Realme X2 Pro Review: The New Flagship Killer

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Realme rose from the shadows of OPPO to become the fiercest rival to India’s biggest smartphone brand quicker than we expected. The company had always played in the entry-level and mid-range category, where it excelled and pushed boundaries over the past year. Now, the company seems ready to challenge the likes of OnePlus, Honor, Huawei, and Samsung with the launch of its first high-end smartphone, the Realme X2 Pro.

Realme X2 Pro

₹29,999
8.4

Design and Build Quality

8.0/10

Display

8.5/10

Front-Facing Camera

8.0/10

Rear-Facing Camera

9.0/10

Software

7.0/10

Performance

8.5/10

Battery Life

9.0/10

Value for Money

9.5/10

What Is Good?

  • Good build quality.
  • 90Hz AMOLED screen with 1000 nits brightness in HDR10+ scenes.
  • Really good cameras for the price.
  • Fast performance.
  • Wicked fast battery charging speeds and a good battery life.
  • 50W charger supplied in the box.
  • There is a headphone jack.

What Is Bad?

  • UI design needs improvement.
  • Battery saver mode starts even when not intended.
  • Headphone volume is not as high as other high-end phones.
  • No IP rating or microSD card slot.

The Realme X2 Pro features high-quality build and stylish design, along with a 90Hz HDR10+ AMOLED screen, stereo speakers, a 64MP quad-camera, Snapdragon 855+ processor, and Android 9. What separates it from the rest of the competition is its wicked-fast 50W charging tech that can charge the built-in 4000mAh battery within half an hour. Oh, and there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack, too, in times where it is proving difficult to find headphone jacks on premium phones.

While we quite liked the company’s more-for-less approach with devices like the Realme XT (Review) and the Realme X (Review), will the same approach work in the high-end smartphone segment? Will it succeed in loosening OnePlus’s tight grip on India’s flagship killer category? Let’s find out in our review of the Realme X2 Pro.

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What’s In Realme X2 Pro’s Box?

  1. Realme X2 Pro
  2. 50W SuperVOOC Charger
  3. USB Type-A To USB Type-C Cable
  4. Clear Silicon Cover
  5. Paperwork & Quick Start Guide
  6. SIM Ejector Pin

Realme X2 Pro Design & Build Quality

The Realme X2 Pro looks and feels like a marriage of Realme X and Realme XT. The engineers took some of the best bits of the two phones but also stopped themselves from going overboard to keep the price in check. The presence of a waterdrop-shaped notch instead of a swanky pop-up camera is a logical decision. And, so is the decision to retain the headphone jack.

The phone’s body is made using an aluminum frame sandwiched between two slabs of Corning Gorilla Glass 5. It feels premium but not as svelte as the OnePlus 7T or OnePlus 7T Pro. The Realme logo at the rear appears misplaced. The phone is also a bit heavy, too. But I would take a heavy phone over a weakly-built phone any day of the week. Plus, there’s a linear vibration motor that offers much more satisfying haptic feedback than the one inside the Redmi K20 Pro.

Realme is up there with the best in the business in its price segment with regards to build quality.

Realme X2 Pro Display

The AMOLED screen used on the Realme X2 Pro looks as good as any other smartphone screen, at least on paper. It is big and bright, has sharp visuals, inky blacks, and even features HDR10+ content playback. A 90Hz refresh rate means that everything that you do on the screen, be it swiping, scrolling, or playing games, looks absolutely smooth and fluid.

A 90Hz refresh rate means that everything that you do on the screen looks absolutely smooth and fluid.

I would’ve liked the screen to be more color accurate, though. There’s a waterdrop-shaped notch, which sometimes doesn’t feel as high-end, especially after using phones like the Realme X and the Redmi K20 Pro. Plus, I noticed a few multitouch issues while typing on the screen. When you spend Rs 30,000, you’ll have to choose between a completely bezel-less screen and a 90Hz refresh rate. You can’t have both, at least right now.

Realme X2 Pro Cameras

The Realme X2 Pro’s quad-camera setup comprises of a 64MP Samsung ISOCELL Bright GW1 sensor, a 13MP 2x optical zoom telephoto camera, an 8MP ultrawide-angle camera, and a 2MP depth sensor. The 8MP ultra-wide-angle camera can also double up as a macro camera. The primary rear-facing camera can also record up to 4K 60fps videos with HDR10+. At the front, there’s a 16MP camera with up to 1080p 30fps video recording.

The Realme X2 Pro is the best smartphone camera in its price segment.

The phone captures some really good images. In broad daylight conditions, images captured using the X2 Pro exhibit extremely wide dynamic range, colors with a slight pop, and extremely low noise. They are quite bright, too. If you like even more colorful images, you can use the Chroma Boost feature. The feature is available to be used with all the cameras.

There’s a 64MP ULTRA mode which uses the re-mosaic algorithm to capture multiple 16MP images and turns them into a single 64MP image. 64MP still images showcase slightly more details, but only in daylight conditions. Portrait images captured using the rear-facing camera turn out really good-looking, thanks to the accurate separation of subject from the background and a natural-looking blur-effect.

It is surprising to see that the ultrawide-angle camera has an autofocus mechanism, something that’s amiss from many phones that use ultrawide-angle cameras. It also doubles up as a macro camera, and I should say that it works admirably compared to macro cameras on other phones, thanks to its higher resolution and a larger sensor.

As the light starts to drop, noise starts to creep in, but it’s manageable. Plus, the Nightscape mode, which works with all three sensors on the rear as well as the front-facing selfie camera, allows capturing images with wider dynamic range, lower noise, and higher brightness. This mode overdoes the HDR processing on people’s faces so they look slightly funny. It also oversharpens images, which you can notice while pixel peeping. If only Realme could fix how it processes faces in the Nightscape mode, it would such a brilliant camera.

Videos recorded using the rear-facing camera are pretty impressive, thanks to high bitrate, 60fps frame rate, wide dynamic range, low noise, plenty of details, and stereo audio. There’s no OIS (optical image stabilization) but the EIS (electronic image stabilization) is so good that you won’t miss OIS most of the time. The ultrawide-angle camera and the selfie camera can only reach 1080p resolution and 30fps frame rate.

Selfies captured using the Realme X2 Pro’s 16MP front-facing camera were pretty good, too. They were similar to the Realme X and Realme XT’s selfie camera, and they were much better than the ones captured using the Redmi K20 Pro and the OnePlus 7T.

Although there’s only a single camera at the front, the Realme X2 Pro can capture portrait images. The quality of portrait selfies was good but not as good as the rear-facing camera. Plus, the Nightscape mode works with the selfie camera as well. Selfies captured while using the Nightscape mode showcased wider than usual dynamic range and lower noise.

Overall, I would say that the Realme X2 Pro is the best smartphone camera in its price segment. It shoots better images and videos than the Redmi K20 Pro. The X2 Pro punches far above its weight in the imaging department.

Realme X2 Pro Software

Realme X2 Pro Software

The Realme X2 Pro runs ColorOS 6.1 which is based on Android 9 Pie. I would’ve loved it if it was launched with it running Android 10 out of the box. While it comes with plenty of features, the company’s custom build of Android has a long way to go before it can compete with the best in the business.

The company’s custom build of Android has a long way to go before it can compete with the best in the business.

There is an option to change the screen refresh rate (60Hz or 90Hz), Night Mode (which can also force unsupported apps to turn dark), gesture-based software navigation, face unlock, screen-off gestures, always-on display clock, dual apps, phone clone, and many more.

The company announced Android 10 based ColorOS 7 software for Realme phones, and I had a chance to try it out on the OPPO Reno 10x Zoom. I must say that it is a tremendous improvement over ColorOS 6. It looks and behaves like a matured operating system.

Realme X2 Pro Performance

Realme X2 Pro Gaming Performance

The combination of Snapdragon 855+ processor, 8GB LPDDR4X RAM, and 128GB UFS 3.0 storage offers absolutely fast and smooth performance on the Realme X2 Pro. There were no hiccups or stutters anywhere. Gaming was quite enjoyable, too. Even the camera app performed smoothly. Yes, it did not feel as fluid as the OnePlus 7T, but that’s what OnePlus excels at. It makes the software behave in such a way that it just feels faster with the same hardware as that of the competition.

The Realme X2 Pro has absolutely fast and smooth performance. There were no hiccups or stutters anywhere.

The Realme X2 Pro’s optical fingerprint reader is accurate and fast. However, it wouldn’t recognize fingers if they’re too dry. The fingerprint reader is as fast as capacitive ones that are used on other phones.

The stereo loudspeaker setup it quite loud and clearer. It is obviously better than the mono loudspeaker used in the Redmi K20 Pro. I was surprised to notice that it sounded louder and deeper than the stereo loudspeaker setup on the OnePlus 7T and the OnePlus 7 Pro. I did not face any issue with cellular and Wi-Fi network reception. I found Dual Channel Wi-Fi acceleration and Wi-Fi + Cellular network acceleration features really useful.

Realme X2 Pro Battery Life

Realme X2 Pro Battery Life

With a fully charged battery, the Realme X2 Pro lasted more than a day on an average. The 4000mAh battery was good enough for 6-7 hours of screen-on time. Sometimes, I was able to stretch the battery life for as long as 1 day 18 hours and a screen-on time of over 7 hours. That’s quite impressive.

The 50W SuperVOOC charging tech is absolutely impressive and changes your charging habits for good.

Coming to the most exciting bit about the phone’s battery, its 50W SuperVOOC charging tech, it is absolutely impressive and changes your charging habits for good. The bundled 50W charger filled the Realme X2 Pro’s completely drained battery to 100% power in just 34 minutes (it can take anywhere between 30 to 35 minutes depending on various factors like temperature and whether the screen is turned on or off).

I never worried about the Realme X2 Pro’s battery life. When it dropped below 10%, I connected it to the charger and got a 1000% charged battery within 30 minutes. Too bad that its fast charging feature doesn’t work with any third-party charger or power bank. Realme should release a 50W fast charging power bank to work with the X2 Pro.

Should You Buy Realme X2 Pro?

The Realme X2 Pro is the best smartphone in India in the sub-Rs 30,000 price segment.

Realme X2 Pro Rear Design

Definitely. The Realme X2 Pro is the best smartphone in India in the sub-Rs 30,000 price segment. It has a well-built body, an excellent and fluid-feeling 90Hz AMOLED screen, fast performance, plenty of software features, quality cameras, stereo speakers, good battery life, and surprisingly fast battery charging.

The only area where Realme needs to improve is in terms of software, and the company has already announced the rollout schedule of Android 10-based ColorOS 7 for the Realme X2 Pro, which would bring it close to perfection. If you are searching for a phone with a budget of Rs 30,000, you should definitely consider it as your best choice right now.