows you to take close-up shots of small objects at a recommended focus distance of 4 cm. There are three cameras on the back The Camera app on the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is fairly simple and easy to use, and it supports various modes and features that can enhance your photography experience. For example, the Night mode can help you take bright and clear photos in low-light conditions, the Starry Mode allows you to take snapshots of the night sky using long exposure, and the Street mode can auto zoom on your subjects and center them in the photos you take. The Camera app on the realme 11 Pro+ 5G The photos I took in daylight were of the highest quality, with a lot of detail, excellent contrast, and dynamic range. In good lighting conditions, there’s no visible noise, as far as I can tell. The same is true about the photos I took using 2x and 4x zoom. According to realme, zooming at these levels is done without loss of quality, and my experience seems to confirm that. Unlike what I’ve seen on other smartphones that claim the same thing, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G seems to actually be able to take advantage of the 200-megapixel sensor of its main camera. Daylight photography on the main camera is exceptional The widescreen camera is almost as good as the main one. The colors are vivid and match the ones on the main camera, the contrast is excellent, and the dynamic range is wide. The widescreen camera is good too The only part where the main camera system of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G doesn’t shine is macro photography. When it comes to that, the quality of the photos I took is far behind what the main and ultrawide cameras offer. Macro shots have a lot of visible noise and lack detail. Unfortunately, the macro camera is underwhelming Portraits and selfies are of very good quality. The skin texture and colors are realistic, the colors are natural, and the subject separation (the blur on the background) is good. Portraits and selfies are of excellent quality Photos shot during the night or in low-light conditions are surprisingly good. Obviously, there is a bit of detail loss in these photos, but the level is very low compared to the average mid-range Android smartphone. And, what’s essential for night photography is the fact that the main camera on the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is one that captures pictures without noise and good exposure. Night photography is better than I expected Now that you know my opinion about the realme 11 Pro+ 5G, which I believe excels in photography (except for macro shots), what about video recording? The device’s main camera can record videos in up to 4K resolution at 30 fps. 1080p recording is available for both the main camera, the ultrawide camera, and the selfie one. When using the main camera in 1080p, you can also increase the framerate to 60 fps, which delivers more cinematic results than the standard 30 fps. Electronic image stabilization (EIS) is also available for all the mentioned cameras, except when recording in 4K. To get a clearer picture of how good video recordings are, watch the next clip, shot at 4K resolution and 30 frames per second. As you can see, the smartphone can capture a lot of details, the contrast is high. In the next video sample, recorded in 1080p and 60 frames per second, with more movement, you can notice a similar level quality, and how the image stabilization does it job: The realme 11 Pro+ 5G is a smartphone that offers an amazingly good photo and video recording experience. Better than I expected, actually. With the sole exception of the macro camera, both the wide, ultrawide, and selfie cameras deliver outstanding results. And that’s true for any situation, regardless of whether we’re talking about daylight or night-time photography. While the chipset of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G classifies it as a mid-range smartphone, the camera quality it offers is flagship-grade.

Android 13, realme 4.0, and bundled apps

The realme 11 Pro+ 5G runs on Android 13 with the realme 4.0 user interface on top. During the time I had the phone, it received two software updates, improving system fluency, stability, and security, as well as optimizing other features like the fingerprint reader speed, standby power consumption, or the Camera app performance. According to realme’s policy, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G should receive two operating system updates (Android 14 and 15) and three years of security patches. realme 11 Pro+ 5G comes with Android 13 and realme UI 4.0 The realme UI 4.0 is an easy-to-use interface that enhances the default one in Android and comes with several optimizations. realme UI is relatively uncluttered yet filled with features and customization options. Among many other things, it’s worth mentioning that it allows you to configure the way the always-on display feature works, personalize the phone’s overall appearance (wallpapers, icons, fonts, etc.), enable a smart sidebar (similar to Samsung’s Edge Panels) that lets you launch apps and quickly access shortcuts, and set how much storage space you’d like the phone to use as RAM (when the phone’s built-in RAM is all used up). The main interface of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G When you start the realme 11 Pro+ 5G for the first time, the smartphone allows you to review and (de)select some of the apps that are automatically downloaded and installed. As I’ve always favored a lighter operating system, I refused all the recommended apps. However, even if I did that, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G still installed many apps that I didn’t need and didn’t ask for. They weren’t shown in the list I’ve mentioned, and there was no way I could avoid having them on the phone. Also, during the first configuration of the smartphone, you can choose how you prefer to handle system updates, whether or not to enable the Lock Screen Magazine (randomly selected photos that appear on the lock screen), and whether you’d like to use realme’s Global Search (a search tool for finding content on the phone and on the internet). I decided to disable the latter because I found it to be quite inefficient. Additional apps recommended by realme Besides all the regular Google apps you find on Android and the recommended apps that you could decide whether to install while configuring the smartphone, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G also includes the following ones, by default:

• Amazon Shopping: the app of the well-known online store.
• App Market: an alternative to Google’s Play Store.
• Booking: useful for planning trips and making hotel reservations.
• Calculator: can be of service when math gives you headaches.
• Clock: does what it says, which is telling the time.
• Clone Phone: helps you migrate your data from your old phone.
• Compass: a simple app that indicates the cardinal points.
• Facebook: the app of the popular social network.
• Games: a hub where you can find and manage all the games installed on the smartphone.
• Genshin Impact: a free-to-play action role-playing game available for Android, iOS, PlayStation, and Windows, featuring an anime-style open-world environment and an action-based battle system with elemental magic and character-switching.
• Internet: a web browser with a simple user interface.
• LinkedIn: the app of the popular business and employment-focused social network.
• Lords Mobile: Kingdom Wars: a mobile strategy game set in a fantasy world where players build and manage their own kingdoms and armies and battle others in real time.
• Miravia: an online shopping platform that seems to address citizens of Spain; I have no clue why it’s installed by default on realme 11 Pro+ 5G smartphones sold elsewhere, like in Romania. 🙂
• Music: an app that helps you manage and play your music.
• My Files: useful for managing the files and folders on your smartphone.
• Notes: a minimalistic note-taking app that also lets you create to-do lists.
• Phone Manager: helps you keep an eye on the well-being of your smartphone and perform optimizations.
• Photos: the default gallery app on the smartphone.
• Recorder: lets you record sound using the phone’s microphones.
• Screen Lock: does one thing only, and that’s to lock your screen as soon as you tap on this app. 🙂
• Snapchat: the app of the popular multimedia messaging app bearing the same name.
• Spotify: the popular music streaming service.
• TikTok: the digital gate to the social network bearing the same name.
• Videos: a relatively simple app that lets you play locally stored videos.
• Weather: displays the weather forecast for the upcoming days.
• Zen Space: an app designed to help you eliminate distractions and focus on what matters. Its two features, Deep Zen and Light Zen, automatically silence all notifications for a set amount of time, to help you give your undivided attention to what you’re doing, not your phone.

Preinstalled apps on the realme 11 Pro+ 5G While I do like the realme UI overall, and I do appreciate the multitude of customization options, I’m not a fan of the company’s approach to bundled apps. On one hand, it’s nice to see that when configuring the smartphone for the first time, the user can choose what additional apps are to be installed. On the other hand, there are so many bundled apps that are preinstalled without giving you the choice to decline them… Unfortunately, no matter how you look at it, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is an Android phone filled with bloatware.

Performance in benchmarks

Now that you know what the realme 11 Pro+ 5G smartphone has to offer in terms of design, specs, camera quality, software, and overall user experience, let’s take a more in-depth look at its performance. For that, we need benchmarks: I began benchmarking the realme 11 Pro+ 5G with Geekbench. In the tests offered by this app, the smartphone got a Single-Core score of 932 points and a Multi-Core score of 2401 points. The GPU Compute scores were 2399 for OpenCL and 2400 for Vulkan. These results tell the story of a mid-range smartphone with a performance similar to other mid-range Android devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy A34 5G, Redmi Note 12 Pro, Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite, or Google Pixel 4. Benchmark results in Geekbench 6 The second app I used for benchmarking the realme 11 Pro+ 5G was 3DMark. In the Wild Life test, the smartphone scored 2301 points, while in Sling Shot, it got 5189 points. While not formidable, these scores show that it can run casual games without any kind of issue. You can get good framerates in higher-end games too, albeit with some compromises in terms of graphics quality settings. Benchmark results in 3DMark I continued with running PCMark for Android, a benchmarking app that evaluates the daily performance of the smartphone and can also give you an accurate insight into the battery life you should expect in real-world situations. The realme 11 Pro+ 5G got an excellent score of 14099 points in the Work 3.0 performance test and an impressive result in terms of autonomy: almost 15 hours! Benchmark results in PCMark The last aspect I checked was the wireless performance of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G. Though my mobile subscription plan doesn’t include 5G, I did test the smartphone’s speed when connected to a Wi-Fi 6 network with an internet connection of 1 Gbps. Ookla’s Speedtest app measured a download speed of 636 Mbps and an upload speed of 322 Mbps, which are top-notch results for a mobile device like this smartphone. Speedtest also showed that the realme 11 Pro+ 5G would have no issues streaming videos and movies in 4K resolution. Benchmark results in Speedtest The results of the benchmarks indicate the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is an impressive mid-range smartphone that delivers solid levels of performance. It does great in productivity tasks and handles casual gaming without issues. For more demanding games, you might need to set a lower resolution or accept a trade-off in terms of graphics quality, but still, they can run well. And last but not least, the battery life of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is quite exceptional and will easily keep you going for at least one, if not two days before having to charge it.

What do you think of the realme 11 Pro+ 5G?

Now you know more about the realme 11 Pro+ 5G: what impressions it’s left me, how it performs in real-life, what its cameras can do, and what the benchmarks say about its performance. What’s your opinion about it? Do you intend to buy a realme 11 Pro+ 5G? What other smartphones are you comparing it with? Let me know what you think in the comments section.