We think the Realme 9 Pro Plus may not be the best camera phone, but it is the best camera phone you can find if you’re looking for a plan at around £349. It has a 12MP rear camera with dual LED flash and a 13MP front-facing shooter. Its main camera boasts 2020p with a wide-angle lens and improved low lighting optics, which is consistent across the board. At first glance, Realme doesn’t look like too strong a contender in the smartphone space when you consider that it doesn’t have flagship specs and can be found at a low price point. However, there are a couple of shooting modes that support RAW photography too, which might make some people interested. Photographers should be aware that not all cameras have the same features or power. While you may find one brand that’s cheaper with the same quality, others won’t have hold a candle to it in term of function, size or quality.
Realme, a global smartphone brand that has been on the market since 2017, recently gave us a chance to test-drive the Realme 9 Pro Plus. This device is designed to improve on some of the key aspects of its predecessor and meet customer expectations. The Realme 9 Pro Plus is also great for good nature photography thanks to it having a 16MP camera system with a ƒ/1.7 aperture.
The Realme 9 Pro Plus shares the primary camera found on the Oppo Find X3 Pro. Offering a Sony IMX766 sensor with 2-axis optic, it is not ideal in comparison to the 5-axis OIS found on the Oppo Find X5 pro -although that doesn’t make it any less impressive when comparing at a glance.
The Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1 is one of the few phones in this segment to offer a 2MP fixed-focus macro camera. So if you’re in the market for a budget device, this phone has exactly what you want.
Choosing the best smartphone for you doesn’t have to be a difficult task. If you’re more focused on the camera, you could choose this budget-friendly alternative from Apple! The iPhone X has fantastic camera capabilities, which would be ideal for photographers who want to do their own photography rather than hire it out. It’s been said that old standbys like the Redmi Note 10 Pro and other budget-friendly phone in 2022 are still better than this phone. While it may work well, it won’t have the same high-quality features as some of the competition.
Design and screen
The Realme 9 Pro Plus has a stable design and is incredibly portable. It also has a glass or plastic finish depending on your preference, and its Midnight Black or Aurora Green or Sunrise Blue colors are classic pieces for any room in your home.
The Pro Plus is relatively light, but at 182 grams it still has a lot of weight in the hand and isn’t without problems. The surface is matte and its back is reflective, which means it will easily pick up fingerprints on your screens to create a less-than-ideal viewing experience.
With a user-friendly and intuitive design, the Realme 9 Pro Plus is easy to set up. Its 6.4-inch Super AMOLED screen’s refresh rate and pixels per inch are good but not best-in-class. It’s not designed for gaming or movie watching, which sacrifice refresh rates for other features. It still has a fast enough refresh rate for most websites, which is more important than the 0fps frame-rate.
If you’re not mad about losing a bit of brightness, the 430 nits max brightness (600 nits in high brightness mode) means your screen is easy enough to view outdoors, and the clarity is on-point with 411 PPI pixel density – not far behind what most people need to meet workplace guidelines.
Cameras
I want to say that Realme 9 Pro Plus’s main camera features the 50MP Sony IMX766 sensor with 1-micron pixels, OIS and an f/1.8 aperture lens. The camera also has an ultra-wide 8MP sensor with a 16mm focal length and an f/2.2 aperture. Lastly, the 2MP macro ability assures that your pictures are as good & clear as possible for Instagram & Twitter posts.
It’s not a big deal, though. The camera is still capable of taking beautiful selfies at 16MP with an f/2.4 lens and a 27mm focal length, so that problem can be resolved.
The Realme 9 Pro Plus captures video at up to 4K resolution, 60 frames-per-second, and 1080p resolution. You can take smoother videos as well in slower fps increments if you’d rather save battery life. RAW photos are taken automatically and feature the highest level of detail & quality possible. Shutter speeds can be as long as 32 seconds, so you can capture moments that are otherwise missed
As for shooting modes, these include old favorites like Night, Portrait, Video, Photo, Pro Mode, 50MP, and more, as well as the semi-automatic Street Mode, for more creative shots that pack ramped up contrast and saturation, control over manual focus and access to RAW shooting.
Camera performance
Realme has a popular style of phones – easy on the eyes and fluid. They use strong colors and light contrast to prioritize the parts that are important, but stay grounded to keep you in touch with reality. As for the Realme 9 Pro Plus, it’s one of those phones that offers good quality features but still has high value for those looking for a phone.
The Realme 9 Pro Plus camera shoots 12.5MP pictures in bright environments and holds up well. This is a good option if you like the camera on your smartphone and want to get it at a low price compared with some others in its class.
Despite the heavy post-processing, the Realme 9 Pro Plus’s images are incredibly sharp. Hardware factors and Optical Image Stabilization allow for much higher image quality than we see from GPS devices of this price range. RAW capture mode is supported in both Pro and Street modes of the D3400, which means you can take unprocessed pictures without too many swipes or taps.
We struggled a bit with selfies. Unless our hand taking the shot was super still, photos taken packed a bit of ghosting, even in relatively bright scenes. Turning off Auto HDR helped this, but given that it’s on by default, it threw us at first. Despite this, color reproduction was accurate, and the phone exposed well for faces, even in bright backlit scenes with Auto HDR turned off.
The Realme 9 Pro Plus is well-equipped to shoot both low and high resolution video – the only caveat is that you should allow it take a breath when recording videos in 60fps FullHD. Where this system is lacking is the dedicated macro camera. While it excels in poorer lighting, you’re better off using the main camera and cropping in to emulate its framing capabilities.
Additional specs
The Realme 9 Pro Plus comes with a MediaTek Dimensity 920 processor, and has some good benchmark success. The price is lower than most, so it’s great for gaming and also lasts a decent amount of time on the battery. The camera is solid and you’ll have enough RAM available to keep most programs running smoothly.
With their new UI and support for Android 12, Realme has streamlined the smartphone’s content. They have also improved on their fingerprint scanner which can be used as a heart rate monitor. The Anker A6 sound combining wireless receiver can turn your audio off- the wired one’ll seamlessly connect your device to any speaker in the house with a high level of quality. All of that is made possible by the impressive versatility and versatility combined with a one-of-a-kind tone and volume control system, featuring a side column that you can swipe into view.
With a 9 Pro Plus, you can watch movies or stream live shows on its stereo speakers. But the most standout feature is that it has 256GB storage memory and 8 GB RAM—allowing for lots of space for photos, videos, apps, and games.
The Realme phone is not the fastest charging smartphone available, it takes around 45 minutes to fully charge, but the chipset powering it is efficient and will last a day of use.
Realme 9 Pro Plus: verdict
There is no arguing that this particular model of phone is not a camera standout. It may fall in price into the eyes of some, but it offers an affordable camera experience. In fact, this particular phone might be the best deal for anyone with a need for great picture quality. This year’s top phones do have much better cameras, but many people cannot afford those options so. Its main camera packs 2021 flagship-grade photography, which means these impressive results day or night and impressive video. The Realme smartphone boasts a lot of good qualities for its price but one not-so-great feature it does have is the oversharpening. While a lot of people will be happy with this, others may find themselves disappointed by this feature, so please pay extra attention before you make your purchase decision!
Photographers will not be disappointed by the added storage space and amazing features that this unit provides. It comes standard with 10GB of memory and support for high-resolution 4K video transfer.