Master of all trades, jack of none is what defines this Realme!!
Realme started three years ago and now has gained huge momentum globally with its smartphones. The mid-range smartphone market has a lot of Realme smartphones which are directly giving competition to the likes of Samsung, Xiaomi, and also Motorola. Realme X series has been quite some time in the market in premium mid-range segment and recently we saw the Realme X7 Max.
The Realme X7 Max (Review) is a very good smartphone that packs everything like a 120Hz AMOLED display, a powerful Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset, a good set of triple cameras, and much more. So now Realme is focusing on smartphones that bring in a new experience level and performance with the new GT series.
The Realme GT Master Edition is the latest smartphone from the GT series after the original Realme GT which is a flagship smartphone. The Realme GT Master Edition has a 120Hz AMOLED display, a new build and design compared to other Realme smartphones, a powerful Snapdragon 778G chipset, a good set of triple cameras, and brings support for 5G also.
There are many competitors like the Realme X7 Max which is almost close to this smartphone's price and we also have some other popular smartphones like the iQOO 7, Xiaomi Mi 11X (Review), OnePlus Nord 2 (Review), and the POCO F3 GT (Review). So does this new Realme smartphone make a statement for itself and is it worth buying? Let's find out in the full review.
Realme GT Master Edition Design:
The Realme GT Master Edition comes with a unique design especially if you choose the Voyager Gray color which has a vegan leather finish at the back and looks like a suitcase with thick horizontal grids. Alongside the camera module, we have the Realme logo and the signature of Naoto Fukasawa, the man behind this design, and also on the Realme GT.
The back provides a great grip while holding it in hands and does not catch smudges as the vegan leather finish gently curves around the sides. The smartphone is available in two other colors - Luna White and Cosmos Black. The Luna White variant has a matte finish whereas the Cosmos Black variant has a glossy finish which attracts a lot of fingerprints.
However, still, this design is a huge departure from other Realme smartphones. The Realme X7 Max with a polycarbonate back has a rainbow effect color with Dare to Leap logo behind and thankfully this is not present on the Realme GT Master Edition. The other two variants have a polycarbonate back and there is no glass design which Realme has done to keep costs low.
The back has P2i coating and the smartphone weighs around 174grams for the Voyager Gray color and around 180grams for the other two colors. Around the sides, there is a plastic frame that houses the volume buttons and dual SIM card slot on the left and power button on the right. There is no room for a microSD card for storage expansion.
At the top, there is only a secondary noise-canceling microphone and at the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone, and a 3.5mm headphone jack which is a rarity these days. On the front, there is a punch-hole display located to the left with minimum bezels to the sides. The earpiece just lies on top of the display. So overall, the design feels refreshing and good.
Realme GT Master Edition Display:
The Realme GT Master Edition houses a 6.43-inches Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) Super AMOLED display and here is an E4 AMOLED panel made by Samsung, the same one found on the Realme X7 Max. As it is an AMOLED display, the color reproduction is good with deeper blues and blacks and the viewing angles are also great.
This display supports a 120Hz refresh rate which ensures smooth scrolling, multitasking between applications, and also provides smooth gaming. There is also the 360Hz touch sampling rate which ensures faster inputs and animations in games. There is also the standard 60Hz setting and switching to it results in better battery life.
There is also an Auto Select option where the display automatically depending on the application in usage. In terms of brightness, this AMOLED display can go as high as 1000nits which is great considering an AMOLED display but still, the Xiaomi Mi 11X is better as it can go as high as 1300nits. The legibility of the display is good under direct sunlight.
The color temperature of the display can be set between three different modes - Vivid, Gentle, and Brilliant. Vivid mode enables more saturated colors on the display whereas Gentle and Brilliant enable sRGB display and this display covers 100 percent DCI-P3 gamut. The display supports HDR10 and Widevine L1 so steaming HD contents from OTT platforms is a breeze.
But still, you cannot stream Netflix in HDR which is available on the Xiaomi Mi 11X. In terms of protection, there is no Gorilla Glass, instead, you get DragonTrail glass. Since this is an AMOLED display, there is an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that is accurate and fast. Overall, the display is very good for media consumption and the screen size is perfect which makes it compact for usage.
Realme GT Master Edition Performance:
The Realme GT Master Edition is powered by the latest Snapdragon 778G chipset which is the first smartphone to get this chipset. The Snapdragon 778G is based on a tri cluster setup which has: 1x2.4GHz Kryo 670 Prime core with another 3x2.2GHz Kryo 670 cores (both based on ARM Cortex-A78) and 4x1.9GHz Kryo 670 cores (based on Cortex-A55) and is coupled with Adreno 642L GPU.
This is the third most powerful chipset after the Snapdragon 888 and 870. The performance is excellent as it can handle most of the tasks easily without any problems. App openings remain faster and the RAM management is also done very well. Whether playing heavy games, rendering videos, or even scrolling through webpages at 120Hz, the experience was great.
Many heavy games like Call Of Duty Mobile, BGMI, and Asphalt 9 Legends ran extremely well without any stutters or lags. In BGMI gameplay, the smartphone can run HDR graphics with an Ultra frame rate of 40fps and also Smooth graphics with Extreme frame rates at 60fps. The gaming experience was good but still, it could not go as high as 90fps which its sibling the Realme X7 Max is capable of.
After long hours of gaming, the temperature of the back did not feel warmer due to the polycarbonate/vegan leather back and here Realme has provided a larger vapor cooling chamber that dissipates heat faster and maintains the stability of the game. And since this is a GT smartphone, there is a GT mode present which when turned on improves the gameplay as it tweaks the performance a bit.
Here the CPU and GPU performance is utilized to its maximum and here the display switches to 120Hz refresh rate, a DND mode is present to handle calls, the auto-brightness, and pop-up notifications get disabled and Ultra HD Visual Effects pop on the display thus ensuring smooth gameplay. There was not much difference with the GT mode turned on/off but as you switch it on, there is some battery drain noticed.
With the Realme GT Master Edition, there are three variants available - 6GB RAM with 128GB storage, 8GB RAM with 128GB storage, and the top-end 8GB RAM with 256GB storage. Here RAM is LPDDR4X and the storage speeds are of UFS 2.1. This is a sort of letdown as the similarly priced Realme X7 Max and Xiaomi Mi 11X have faster UFS 3.1 speeds.
In terms of benchmarks, the smartphone scores are good both on Antutu v8 and Geekbench 5.1 but still slightly lower than the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset used in the Realme X7 Max. But when it comes to thermal throttling tests, the Realme GT Master Edition maintained stable performance with very little throttling and this clearly shows that this is a very capable performance-oriented smartphone.
Realme GT Master Edition Software:
Like all Realme smartphones, the Realme GT Master Edition runs on RealmeUI 2.0 with Android 11 out of the box. The experience is very good as the look and feel are more like Stock Android. Still, there is a couple of bloatware in the form of third-party applications and also Realme specific applications. Most of them can be uninstalled which is good and also there are a lot of notifications from the Themes app.
The dialler, contacts, and messaging applications are of Google, and sliding to the left of the home screen reveals the Google Discover feed. There is also Virtual RAM technology using which you can expand the RAM from 8GB to around 13GB depending on the limit between 2/3/5GB RAM where the unused storage is converted to RAM for better usage.
However, Realme does provide a lot of customizations to icon size and shape, accent colors, a Smart Sidebar, an enhanced dark mode which includes three different modes - black, dark gray, and light gray, live wallpapers, and also the Always-On display. All of these are placed in the Personalization feature. Other than the GT mode, there is a Game Space App present where you can organize all games.
In terms of software updates, you will get around two years of Android OS updates and three years of security updates which is great for a mid-range smartphone, and definitely, the overall software experience which may not be as good as the OxygenOS or OneUI, but better compared to FuntouchOS and MIUI also.
Realme GT Master Edition Cameras:
The Realme GT Master Edition has a triple camera setup that consists of the main 64MP f/1.8 OmniVision OV4B sensor for the main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 2MP macro camera. On the front, there is a 32MP f/2.5 camera. The images from the main camera have good and sharper-looking details with a wider dynamic range.
The color saturation is well maintained but there is some overexposure in the background. The default images are saved at 16MP and there is a 64MP mode also which takes more detailed images but does apply in some crops to reduce noise in the background. With the AI Scene Enhancement turned on, the colors pop out a lot and oversaturation takes place.
There is no zoom camera but here the main camera can do 2x and 5x digital zoom which results in images with good dynamic range and more noise. At night, the main camera does struggle to capture detailed images as there is a lot of noise and the dynamic range is not so great. The contrast is good but the highlights in shadows are blown out.
With the Night Mode turned on, things change drastically as dynamic range improves by a larger margin, noise is reduced, and also in long exposure shots, the images have much better details.
The 8MP f/2.3 ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of dynamic range and details come out good. The 119-degree field of view ensures a wider aperture but if you look around the edges of the image, there is a lot of noise and distortion present.
The color saturation is not as good as the main camera as there is a lot of oversharpening in the background. At night, the ultrawide camera struggles as the dynamic range do fall short and when you zoom in, there is a lot of noise and as said earlier, around the sides, there is distortion. The colors look dull and too much noise is present.
The ultrawide camera also gets a dedicated Night Mode which does improve the dynamic range but still, there is a lot of noise. The 2MP macro camera seems like an extra addition as it does not as good as some other macro cameras. It can go close to 4cm only and the details have a lot of noise with washed-out colors and poor dynamic range.
Sometimes the macro camera is not able to lock focus. It is better to use the main camera for a close-up image that has better details and dynamic range. In terms of portraits, the edge detection is good and the color saturation feels more natural whether it is the skin tones of a human subject or any other animal captured. When you zoom into the portraits, the images have slight noise present but you do have sharper details.
After taking a portrait you can adjust the background blur and apply different effects.
The 32MP selfie camera takes selfies with good dynamic range and has a wider field of view. The details look sharper but some is oversharpening in the background and the skin tones are natural but in some scenarios, there is some skin smoothening taking place. The selfie portraits have good edge detection and the details here also look sharper and have good contrast.
In terms of videos, the smartphone can do 4K videos at 30fps. This is sort of disappointing as the Snapdragon 778G is a premium mid-range chipset and still it is missing 4K video support at 60fps. The videos come out with good details but the dynamic range is not so good and there is quite some noise present. However, due to the presence of EIS, the videos have good stabilization.
The 1080p videos at 30/60fps from the main camera come out with a good dynamic range and details are sharper. There is some noise present and switching to the ultrawide camera, the videos have a lot of noise and there is shakiness but with the Ultra Steady Mode, you can get better-stabilized videos for the ultrawide camera as well as the main camera.
However, using the Ultra Steady Mode does apply a heavy crop to maintain stability, and also the color saturation is not so good. The portrait videos come out with good edge detection but there is some focus issue while locking focus on an object. The selfie videos have a good dynamic range and a wider field of view. Other features are AI Color Portrait and the Live Bokeh effect for portrait videos.
AI Color Portrait mode enables the subject that is in focus to have colors whereas the background is black and white. There is also Dual Video Mode where you can record videos from both the front as well as the back camera simultaneously. So overall the cameras are definitely good but do struggle in low-lighting situations if you do not use the dedicated Night Mode.
Realme GT Master Edition Battery Life:
The Realme GT Master Edition sports a 4300mAh battery which is 200mAh lesser in capacity compared to a 4500mAh battery on the Realme X7 Max. With the Snapdragon 778G chipset built on a 6nm process, you can get good battery efficiency so with the display set to 120Hz, you are getting worth two days of battery life with normal usage.
However, with heavy usage, the battery easily lasted one single day but still needs a top-up charge at night. The standard screen-on time was hovering around 6-6.5 hours which is slightly lesser compared to the Realme X7 Max that yields slightly better battery life. You do get Super Night-Time Standby and also the optimizations to the battery are good with the RealmeUI 2.0.
In terms of charging speeds, there is a 65W SuperDart charger bundled inside the box which takes around 35minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 percent which is slightly faster than the Realme X7 Max which takes around 50 minutes for a full charge. So clearly battery life is good and so are the charging speeds.
Realme GT Master Edition Audio Quality:
The Realme GT Master Edition has a single speaker which is a big omission as the similarly priced Realme X7 Max has a stereo speaker setup. The speaker is just adequately loud and the bass level is average. However, you do get a 3.5mm headphone jack which is a very rare thing to find in a smartphone. Realme has done some cross-cutting here.
Verdict:
The Realme GT Master Edition is a good package overall as it has a good display with that 120Hz AMOLED panel, a unique design and build if you consider the Voyager Gray variant, the performance and gaming are good with the Snapdragon 778G processor underneath, the software experience is good as it is feature-packed, and comes with a good set of cameras.
There is a 3.5mm headphone jack which most smartphones lack but you get a single speaker setup which is a big letdown. Though the design is good the build material used is polycarbonate and feels cheap compared to other smartphones like the Xiaomi Mi 11X or the OnePlus Nord 2 that sport a glass back. The cameras are just decent and not extraordinary as such.
The RealmeUI 2.0 though has a lot of features, there is a considerable amount of bloatware present which hampers the software experience a bit. Coming to performance, the Snapdragon 778G is a good chipset but the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset has better gaming performance, and also Realme X7 Max can play BGMI at 90fps which the Realme GT Master Edition cannot.
If you spend some extra, there is the Xiaomi Mi 11X and the iQOO 7 also provide the flagship Snapdragon 870 chipset which is the best chipset for the premium mid-range segment. The storage speeds are slower at UFS 2.1 compared to other smartphones with UFS 3.1 speeds. Still, the Realme X7 Max is of great value as it is slightly cheaper and has better gaming performance, and has stereo speakers.
But if you want a Realme smartphone with a Snapdragon chipset then this is a good option. So as a package, if you want a good display, an attractive design, good performance, and decent cameras, then the Realme GT Master Edition is a good
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