Realme 11x 5G: price in India
The 6GB + 128GB storage variant of Realme 11x 5G is priced at Rs 14,999, while its 6GB + 128GB storage variant is being sold for Rs 15,999. With the start of the festive season, we can expect some offers on this phone. The phone is available in Purple Dawn and Midnight Black color variants.
Realme 11x 5G: design and display
The Realme 11x 5G comes with a boxy design. With a thickness of 7.9 mm and a weight of 190 grams, the smartphone does not feel too heavy or uncomfortable to hold. Its body is made of polycarbonate, but Realme has done a good job with the finish. An attempt has been made to give a glass finish on the back panel and despite being polycarbonate, the frame seems to be made of aluminum. We had its Purple Dawn color variant for review, in which a glittery and very bright blue shade is found on the back panel, which changes color between blue and purple when light falls on it. At a certain angle, you will see an ‘S’ pattern made of lines. The good thing is that despite the glossy glass finish, it is easy to grip and it does not slip from the hand easily.
The back of the Realme 11x 5G has a large circular ring, fitted with two smaller camera rings and an LED flash. The module is slightly raised above the panel. The volume rockers and power button are placed on the right side of the frame. The power button acts as a fingerprint sensor and it was fast and accurate in unlocking the phone. The left side of the frame has a triple slot tray, which can accommodate a microSD card along with two SIMs and expand the storage by 1TB. There is a Type-C charging port, primary microphone and a 3.5mm audio jack with speaker grille at the bottom and a secondary microphone for noise cancellation at the top. The single bottom firing speaker was loud enough, but the sound quality was average. The microphone did a good job of removing external sound during calling. Overall, the Realme 11x 5G feels strong and durable. Its build quality is good. However, everyone’s choice and opinion about the large circular camera can be different.
The Realme 11x 5G sports a 6.72-inch IPS LCD display with FHD+ (1080 x 2400 pixels) resolution and a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. With thin bezels on the sides and a relatively thick chin at the bottom, its screen-to-body ratio is around 86.6%. Despite being an IPS LCD, the display produces good colours. However, there is a slight blue tint on the screen, which can be warmed or balanced by changing the color temperature settings. It has received Widevine L1 certification for streaming HD content, but it does not support HDR. At the same time, with a brightness of 550 nits, the display was bright enough indoors, but I had trouble reading text at times in direct sunlight.
Realme 11x 5G: specifications and software
The Realme 11X 5G runs on an octa-core 6nm MediaTek Dimensity 6100+ SoC, paired with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage. It is claimed to include 9 5G bands. Connectivity options on the phone include 5G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.2, GPS/ A-GPS.
Realme 11x 5G runs on Realme UI 4.0 based on Android 13. After the first boot, you will get a lot of bloatware. Apps cannot be uninstalled in bulk, which means you have to uninstall them one by one. The good thing is that most apps can be uninstalled and some can be disabled. Realme UI is full of customization options. There were also some special features in it, such as split screen, flexible window, smart sidebar, kid space and simple mode for senior citizens. Apart from this, RAM management could have been a little better, as I found that apps were not staying active for long in the background. However, one good thing is that Realme is promising users two years of OS upgrades and three years of security updates.
Realme 11x 5G: performance, battery
In normal everyday usage, Realme 11x 5G performs well. The MediaTek Dimensity 6100+ is a capable chipset, which did not give me any problem even in medium to heavy usage. The smartphone scored 10405 in PCMark’s Work 3.0 test, which was above average. Keeping the BGMI game in the background and some social media apps minimized, I streamed OTT content in it and the phone handled it without any problem. Talking about benchmark scores, Realme 11x 5G scored 726 and 1931 points respectively in Geekbench’s single-core and multi-core tests. At the same time, it got 430589 scores in AnTuTu, which was around other smartphones in this range.
At the same time, Realme 11x 5G did not disappoint me even in casual gaming. A graphics demanding game like BGMI was set to HD graphics and High frame rate in default settings. In this setting, the game was reaching an average of 45 fps and ran without any stutter or lag. At the same time, Asphalt 9 was on medium graphics settings by default, but I got to see FPS stuttering during gameplay, but it did not spoil the experience of the game. The claimed 240Hz touch sampling rate here also helped to improve the experience of these games. Thermal throttling was also handled well by Realme 11x 5G.
The Realme 11x 5G did not disappoint me in terms of battery backup either, but I was expecting slightly better results. The battery lasted the whole day with about half an hour of gaming, a few hours spent on social media and finishing a movie in HD resolution on the OTT platform, but after a slightly longer gaming session and spending a little more time on Instagram and YouTube, I had to put the phone on charging before the end of the day. In our HD video loop test, the Realme 11x 5G lasted 11 hours XX minutes, which was a backup below average. The phone gets a 33W charging adapter in the box, which charged the battery from 0-50% in about 30 minutes and from zero to full in 1 hour 10 minutes.
Realme 11x 5G: cameras
The Realme 11x 5G gets a dual rear camera setup, which includes a 64-megapixel OV64B primary camera. The camera can give you some great shots in daylight. In good lighting, there is plenty of detail in the pictures and the pictures appear sharp. Exposure and contrast were also accurate and the dynamic range was also good. Although the colors were slightly boosted in most of the pictures, the pictures were worth sharing directly on social media without editing. There is also a 64MP mode, which gives you even better results, but with a larger file size. However, there was not much difference between the binned photo and the full resolution photo here. If you want to save storage space, I would recommend you to take pictures in normal mode only.
The setup lacks a telephoto lens, which is missing from most phones in this price range, but the primary camera does support 2x zoom, which can give you some zoomed-in results similar to a telephoto. It gave me some shots that had adequate details. However, there was a haze effect in some of the images, but that went away with basic editing.
Results in indoor lighting were mixed. Under good artificial lighting, the camera produced good shots with good contrast and exposure, and plenty of detail. But once again, the camera boosted reds and greens and skin tones were a little too bright. However, almost all the photos were good enough to share directly on social media. As the light decreased, there was a drop in quality. There was noise in the photos and some parts were over-sharpened. However, the app has a Night Mode, which improves the results to a great extent. It did a great job of removing noise from the shots, but there was a loss of detail on zooming.
Portrait mode does accurate edge detection in good lighting and generates some good shots. However, it sometimes makes skin look washed out and details seem a bit lacking. In artificial lighting, the camera struggled to recognize the edges of the subject.
The Realme 11x 5G has an 8-megapixel front camera, which can give you some good selfies in good lighting conditions. The good thing was that the skin tones appeared natural in the front camera. There was a natural blur in the background and there was plenty of detail. However, this camera struggled a lot with low light. There was noise in the pictures and in some pictures the skin tones appeared relatively bright. However, all the results were worth sharing on social media without editing.
In terms of video recording, it disappointed me a lot. Both the main and front cameras can record at a maximum of 1080p@30fps and the results were average. The videos were not stable and the dynamic range was also not good.
Overall, the camera system of the Realme 11x 5G performs well. It offers excellent daylight performance for the price. However, the low-light camera performance needs some improvement.
Realme 11x 5G: The verdict
The Realme 11x 5G is a budget-friendly 5G phone that offers great build quality, a competent camera system, and a vivid display experience for its price. I did miss the stereo speakers, but the single bottom firing speaker was enough to enjoy movies inside a room. The battery is relatively less powerful, but the 33W fast charging does the job of charging the device quickly. At the same time, the phone does not get any kind of IP rating, which is present in some models in the competition.
Overall, at a starting price of Rs 14,999, the Realme 11x 5G is a good option for those looking to buy a budget-friendly device. However, if you can compromise on slow charging and average low-light camera performance, the Infinix HOT 30 5G is also a good option at a lower price, which also gives you extra perks like long battery life, stereo speakers and IP53 rating.