While iPhones dominate the charts as the most popular smartphones on the market, many people can’t afford them and are looking for reasonably-priced devices. If you’re not keen on paying a lot of money on a phone, you should take a look at the realme 11 Pro. It’s an Android smartphone with a very good price, a beautiful design, solid performance, and a long battery life. Read this review to find out why this phone may be a great choice for you:
realme 11 Pro comes in a typical yellow box
Open the box to find another, smaller, yellow box inviting you to “Dare to Leap.” Take it out, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the generous bundle offered by realme.
Make the leap and open the box 🙂
Inside the package, you should have the following items: the phone itself, a 67W fast charger, a USB-C cable, a transparent protective cover, the SIM card tray eject tool, the quick setup guide, and the warranty details.
Everything you find inside the box
Unboxing the realme 11 Pro is a pleasant experience. Unlike other smartphone manufacturers, realme bundles a fast charger and a protective case. Also, the packaging looks nice and robust.
The colors for realme 11 Pro
The back of the realme 11 Pro I tested is Sunrise Beige, covered by vegan leather with a texture that’s a pleasure to touch. This smartphone was created with Matteo Menotto, a prints and textile designer who worked for Gucci, and it shows. The camera island on the top is large and has a pleasant aesthetic. From top to bottom, the back of the phone is vertically divided by a zipper-like section with fake embossed stitches adding to the general impression that you’re holding an elegant device.
realme 11 Pro Sunrise Beige
Adding the bundled silicone cover doesn’t ruin the aesthetic but diminishes the appeal of holding and touching this phone.
The silicone cover is found inside the box
The frame of the phone is made of plastic, and it has an elegant reflective surface. However, it is a magnet for fingerprints. On the left side, you don’t find any buttons or ports.
The left side of this phone doesn't feature any buttons
The Power button and Volume rocker are on the right side. They’re thin, slightly protruding, and easy to press even if you’re not looking at your smartphone.
All the buttons are on the right edge
The bottom of the realme 11 Pro hosts the SIM tray (you can use two nano SIM cards with this phone), the main microphone, the USB Type C port, and the main speaker.
The bottom of the realme 11 Pro
The top edge hosts the secondary microphone and the earpiece speaker. There’s no headphone jack available.
The top edge of the realme 11 Pro
The size of the Sunrise Beige & Oasis Green versions is 161.6 x 73.9 x 8.77 mm or 6.36 x 2.91 x 0.35 inches in length x width x depth. The phone is also thin, at 8.7 mm or 0.34 inches in thickness. As mentioned earlier, the Astral Black version is 0.5 mm thinner and 6 grams lighter than the other two colors. The screen is curved and has a size of 6.7 inches, while the screen-to-body ratio is 93.65%. At the top side of the screen, you have a small cutout for the selfie camera, and at the bottom, there’s the in-display fingerprint reader.
The fingerprint reader is inside the screen
The design of the realme 11 Pro is a strength of this smartphone. The materials, colors, and finishing used by its manufacturer make it look like a premium device, not your usual mid-range phone. However, realme 11 Pro doesn’t possess any certification for protection against water or dust, which may lower its appeal to some users.
Details about the hardware inside the realme 11 Pro
The screen uses a beautiful AMOLED panel with an adaptive refresh rate of up to 120 Hz, a maximum brightness of 950 nits, and a 1080 x 2412 pixels resolution. It also holds an HDR 10+ certification. These specs are quite impressive for a mid-range smartphone.
realme 11 Pro has an AMOLED screen
The realme 11 Pro is a dual SIM smartphone, accepting two nano-SIM cards that can work simultaneously in dual stand-by mode. However, it doesn’t have a micro-SD card slot, so you won’t be able to expand its storage capacity. 5G mobile connectivity, Bluetooth 5.2, and Wi-Fi 6 are available. The phone has an NFC chip too, plus many other sensors, such as an optical fingerprint reader under the display, an accelerometer, a proximity sensor, a gyroscope, a light sensor, and a compass sensor.
The available connectivity options are pretty good
The biggest difference between the realme 11 Pro and the realme 11 Pro+ 5G is the camera system. On its back, the realme 11 Pro has a main 100 Megapixel camera, with optical image stabilization, a 1/1.8” sensor, and an aperture of f/1.75. On the same camera island, you also find a LED flash and a 2 Megapixel portrait camera, with an aperture of f/2.4. On the front, you have a 16 Megapixel selfie camera with an aperture of f/2.45.
The camera island on the back of the phone
The battery of this smartphone has a capacity of 5000 mAh, and you can charge it using the 67W SUPERVOOC charger included in the box.
realme 11 Pro has a 5000 mAh battery
If you’d like details about all the features and technical specifications, check out this page: realme 11 Pro 5G.
The realme 11 Pro packs a punch in terms of hardware. It has a solid mid-range chipset, plenty of RAM, a good amount of storage space, adequate connectivity, a beautiful screen, and a decent camera system.
Let’s see how it 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, as well as the benchmark results of the realme 11 Pro.
The screen is large and bright
But let’s get real for a bit (pun intended 🙂 ): this is a phone first and foremost, and it must work well to contact people. In this regard, realme 11 Pro offered no reasons to complain. I enjoyed good signal reception, 5G connectivity, and crisp voices during phone calls.
Cellular reception is good
The overall performance of the realme 11 Pro is good. Navigating apps and all the settings is fast and fluid. I had no problems with daily tasks or media playback, which were easily handled. Gaming was decent too, especially for casual games. If you’re ok with using medium or, in some cases, low graphics quality, complex games will also run smoothly on this device.
realme 11 Pro works well for casual gaming
The stereo speakers on this phone sound well and are loud and balanced. realme 11 Pro is good for listening to music or watching movies. Its HDR10+ certified display helps with the multimedia experience.
The audio experience is pretty good
Unlocking the realme 11 Pro also works well when you use the fingerprint reader and face unlock. While not the best I’ve seen on a smartphone, both systems are fast and accurate.
You can unlock the phone with your face or your fingerprint
The battery of the realme 11 Pro lasts for a day and a half to two days of normal use. If you’re a heavy user, you might get just one day. The charging is not as fast as it is on the realme 11 Pro+ 5G, but it’s fast enough. The company says the smartphone can charge fully in 47 minutes, and reach 50% in 18 minutes. In my case, the phone’s battery went from 0 to 100% in 44 minutes, which was slightly faster than the time advertised by its manufacturer.
How fast the realme 11 Pro charges
The experience of using the realme 11 Pro is a pleasant one. For a moderate budget, you get a premium-looking smartphone with a solid mid-range hardware configuration, excellent battery life, and decent fast charging.
The Camera app is easy to use
This phone takes good-quality photos in daylight, with excellent contrast, lots of detail captured, and the dynamic range is high. In most cases, the colors look natural, though there are certain situations where you may notice some oversaturation (colors are too vivid or punchy) and, at times, some of them come out yellow-ish.
You can take good pictures with the realme 11 Pro
In low-light photography, the realme 11 Pro performs well. You get pictures with plenty of details in bright areas, but some detail is lost in the darker spots. There’s also some granulation, but not too much, and some softness around the edges when using the dedicated Night mode. However, in most situations, you will be pleased with the results you get.
A night picture taken with realme 11 Pro
When shooting portraits or taking selfies, you’ll enjoy good separation of the subject from the background, a decent blur effect, and good focus. During daylight, portraits tend to feature natural colors and detailed skin textures. However, in low-light situations, the brightness and contrast of your portraits seems a bit overdone.
Potraits look pretty good
For a better perspective, you can find a gallery with dozens of pictures taken with the realme 11 Pro embedded below:
When you want to record videos with the realme 11 Pro, take into account the following limitations:
Some of the special features offered by realme 4.0 UI
Besides all the regular Google apps you find on Android devices, this phone bundles quite a lot of preinstalled apps:
There are many apps and games preinstalled
While the realme user interface looks good, is easy to use and customize, the amount of bloatware included is too much. Prepare yourself for manually uninstalling many apps if you want a clean realme 11 Pro.
TIP: For help on this issue, here are four ways to uninstall apps on Android.
The results you get in Geekbench 6
The second app I used for benchmarking the realme 11 Pro was 3DMark. In the Wild Life test, the smartphone scored 2305 points, while in Sling Shot, it got 5223 points. They’re reasonable scores which show that it can run casual games without problems. However, for the more demanding games, you do need to lower the graphics quality settings to get a good level of performance.
The results you get in 3DMark
A similar level of performance was measured in GFXBench. I ran the Car Chase and 1080p Car Chase Offscreen tests, and they ran at 22 frames per second (fps) and 27 fps, respectively. Again, a decent result.
The results you get in GFXBench
The next benchmarking app I used is PCMark for Android, which measures general performance. In addition, it can also help determine how long the phone lasts on battery in real-world use. The Work 3.0 performance score reached by realme 11 Pro is slightly better than what you get from a Samsung Galaxy A34. Its battery also lasted an impressive 18 hours and 4 minutes of continuous use.
The results you get in PCMark
The realme 11 Pro also offers Wi-Fi 6 connectivity. Ookla’s Speedtest app measured a download speed of 723 Mbps and an upload speed of 783 Mbps. They’re simply excellent. At these speeds, 4K movie streaming is a breeze, and downloading large games doesn’t take a lot of time.
The results you get in Speedtest
The benchmarks I ran confirm that the realme 11 Pro is an excellent mid-range smartphone. Its performance in regular tasks is good, its Wi-Fi 6 connectivity is super fast, and the battery life is great. The only weakness is mobile gaming: you may need to lower the graphics quality presets in your games if you want great framerates.
realme 11 Pro: Who is it good for?
The realme 11 Pro is a great choice if you:- Want an elegant smartphone
- Desire a phone with a fast, good-quality screen
- Are looking for a smartphone with good battery life
- Want a well-rounded mid-range device with a reasonable price
Pros and cons
These are the things I like most about the realme 11 Pro:- Beautiful design
- Fast, high-quality display
- Excellent battery life
- Good performance in daily tasks and casual games
- Satisfying photo and video experience
- Competitive price
- No certification for protection against dust or water
- Plenty of bloatware preinstalled
- No optical image stabilization for 4K video
Verdict
The realme 11 Pro is a great mid-range smartphone. It impresses with its looks, the excellent screen, capable hardware, good main camera, and generous battery life. Unfortunately, its camera system and fast charging are not as good as the ones of its more expensive brother, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G. To complicate things, the price difference between the two is rather small. Therefore, if you’re interested in photography, I recommend the realme 11 Pro+ 5G. However, if this aspect is unimportant to you, and you want a good, well-rounded smartphone that costs less, you’ll be more than happy with the realme 11 Pro.Unboxing the realme 11 Pro
The realme 11 Pro comes in a large yellow box, showcasing the smartphone’s name and its 5G capabilities. On the sides and bottom of the box, you find a couple of details about the main specs of this phone, as well as its IMEI code(s) and serial number.Design and build quality
The realme 11 Pro has the same colors, materials, and design as its more expensive brother, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G, which we reviewed recently. It’s available in Sunrise Beige, Oasis Green, and Astral Black. The Astral Black version is thinner and lighter than the other two because it doesn’t use the same vegan leather on the back. Instead, it has a sandblasted back with no traces of leather or stitching.Hardware specifications
The realme 11 Pro has almost identical hardware to its more expensive brother, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G. For starters, they’re both powered by the same MediaTek Dimensity 7050 chipset, built on a 6-nanometer manufacturing process. It 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 graphics unit. This phone is available in configurations with 8 GB or 12 GB of RAM and 128 GB or 256 GB of storage. The device I tested had 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. By default, the operating system and all the bundled apps usually occupy around 28 GB of storage. You can lower that figure if you spend some time removing the bundled apps and games you don’t need.The smartphone experience on the realme 11 Pro
Using the realme 11 Pro is a pleasure thanks to the materials involved in making this phone. The vegan leather on the back is soft and provides a good grip. Furthermore, the realme 11 Pro is bound to gather admiring looks and comments from others. Most people who see it assume it’s a premium smartphone, much more expensive than it actually is. Kudos to realme for their design success with this phone. The screen is yet another impressive feature of the realme 11 Pro: it’s large, bright, and offers good visibility even when used outdoors. Although the phone’s size is not an issue for me, the width and height of the screen may be a problem for some (like children or women), who have to use two hands to navigate it properly.The camera experience on the realme 11 Pro
The camera experience is where the realme 11 Pro differs the most from its more expensive brother, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G. First of all, this phone has fewer cameras, and it is capable of taking pictures in 100 Megapixels, instead of 200 Megapixels. It even has a dedicated 100M mode. However, the pictures you capture don’t seem too different from the ones taken in the usual modes. The Camera app is identical on both phones, with similar options. I found it easy to navigate and configure.
When you want to record videos with the realme 11 Pro, take into account the following limitations:
- You can record videos in 4K resolution, but only at 30 frames per second and without optical image stabilization.
- The best idea is to shoot in 1080p resolution. You can choose between recording at 30 fps or 60 fps, and you get to enjoy optical image stabilization (OIS).
- The selfie camera can record at a maximum resolution of 1080p with a framerate of 30 fps. In this case, you get electronic image stabilization, which is good but inferior to the OIS available on the main camera.
Android 13, realme 4.0, and bundled apps
The realme 11 Pro runs on Android 13 with the realme 4.0 user interface on top. This phone will receive three years of security patches and the next two major Android versions. Other vendors offer software support for longer periods. realme 4.0 is easy to use and feels familiar to all Android users out there. It also includes a few “special features” like the ones listed in the screenshot below.- Amazon Shopping: you can access your local Amazon store and purchase anything you want.
- App Market: an alternative to Google’s Play Store.
- Bolt: the popular ride sharing app.
- Booking: useful for planning trips and making hotel reservations.
- BridgeRunIO: a bridge race game that’s monetized through many ads.
- 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.
- Cornhole League: a weird game, filled with ads.
- Crowd Rush 3D: a platform game, where you have to avoid traps and fight enemies, which is also filled with ads.
- Facebook: the official app of the still 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.
- Ice Cream Inc: a casual game in which you make ice cream. This one too is filled with ads.
- Internet: a web browser with a simple user interface.
- Joom: an international store, where you can buy all kinds of stuff.
- LinkedIn: the app of the popular business and employment-focused social network.
- 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.
- Royal Match: a game where you decorate castles and solve puzzles.
- Screen Lock: does one thing only, and that’s to lock your screen as soon as you tap on it.
- Spotify: the popular music streaming service.
- TikTok: the digital gate to the social network bearing the same name.
- ThiefPuzzle: a game where you play the role of a thief and must solve all kinds of puzzles to steal the items you want.
- Videos: a relatively simple app that lets you play locally stored videos.
- Weather: displays the weather forecast for the upcoming days.
- Woodoku: a game with logic puzzles that test your intelligence.
- 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.
Performance in benchmarks
It’s time to take an in-depth look at the performance offered by realme 11 Pro, and how it compares to other smartphones. I began benchmarking the realme 11 Pro with Geekbench. This phone reached a score of 944 points in the Single-Core tests and 2386 in the Multi-Core tests. These scores are almost identical to the ones of its more expensive brother, the realme 11 Pro+ 5G, and of the Samsung Galaxy A34.
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