Two years ago, we reviewed a mid-range phone. It wasn’t very powerful, but it used a 108 MP main camera, making it the best phone for taking photos in its price range. Now, two years later, we also received a mid-range phone from a different brand. It has exactly the same idea as that phone from two years ago. This one, realme 11 Pro+ 5G, tries to use its 200MP main camera to make taking pictures enjoyable for everyone as a budget phone.
Camera
If you are interested in this realme 11 Pro+, then you should be in for its powerful main camera. That 200MP, 1/1.4-inch sensor and OIS support main camera does sound great. This is a phone that costs around $300, and no one in its price range should have a better main camera than it. Indeed it didn’t let us down, I took a lot of photos and every one of them was beautiful.
realme used this Ultra-high resolution sensor mainly to enable the budget phone without a telephoto lens the ability to shoot from a long distance away. So can the 11 Pro+ really do that?
For the most time, it really can. Whether you crop it yourself using the 200MP mode or just hit the zoom button, the sharpness is shockingly good, because the size of photos taken in 200MP mode is so large. But the dynamic range is not as good as it in auto mode, I still recommend that you shoot directly by clicking the zoom button.
There are two advantages to using an Ultra-high Resolution Image Sensor: First, you can zoom in 1 to 4 times and still have good clarity. You can even shoot objects at longer distances when the light is good.
Second, its main camera can be used as a telephoto lens as well as a macro lens. Telephoto cameras have a long closest focus distance, so it’s hard to get close enough to shoot objects. realme 11 Pro+’s in-sensor zoom technology can solve this problem.
At night, as long as the light is not super low, the performance is also better than I expected. Photos are also not so blurry as to be unusable at all. There’s only one situation where it would be worse than a phone with a telephoto camera, and that’s low light combined with high contrast scenarios. We can’t expect it to capture any scene perfectly with just one lens. After all, it’s not expensive for most people.
This time a new feature has been added to Street mode, which can quickly help you zoom in on some areas. You click on an area, and it will crop and zoom in on that place. This feature may help you capture more fleeting scenes when your phone is clipped to a tripod.
Since both in-sensor zoom and 200MP mode cannot be used in video recording, ultra-long distance recording is not possible. Plus the processor performance limitations, EIS is not supported when shooting with 4K resolution. it seems that recording videos in 1080P would be a more sensible choice.
Design
Although it’s a $300 phone, it doesn’t look cheap at all. The main sunrise color scheme lies in the vegan leather back cover, plus the shape and position of this camera module, a very classic design. The symmetrical design looks good and the weight of less than 190g is relatively light among all phones.
Display
The curved screen also makes this phone look more expensive than it actually is. The quality of the OLED screen is actually good, with a 120Hz refresh rate and 10-bit color depth. although the resolution is still 1080P, the PWM dimming frequency reaches 2160Hz.
As for other specs, it has everything except the IR emitter and headphone jack. Anyway, the design and screen are up to our expectations for a mid-range phone.
Performance & Gaming
The more regrettable part of this phone is the performance. Because it’s not expensive and has a super awesome main camera, some parts should be sacrificed for less. This Dimensity 7050 sounds awesome, but it’s actually just an upgraded version of the Dimensity 1080 and not a huge upgrade. It’s definitely no better than the Dimensity 8200 or Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2, so you can’t expect much better gaming performance from it.
You can play PUBG without any problem but struggle a bit in Genshin Impact. Although we set the graphics at the recommended low level for the game as you can see, the average 40fps is still within an acceptable range as long as you can accept this graphics quality. Want higher graphics and frame rate, then it may not satisfy you.
Battery & Charging
realme 11 Pro+ supports up to 100w of charging power. 28% in 5 minutes and 23 minutes to fill this 5000mAh battery. Battery life also benefits from a low-power processor that will be a little better than flagship phones. As long as you don’t use it to play large games like the Genshin Impact, you should be able to charge it only once a day.
Photography has never been a cheap hobby, you need to spend thousands of dollars on cameras and lenses. Even flagship phones with good cameras start at $600. In China, the realme 11 Pro+ starts at roughly $300, and the global version isn’t expected to be much more expensive. Making photography fun for everyone with a phone, including people on a budget, should be the reason why realme 11 Pro+ was born.
