Is the Realme 9 Pro Plus a perfect all-rounder that money can buy?
Realme number series paved the way for the success of the company ever since it came into the market. From the popular number series, Realme stepped into the flagship territory with its X series and now the budget segment which consists of the Narzo series has been doing good. Later this year came the GT series which focussed on performance and was very popular that it replaced the X series.
Last year the Realme 8 Pro (Review) was launched as a good package as it brought in an AMOLED display, 108MP camera setup, good performance, etc. but was criticized as there was no high refresh rate display, the build and design was polycarbonate instead of glass and Realme were still sticking to the Snapdragon 720G chipset which first came on the Realme 6 Pro (Review) and again on the Realme 7 Pro (Review) also.
But now Realme has taken a huge step in 2021 with its Realme 9 series as first it brought the Realme 9i which is a good budget smartphone from Realme and now it has another offering in the form of the Realme 9 Pro Plus as it seems to be the pinnacle of the Realme number series and offers good specifications but has been priced slightly higher compared to other Realme number series smartphone.
However, the biggest talking point about this smartphone has to be the cameras as this is the first smartphone from the company that features OIS and has the flagship 50MP Sony IMX766 sensor which is seen on flagship smartphones like the OnePlus 9RT (Review) and the Oppo Reno 7 Pro (Review). So is it worth buying and does it have enough to take on the competition in the market?
Let's find out in the full review.
Realme 9 Pro Plus Design:
In terms of design, the Realme 9 Pro Plus comes with a premium glass build both at the front and back with the front being protected by Gorilla Glass 5. The back is quite interesting if you consider the Sunrise Blue color which shines in different colors when seen at different angles or also under direct sunlight like in sunlight it turns from blue to red or when you take it away from sunlight, it turns from red to either pink or blue.
Realme calls this the "Light Shift" design and if you look closely at the back, there are minute blue colored glitters and they do sparkle when light hits at different angles. There are other color options present like the Aurora Black and the Midnight Black that does look simple and plain from the back but do shine when light hits at the back.
The matt finish at the back does catch some fingerprints and the weight is around 182grams which is not very heavy. The back has a rectangular camera module which consists of a triple camera setup with a LED flashlight and the camera module is slightly raised which may not be a problem. The back has only P2i coating as there is no IP53 rating.
To the sides, there is a polycarbonate frame that houses the power button on the right side whereas the left side gets the volume buttons with a dual SIM card slot and there is no dedicated slot for a microSD card. The bottom has a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a loudspeaker grille, and a 3.5mm headphone jack which is a welcome addition. The top only has the secondary noise-canceling microphone.
On the front, there is a single punch-hole located to the top left corner of the display and the bezels are quite slimmer except for the bottom which has a thicker bezel and this takes away the look factor. Overall, the Realme 9 Pro Plus does feel premium and looks good.
Realme 9 Pro Plus Display:
The Realme 9 Pro Plus houses a smaller 6.43-inches Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) AMOLED display which is similar to that of the Realme 8 Pro and has a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. This display has a 90Hz refresh rate which is a good improvement from the standard 60Hz refresh rate on the Realme 8 Pro. As it is an AMOLED display, the color reproduction and viewing angles are good.
The 90Hz refresh rate does feel smooth while multi-tasking and also when scrolling through web pages or playing games. Combined with it you get a 180Hz touch sampling rate which provides faster touch responses. However, still, this refresh rate is not the adaptive one but you do get the Auto-Select option where the display either switches between standard 60Hz or higher 120Hz depending on the application in usage.
Still, though you get a higher refresh rate display, other smartphones get a 120Hz refresh rate combined with a 360Hz touch sampling rate but still, you would not notice much difference between the 90Hz or 120Hz refresh rate display. In terms of display brightness, this display can reach a peak brightness of 1000nits which is very good while watching content in HDR.
Under direct sunlight, the visibility of the display is very good and you can achieve around 600nits of brightness. There are different color modes available - Vivid, Natural, and Pro out of which Vivid provides punchier colors and the Pro mode has another two modes - Brilliant and Cinematic both of which can be set to warmer or cooler tones.
This display supports Widevine L1 so you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms but still, there is no support for HDR on Netflix as of now but you can do stream HDR on Youtube. As this is an AMOLED display, there is an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works fast and is accurate. Overall, this display is great for media consumption, however, a higher 120Hz refresh rate display would have been better.
Realme 9 Pro Plus Performance:
The Realme 9 Pro Plus sports the Mediatek Dimensity 920 chipset which is a similar chipset found on the Xiaomi 11i Hypercharge. This chipset provides good performance in all the daily tasks and also gaming performance. All tasks like scrolling through web pages, rendering videos and playing games felt smoother. Games like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc. ran smoothly without any stutters.
In BGMI, it achieved both Ultra with HDR and Smooth with Extreme. After long hours of gaming, the back does not get warmer as Realme has equipped a vapor cooling system that does dissipate heat much better. In terms of CPU throttling tests, the sustained performance is very good as the stability achieved was around 85 percent. The benchmark scores were also good for both Antutu v8 and Geekbench 5.1.
The Realme 9 Pro Plus is available in three variants - 6GB RAM with 128GB storage, 8GB RAM with 128GB storage, and another 8GB RAM with 256GB storage where RAM is LPDDR4X and storage speeds are UFS 3.1. There is also virtual RAM present called the Dynamic RAM expansion as you get an extra 5G RAM for enhanced multitasking.
The network connectivity is good as you get good carrier aggregation and there is support for 5 5G bands which is good but still lower than the competitors that offer around 8 to 12 5G bands. The haptic feedback is very good and you do get an O-Haptics option for better and premium haptic feedback. Overall, the performance is good but a slightly powerful chipset like a Mediatek Dimensity 1200 or Snapdragon 778G could have been better.
Realme 9 Pro Plus Software:
The Realme 9 Pro Plus is one of the first smartphones from Realme that runs on RealmeUI 3.0 based on Android 12 out of the box. The RealmeUI 3.0 brings some minor improvements over the RealmeUI 2.0 as you get privacy features for all applications, better customizations, and the ease of accessing the floating windows.
There is a feature called Personalization where you can change the icon shape and size, newer wallpapers, different colors where the colors which you choose will be applied to the entire UI and also There is support for AOD Sketchpad where you can sketch a portrait or image and use it on the Always-On display similar to that of OnePlus and Oppo which ic called Omoji.
However, there is a considerable amount of bloatware present which does take away the premium software experience. The interesting addition is that Realme 9 Pro Plus has the in-built heart rate monitor which is placed under Realme Labs and is an introduction here on this smartphone as you can test it by playing the figure on the fingerprint scanner that scans and lets you know the heart rate.
In terms of software updates, Realme will provide two Android OS updates and three years of security patches. Overall, the software experience is good, but a considerable amount of bloatware could have been removed by Realme.
Realme 9 Pro Plus Cameras:
The Realme 9 Pro Plus is one of the very few smartphones that has a flagship camera setup as it borrows the 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX766 sensor for the main camera from smartphones like the OnePlus 9RT and the Oppo Reno 7 Pro. So the triple camera setup consists of a 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX766 sensor for the main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera.
The front has a 16MP f/2.4 camera for selfies. The images from the main camera come out with good details that look sharper and have excellent dynamic range. The colors look natural without any oversharpening as such and noise is also considerably lower. The images are saved at 12.5MP by default but using the HDR mode does oversaturate colors a bit.
At night, the images taken have a good dynamic range with natural colors and the details also look sharper. Since there is OIS present, the noise is not present which is a great thing to have for a smartphone camera in this price segment. Using the dedicated Night Mode does not make much of a difference as it saturates the color more, restores blown away highlights and images look really good.
The 8MP ultrawide camera does a decent job in terms of dynamic range which is good but the details look slightly softer and around the corners, there is some amount of distortion and some amount of noise is present. However, the colors look natural there is no such oversharpening which we have seen on most ultrawide cameras in the premium mid-range segment.
The same goes for images taken during the night where the dynamic range is weaker and there is a lot of noise but with the dedicated Night Mode, the noise reduces to quite some extent, and also the dynamic range improves. It also restores the details in shadows and maintains a natural color in the background.
The 2MP macro camera does a decent job in terms of dynamic range but there is a considerable amount of noise and the colors look washed out. It is better to the main 50MP camera by applying a 2x zoom and going near to the object for macro images which do have natural colors and the details look sharper.
The portraits come out with good dynamic range and edge detection with proper background blur.
The front camera has a 16MP Sony IMX471 sensor that takes images with good dynamic range and details do look sharper. The skin tones look natural but the field of view is not so larger and there is some amount of noise present. The portrait selfies come out with good background blur and edge detection without any oversharpening in the background.
The Realme 9 Pro Plus can record 4K videos at 30fps from the main camera and the details look sharper and colors are on the natural side. There is very little noise present and the dynamic range is excellent. Since there is OIS present, the videos do not have any shakiness and come out stable both during the day as well as night.
Using the dedicated Night Mode, the videos come out with better details slightly and the dynamic range also improves. The ultrawide camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps which come out with average dynamic range but details do look slightly sharper with natural colors in the background. There is also an Ultra Stable Mode for better-stabilized videos from the ultrawide camera.
The videos from the front camera are limited to 1080p at 30fps and the level of details looks good and sharper but there is some noise present. The dynamic range is good and you do get a dedicated Night Mode for selfie videos during the night. The skin tones look natural though. Overall, the cameras are good on the Realme 9 Pro Plus and it does give a tough fight to other smartphones in this segment.
Realme 9 Pro Plus Battery Life:
The Realme 9 Pro Plus sports a 4500mAh battery which can easily last for two days with normal usage the display being set to 60Hz and switching to higher 90Hz will yield around one and a half days usage with some charge left. With heavy usage and the display is set to 90Hz, the smartphone can last only a single day with some charge left.
The newer RealmeUI 3.0 does provide some battery optimizations that do improve the battery life and the standard screen-on time was around 7-8 hours with normal usage which is very good and with heavy usage, it was around 5 hours which is also good. However, like some Realme smartphones, there is support for faster charging but instead of 65W, you get a 60W fast charger bundled inside the box.
The dedicated charger takes around 50 minutes to charge the smartphone from 0 to 100 percent which seems to be fast but not as fast as the Realme GT Master Edition which takes around 35 minutes from 0 to 100 percent. However, it is faster than the 50W fast charging on the Realme 8 Pro. Overall, both the battery life and charging remain good.
Realme 9 Pro Plus Audio Quality:
There is a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds louder and clearer and has very good bass and is one of the very few stereo speakers that support Hi-Res audio. Other than this there is also the 3.5mm headphone jack and the sound output through it is very good. There is also support for Dolby Atmos which means you get enhanced sound output while watching videos or playing games.
Verdict:
The Realme 9 Pro Plus is a complete package that packs in the best of everything and the most striking thing is the cameras as there is support for OIS which most of the smartphones in the premium mid-range segment do not have. The build and design are good and premium, the display is good for media consumption, performance and gaming feel faster and you get good battery life with faster charging.
Other than this there are some places where the Realme 9 Pro Plus does fall short though you have a 90Hz refresh rate, a 120Hz or 144Hz refresh rate could have been better, the ultrawide camera performance is not so good and RealmeUI 3.0 though looks good is filled with bloatware and then the design may or may not appeal to everybody.
Some other smartphones in the market do offer slightly better chipsets like Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset or even the Snapdragon 778G chipset, but still, the overall performance is good. So as an overall basis, the Realme 9 Pro Plus is a well-rounded mid-range smartphone worth considering and definitely feels like a very good upgrade from the Realme 8 Pro.
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