Realme Narzo 10 review: Another competitive offering from Realme's stable at Rs 11,999

This is the Realme Narzo 10 — Realme’s yet another offering in the budget smartphone category for the Indian market.

With the Narzo 10, Realme aims at offering a ‘Next-level camera’, an ‘A class processor’, a ‘Remarkable battery’, ‘Zenith of design’, and an ‘Outstanding display’, and that’s what Narzo means, in case you were wondering.

Realme is betting big with a brand new series that claims to offer the best of experience across the key pillars towards becoming the ideal smartphone in its price range. Does the Narzo 10 tick the right boxes to be the best smartphone under Rs 12,000? We have been using the device for over a week. Enough to gauge if the phone is worth its salt. But first, a look at the specifications:

Now that the specifications are out of the way, let’s begin with the Realme Narzo 10 review.

Does the Narzo 10 have a ‘next-level’ camera? 

Let’s just say that it's good for the price but nothing extra-ordinary. Realme Narzo 10 shoots excellent images during the daylight with its 48MP primary sensor that is quick to focus and uses pixel-binning to give 12MP shots.

You get detailed shots and there is no aggressive saturation either. There were a couple of instances wherein the greens were slightly oversaturated, especially when the subject was in line with the sun. Overall, the images were colour accurate and we liked the performance of the primary camera during the day. 

That said, the primary camera’s performance in low light is as good as satisfactory. You will notice some noise and lack of details, especially in the shadows.

There is a dedicated Night Mode, which takes about four seconds to capture multiple shots of different exposure to give a better low-light image.

However, do not expect a lot of improvement as we did notice noise and lack in detail in Night Mode photos as well.

The 8MP 119-degree ultra-wide camera offered similar colour temperature and accuracy as the primary camera. There is some amount of barrel distortion along the edges but that’s common across most smartphones with an ultra-wide camera. The dynamic range, too, was pretty good.

The macro camera is functional-enough to shoot close up shots of subjects but do not expect sharp details, thanks to the 2MP’s 1600 x 1200 resolution. 

For selfies, you get a 16MP front camera housed inside a waterdrop-style notch. Realme smartphones tend to click good quality selfies and the Narzo 10 is no different.

Disable the beauty modes and you will get close-to-real selfies with ample detail when there’s good light. Edge detection in portrait shots is fairly good but the bokeh was very aggressive and looked very artificial. Take a look at the Flickr slideshow below to see all the photos shot on Realme Narzo 10

Good Performance unit and a wow battery life

The Narzo 10 gets a 2.0GHz MediaTek Helio G80 octa-core processor with Mali G52 GPU. MediaTek’s G-series processors are typically targeted towards gamers who want max performance from their smartphones.

The Narzo 10 does deliver smooth performance in most cases. When playing PUBG, we did notice a couple of frame drops here and there but that’s very minimal especially considering the price you pay. Notably, the device did not get as warm as we had expected in comparison to smartphones with the more-powerful Helio G90T processor. 

We did not face any issues while using the phone for day-to-day tasks like scrolling through social media, playing light games like Ludo King or Subway Surfer, etc. We had no complaints when it came to battery life either.

The massive 5,000 mAh battery is remarkable indeed and can easily last for over a day or two depending upon your usage. Add to it no refresh rate support and resolution limited to HD+, the device will offer better battery life. Despite the 18W fast charger bundled in the box, the device took between an hour and a half to two hours charge from zero to 100 percent via USB Type-C. 

The 4GB RAM offers enough buffer memory to ensure seamless multitasking. Apps should open from where you leave. In a couple of instances, some apps did close when we opened the stock camera app and PUBG Mobile. There’s a nifty feature that the smartphone’s software offers, which brings us to the Realme UI.

Realme UI gets a thumbs up

The Narzo 10 boots on Android 10-based Realme UI out-of-the-box. Like the most recently-launched Realme devices, the Narzo 10 gets the latest Android 10 features with some customised additions from Realme. 

The new UI comes loaded with lesser bloatware (thank you, Realme) but there are some third-party apps that come pre-installed. You will also see a bunch of more apps that Realme recommends while setting up the device, which you can choose to skip or install later.

A notable addition to the app recommendations is the Aarogya Setu app. In case the bloatware bothers you, there’s always an option to delete these apps.

Coming back to the feature that prevents closing or suspension of apps in the background. Realme UI takes cues from Color OS 7’s ‘Lock App’ feature, which prevents from suspending or closing any app.

When in the multitasking window, tap on the two dots on the top of the app and select ‘Lock’. That way, even when you clear all the RAM, the smartphone will not close any of the locked apps, hence also avoiding suspension. 

There are a bunch of other features like custom styles for app icons like Another cool feature of Realme UI is icon styles. The new Oppo custom skin offers three different icon styles — default, rectangle, and pebble, which can be selected as per the user’s preference. You can also hit the settings and choose to customise the icon size.

Design is good, display not so

Realme claims that Narzo 10 is a zenith of design. While the design isn’t surely at its peak, the Narzo 10 does look polished and pretty good, at least at the back. Our review unit’s ‘That Green’ colour comes with a matte finish on the back, which is a big thumbs-up as it helps avoid those fingerprint smudges.

The device, however, tends to slip out and we would recommend using the case that Realme ships in the box. There’s Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection for accidental drops but we wouldn’t risk testing the device’s durability. 

The power and volume buttons are placed on either edge and are quite comfortable to reach out despite the tall 20:9 aspect ratio. At the bottom, you get a USB Type-C port sandwiched between the mic and the loud single speaker grille. The device is considerably thick at 9mm and weighs just below 200 grams, courtesy of that beefy 5,000 mAh battery.

You ask where is the fingerprint scanner? Realme’s opted for a relatively-traditional rear-mounted fingerprint reader on the Narzo 10 that is quick to detect and unlock the device. The rear camera has a tiny bump that leads to slight wobbling on flat surfaces but that can be avoided with a case.

The front has a considerably thick chin bezel, which we feel makes the Narzo 10 falls behind in its pursuit to achieve the ‘zenith of design’.

A bummer here is an HD+ screen for a smartphone priced under Rs 12,000.

There are several smartphones that offer Full HD+ displays even at the price of Rs 10,000 and Realme should have at least offered a 1080p display. This also means that you cannot stream content in 1080p on Netflix or Prime Video as the 6.5-inch display does not get WideVine L1 certificate. This should otherwise not be a problem during the lockdown wherein YouTube and other video platforms have capped the video resolution at 480p.

But is the lockdown going to stay? That's something we can't answer in this piece.

The screen is reasonably bright and should be just fine even when using outdoors. There’s a water-drop notch on top for the front camera that also doubles up for face unlock. By the way, face unlock won’t work if you have a mask on — just the way it is supposed to be. 

Verdict

The Narzo 10 ticks most boxes for a smartphone priced under Rs 12,000. Sure, the display is above-average but as an overall package, you get a decent processor, a capable camera system, and amazing battery life.

The smartphone suits best for people who want maximum performance from a good-looking device within a budget. 

However, the Narzo 10’s problem is its own in-house counterpart, the Realme 6 (Review), which is priced slightly higher at Rs 13,999.