Realme X3 SuperZoom Full Review – Affordable Flagship with 120Hz Display

Lots of flagship killers back in the days are becoming premium–in price. This is the best way for realme to enter the flagship market using their Realme X3 SuperZoom. The specs are amazing, it is not a premium flagship, it doesn’t have an amoled display and no IP rating. So why is this phone being called as a flagship? Well, it’s true that it lacks some features but the essentials or eye-catching specs are here, 120Hz, periscope lens, last year’s flagship soc, fast charging, and amazing camera features.

Specification

Pros

• 120Hz Fluid Display
• Flagship specs with low price
• Impressive Photography Features
• Large Ram

Cons

• Power consuming display
• The design doesn’t look like Flagship

ALSO READ: Top Reasons Why Realme X3 SuperZoom Is a Flagship Killer

Design

Like all phones that are glossy or Hermes-looking, the design of the realme x3 superzoom is something. A silky-smooth less fingerprint magnet, with a touch of a blue gradient, feel then orange and green holographic reflecting lines. The feeling is different when you hold the phone. It feels cold and slippery. It feels like you have to take good care of this phone. For the price of P24,990, this phone has the best value for money at least for me. First impression on the back we thought it was plastic but then we tried to scratch the surface and it turns out it has gorilla glass. The impressive thought was it is glass but they made it look less reflective, it is glossy but the surface is not prone to fingerprints. The camera module is also something, it differs from other realme phones, it has a periscope telephoto lens. Giving you superzoom up to 60X Zoom and it has a 3D curved glass back for a comfortable grip.

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Around the frame, it has a power key that doubles as a fingerprint scanner, volume rockers on the left, and underneath are the speakers, USB Type-C port, microphone, simtray but sadly there is no expandable storage and headphone jack, lastly on top is a secondary noise-canceling microphone. Switching to the front, we will see a pill shape cutout, and the 2nd lens is an 8MP ultrawide, in this new normal we can take wider group selfies while having social distancing.

Display

Opening the screen it offers a 6.6″ FHD+ equipped with a 120Hz refresh rate and with the protection of Gorilla Glass 5, it offers contentment. The display is different on its price range, it offers 120hz smooth scrolling. It is pleasing to the eye.

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It has an IPS LCD panel, the question is what do you get on an IPS screen? For the preferences, if you want to be productive and you want to produce something with your phone, viewing it in an IPS screen is reliable as it has a color-accurate display. Besides IPS LCD will take better endurance in straight gaming. The Realme X3 SuperZoom has a sharp display, great contrast but the brightness is a bit dimmed outdoors.

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Camera

It has a 64MP f/1.8 main shooter backed by a Samsung GW1 camera sensor.
8MP Periscope Telephoto lens
8MP Ultrawide
2MP Macro

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The main cam shoots a nice and high dynamic range, the colors are vibrant, we get somehow natural colors sometimes in the normal photo mode but it will likely process vivid colors. Shadow parts are a bit grainy but the overall picture is sharp and detailed.

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Shooting normal photo, it is not efficient in low light it is underexposed, but shooting in night mode we get a brighter image but the whole image is soft. While shooting in tripod we get a sharp image but the overall picture is grainy. It has an extra feature called starry mode and pro mode, starry mode shoots a 5mins long exposure shot in the night skies and gives you a nice picture of stars. The same in pro mode, the difference between the use of starry night is, the stars have no paths. It was optimized to capture the stars even when we are moving along with the earth. By choosing pro mode in night mode tab, we get a brighter image at night and it was like a daylight shot. This is really an impressive feature.

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Now switching to periscope lens it has the same color reproduction as the main cam and the decent quality pictures we can get is up to 10X zoom. 5X is the perfect quality on this lens but still, 10X zoom is decent. We really like the zoom quality of the Realme X3 SuperZoom, one of the best things on this phone is the ability to switch lenses seamlessly and it has autofocus and it makes the viewfinder stable to capture sharp images.

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Going ultrawide, the photos seem a bit overexposed but the details still preserved, it does have a bit of chromatic aberration but it is barely unnoticeable while looking at the picture as a whole. It also has a hard contrast though but turning on HDR will lift deep shadows up.

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Last is the macro lens, it’s not that impressive but we still get decent macro shots. it doesn’t offer autofocus on the macro lens so you only need to manual focus by moving the phone near the subject.

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Switching to the front camera, the 32MP main selfie cam with Sony IMX 616 capture great photos but we get more of a pinkish skin tone. It has decent sharpness and the background separation is accurate. It also has sharp edges when shooting portrait shots.

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Next to it, is the 8MP Ultrawide selfie, it tends to be overexposed and the skin differs from the main selfie cam but the overall image is acceptable as it is wide and captures a decent contrast as well.

On video recording, you can shoot 4K@60fps which for us is an impressive versatile feature it offers different shooting modes with an EIS and the colors are almost true to life it also has great contrast as well. If you want to see the sample videos watch our video version here.

Performance

Now heading to its performance, it is equipped with a Snapdragon 855+ 7nm chipset with 12GB of ram and 256GB of internal storage. This is the only configuration available in the Philippines. The chip is ready for 5G connectivity but it doesn’t have an integrated x50 modem.

The Realme X3 SuperZoom is currently running on Android 10.0 with Realme UI on top. It offers smooth scrolling, seamless animation, clean and simple skin that is close to stock android. It offers many features including dual wifi that allows the device to connect two wifi networks at once to speed up internet connection it supports watching Netflix, youtube, and other more social media platforms.

WATCH: Poco F2 Pro vs Realme X3 SuperZoom – Which one is better?

We’ve tried a few games, and in Cyber Hunter, we thought it has 90fps mode but it turns out, it only offers max 60fps. We want to address this to the developer of the game for it to support this phone. But the graphics and stability are ok at 60fps. It is stable and stutter-free. In PUBG mobile by default, we get HD + High settings, and we can enable HDR + Extreme framerates as well. All settings are smooth at least 58-64fps on extreme framerates with 100% stability. Streaming on this device is hassle-free thanks to the large ram configuration, and about heat management realme said it has a Liquid Cooling System a built-in vapor cooling chamber to ensure the phone stays cool during intensive gaming.

Battery

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For the battery endurance test, we tested its 4200mAh battery and running in 120Hz enabled while browsing social media feeds, it endures at least 6hrs and 25mins well for us the power-efficient chip compensates the power-consuming display and it endures long enough to handle your daily task. As for charging the 30W ‘Dart’ charger is pretty fast, what advertised is true we fully charged the phone from 0-100% in just 57mins.

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Audio

The audio on the device is good, it has decent bassy sound but we don’t get stereo speakers, this is something that most flagships have. Although, the sound is loud and crisp and it doesn’t get distorted in max volume it also has Dolby Atmos software.

Verdict

For us, this phone is a flagship killer, but by observation, it’s hard to make a flagship killer phone this year as we got expensive flagship soc with 5G capability currently competing in the market and this will cause a price increase on the device. The bright side, Realme made a cheaper but flagship phone feel.

Overall in terms of price, it has rivals that also offer some flagship specs but considering the price point, even though it doesn’t offer some flagship standard it offers the most reliable ones. Again by this price point, it has impressive specs and will get you a flagship experience, smooth displays, powerful chipsets, lots of camera features including EIS at 4k 60fps, and offers liquid cooling for heat management. It captures our needs, comfortability, and feel, satisfaction is still acceptable. The Realme X3 SuperZoom is a phone that has something, something incredible and affordable.

READ: OnePlus Nord vs Realme X3 SuperZoom vs POCO F2 Pro – Flagship Killers?!