Realme X7 Max redefines flagship-level performance!!
Realme started this year with the popular X7 series that includes the Realme X7 and the X7 Pro which came with newer design elements and had quite some good specifications for the prices at which they are offered. Well, Realme has been launching quite a bunch of smartphones in the mid-range and the premium mid-range segment when we talk about their popular number series and the X series.
Last year, the Realme X2 Pro (Review) and the X50 Pro were some of the very powerful smartphones that pack in powerful specifications with flagship chipsets, a good set of cameras, and faster-charging capabilities thus being cheaper compared to smartphones from brands like Samsung, OnePlus, etc. making a true value for money proposition.
Similarly, this time Realme X7 Max is a premium mid-range flagship smartphone as it is the first smartphone to have the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset while borrowing almost all the features of the Realme X7 Pro (Review) that includes a 120Hz AMOLED display, quad-camera setup, 65W fast charging and runs on the RealmeUI 2.0.
However, the premium mid-range segment has witnessed a lot of great smartphones like last year's most popular OnePlus Nord (Review) and some new launches like the Xiaomi Mi 11X (Review) and the iQOO 7 that does pack in some aggressive specifications. How does the Realme X7 Max stack up against its own sibling the Realme X7 Pro and is it worth buying? Let's find out in the full review.
Realme X7 Max Design:
In terms of design, the Realme X7 Max is quite different from other Realme smartphones especially the Realme X7 (Review) and the X7 Pro. The back is made of polycarbonate here instead of glass that we saw on the Realme X7 Pro. The back also has a two-tone color design where there is a glossy thick strip from the camera to the bottom whereas the other part of the back has a soft matte textured finish.
While holding it in hand, you can easily distinguish a plastic back from a glass but still, the grip remains very good. The camera module is rectangular here which contains three cameras with a LED flashlight instead of the quad cameras present on the Realme X7 Pro. The smartphone is available in three colors - Mercury Silver, Asteroid Black, and Milky Way.
The Asteroid Black looks premium of the three and the Milky Way color will come at a later stage in India. There is no IP rating at the back instead you are getting IPX4 certification which means the smartphone is splash-resistant. The Realme X7 Max weighs around 179 grams which makes it quite light and is 8.4mm in thickness.
This time the small Dare to Leap logo is placed on the bottom at the corner instead of the large logo that we have seen previously. If you tilt the smartphone at different angles, there is a slight rainbow effect is seen. The sides of the smartphone have a plastic frame where the volume buttons and the power button are located on the left side whereas the right side remains clean with only the hybrid SIM card slot.
At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C 2.0 port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a primary microphone, and a loudspeaker grill and to the top, there is a secondary noise-canceling microphone only. The 3.5mm headphone jack makes a return here which was not present on the Realme X7 Pro. On the front, there is a punch-hole display located at the top left with minimum bezels to the sides.
Overall, the design and build feel and look good but a glass back and the presence of IP53 rating could have been better which are both presents on the Xiaomi Mi 11X.
Realme X7 Max Display:
The Realme X7 Max has a smaller 6.43-inches Full HD+(1080x1920 pixels) E4 Super AMOLED display and this display panel have been made by Samsung. Like the Realme X7 Pro, this display also has a 120Hz refresh rate and a 360Hz touch sampling rate which means scrolling through web pages, multi-tasking between applications will work smoothly.
And since this is an AMOLED display, the color reproduction is very good with great viewing angles. The display has support for HDR10+ and Widevine L1 which makes streaming of HD contents on OTT platforms much easier without any issue. Talking about brightness, the display is very bright and if you take it under direct sunlight, the visibility remains good.
Talking about the display, the Realme X7 Max covers 91.4 percent of the DCI-P3 gamut and you can set the color temperature of the display from warmer to cooler. There are different color profiles to choose from and Realme has provided the OSIE visual effect, an Always-On display that can be customized, Smooth Scrolling, SuperNight Time Standby and DC dimming features are present.
This display can achieve a peak brightness of 1000nits which is very good but the lowest brightness levels could have been better. In terms of protection, there is no support for Corning Gorilla Glass 3 or 5, and instead, Realme has gone for a DragonTrail glass to do some cross-cutting. This display has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner which is very accurate and works faster.
Realme X7 Max Performance:
The Realme X7 Max is powered by the latest and greatest from Mediatek, the Dimensity 1200 chipset. This is the most powerful chipset made by Mediatek to compete with other flagship chipsets from Qualcomm. Like the Snapdragon chipsets, this chipset is also an octa-core chipset based on a tri-cluster setup and has the powerful Cortex-A78 cores which are also present on the Snapdragon 888.
The chipset has: 1x3.0 GHz Cortex-A78 Prime core with 3x2.6 GHz Cortex-A78 cores and another 4x2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 cores and is coupled with Mali-G77 MC9 GPU. This chipset is built on an efficient 6nm process. Since the chipset is built on a 6nm process, it is power efficient but still, if you see the Snapdragon 888, which is built on a 5nm process is the most efficient.
However, we should not compare both chipsets as the Snapdragon 888 chipset is found on more flagships which are much costlier compared to the premium mid-range smartphones like the Realme X7 Max. So the day-to-day performance feels smooth and there were no stutters noticed. All other tasks like playing games, multitasking between applications, rendering videos ran smoothly.
The Mediatek Dimensity 1200 is a good upgrade over the Mediatek Dimensity 1000 Plus used in the Realme X7 Pro as the later chipset is built on a 7nm process but if you compare performance or app closing/opening there is not much of a difference. But if you see the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 with the 1000 Plus, you are getting 25-percent more power efficiency and 22-percent better CPU performance.
Even in games like Call OF Duty Mobile, Asphalt 9 Legends, the graphics and frame rate settings are set to the highest by default. With the games set to the highest settings, there are no frame drops or stutters noticed while playing but after a long time of gaming, the back of the smartphone does feel warmer to the touch though Realme has provided a vapor cooling system.
In terms of benchmarks, the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 scores 968 and 3327 in Geekbench 5 and around 701800 on Antutu v8 which is really good and the scores are almost closer to the Snapdragon 870 chipset. The Realme X7 Max is available in two variants - 6/8GB LPDDR4X RAM with 128/256GB UFS 3.1 storage. The UFS 3.1 storage speeds are an upgrade over the UFS 2.1 speeds on the Dimensity 1000 Plus.
Realme X7 Max Software:
Like all other Realme smartphones, the Realme X7 Max also runs on the newer RealmeUI 2.0 with Android 11 out of the box. RealmeUI 2.0 is a major improvement over the RealmeUI 1.0 seen on the Realme X7 Pro. The RealmeUI 2.0 resembles looks almost like Stock Android but comes with many bloatware pre-installed.
There are a couple of third-party applications like HeyTap, Community, FinShell, Realme Paysa, Netflix, Youtube Music, and many others that do consume some memory but thankfully can be uninstalled. There are some ads noticed here and there and you can go to settings and disable the option to display ads in the UI but the constant notifications do hamper the software experience.
But RealmeUI 2.0 comes with great features one being the Personalization app where you can set the size and color of icons on the home screen and app drawer, newer themes with wallpapers are present, new animations of fingerprint unlocking, and much more. The enhanced dark mode is present which turns on automatically depending on light intensity and is applicable to almost all third-party applications.
There are some new gestures like a three-finger swipe to take screenshots, draw certain alphabets like V for the flashlight or any other alphabets to open some specific app on the lock screen, turn the smartphone down to mute calls, floating windows, smart edge lighting, a sidebar to access some applications, mini windows, the Always-On display functionality is present.
If you remove the bloatware, then you might get the software experience almost close to Stock Android we can say. In terms of software updates, Realme has not confirmed its software cycle policy but we do hope this smartphone will get the Android 12 update as soon as possible. Overall, the software experience is better when compared to MIUI but still, OxygenOS is better compared to RealmeUI.
Realme X7 Max Cameras:
The Realme X7 Max has a triple camera setup like the Realme X7 that comprises the main 64MP f/1.8 Sony IMX682 sensor camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera. There is no depth sensor like on the Realme X7 Pro and also on the front, there is a 16MP f/2.5 camera.
Talking about the main camera, this time there is a 64MP Sony IMX682 sensor instead of the 64MP Sony IMX686 sensor on the Realme X7 Pro. The images from the main camera of the Realme X7 Max have very good and sharper details. The dynamic range is good but there is some noise in the images. You can also use the 64MP resolution to take detailed and sharp images also.
A shot was taken at 64MP resolution:
(Credits: MySmartPrice)
Similarly, at night, the images have sharp details and good dynamic range. There is a lot of noise present and the shadows become crushed. The Ultra Night Mode helps with better dynamic range, reduces noise to a large extent also restores the highlights in shadows. It may not be as good as the Sony IMX686 sensor used in the Realme X7 Pro but still, it is good on its own.
Without Night Mode:
With Night Mode:
The 8MP ultrawide camera takes images with good details and dynamic range. It has a 119-degree field of view which ensures a wider field of view but around the edges, there is a lot of distortion and when you zoom into the images, the details look slightly softer and there is a lot of noise present. The colors look slightly oversaturated and as good as the main camera.
At night, the images have good details with an average dynamic range. There is a lot of noise present and the colors as said look oversaturated. There is a dedicated Night Mode for the ultrawide camera also which does improve the exposure in images, reduces noise but still does not do much as the dynamic range continues to remain average.
The 2MP macro camera is just an extra camera added which does not deliver much in terms of macro images as it does not have autofocus and is a fixed focus macro camera that results in images with washed-out colors, poor dynamic range and a lot of oversharpening takes place. Maybe Realme could have provided a depth sensor instead and used the ultrawide camera as the macro camera.
There is no dedicated depth sensor but still, the portraits come out with good details and when you take a portrait of a human subject, the skin tones look natural and the dynamic range is also good. The edge detection is also good with proper subject separation from the background. The background blur can be adjusted and you can also apply different filters to it.
The 16MP front camera does a good job in terms of selfies with good dynamic range and the skin tones also look natural here. There is some noise present and sometimes, there is a lot of oversharpening present. The portrait selfies come out with good details and dynamic range but they do also suffer oversharpening. The edge detection could have been better.
On the video's side, the Realme X7 Max can record 4K at 60fps and the video footage has good details and dynamic range. The colors look slightly oversaturated and there is some amount of noise in the videos. There is no stabilization and as a result, the videos have a lot of disturbances and distortion but switching to 1080p at 60fps results in better-stabilized videos with the EIS kicking.
And the ultrawide camera is only restricted to 1080p at 60fps and the videos from it have good details and come out with an average dynamic range. There is also the Ultra Stable Mode for more stabilized videos on the ultrawide camera and also a Super Stable Mode on the main camera but that is restricted only up to 1080p.
On the front, there is only 1080p at 30fps present and no 4K like the OnePlus Nord. The videos from the front camera have a good dynamic range and the colors look natural also. As there is no EIS, the videos have slight jitteriness and you cannot zoom while taking the videos. There is also an option to take portrait videos but there is a Night Mode on the front camera to take better videos during the night.
Realme X7 Max Battery Life:
The Realme X7 Max has a massive 4500mAh battery which is also similar to the Realme X7 Pro and this battery can easily last for two days with normal usage. With the display set to 120Hz, and with heavy usage like playing games like Call Of Duty Mobile for 3-4 hours, streaming social media, scrolling webpages, etc., the smartphone lasted for a single day with some charge left.
The average screen-on time was around 6-7 hours with the display brightness set to the highest and since the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 is based on a 6nm process, the battery life is quite an improvement over the Realme X7 Pro with some extra screen-on time and also Realme has optimized the battery life by offering features such as Super NightTime Standby and other power-saving modes.
In terms of charging, there is a slight downgrade, as the Realme X7 Max supports 50W SuperVOOC charging instead of the 65W SuperVOOC charging on the Realme X7 Pro. You do get the 65W SuperVOOC charger inside the box, but the smartphone only supports up to 50W. The charger took an hour to charge from 0 to 100 which is slightly slower compared to 40 minutes on the Realme X7 Pro.
Realme X7 Max Audio Quality:
The Realme X7 Max has a stereo speaker setup which includes the earpiece and the loudspeaker at the bottom together with sound to produce a stereo setup. There is support for Hi-Res audio and Dolby Atmos that further enhances the sound experience while watching videos and also playing games. The 3.5mm headphone jack makes a return which was a miss on the Realme X7 Pro and the audio is really good.
Verdict:
The Realme X7 Max is a good overall package to be considered as brings with it almost all the flagship specifications that include the powerful Mediatek Dimensity 1200. When you look at the specifications like a 120Hz AMOLED display, a 4500mAh battery that provides great battery life and supports fast charging, good performance, good audio quality, and a good set of cameras.
There are some areas where it does feel a little bit of a letdown like Realme provided a glass back on the Realme X7 Pro but the Realme X7 Max has a polycarbonate back and the front glass protection is not the Corning Gorilla Glass 5. The RealmeUI 2.0 provides an almost Stock Android-like experience with some good features but the presence of bloatware and constant notifications hamper the software experience.
And talking about cameras, they are good but still, there is some improvement needed in night photography. The charger provided inside the box is a 65W one but Realme X7 Max supports 50W fast charging which is a small downgrade over the Realme X7 Pro. But when it comes to gaming and day-to-day performance, this smartphone outperforms many other smartphones there in the market.
To sum it all up, if you want a smartphone with a good high refresh rate display, top-notch performance, good cameras, good battery life with fast charging, and a decent software experience and do not much care about the build and design much, then the Realme X7 Max is a perfect buy but if you are someone who is looking for other smartphones, then the Xiaomi Mi 11X and the iQOO 7 can be considered.
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