With some good specifications and 5G, is this Realme worth buying?
5G smartphones have been a huge craze among the crowd in 2021 as we saw many 5G smartphones last year that arrived with the flagships and now have been trickling down to premium mid-range and also mid-range smartphones. In the mid-range smartphones, we have popular manufacturers like Xiaomi, Realme, Samsung, and even Motorola.
Xiaomi and Motorola came up with their 5G smartphones starting of the year in January and Realme was slightly behind so they came up with the Realme X7 (Review). Realme Narzo series has been one of the most popular series of smartphones with powerful chipsets and great battery life. This year the Realme Narzo 30 Pro 5G (Review) was launched which was the cheapest 5G smartphone from Realme.
But now Realme itself is battling out with its own products and just recently they launched the Realme 8 5G and now they have come up with the Realme Narzo 30 5G. It sports a 90Hz display, packs a Mediatek Dimensity 700 chipset, a capable triple 48MP camera setup, a 5000mAh battery with a price starting at Rs. 15,999. Is it worth buying? Let’s find out in the full review.
Realme Narzo 30 5G Design:
The Realme Narzo 30 5G comes with a polycarbonate back instead of a glass back and the design looks quite unique especially if you look below the rectangular camera module. There is a V-shaped shimmery design that produces an optical illusion and this shimmery effect is noticed when the smartphone is held at different angles and also when light strikes at the back.
The other parts of the back are made up of a glossy matte finish that provides a good grip while holding the smartphone in hand. Thankfully, there is no Dare To Leap logo present as seen on the Realme X7 Max (Review). The Realme Narzo 30 5G is available in two colors – Racing Blue and Racing Silver. The sides of the Realme Narzo 30 5G have a plastic frame.
At the sides, on the left side are the volume buttons and a triple card slot that houses dual SIM card slots with an additional microSD card slot. The power button is present on the right side which also doubles up as a fingerprint scanner. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a primary microphone, and a loudspeaker grill.
The top has the secondary noise-canceling microphone only. On the front, there is a single punch-hole display with minimum bezels to the sides. The Realme Narzo 30 5G weighs around 185grams and is 8.5mm in thickness. The smartphone has a P2i coating at the back. Overall, the design is good but since the back is polycarbonate, there is some cross-cutting present.
Realme Narzo 30 5G Display:
Like the Realme 8, the Realme Narzo 30 5G has a 6.5-inches Full HD+(1080×2400 pixels) IPS LCD display and here Realme has done some cross-cutting here as instead of an AMOLED display, there is an IPS LCD display. So you do not get deeper blacks and blues on the display but still, the color reproduction is good and the viewing angles are good.
But looking at the display, the bottom bezel is slightly on the thicker side. The display on the Realme Narzo 30 5G has a 90Hz refresh rate so you get smooth scrolling through webpages, playing games, and also while multitasking between applications. The refresh rate works dynamically here as it auto switches depending on application content on the display.
However, you can manually switch the refresh rate to standard 60Hz. There is support for HDR10 and Widevine L1, so streaming HDR content from Youtube and other OTT platforms is a breeze. But Netflix could show HD content and Realme may fix this software update. The display offers two different modes – Vivid and Gentle. Gentle provides more natural colors which are set by default.
In terms of brightness, the display achieves a standard screen brightness of 480nits and hits a brightness of 600nits which is good but still lower compared to other AMOLED displays. The sunlight legibility could have been slightly better and sometimes the auto-brightness sensor was working slightly inconsistently. Still, Realme has put a good LCD display and there is the 90Hz refresh rate also.
Realme Narzo 30 5G Performance:
The Realme Narzo 30 5G is powered by the Mediatek Dimensity 700 chipset. This is a newer chipset that is based on a 7nm process and has an octa-core setup that includes 2×2.2 GHz Cortex-A76 cores and another 6×2.0 Cortex-A55 cores and has the Mali-G57 MC2 GPU. The biggest talking point of this chipset is that it supports 5G making it currently the cheapest 5G chipset in the market now.
All tasks like scrolling through webpages, multitasking between applications, and playing games felt smoother as the chipset could easily handle all the things easily without breaking a sweat. Alongside the 90Hz refresh rate, there is a 180Hz touch sampling rate so touches feel smooth and the responses in games are faster.
Talking about gaming, all games like Call Of Duty Mobile, Asphalt 9 Legends, and even BGMI ran at the medium graphics settings with higher frame rates. Though Mediatek needs to work with game developers to offer at least extreme and very high frame rate settings though the chipset is very capable to handle all games. There were minor stutters noticed but still the gaming experience is top-notch.
The Realme Narzo 30 5G is available in two variants – 4/6GB LPDDR4X RAM and 64/128GB storage with UFS 2.1 speeds which is quite faster compared to the Samsung Galaxy M32 (Review) that has eMMC 5.1 storage and comes with Mediatek Helio G80 chipset. In terms of benchmarks, in Antutu v8, the Realme Narzo 305G scored around 364047 and 569 and 1784 in Geekbench 5.1.
There is also a dynamic RAM expansion feature present on the Realme Narzo 30 5G which uses 5GB of internal storage so you are getting 11GB RAM altogether which is good for multitasking. Talking about 5G, there are around 7 bands of 5G available which is good. Overall, the performance is great and the gaming is good but a base RAM of 6GB could have been better.
Realme Narzo 30 5G Software:
The Realme Narzo 30 5G runs on RealmeUI 2.0 with Android 11 out of the box. RealmeUI provides one of the best software experiences around. The look is almost closer to Stock Android and there are a lot of features present. The RealmeUI 2.0 brings in many personalization features like changing home screen layouts, icon’s shape and size, and also the Ambient display.
Though there is a handful of bloatware present like many third-party applications present like Realme Link, Browser, HeyTap, and Community. You can uninstall some of them but the Browser application throws in a lot of notifications which is jarring. In terms of software updates, Realme provides two years of Android updates and security updates.
Realme Narzo 30 5G Cameras:
In terms of cameras, the Realme Narzo 30 5G has a triple camera setup that consists of a 48MP f/1.8 Samsung ISOCELL GM1 sensor for the main camera, a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera, and a 2MP F/2.4 depth sensor. There is no ultrawide camera present and on the front, there is a 16MP f/2.1 camera.
The images from the main camera come out with good details and the dynamic range is also fine. There is some oversharpening in the background hence the contrast is good but the noise is quite present. The 48MP resolution mode takes sharper images with less noise but the dynamic range is not as good as the 12MP images.
The main camera also offers 2x and 5x zoom levels but it is digital zoom and the 2x zoomed images have better details compared to 5x zoomed images which have a large amount of noise and the details look softer.
The images taken at night have a good dynamic range and the noise is not so prominent. The images do have washed-out colors and there is a lot of oversharpening in the background. The details do look slightly softer and the dedicated Night Mode does improve the dynamic range and also improves the background noise. But still, the Night Mode needs some improvements.
Without Night Mode:
With Night Mode:
There is no ultrawide camera which has come across as a huge omission and you get only 2MP macro and depth cameras. The 2MP macro camera takes images with a lot of noise and washed-out colors. The dynamic range is just average and it is better to use the main camera for macro shots by focusing closer to the subject.
The 2MP depth sensor does a good job in terms of edge detection and also provides good background blur. You can adjust the background after taking an image. The portraits have a good dynamic range but the background looks oversharpened. There is some amount of noise present when you zoom into the portraits. The smartphone also provides different portrait effects.
On the front, there is a 16MP camera that takes some very good selfies. There is some oversharpening in the background but still, the skin tones look natural. The selfies have a good dynamic range and the contrast is good. At night, the selfies come out with good details but there is a lot of noise present. The portrait selfies have good dynamic range and edge detection.
The back camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps which is slightly disappointing as it lacks 4K video support. The videos come out with good details but there is quite some noise present and the background looks oversharpened but the stabilization is pretty good. The dynamic range is pretty good and similarly, the front camera takes videos with good details and dynamic range but there is oversharpening present.
Realme Narzo 30 5G Battery Life:
The Realme Narzo 30 5G sports a 5000mAh battery which typically lasts for two days with normal usage and the display is set to 90Hz. While using the smartphone heavily at 90Hz, the smartphone easily lasts one single day and a half with some charge left. With normal usage, you can expect a standard screen-on time of about 8-9 hours which is great.
This stellar battery life is achieved by the Mediatek Dimensity 700 chipset that is built on a 7nm process and RealmeUI 2.0 provides many battery optimizations and you do have a Night Time Standby feature that is very handy. But the Realme Narzo 30 5G ships with an 18W fast charger and that is bundled inside the box.
Here Realme has done some cost-cutting to make it priced aggressively. This charger takes the smartphone from 0 to 50 percent in an hour which is very slow compared to its own competitors like the Realme 8 which has support for 30W fast charging and takes around 55 minutes to charge completely to 100 percent but a complete charge on the Realme Narzo 30 5G from 0 to 100 percent takes around 2 hours and 10 minutes.
This is very slow charging but still, the battery life is great. Realme could have bundled the 30W/50W fast charger inside the box which could have made it a better deal.
Realme Narzo 30 5G Audio Quality:
The Realme Narzo 30 5G has a downwards single-firing speaker which is adequately loud but still it does not have the audio quality of some of the smartphones that have stereo speakers. There is a 3.5mm headphone jack present and the audio quality is good enough through it. However, the smartphone misses out on Dolby Atmos.
Verdict:
The Realme Narzo 30 5G is a good overall smartphone that comes with support for 5G. The design looks good and this is one area where it differs from the Realme 8 5G. The 90Hz display ensures smooth scrolling, the touch responses are faster and multi-tasking is smoother. The Mediatek Dimensity 700 chipset handles almost all tasks smoothly and the gaming experience is also good.
This chipset also supports 7 bands of 5G instead of one or two bands that we see even on flagships making it a future-proof smartphone whenever 5G arrives in India. The RealmeUI 2.0 is good for battery optimizations and provides a great software experience with great features and almost looks close to Stock Android. Talking about battery life, it is stellar and easily lasts two days with normal usage.
However, there are some downsides like the build quality is still polycarbonate which makes it feel cheap compared to glass, then there is an IPS LCD display instead of AMOLED, so you miss the deeper blues and blacks and also the brightness levels are average. The Mediatek Dimensity 700 being a powerful chipset does not support Extreme or Max frame rates in many games.
Though RealmeUI 2.0 is feature-packed many third-party applications and contact notifications from some of the applications does hamper the software experience. The large 5000mAh battery provides great battery life but the charger supplied in the box is 18W which is very slow compared to some other 30/50W fast chargers. And the last is the presence of single speakers which just sounds average.
The cameras are just average here but still, the main camera is good. However, there is no ultrawide camera and no support for 4K video recording which is a miss. So overall, if you want a smartphone that has a good design, a high refresh rate display, and is not concerned about an AMOLED display, good performance and gaming, decent cameras, great battery life, and support for 5G.