Introduction
The new Realme 6 lineup is all about speed on the budget and even the cheapest phone in the roster - the Realme 6i - is as gaming-friendly as the rest. The 6i offers fresh looks, high performance, and a quad-camera setup, but it can also has a extra large 5,000 mAh battery to boast about.
The Realme 6i is a looker like any other Realme - the maker is already known for its unique takes on design. The phone also packs a new Helio G80 chipset and it should be a match to the performance of the more expensive Realme 6 devices as the 6i has a lower screen resolution of 720p.
The lower pixel count aside, the Realme 6i manages to keep the attention with a capable rear camera with a 48MP primary and am 8MP ultrawide. There is also a 2MP macro snapper, and a 2MP depth sensor but these hardly add to the camera experience.
And finally, you have the Realme UI and Android 10 running on top of all this hardware.
Realme 6i specs
- Body: 164.4 x 75.4 x 9 mm, 199g; Front Gorilla Glass 3, plastic body, splash-proof
- Screen: 6.5" IPS LCD, FHD+ (720 x 1600px) resolution, 270 ppi
- Camera: Primary: 48MP Quad-Bayer, f/1.8 aperture, 0.8µm pixel size, 1/2.25" sensor size; Ultra-wide: 8MP, f/2.3 aperture, 1.12µm pixel size; Macro: 2MP f/2.4, 1.75µm pixel size, 1/5" sensor size; Depth sensor: 2MP mono camera
- Front camera: 16MP f/2.0 aperture
- Chipset: MediaTek Helio G80 (12nm): octa-core (2x2.0 GHz Cortex-A75 & 6x1.8 GHz Cortex-A55), Mali-G52 MC2 GPU
- Memory: 3GB/64GB, 4GB/128GB, expandable via microSD card
- OS: Android 10, Realme UI
- Battery: 5,000 mAh, 18W fast charging
- Connectivity: 4G LTE; Dual SIM; Dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, USB Type-C 2.0
- Misc: Rear-mounted fingerprint reader, 3.5mm audio jack
Realme 6i also features splash-resistant body - something that few makers are ready to offer on a budget device. It's far from secure against water, but an extra peace of mind is always appreciated.
Unboxing the Realme 6i
The Realme 6i comes in a bright yellow box, just like the 6 and 6 Pro. Realme seems to be particularly fond of this particular yellow hue.
Anyway, the retail bundle includes an 18W charging brick, a USB-C cable, and a transparent soft case.
The Realme 6i also comes with a pre-applied screen film. It's quite thin and the protection won't be as good as a glass piece, but we still like having it as an option.
Design and handling
The Realme 6i is a good-looking phone, just like the Realmes that came before it. The maker has been known to make eye-catchy designs, and it has delivered once again on one of its cheapest handsets to date.
The 6i has a glass front, made of a flat Gorilla Glass 3, and an all-plastic back and frame. The finish on the plastic is matte, which is a great grip booster, and the phone feels quite secure even in single-handed operations.
There is a large 6.5" IPS LCD at the front with a droplet-shaped notch to make way for the selfie camera. The screen is of basic 720p resolution but looks bright, punchy, and sharp enough, so it should be enough for the class. And we appreciate the double protection - Gorilla Glass 3 and an additional protector that's applied in the factory.
Within the notch you'll see the 16MP selfie camera. There are no visible sensors around, and the Realme 6i lacks a notification LED. The earpiece is almost unnoticeable above the front camera; it's quite thin and nested within the screen frame.
The 6i's back is a sight to behold. The Green Tea version is, well, green like tea, but thanks to some clever layering of plastic and polish, we get these cool light effects mimicking parallel laser beams. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is one.
The back is mostly distraction-free, even if it is one giant distraction itself. The quad-camera setup is humping around the top left corner, and the snappers, top to bottom, are the 8MP ultrawide, the 48MP primary, the 2MP portrait, and the 2MP macro shooters. The LED flash is outside this quartet.
The fingerprint reader is also on the back, it is always on, fast and accurate. Its surface is painted in the same green tea color but lacks the lighting effects.
The plastic frame is also green, and its longer sides are quite sharp and grippy. On its left you'll see the tri-card slot and the volume keys, the power button is on the right, while the bottom has everything else - the USB-C port, the audio jack, the mouthpiece and the speaker.
The Realme 6i is as large as the Realme 6, but it adds 9g of weight for a total of 200g - and the larger battery is probably to "blame".
The Realme 6i has a slim profile and fits well both in hand and in a pocket. It is easy to handle and operate, feels good when handled, and looks great. Overall, the 6i's design and build quality is yet another solid job from Realme.
Large display, 720p resolution
The Realme 6i has a large 6.5" IPS LCD screen with a waterdrop-shaped notch at the top. The resolution is rather low at 720 x 1,600 pixels. With a density of 270ppi - the sharpness on paper is not ideal for sure, but still usable for this class and won't get in the way of reading or gaming.
The display is protected with a Gorilla Glass 3, but there is also a factory-applied screen protector. You decide whether to keep it or not.
The good news is that all text is sharp enough and we saw no pixelization whatsoever. Realme has reworked the UI, and it is optimized for the 720p resolution, and nothing is visibly blurry as was the case on the Realme 3 and 5.
The Realme 6's display has a maximum brightness of 528 nits - a very good one for an LCD panel. The black levels turned out quite deep and so the Realme 6i screen scored an excellent contrast ratio of 1610:1.
For those following our tests closely - the lowest brightness we could achieve on the Realme 6i is 1.9 nits.
| Display test | 100% brightness | ||
| Black, |
White, |
||
| 0.328 | 528 | 1610:1 | |
| 0.343 | 451 | 1315:1 | |
| 0.318 | 421 | 1324:1 | |
| 0.273 | 512 | 1875:1 | |
| 0.345 | 485 | 1406:1 | |
| 0.345 | 487 | 1412:1 | |
| 0.263 | 385 | 1464:1 | |
| 0.285 | 508 | 1782:1 | |
| 0 | 448 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 432 | ∞ | |
| 0.347 | 460 | 1326:1 | |
| 0.486 | 640 | 1317:1 | |
| 0.331 | 450 | 1360:1 | |
| 0.453 | 600 | 1325:1 | |
| 0.399 | 550 | 1378:1 | |
| 0.527 | 714 | 1355:1 | |
| 0.361 | 464 | 1285:1 | |
| 0.392 | 517 | 1319:1 | |
| 0.425 | 461 | 1085:1 | |
| 0.501 | 515 | 1028:1 | |
The color rendering is average - the screen offers accurate enough colors, and we measured an average DeltaE of 6.1 towards the sRGB color space. The representation of the white and gray colors is colder than it should be, and a blue tinge is noticeable all the time.
If you opt for the Warm color saturation from Settings, the blue tinge is suppressed a bit, and the average DeltaE drops to 4.4 - an excellent score.
Battery life
The Realme 6i is powered by a massive 5,000 mAh battery. The phone supports 18W fast charging - up from the 10W available on the Realme 5 and 3. The bundled 18W charger restores about 33% of the battery in 30 minutes and 50% in 50 minutes. Not exactly fast, but as fast as you can expect in this price segment.
The Realme 6i scored an outstanding result in our battery test with a 186-hour Endurance rating - it tops our all-time battery life chart. It did an excellent job across all test scenarios - video playback, calls, web browsing, and demonstrated almost endless standby (just as Realme promised).
Our best guess is that this great result should be equally attributed across the large battery capacity, the low display resolution, and the power-efficiency of the new Mediatek Helio G80 chipset.
Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating above denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the Realme 6i for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern so that our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritty. You can check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.
Speaker
The Realme 6i has a single loudspeaker firing down from the bottom, and it posted a 'Below Average' result for loudness in our seven-track music test. It is good enough for vocals but lacks both in bass and high-pitched sounds.
Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.
Realme has its own UI, premieres on Android 10
The Realme 6i is among the first Realme devices to boot Android 10 with the brand new Realme UI launcher. The maker has promised us a new take on ColorOS that's made by Oppo, and with the most recent Series 6 and X50 it surely delivered.
The new launcher looks a lot like vanilla Android with no-nonsense homescreens, simplistic notification/toggles area, and easy-to-use task switcher. An App drawer is available, too, and it is as clutter-free as one could hope for.
Realme UI 1.0
The new Realme UI supports different icon packs, so if you are not happy with the default one, you can opt for material style, pebbles, or you can even fully customize them by your liking.
Customizing system and icons
There are a lot of powerful tools within the settings menu if you want full control over your Android OS. Or you can leave everything as is and enjoy hassle-free Android experience optimized by Realme's AI algorithms and machine learning.
Settings
Similar to the recent Galaxies, the Realme UI offers a Smart Sidebar on the edge of the screen - you can customize the actions and app shortcuts that appear there.
Smart Sidebar
The multimedia apps such as Gallery, Music, and Videos - are provided by Realme. There is also a redesigned File Manager and even a Phone Manager app. And with that, the non-Google app list is complete.
Gallery • Music • Videos • Phone Manager • File Manager
Depending on the market, your Realme 6i may or may not come with some pre-installed third-party apps that may or may not display annoying notifications. Worst-case scenario, you'd have to disable or remove such apps and services.
Performance and benchmarks
The Realme 6i packs the newly introduced MediaTek Helio G80 - a gaming-centric SoC for budget purposes. It is fabricated on the 12nm FinFET manufacturing process from TSMC.
The Helio G80 packs an octa-core CPU with two high-performance Cortex-A75 cores ticking at 2.00GHz and six energy-efficient Corext-A55 cores working at 1.8GHz.
The Mali-G52 MC2 GPU is in charge of graphics, and each of its two cores is clocked at 1000MHz (Kirin 810 G52 ones tick at 820MHz). These should provide great performance on the 720p screen.
The Realme 6i here packs 4GB of RAM and has 128GB storage, but a 3GB+64GB model exists on some markets.
The compound AnTuTu test puts the Realme 6i behind the Realme 6 and 6 Pro, though that's understandable - it has inferior GPU raw performance and a slightly lesser main processor. The performance is more than adequate for the class, though.
AnTuTu 8
Higher is better
- Huawei P40 Lite
325777 - Honor 9X Pro
312668 - Realme 6
288931 - Redmi Note 8 Pro
279355 - Realme 6 Pro
268785 - Realme X2
257443 - Realme 6i
202275 - Honor 9X
187528 - Samsung Galaxy A51
175363 - Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
167395
Indeed, the Realme 6 and 6 Pro use newer high-performance A76 cores, plus all cores run faster. The Realme 6i has A75+A55, once again - enough for the budget class and nobody should be experiencing bottlenecks with this processor.
GeekBench 4.4 (multi-core)
Higher is better
- Huawei P40 Lite
7846 - Honor 9X Pro
7836 - Realme 6
7815 - Redmi Note 8 Pro
6999 - Realme X2
6926 - Realme 6 Pro
6513 - Realme X
5915 - Realme 6i
5890 - Realme 3 Pro
5881 - Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
5620 - Samsung Galaxy A51
5401 - Honor 9X
5345 - Realme 3
4936
GeekBench 4.4 (single-core)
Higher is better
- Huawei P40 Lite
2844 - Honor 9X Pro
2831 - Realme 6 Pro
2639 - Realme 6
2606 - Realme X2
2508 - Redmi Note 8 Pro
2472 - Realme 6i
1835 - Samsung Galaxy A51
1668 - Honor 9X
1559 - Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
1519 - Realme 3
1482 - Realme X
1475 - Realme 3 Pro
1471
GeekBench 5.1 (multi-core)
Higher is better
- Honor 9X Pro
1911 - Huawei P40 Lite
1862 - Realme X2
1750 - Realme 6
1726 - Realme 6 Pro
1666 - Redmi Note 8 Pro
1622 - Realme 6i
1349 - Samsung Galaxy A51
1294
GeekBench 5.1 (single-core)
Higher is better
- Honor 9X Pro
594 - Huawei P40 Lite
591 - Realme 6 Pro
565 - Realme 6
548 - Realme X2
545 - Redmi Note 8 Pro
493 - Realme 6i
388 - Samsung Galaxy A51
347
The raw performance of the dual-core Mali-G52 is indeed mediocre at best.
GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)
Higher is better
- Honor 9X Pro
21 - Huawei P40 Lite
21 - Realme 6 Pro
18 - Realme 6
18 - Redmi Note 8 Pro
18 - Realme X2
16 - Realme 3 Pro
13 - Realme 6i
9.4 - Realme 3
8 - Honor 9X
7.7 - Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
7 - Samsung Galaxy A51
6.6
Luckily, the Realme 6i has a lower resolution screen (720p), and the onscreen tests show it is a great gaming device for the class and provides the same graphic punch as its Realme 6 siblings. Nice!
GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Realme 6i
31 - Honor 9X Pro
30 - Huawei P40 Lite
30 - Realme 6 Pro
27 - Realme 6
27 - Realme 3
26 - Redmi Note 8 Pro
24 - Realme X2
24 - Realme 3 Pro
20 - Honor 9X
12 - Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
11 - Samsung Galaxy A51
8.9
GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Realme 6 Pro
19 - Honor 9X Pro
18 - Huawei P40 Lite
18 - Realme 6i
17 - Realme 6
16 - Realme 3
15 - Redmi Note 8 Pro
14 - Realme X2
13 - Realme 3 Pro
11 - Honor 9X
6.5 - Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
5.9
5.6
Thanks to the 720p display, the Realme 6i turned out to be an excellent performer. It will not hesitate whatever the task at hand, but most importantly - the 6i should provide unmatched performance for this sub €200 budget class.
We experienced no bottlenecks and throttling, no heating issues either.
Quad-camera setup on the budget
Realme 6i packs a quad-camera setup on the back, with a similar arrangement to the Realme 5 cameras. Top to bottom you'll see an ultrawide shooter, the primary camera, then comes the depth sensor, and the last one is a macro snapper.
The main camera uses on the 48MP 1/2.25" (probably Sony) sensor with 0.8µm pixels and Quad Bayer filter and sits behind an f/1.8 28mm lens. It's meant to shoot in binned 12MP mode, and this is what you get as a default output.
The 119-degree ultrawide-angle camera has an 8MP sensor (1.12µm pixels) with an f/2.3 aperture - and this camera seems to be identical across all recent Realme phones. There is automatic distortion correction applied when necessary.
The 2MP monochrome unit is called "Portrait camera," rather than just a depth sensor. It certainly helps with the bokeh rendering, but allegedly, it's also used to enhance the contrast of the final photo.
Finally, there's the 2MP macro camera (the pixels on the sensor are quite large, 1.75µm). Its lens has fixed focus at 4cm away so that you can get really close to your subjects.
The camera app is familiar with a few tweaks here and there - there are fewer menus - most of the modes are now on the main rolodex, which is good. It offers AI scene recognition - you'll see a small icon when a scene is successfully recognized, and the software will tweak all settings accordingly. Food, snow, pets, sunsets, grass, among other scenes, are detected mostly correctly.
Camera app
The Chroma Boost toggle is on the opposite end of the viewfinder - it is an advanced HDR mode, which stacks a couple of images and offers even further improvements in the dynamic range and occasionally - better color saturation.
You will notice zoom toggles switching between Wide, 1X, 2X, and 5X, but quite expectedly everything beyond 1X is only digital zooming - there is no telephoto lens on the Realme 6i.
In the Expert mode you get to tweak exposure (ISO in the 100-6400 range and shutter speed in the 1/8000s-16s range), white balance (by light temperature, but no presets), manual focus (in arbitrary 0 to 1 units with 0 being close focus and 1 being infinity) and exposure compensation (-2EV to +2EV in 1/6EV increments).
Image quality
Let's talk about the image quality now. The 48MP main camera saves 12MP images by default, and the photos look good. There is enough detail, though not exemplary, contrast is great and the colors are accurate. The noise seems pretty low in such bright sunny days, and the dynamic range is wide enough for us never to trigger HDR manually.
Just like with previous Realme snappers, here the foliage rendering is far from ideal and could use some enhancements in the processing.
Realme 6i 12MP photos
Realme's Chroma boost mode enhances saturation slightly and makes for somewhat livelier shots. If you want your colors to pop (but nothing over the top), you may want to try it. It works by stacking images of different exposure so it also increases dynamic range and you may get some improvement with previosly clipped highlights.
Realme 6i 12MP photos with Chroma Boost
A supposedly full-res 48MP is available, but while it will provide you with a 48MP image - it's just a simple upscale on the default 12MP image, meaning it's useless.
Realme 6i 48MP photos
And here is a crop from a normal 12MP image and one from a 48MP photo that was downsized to 12MP. As you can see, there are no benefits in shooting 48MP.
And here are the samples.
12MP • 48MP-to-12MP • 48MP
Realme 6i offers 2x and 5x zoom toggles on the viewfinder, but the zoom is purely digital. And since there is no real demosaicing 48MP mode, shooting in 48MP and then cropping its center won't yield better results than the ones you see below.
Realme 6i 12MP 2x zoomed photos
The photos from the ultrawide camera are quite good for this class - the dynamic range is wider than usual, the contrast is great and the colors - lively - even if a bit over-saturated. The detail is nothing impressive, but in line or even better than many competitors from the same class.
Realme 6i 8MP ultrawide photos
Realme 6i has a 2MP macro camera, and we snapped a couple of shots. You should get in really close to the subject though, precisely 4cm way, and still, the detail isn't that great, and the photos are quite dull.
Realme 6i 2MP macro photos
You can get similar or better results with the main camera, and then decide for yourself whether to crop those or not.
Realme 6i 12MP closeup photos
The Realme 6i captures portraits with its main 48MP snapper and with the help of the 2MP so-called portrait camera. The photos are good most of the time, but stray hair is an issue, and clipped ears are not uncommon, too. Odd, as the Realme 6 did an excellent job with similar hardware, while the 6i failed to impress.
Realme 6i 12MP portraits
When the light is low, the main camera shoots soft and noisy photos. The detail is average at best, but on a positive note - colors are good, and the exposure is fine.
Realme 6i 12MP low-light photos
Night mode is present on the Realme 6i, and it dramatically improves the exposure and brightens up the bright skies. But that's about it - you won't get more resolved detail, better colors, or less noise. We've seen other Realme phones do better and we are a bit disappointed with the 6i.
Realme 6i 8MP Night Mode photos
As usual, using the 8MP ultrawide camera at night should only be done in some extreme cases - you get underexposed shots with plenty of noise and little detail.
Realme 6i 8MP ultrawide low-light photos
The Night Mode on the ultrawide snapper improves the exposure, but it also introduces massive amount of noise and renders the images as useless.
Realme 6i 8MP ultrawide Night Mode photos
Once you're done with the real world samples, head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the Realme 6i stacks up against other phones.
Realme 6 against the Redmi Note 8T and the Realme 5 Pro in our Photo compare tool
Selfies
The Realme 6i, just like the Realme 6, has a 16MP f/2.0 selfie camera with fixed focus. On the software side, there are all sorts of beatification enhancement options like skin smoothing and eye enlargement and face thinning, and whatnot.
When there is enough light, you'll get very good selfies even though they are not very detailed. The colors are nice, and the contrast is great. The last selfie was shot in HDR.
Realme 6i 16MP selfies
Just stay away from the selfie portraits. Those are saved in 8MP instead of 16MP but being based entirely on computational photography, they turned out quite bad.
Realme 6i 8MP selfie portraits
Video recording
The Realme 6i captures only 1080p videos at 30fps with its main and ultrawide cameras. No 60fps option is available. There are no codec options. Image stabilization is not available, either.
The 1080p clips from the main camera show good detail, accurate colors, and high contrast even in such bad weather. The dynamic range is also pretty good.
The zoomed 1080p videos are of similar quality.
The footage from the ultrawide camera is dimmer and not as detailed, but, nevertheless, good for the class.
Here's a glimpse of how the Realme 6i compares to rivals in our Video compare tool.
1080p: Realme 6i against the Realme 3 and the Huawei P40 Lite in our Video compare tool
Wrap-up
The Realme 6i is a good budget phone, but not the best for sure. While it offers enough punch for hiccup-free gaming, on a large screen at that, elsewhere it leaves us wanting for more.
Our point is that Realme is already selling a much better phone at nearly the same price - the Realme 6 with a 90Hz display and the far inferior 6i will be a tough sale for the maker until it introduces a reasonable price cut.
The competition
Realme 6 costs just €30 on top of the Realme 6i and yet it offers a much better 1080p 90Hz screen, and a superior camera quality across the board.
The Realme C3 (3-camera version) is pretty much the same phone, but it lacks an ultrawide snapper at the back and packs a 5MP selfie cam at the front. It costs €40 less than the Realme 6i in Europe, but it may be even cheaper in Asia (with or without a 2MP macro camera).
Redmi Note 8T costs about €15 less than the Realme 6i, but it tops the 6i with a higher-res screen, snappier processor, and a better main camera with 4K video capturing.
Finally, back to Realme - the 5 Pro matches the price of the 6i and it's just the better deal. Realme 5 Pro has a higher resolution display and faster Snapdragon 712 chip - and these make for the same gaming performance as 6i's but under higher 1080p resolution.
Realme 6 • Realme C3 (3 cameras) • Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T • Realme 5 Pro
The verdict
Realme delivered a solid budget smartphone that offers great gaming performance on the cheap. In a vacuum - it would have been a great deal. But the 6i is not alone on the market, worse, it's outmatched by its own siblings. Until a proper price adjustment happens, "this is not the Realme you are looking for' (spoken with a Jedi master gesture).
Pros
- Good-looking body, splash-resistant
- Large screen with excellent contrast
- Great for gaming, the Helio G80 is great under 720p screens
- Good photo and video quality with the main camera
- All-time chart-topping battery life
- Realme UI is clean and snappy on top of Android 10
Cons
- Low-res screen
- No 4K videos, no EIS
- Mediocre selfie quality
- Realme offers better phones at the same price
Related Posts :
Huawei nova 8 SE announced with 64MP quad camera, 66W fast charging, and 5G support- Xiaomi prepares two Redmi Note 9 phones with 5G, leakster reveals key specs
- Apple iPhone 12 mini and iPro Max available for pre-order, HomePod mini tags along
- Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G gets 256GB memory variant in the US
- iOS 14.2 and iPadOS 14.2 out with new emoji, wallpapers and bug fixes
0 Response to "Realme 6i review"
Post a Comment