Realme Narzo 70 Pro Review
The Realme Narzo 70 Pro impresses with its premium design, crisp AMOLED display, versatile features, and fast UFS 3.1 storage speeds, however, it lacks a certain level of polish. The camera, which is supposed to be the star of the phone, proved to be a bit too inconsistent for my liking. The disparity in the colour science of portraits taken at different magnification levels can be jarring, and low-light performance is definitely not as strong as I’d like it to be. Additionally, it houses the same processor as its predecessor, meaning it is behind the times when it comes to performance.
The Realme Narzo series has quite a great reputation in the mid-range smartphone market. Especially after last year, Realme made a genuine effort to improve the series’ camera tuning and design. Now, the company is back with a new Narzo series phone for the year 2024. Enter the Realme Narzo 70 Pro, a sub-₹20,000 phone that has a lot to offer; at least on paper. The Realme Narzo 70 Pro comes packing a 2,000 nit AMOLED display, a flagship-grade Sony IMX890 primary camera, and a ton of compelling features such as Air Gestures, Rainwater Smart Touch, a VC cooling system, Flash Capsule, and more.
Moreover, the company has also addressed the bloatware issue that plagued us in the Realme 12 Pro (review) series by reducing the number of preinstalled third-party apps by 65 per cent. However, there’s a lot of solid competition in the market from the likes of the Nothing Phone (2a) (review) and the iQOO Z9 (review). Will the Realme Narzo 70 Pro manage to stand out in this cutthroat landscape? Let’s find out.
The Realme Narzo 70 Pro launched in India on March 19, 2024. The Realme Narzo 70 Pro is priced at ₹19,999 for the 8 GB + 128 GB version and at ₹21,999 for the 8 GB + 256 GB version. The company is offering a ₹1,000 bank discount on the 8+128 variant and a ₹2,000 discount on the 8+256 variant. It is only available for ICICI and HDFC bank cards. Early Bird Sale starts on March 19 and the phone will officially go on sale on March 22 at 12 PM. Users can buy it on realme.com and Amazon India.
The Realme Narzo 70 Pro features a solid, premium design language. Granted, there’s no vegan leather back like its predecessor – the Realme Narzo 60 Pro (review), but the matte plus glossy rear panel looks striking. The Glass Green colour variant I got for review particularly looks super premium – it is an understated yet elegant colour. Realme calls this the Horizon Glass design. There are some misses though.
The glossy part of the back panel attracts a lot of fingerprints and smudges over time. Additionally, the glossy metallic frame also looks rather rough with use; once again acting as a fingerprint magnet.
The large circular camera module has become a staple with Realme phones now; I like it, it gives the phone character. However, it doesn’t look nearly as elegant as the Realme number series phones. Still, a great look for the price point.
The screen houses an in-display fingerprint scanner that worked flawlessly in my testing. The phone also has dual stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support, and these are one of the best-sounding stereo speakers on a phone at this price. The bezels on the display are quite thick though; especially the chin bezel, so I hope Realme can trim this down in the next iteration.
The Realme Narzo 70 Pro has quite a stellar display. It’s a 6.67-inch AMOLED panel with Full HD+ resolution and 120 Hz refresh rate. The display supports 16.7 million colours and 100 per cent of the DCI-P3 colour gamut. The AMOLED display has deep blacks and vibrant colours. They’re close to accurate and content looks great on this screen.
A quick look through DevCheck confirmed that the display supports HDR10+, however, it did not work on the Netflix app. HDR worked perfectly on YouTube, so I hope Realme brings support to Netflix as soon as possible too. The display is also quite bright. It has a rated local peak brightness of 2,000 nits and in my testing, I got a reading of 1378 nits under bright sunlight.
Powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7050 SoC, the Realme Narzo 70 Pro is not the fastest phone on the block. In fact, even the iQOO Z9, which is priced under ₹20K, has a faster Dimensity 7200 processor. The processor is the same as the one on its predecessor, which is disappointing. However, the phone does have faster UFS 3.1 storage which beats the read and write speed numbers of the Nothing Phone (2a) and iQOO Z9.
As for raw performance, the Realme Narzo 70 Pro scored 6,07,063 in AnTuTu v10; not the best score but decent enough. You can see the pattern repeat in GeekBench as well where it scored lower than its competitors. However, it did redeem itself in PCMark Work with a score of more than 12K. So, it is a capable phone for day-to-day tasks such as using social media, light photo editing, using Excel Sheets, and more.
However, the GPU scores are much lower than competing products in both 3D Mark and GFXBench as you can see in the graphs below. So, if you’re an ardent gamer, this is not the best phone for your needs at this price. You can only play games on Low to Medium graphics without too much lag disrupting your experience. There’s a VC cooling chamber that helps control heat, but the phone really isn’t meant for intensive gameplay.
As for UI, FINALLY, Realme has listened to its consumers and the reviewers. The phone comes with Android 14 with Realme UI 5.0 on top and it features 65 percent fewer preinstalled third-party apps. This immediately makes the phone feel much cleaner. The UI is the same as before, and it does look clunkier than say a Nothing Phone’s UI, but the experience has improved. Now, all that needs to improve is the software update policy which is stuck at 2 (OS updates) + 3 (security updates) years.
The phone brings a ton of innovative features to the table though. There’s Air Gestures that lets you navigate the phone hands-free which worked surprisingly well in my testing. The phone also comes with Rainwater Touch, dual carrier aggregation support, Flash Capsule (realme’s take on Dynamic Island) and File Dock.
Cameras are a huge focus of Realme phones, and the same is true for the Realme Narzo 70 Pro. While the secondary 8 MP ultrawide shooter and tertiary 2 MP lens are nothing to write home about, Realme has incorporated the renowned Sony IMX890 primary camera which featured in flagship phones such as last year’s OnePlus 11. The camera has an f/1.88 aperture and comes with OIS and 2x in-sensor zoom. There’s also a 16 MP front camera for selfies.
While most are well aware of the capabilities of the Sony IMX890 lens, the Realme Narzo 70 Pro’s results are quite a mixed bag. For instance, you can get some stunning shots in ideal lighting – the dynamic range is good and everything looks crisp. However, the colours, while flattering are a bit too contrasty.
Another issue is portraits – the results were just mediocre, in my opinion. The detail retention is good, but the edge detection is quite poor. Additionally, even though the 1x and 2x portrait shots both use the same camera, there’s a massive colour profile difference which is obvious when you compare the skin tone on these pictures. Check the samples below that were taken consecutively but have completely different colour science, particularly when representing skin.
Low light was also an issue. Once again, the details are solid – everything looks super crisp. However, there’s way too much lens flare in nearly every low-light picture.’
So, while Realme has incorporated a fantastic sensor for the price, there’s a lack of polish that’s really quite apparent upon some inspection.
The Realme Narzo 70 Pro houses a 5,000 mAh battery, which is standard affair at this point. The phone boasts 67 W SUPERVOOC fast charging as well. So, both the battery capacity and charging speeds remain unchanged as compared to the predecessor. The phone even houses the same processor as its predecessor, so battery life is quite similar.
The phone can easily last a day even with heavy usage which includes playing games, clicking pictures and shooting videos. In our 4K video loop test, the Realme Narzo 70 Pro lasted nearly 14 hours from full charge to empty. Additionally, the phone charges quite fast – 58 minutes from zero to full.
The Realme Narzo 70 Pro impresses with its premium design, crisp AMOLED display, versatile features, and fast UFS 3.1 storage speeds, however, it lacks a certain level of polish. The camera, which is supposed to be the star of the phone, proved to be a bit too inconsistent for my liking. The disparity in the colour science of portraits taken at different magnification levels can be jarring, and low-light performance is definitely not as strong as I’d like it to be. Additionally, it houses the same processor as its predecessor, meaning it is behind the times when it comes to performance.
The Nothing Phone (2a), especially with its latest software update, is much more reliable when it comes to the camera. For raw power, the cheaper iQOO Z9 knocks it out of the park. These alternatives could suit you better depending on your preferred use cases. Nevertheless, for the price of ₹19,999, this is a good option by Realme, which could be further improved if Realme pushes out updates to fix some issues.
