Following on from my review of the realme 5 Pro – I’ve been testing the X2 Pro – realme’s flagship phone.
The realme X2 Pro promises to deliver great camera quality, good battery life with super fast charging, fast performance and a great screen and all for a price sub 2,000 AED.
Does it manage to deliver all this at a super competitive price point? Read on to learn more!
Unboxing and first impressions
The realme x2 Pro is a great looking phone. Out of the box it feels a little narrower and taller than my normal onePlus 7 Pro (although when placed side by side it looks like a different of a few mm at most) and I prefer the how the realme feels when holding it.
The X2 Pro comes with a case, screen protector already installed, and the superVOOC charger and USB-C cable. realme have included a headphone port but unfortunately no headphones are included.
When I charged the phone for the first time I saw the superVOOC charger in action – and it’s very impressive. The phone can full charge in 35 minutes, and in my use of it the battery life has been great. If you’re a heavy phone user and find yourself regularly out of battery of having to carry a battery pack around with you – look no further.
Camera & Display
The camera in the realme x2 Pro is one of the standout features. The X2 Pro has been tuned by Aaron Huey, a National Geographic photographer, and it shows. If you are an interior designer, architect, love taking outdoor images in challenging conditions and don’t want to have to take a larger standalone camera with you everywhere, the X2 Pro has a camera you should try.
Outdoor and details shots come out accurate – the AI hybrid zoom delivers great clarity and for once the shots in the marketing represent the shots you can take yourself.
For those selfie lovers and video bloggers there’s also a 16MP front camera which works well in dark conditions. The phone has a teardrop notch like the x5 pro reviewed previously – whilst it’s inconspicuous I still prefer the pop up design on my onePlus 7 Pro. (Unfortunately, it seems many people don’t agree with me there – as onePlus have stopped using the same design in their newer phones!)
The display is AMOLED panel and fixes my main issue with the realme 5 Pro. Colours and Black levels are great – the 90HZ response rate makes everything seem faster. From animations to scrolling down web pages and emails, it’s hard to go back to a lower refresh rate once you’ve tried it. Whilst I’m not a massive fan of watching films on my phone – the experience when doing so is good and I can see myself loading a few videos onto the phone next time I fly.
Performance
The realme X2 Pro has a Snapdragon 855+ Octa-core CPU and the model I’m reviewing has 12GB of Ram. I haven’t found anything which it struggles with, and the 90HZ screen makes everything feel super fluid.
The facial recognition is instant, to the point where with facial recognition turned on I cant get my finger to the in-screen fingerprint sensor in time to test it. The camera loads quick and takes photos almost instantly, switching apps is fast and opening Gmail with thousands of emails and scrolling down is fast. It feels noticeably faster than my onePlus 7 Pro – and that’s still a recent flagship phone.
The X2 Pro runs realme’s colourOS which is a very lightly modified version of Android 9 (at the moment). The operating system is fast, mostly sticks to stock android, and has a few nice touches like dark mode, gaming mode and the ability to download larger files using two Wifi networks at once.
As with the realme 5 Pro there’s not much junk preloaded but again the installed email client asks you to pay extra to go premium. I’d still recommend sticking with the free options on the Play Store.
Sound quality through the dual stereo speakers is very good and is clear even at higher volumes. The X2 Pro also comes with a headphone jack – and using Dolby Atmos and a good set of headphones, the sound quality is great. I like listening to music on the go – and am not a massive fan of most Bluetooth earphones (or their battery life!) – so for me this is enough of a reason to switch from my current phone (without headphone jack) to the realme.
Value for Money
At sub 2,000 AED – the realme X2 Pro is great value for money. I’d recommend getting the top specced phone with the extra ram and storage capacity and would also recommend shopping around as there are some good deals available on these phones.
Would I buy it?
Yes. I’m going to be using this as my main phone from now on.
If you value a great quality camera and display, need good battery life and insane charging times, and don’t like waiting for your phone to respond to inputs, this phone ticks all the right boxes. For once I’m struggling to find any negatives!
Specs (as reviewed)
Display
- 6.5-inch (16.0cm) dew-drop fullscreen
- Super AMOLED display
- 90Hz Screen Refresh Rate
- 2400-by-1080-pixel resolution at 402 ppi
- 1000nit max brightness (typical)
- Corning Gorilla Glass 5
Camera
- 64MP Quad Camera with 20x Hybrid Zoom
- 13MP Telephoto Lens
- 8MP wide-angle camera
- 2MP portrait camera
- 16MP front camera
Chip and Capacity
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+
- 12GB LPDDR4x RAM
- 256GB ROM
Power and Battery
- 4000mAh (typical)
- 50W SuperVOOC Flash Charge
Ports
- 3.5mm headset jack
- Type-C
- Dual nano-SIM
Sound
- Dual Stereo Speakers
- Dolby Atmos
- Hi-Res Sound Quality
