decent middle class with few drawbacks

The Realme 9 Pro is a great phone on paper when you consider the price and the specifications. Everything stands or falls, of course, how the device works in practice. To experience this, we have extensively tested the device.

Realme 9 Pro review

We have been able to extensively test the 9 Pro from Realme. Last year, Realme already released the 8 Pro in the Netherlands, a great smartphone with ditto specifications. Oddly enough, the 9 Pro isn’t an upgrade over the 8 Pro in every way. You can read how this works out in daily life in this review.

Sales package

The Realme 9 Pro comes in a striking yellow and black rectangular box. In the box we will of course find the well-known booklets, a sim needle, a 33 Watt fast charger, a cable and the device. And that is immediately. No case or other extras have been added.

Design and interface

Realme has equipped the 9 Pro with a 6.6-inch screen with the selfie camera at the top left. The screen is a Full-HD screen with a refresh rate of 120Hz. What is striking are the fairly large edges around the screen.

The left side offers space for the volume keys and the sim tray. Realme has placed the power button on the right side. This power button contains a fingerprint scanner. The USB-C connection, the 3.5 millimeter connection and the speaker are placed at the bottom.

Then the back of the device. We have received the color variant “Sunrise Blue”. This is a bright blue color where the color changes when you turn the device. This looks nice, but is sensitive to fingerprints. Although the back is made of plastic, it does feel premium. In addition, the device fits comfortably in the hand. The camera module is located in the top left corner.

Interface

Realme devices are provided with the manufacturer’s own skin, namely Realme UI 3.0. Although this skin is very colorful, it still looks uncluttered. You can see from the way the settings menu is arranged that Realme is a subsidiary of Oppo. Various non-standard functions are in the same place as, for example, with devices from Oppo and OnePlus. We will return to these functions later in this review. As with devices from Oppo and OnePlus, you can adjust the appearance and layout of the Realme 9 Pro, albeit not as extensively as with a device from OnePlus.

Communication: calling, chatting and networking

The Realme 9 Pro is, how could it be otherwise, perfectly suitable for calling. The device offers the possibility to place two SIM cards in the device. However, this comes at the expense of the possibility to place an SD card in the device.

With regard to connectivity, the 9 Pro is also good, the device has all common sensors and options. For example, there is Bluetooth available on the device, just like WiFi (also 5GHz), GPS, NFC and support is offered for 5G.

Multimedia: music and film

The Realme 9 Pro has a beautiful screen on which watching videos is excellent. The screen is easy to read, even in bright sunlight. Playing music is no problem at all. You can play your favorite music via the speaker, but you can also connect a headset via the 3.5 millimeter connection or Bluetooth. The speaker works fine, the volume can be loud enough and the quality of the sound is also just good.

Camera: photo and video

The manufacturer has chosen to equip the Realme 9 Pro with three cameras. A 64 megapixel main camera with an 8 megapixel wide-angle lens and a 2 megapixel macro lens.

We see few bad camera apps these days and that is also the case with this device. This app is very similar to the OnePlus camera app with a slight difference here and there. We are generally very pleased with the quality of the photos. We keep in mind that it is not a high-end device. For example, the macro lens occasionally takes a photo that is not completely sharp. Photos taken with the wide-angle lens are sometimes a bit faded. Photos taken in the dark are mediocre; we see quite a bit of noise and images are regularly out of focus.

Photos we took with the phone are collected in the Realme 9 Pro photo album that you can find on Google Photos.

Selfie and video camera

You can take 16 megapixel photos with the selfie camera. The quality of the photos can be called good, although there is sometimes a lot of noise in the photo. Movies that you shoot with the Realme 9 Pro are fine. Before you start filming, you have the choice to film with the wide-angle lens or with the main camera, once you have started filming you cannot switch between the different lenses. The video camera makes video images in 1080p, but at 30fps.

Performance: battery, speed and memory

The Realme 9 Pro features the Snapdragon 695 5G. The performance of this processor is excellent, suitable for everyday use. We did not experience any hiccups or anything like that. All tasks are performed smoothly, also thanks to the working memory of 8GB. There is also a version with “only” 6GB, but this should also be sufficient in most cases. The device has 128GB of storage memory.

Battery

Realme has given the 9 Pro a large battery, namely 5000 mAh. You can easily get through the day on a full battery charge. With intensive use, you will have about 30% battery charge left at the end of the day with screen-on-time of more than 4 hours. So very neat. If you still manage to empty the battery quickly, then there is the 33 Watt fast charger that charges the device nice and fast.

Update Policy

Realme wants to provide its devices with a security update every two months. Unfortunately, we do not know how long they will update the smartphones, but it is known that devices receive at least one Android OS update. All in all, a bit on the lean side as far as we are concerned, where, for example, Samsung has been promising updates for devices in the middle class A series for five years.

Additional Features

At the beginning of the review, we promised to come back to the extra functions that the device has been given. With these extra features, you should think about what visual adjustments you can do. This way you have the possibility to adjust the colors of the interface.

Another additional feature is the Smart Sidebar. With this option you open a bar on the right side of the screen with a number of apps that can be set. We have not been able to discover an option to move this bar to the left side of the screen, for example.
Another handy function is one that we know from OnePlus devices, namely gestures when the screen is switched off. When the screen is off, draw an O to open the camera and a V to open the flashlight. Here you have the option to add gestures yourself up to a certain height.

Rating

We are quite satisfied with the Realme 9 Pro. The device has few downsides. The processor is fast enough for all daily tasks and supports 5G. The large battery of 5000 mAh lasts a long time and the camera is also in order. A big downside is the manufacturer’s update policy. This can be improved. Apart from this, the Realme 9 Pro is an excellent device that we can certainly recommend.

The Realme 9 Pro is available at Bol.com and Belsimpel.