Realme GT 2 Pro: Great attempt but still not the best – The Unbiased Review

Realme announced its Realme GT last year with the top of the line Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SOC and a 120hz Amoled display, it was absolute bliss for a power consumer at a competitive price tag. Starting this year, they truly stepped into the hyper-premium space with the introduction of Realme GT 2 Pro for India.

The Realme GT 2 Pro brings in a lot of improvements over its predecessors. It packs in top-of-the-line features which one should expect from a flagship device with few omissions to deliver it at an aggressive price tier to give a stiff competition against its rivalries. With a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Processor, a bio-based polymer design, and a 2K LTPO AMOLED display with a refresh rate of 120Hz. All of this at a starting price of INR 49,999! But, are all these high-end specs enough to swap and convince the potential buyers? 

After spending 2 weeks with it as our daily driver, here’s our review of the Realme GT 2 Pro. Before moving ahead, let’s take a look at the specs:

Realme GT 2 Pro Full Specifications

BOX CONTENTS

• Realme GT2 Pro
• SuperDart Charge 65W Charging Brick
• Type-C Data Cable
• Sim Ejector Pin
• Quick-Start and Safety Guide
• Protective Case

DESIGN & DISPLAY

Realme always sets high standards when it boils down to the design. Just like its predecessor which came with a vegan leatherback, the Realme GT 2 Pro comes with a bio-based polymer that delivers a paper-like texture on its back. This paper-like material aids in better ergonomics as well as doesn’t catch scratches and smudges as compared to other glass or polycarbonate plastic material. This unique design is not only limited to the feel of the paper, it also gives an ability to doodle with any regular pencil and can be erased with a rubber. It’s available in three colourways:- Paper White, Paper Green and Steel Black. For this review, we’re rocking the Paperwhite colour of the Realme GT 2 Pro. 

Weighing 189 grams, it feels way lighter than the other flagships available in the market but it also trades off on the premium in-hand feel of the device. If you’re not satisfied with this eco-friendly material design, there’s also an option to opt for Steel Black for a glass back which is not designed by Naoto Fukusawa. The silver aluminium mid-frame blends neatly with the appearance of the device. Delivering the physical overview, the power button is located on the right whereas the volume rockers are on the left with decent tactile feedback. The buttons are easily reachable with single-hand operation. 

On the bottom, it flanks a USB-C Port along with a microphone, a SIM tray slot and a bottom-firing stereo speaker. On the top, it holds a secondary microphone. The antenna cutouts on the side frame help in improving the connectivity and network reception during phone calls. The camera bump protrudes slightly from the back. If the design wasn’t enough to impress eyeballs, the display screams a lot about the Realme GT 2 Pro. Realme chose to go with a flat glass approach rather than a curved display but this doesn’t pull it off from being an exceptional display. It sports a 6.7″ QHD+ AMOLED display panel that supports a 120Hz refresh rate and a resolution of up to 1440×3216 pixels. This display panel is made by Samsung and is mostly available in the high-tier flagship only. With the LTPO 2.0 technology, it adaptively switches from 0Hz to 120hz depending on the usage scenario to preserve more battery. This display is further protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus.

Realme claims a peak brightness of up to 1400 nits but during our usage, this display panel reaches 847 nits of peak brightness under harsh sunlight which is not even close to what Realme claimed. But still, this brightness level can suffice day-to-day usage with ease. However, this display reproduces outstanding and accurate colours. With its three display profiles:- Vivid, Natural and Pro Mode. We’ll recommend you switch to Natural mode and adjust the colour temperature slider towards the cooler side to achieve a more precise colour reproduction.

PERFORMANCE

The Realme GT 2 Pro houses the most powerful SOC till now:- the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 which is based on a 4nm processor and a true incremental upgrade from its predecessor i.e Realme GT with Qualcomm Snapdragon 888. The graphical duties are handled by Adreno 730 GPU. These are arranged in a cluster of Cortex-X2 which is clocked at 3000 Mhz, three clusters of Cortex-A710 which is clocked at 2500 Mhz and four clusters of Cortex-A510 which is clocked at 1800 Mhz. The day-to-day performance felt light and fast on its feet, it holds all the horsepower without compromising the performance. 

While playing heavy game titles like BGMI or Genshin Impact, we didn’t encounter any slowdowns or lags during our usage. It’s the same processor which we earlier reviewed on the iQoo 9 Pro and is also available in other flagship devices including the Oneplus 10 Pro and Samsung S22 series. The device felt slightly warmer than the iQoo 9 Pro while playing a 2-hour session of BGMI but doesn’t throttle on the performance. While performing benchmarks and playing graphic-intensive games on it, the Realme GT 2 Pro’s aluminium side rails and camera bump get too hot which becomes uncomfortable to hold for prolonged gaming sessions, binge-watching and heavy multitasking. Meanwhile, we’re happy to report that the back got slightly warmer but wasn’t too hot. The device reached almost 45°C on maxed-out settings, and we were able to undergo our gameplay at a constant FPS of 51-60. As far as benchmark scores are concerned; it hits 9,23,889 in Antutu Benchmark, 1218 in Single-Core Score and 3403 Multi-Core Score. During the CPU throttling test, it throttled down to 79% to its max performance.

CAMERA 

Realme completely revamped the camera array with its GT 2 Pro which now consists of three-camera lenses:- a 50MP Sony customized IMX 766 OIS Primary sensor, a 50MP Samsung customized ISOCELL JN1 Ultrawide sensor which captures 150° field of view and a 3MP Microscope camera which can go way closer than any regular macro camera and shoots on 20x and 40x magnification for microscopic shots. For cherishing your selfie needs, it holds a 32MP for its front optics. 

Photos that are captured from the primary sensor look pretty crisp in detail and sharp during daylight situations. The dynamic range is balanced by keeping the digital grain and noise to be minimal. The colours reproduction is pretty sober and for producing more punchy colours, toggling the AI button will do the rest to keep the colours looking more appealing. Such camera results can easily be in the same class as other flagship-grade cameras. During indoor situations, it produces slight digital grain with plenty of details but misses on sharpness on it.

However, there is no telephoto lens available in this but it can zoom up to 2x digitally and revamps the details with the pixel-binning method. The results aren’t astonishing but can suffice for other people. In low light, the primary sensor produces well-lit pictures with plenty of details and sharpness with a good dynamic range. Using Night mode results in well-lit shadows coupled with more details and sharpness than the regular photo mode with a subtle exposure and sharpness which doesn’t look artificial at all. The other drawback is its portrait mode which skews in the edge detection every time which is a bit disappointing even after paying such a premium price tag. We hope that Realme can fix this issue with an OTA update but till that time, the portrait mode is fringy.

The results that are captured from its ultra-wide sensor follow the same colour schema which reproduces almost similar looking pictures with minimal degradation in the details. The dynamic range is on-point with an acceptable digital grain in indoor scenarios. It also doubles up as an ultrawide camera which degrades the sharpness and overall details in the scene but presents a fish-eye lens which is enough to impress and can be shared on social media as well. The distortion around the edges drops few details but it’s acceptable for its visual appearance. The ultrawide camera lacks the auto-focus which wasn’t the case with the iQoo 9 pro which follows up with the same ultrawide camera solution.

The other 3MP microscope camera can go really close to the subject and the pair of LEDs helps to brighten up the image for a well-lit micro shot. For capturing with this lens, you’ll have to be patient and standstill to capture well-focused pictures which turn out interesting and fun. As far as video capabilities are concerned, it can shoot up to 8K resolution which is limited only to 24 FPS. Toning down the resolution to 4K, it can shoot in 30 FPS as well as 60 FPS. The 32MP shooter on its front captures good selfies with slightly muted colours a wider dynamic range and excellent exposure compensation. The details and sharpness are optimal, it usually produces digital noise in indoor situations. 

SOFTWARE & BATTERY

The Realme GT2 Pro ships with Realme UI 3.0 which is running on Android 12 out of the box. The Realme UI features a variety of customizations with enhanced visuals and a sophisticated clean stock-like experience. Most of the flagship delivers a bloatware-free UI but this device legitimately shifts with more than 15 preloaded apps, not including Google apps. However, it’s easy to uninstall such apps but it’s not expected from a device that claims itself to be a flagship. When it boils down to software support, Realme promises to bring three years of software updates and four years of patch updates for this device. However, we can’t confirm such promises until watching the future support for this series.

The Realme GT2 Pro comes with a 5000mAh battery which is almost the exact size of other flagships available in the market. It’s an upgrade over its predecessors which bundled a 4,500 mAh battery in the Realme GT. Throughout our day, it does well in daily usage. On FHD+ resolution, we were able to churn out almost a day with 6-7 hours of battery backup. Afterwards, on QHD+ resolution, battery depletion becomes more constant and we are able to finish its battery within 5-6 hours which includes multiple rounds of BGMI and watching movies on Netflix. As far as fast charging is concerned, it ships with a Realme’s SuperDart Charge 65W which juices the battery from 0% to 100% in less than 40 minutes which is impressive. The lack of wireless charging is a bummer at this price point.

VERDICT

Realme GT2 Pro comes in three colours:- Paper Green, Paper White and Steel Black in two configurations:- 8GB+128GB at Rs.49,999 and 12GB+256GB at Rs. 57,999.

Realme GT2 Pro is the first attempt by the brand to enter into the flagship compiling the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Processor, a much more unique and eco-friendly approach towards its design with bio-polymer material, a 2K resolution AMOLED display which comes with 120HZ LTPO 2.0 for preserving more battery, great camera performance and a good- battery life. Meanwhile, there are some omissions as well to make it available at this aggressive pricing which includes a not-so-good cooling solution that results in overheating the device while shooting videos in 4K for 10 minutes and playing heavy graphic games which spoils the fact that you’re using a flagship, the portrait mode is not up to the mark when it comes to precise edge detection, lack of IP rating and wireless charging support.

Realme GT2 Pro undercuts a lot of flagship devices like the iQoo 9 Pro and OnePlus 10 Pro at an affordable price with the same high-end features in it. The lack of a telephoto lens can be a bummer for some people but the microscope lens is enough to impress shutterbugs. If you can deal with excessive overheating issues then Realme GT2 Pro will be a deserving device to try out once. If you’re looking for any other alternatives then the iQoo 9 Pro still remains a true example of how flagships should be made without any compromises; it’s indeed a solid performer whether it is the cameras, the gorgeous 2K display, rapid 120W fast charging or the raw performance it offers with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 with a much-more balanced cooling system which works effectively well. For purchasing this device, you need to shell out 64,999 INR for its base variant and 69,990 INR for the top-of-the-line storage variant.

If you’re looking for other alternatives apart from this, Vivo X70 Pro+ delivers a flagship experience with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888+, a revamped quad-camera setup, and gimbal stabilization for buttery stable videos, powerful SOC under the hood, and a luxurious design which stands it apart from the crowd. It also bundles up a QHD+ Display, Wireless Charging, and IP68 Water and Dust Resistance. It comes in only one storage configuration:- 12GB RAM + 256GB of storage which is priced at Rs 79,990

Samsung S22 prices are as same as the iQoo 9 Pro which is an affordable approach to the Samsung S22 lineup that serves the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, a One-UI software experience with an ergonomically well 6.1-inch low-resolution AMOLED display(when compared with the competition), a slower charging speeds and a slightly weaker battery. However, there are no severe heating issues on this device as well as the others.

Disclaimer: We tested the Realme GT2 Pro (12GB+256GB)  for two weeks before writing this review. All our reviews are unbiased and are published without the brand getting to read them before you guys. We don’t change our reviews on pressure from brands and that’s the reason we are not sent review units from companies like Samsung, Xiaomi, and a few more.