The Realme P1 has carved a niche for itself – it is the single, most powerful phone money can buy under ₹16,000 (₹15K if you have specific bank cards). The Realme P1 will be my default recommendation for gamers and pro-users who want a powerful phone without breaking the bank (for now). While power is its top priority, it’s not a slouch in several other areas as well. The battery life is long-lasting, the AMOLED display and stereo speakers offer an immersive viewing experience, and the design is eye-catching.
With the Redmi Note and Realme ‘number’ lineup’s recent uptick in price, the ₹15-20K smartphone segment is ripe for some healthy competition. These phones were once the defacto choice in the sub-₹20,000 price segment, however, given these phones are now a more premium proposition, we need fresh new alternatives in this segment. Enter the Realme ‘P’ series of phones featuring the Realme P1 and Realme P1 Pro. Realme has positioned the P series as its performance-focused lineup of smartphones. I got the former for review and was immediately intrigued by it. I was excited to see what a performance-focused budget offering would be like from Realme because the company has historically gone for dominance in the design and camera areas. With the P1, Realme hasn’t completely abandoned its design and camera focus, but they have made some sacrifices to ensure pro-level performance. The phone houses the MediaTek Dimensity 7050 chipset backed with up to 8 GB RAM and up to 256 GB UFS 3.1 storage. I put the phone and its chipset to the test to see if it is the fastest phone under ₹16,000. Here’s what I found.
Realme P1 5G Review: Build and Design
Realme has carefully curated a design language that has been standardised across its portfolio now. The Realme P1 follows that to the tee. The phone is available in two striking colourways – Phoenix Red and Peacock Green. The plastic rear panel has a matte texture with a feather-like pattern. Realme has dubbed this the “Bird Culture Inspired Design”. I think it is tastefully designed, but some may find it a tad gaudy.
The large circular module makes a reappearance, complete with the CD-like pattern. It houses what looks like four cameras but two of these are dummy camera lookalikes. The frame is colour-matched – a detail we appreciate. The buttons are nice and tactile, and the in-display fingerprint display is sufficiently accurate and fast. The phone weighs 188 g and is 7.97 mm thick, but the flat, sharp sides dig into the palm making it uncomfortable to hold for long periods.
The phone supports 5G dual carrier aggregation, IP54 dust and water resistance, and Hi-Res dual stereo speakers. The speakers are some of the loudest I’ve heard at this price with weighty lows and clear highs. The phone has Rainwater Smart Touch, meaning the display can function even when wet. It worked perfectly during our testing period. One gripe is the lack of Gorilla Glass protection, which is disappointing given that some competitors offer Gorilla Glass even at this price.
Realme P1 5G Review: Display
Realme has not compromised on the display of the Realme P1 despite its primary priority being performance. You get a solid 6.67-inch AMOLED screen with FHD+ resolution and support for 120 Hz refresh rate. In contrast, the Motorola G54 features a dated IPS LCD display. This is also one bright display with a rated peak brightness of a whopping 2,000 nits. The bezels are quite thick though, especially the top and chin bezels.
For content consumption and day-to-day usage, the Realme P1’s display doesn’t give you a lot to complain about. It is ridiculously bright; I got a reading of 1,312 nits in my test under direct sunlight, which means legibility in on bright, sunny days is not an issue. Moreover, the colours look fairly accurate and the viewing angles are excellent. The display supports HDR but it only works in YouTube; the HDR support for other OTT apps is missing.
How’s the performance and UI?
Realme has made some big claims with the P1. The company claims that the Realme P1 has the fastest chipset in the segment. In comparison to similarly-priced competition, this does seem to be true. The Realme P1 houses the MediaTek Dimensity 7050 SoC which has two Cortex-A78 cores clocked at 2.6 GHz and six Cortex-A55 efficiency cores clocked at 2.0 GHz. You also get up to 8 GB LPDDR4X RAM and up to 256 GB of UFS 3.1 storage. Having UFS 3.1 sets the Realme P1 apart since many phones nearing the ₹20K price point still feature UFS 2.2 storage speeds. It shows up with the highest sequential read and write speeds under ₹16K.
The Realme P1 left its competition in the dust in nearly all of our benchmarking tests as well. It scored a whopping 6,07,055 points in AnTuTu v10 beating out the POCO X6 Neo (review) and Motorola G54 (review). This result repeats itself in Geekbench’s Single Core and Multi Core tests as well. However, the Motorola G54 does edge out the P1 slightly in PCMark Work.
In GPU benchmarks, the Realme P1’s scores far exceed the POCO X6 Neo and Motorola G54’s scores. I ran the 3D Mark Wild Life test as well as the Aztec Ruins, Car Chase, and Manhattan 3.1 tests in GFXBench. Furthermore, the Realme P1 does all of this without throttling too much; it only throttled to 92 per cent in its peak performance when running the CPU Throttling Test for 15 minutes.
In real-world testing, the Realme P1 proved to be one of the fastest phones I’ve used to date under ₹16,000. The processor can handle any basic task you throw at it. It is also the best for gaming at this price point, providing a stable, lag-free experience on games such as BGMI and Call of Duty: Mobile at Medium graphics.
The phone’s UI, however, is tainted with tons of bloatware including apps such as Finshell Pay, Agoda, Snapchat, and more. It runs Realme UI 5.0 based on Android 14 and the company has promised 2 generational Android OS updates, and three years of security updates, which is decent for the price but it’s no Samsung, of course.
Are the cameras any good?
The Realme P1 houses a 50 MP primary camera and a 2 MP B&W camera. For selfies, the phone has a 16 MP shooter. It is also one of the few phones under ₹16,000 to support 4K video recording from its rear camera.
Now, the primary camera has no OIS, so it is not the most reliable at clicking low-light shots. There are instances where it fails to focus in low light. Additionally, the lack of OIS also contributes to some soft photos in low-light conditions.
However, photos taken in daylight have surprisingly good detail detention and sharpness for the price. The dynamic range could be better though; highlights are generally overexposed. Close-ups look decent with a natural bokeh blur effect.
Portraits come out looking nice with decent edge detection and slightly warm skin tones. Once again, the detail levels are impressive, with the phone capturing the texture of human faces very well. The selfie camera clicks good photos in ideal lighting conditions, but low-light photos fail to impress.
Realme P1 5G Review: Battery Life
The Realme P1 has fantastic battery life – it is one of the longest-lasting smartphones in the sub-₹20K price segment. So, if you want a phone with fantastic endurance, you should definitely consider the Realme P1. The phone features a 5,000 mAh battery with 45 W SUPERVOOC charging support. The charging is provided inside the retail box.
The phone consistently gave me 8-9 hours of screen-on time, which is great endurance for the price. One hour of using Google Maps only drains the battery by 6 per cent, which is fantastic. The phone also charges pretty rapidly. 30 minutes of charging will get you about 50 per cent battery, and a full charge takes about 67 minutes.
Should you buy the Realme P1 5G?
The Realme P1 has carved a niche for itself – it is the single, most powerful phone money can buy under ₹16,000 (₹15K if you have specific bank cards). The Realme P1 will be my default recommendation for gamers and pro-users who want a powerful phone without breaking the bank (for now). While power is its top priority, it’s not a slouch in several other areas as well. The battery life is long-lasting, the AMOLED display and stereo speakers offer an immersive viewing experience, and the design is eye-catching. However, the excessive bloatware and subpar low-light photography do detract from the total experience. Still, at ₹15,000-16,000, there is no phone more powerful than the Realme P1.
Realme P1 5G Key Specs, Price and Launch Date
| Release Date: | 15 Apr, 2024 |
| Market Status: | Launched |
Key Specifications
Storage
128 GB
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Battery capacity (mAh)
5000
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Rear Camera Megapixel
50 + 2
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Screen size (in inches)
6.67
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Dhriti Datta
Perpetually sporting a death stare, this one can be seen tinkering around with her smartphone which she holds more dear than life itself and stuffing her face with copious amounts of bacon. View Full Profile
