Realme GT Master Edition 5G Review: An all-round mid-ranger with a unique design

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GT is a befitting name for a Realme series of phones considering the brand’s release spree. Well, there are two new phones namely, the Realme GT 5G and a Realme GT Master Edition 5G. Both have some similarities like a 6.43-inch FHD+ 120Hz Super AMOLED display, 64MP quad rear camera setup, 65W fast charging support, etc. But then, there are of course differences in terms of their outer design, inner hardware, front camera, among various other things. And although we have both phones in for their review, here, we will be taking a look at the one with the Master designation. [हिंदी में पढ़ें]

Starting off with the specs and in-box contents —

Realme GT Master Edition 5G Unboxing

The evaluation unit of Realme GT Master Edition came in a custom-designed portmanteau. It had all the flashy branding, a proper lock system, and upon unboxing it, inside you will get two more boxes. One is the retail box with the phone and the following:

  • 65W SuperDart Charger
  • USB Type-C Cable
  • Protect Case
  • SIM Card Tool
  • Screen Protect Film
  • Quick Start Guide
  • Important Product Information (including the Warranty Card)

And the other box consists of a few Realme branded goodies.

Also Read:

Contents


Realme GT Master Edition 5G Indian price and specs

Dimensions and Weight: 159.2 x 73.5 x 8.7 mm; About 180g
Screen: 6.43 inches, sAMOLED, FHD+, 120Hz, 1000 nits peak brightness
CPU: Snapdragon 778G
GPU: Adreno 642L
RAM: 8GB LPDDR4x + 3GB/5GB DRE (Dynamic RAM Expansion Technology)
Storage: Up to 256GB UFS 2.2
Rear cameras: 64MP Main Camera + 8MP 119° Ultra-wide Lens + 2MP 4cm Macro Lens; 4K 30fps
Front camera: 32MP; 1080P 30fps
Battery: 4300mAh with 65W fast charging
OS: Android 11 with Realme UI 2.0
Misc: 5G, Dual Nano Card Slot, Dual-band WiFi-6, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, GPS, 3.5mm headset jack & Type-C 2.0 port, Dual Mic, Bottom-ported speaker
Realme GT Master Edition India Price: INR 25,499 (6+128GB); INR 27,999 (8+128GB), and INR 29,999 (8+256GB)


So, let’s begin. This is the Smartprix review of the Realme GT Master Edition —

Realme GT Master Edition Design

Sticking to tradition, this one too follows the design guidelines of Naoto Fukasawa, an acclaimed Japanese industrial designer. He and the Realme team has come up with a grey Suitcase design to evoke a sensation of travel. This choice sounds interesting for (safe) traveling is something most of us miss in the new normal. However, I’m not sure, if this is an exciting design for all.

That goes for the “vegan leather” finish by the back, which along with the horizontal hump and hollow pattern endow a nice grip. Due to the material and make, the handset is extremely light (180 grams) and comfortably thin (8.7mm). It also kills any chance of smudges. Even the bundled case resembles that ‘Voyager Grey’ color and character. But again, some of you might want a glass-back finish. So, if you don’t prefer the Suitcase design, you can pick the device in Luna White and Cosmos black variants too.

Rest, the back consists of the camera panel (which doesn’t protrude much), and the Realme logo with the master’s sign. This unique appearance aside, the phone isn’t bringing anything new here. It doesn’t come with any special triggers for gamers or any IP rating for general buyers. There is some sort of oleophobic coating though.

The buttons on the sides are easy to reach and clicky. The volume rockers and the SIM tray are on the left, while the power key sits alone on the right. By the bottom, there is a 3.5mm jack, a USB-C port, the speaker grille, and a mic hole. The other one is on the head of the phone.

The fingerprint reader is embedded under the display and works fine (even when the fingers are wet). So does the face unlocking. Doing so, lets you interact with the display —

Realme GT Master Edition Audiovisual

Realme GT Master Edition has got a 6.43-inch Super AMOLED display with a 20:9 aspect ratio. It is bright (at 1000 cd/m² peak luminance), colorful (100% DCI-P3 coverage), and snappy (120Hz screen refresh rate and 360Hz touch sampling rate). There is Dragaintrail glass protection on top.

In the settings, you get to select Auto or 60Hz (for better battery life) refresh rate, tinker around various Dark Mode options, enable Eye Comfort, DC Dimming, Color Temperature, color profile (Vivid vs Gentle vs Brilliant), among various other things.

The bezels are also very trimmed around the screen. I just wish the punch hole had been in the center for visual symmetry and also that’s an area void of any status bar icons. Just putting out my preference. The left cornered cutout works too.

Coming to the sound, the volume and vigor from the solo grille are good enough. However, while holding the device in landscape mode, the speaker might get blocked. So, maneuver your fingers properly. Else, you can always plug in an earphone to the 3.5mm jack (highly appreciated!) or use Bluetooth-based alternatives.

That brings us to —

Realme GT Master Edition Connectivity

The list of connectivity options includes dual-band WiFi-6, Bluetooth 5.2 (with aptX HD support), NFC, GPS, and dual SIM 4G and 5G. The supported 5G bands are n1/n3/n5/n8/n28a/n77/n41/n78.

The only weird thing was that the WiFi was always switching to the 2.4GHz band and I have to manually choose the 5GHz one. Other than that, I had no trouble with Speedtest (uplink, downlink, ping) and connectivity. And while it’s future-ready for networking, present calls and mobile data on my Airtel VoLTE SIM were also loud and strong.

Now let’s check out its other speeds and feeds —

Realme GT Master Edition Performance

Contrary to what its name would suggest, the Master edition comes with a lower-powered chip than the standard GT phone. To be more specific, the regular Realme GT runs on Snapdragon 888 while the one we are looking at ships with a Snapdragon 778G inside. Be that as it may, we will be focussing on how the hardware at hand performs.

SD 778G is a 6nm architecture-based chip comprising Kryo 670 (Cortex A-78) prime core clocked at 2.4GHz, coupled with three Cortex-A78 cores ticking at 2.2GHz, and four efficiency Cortex-A55 cores running at up to 1.9GHz.

Here are the synthetic test results:

Realme GT ME BenchmarkScores
Antutu536635
Geekbench 5 Single | Multi785 | 2756
PCMark Work 3.014018
3DMark Wild Life Extreme | Wild Life693 | 2492
Androbench Sequential R/W (MB/s)1000.39 | 837.94
Androbench Random R/W (MB/s)207.47 | 245.83
GFXBench Aztec Ruins Open GL (High Tier) | Car Chase | Manhattan 3.119 FPS | 27 FPS | 48 FPS
Conversion of 2:35min 1080p 60fps MP4 video to MKV using Video Transcoder app4 mins
CPU Throttling test (15 mins)94% of its max performance

These scores are behind the Dimensity 1200 wielding OnePlus Nord 2 and Realme X7 Max as well as Snapdragon 870 sporting Xiaomi Mi 11X. But in real-world use, the performance is very reliable.

That’s a capable chip and is married to Adreno 642L, up to 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM, and 256GB of UFS 2.2 storage. Realme could’ve used a better UFS standard. Anyways, you have the option of expanding RAM virtually up to 5GB. This memory called vRAM will be sourced from the ROM and used for less resource-intensive tasks.

The company has also furnished the internals with a vapor chamber cooling system for heat dissipation. This should come useful in gaming. Talking of which, BGMI maxes at HDR Graphics and Ultra Frame Rate while the COD Mobile can run at up to High Graphics and Max Frame Rate (or both at Very High settings). Half an hour of gameplay reduced the battery level by 11%.

Tapping the ‘GT Mode’ quick settings toggle pushes the CPU performance to max clock speeds and screen refresh rate to full 120Hz. Realme also notes this mode enhances the picture quality, app opening speeds, and ‘4D gaming vibration’. Although, this didn’t bring about a meaningful difference in benchmark results, just so you know.

You can also activate ‘Pro Gamer Mode’, improve touch response, and adjust other phone settings to favor gameplay with a few simple clicks, thanks to Game Space. This is a game toolbox, as part of Realme UI 2.0.

If you have followed any of my past Realme phone reviews, you know that I like this skin. It is quite akin to the stock look and also utilizes several optimizations from the base Android 11 software. It is clean and can be made even cleaner with few tinkerings. I mean that for the bloatware, browser ads, and lock screen magazine, all of which can be disabled or deleted easily. Then there are features you may find handy such as Personalizations, Smart Sidebar, Google Discover feed on the home screen, Floating Window, Dark Mode options, App Lock, Multi-user accounts, and Sleep Capsule. There’s also the new PC Connect feature (similar to Samsung’s DEX and Microsoft’s Your Phone), but I couldn’t get it to run as the setup file wasn’t downloading from the official website.

Moving on…

Realme GT Master Edition Camera

Realme GT Master Edition packs a 64MP triplet comprising of the primary sensor, 8MP 119° ultrawide shooter, and a 2MP (4cm radius) macro module. At the front, you are getting a 32MP snapper for selfies and video calls. Well, the quality here would be limited to 1080P at 30fps. The back camera is capable of 4K 30fps.

In natural daylight settings, the phone clicks good detailed shots with decent dynamic range capture. You can also activate the AI Scene Enhancement Mode to add some vibrance effect. Although sans that too, the results are very saturated.

It’s when compared against the ultrawide samples, that you’d notice the main camera takes darker shots. I like the 0.6x wide shots.

The 2MP macro clicks are not worth the effort. Realme could’ve doubled the ultrawide sensor to take these close-up shots.

Selfies from the Realme GT ME were soft in many shots I took. Enabling Portrait mode puts the subject in focus, but edge detection fails in some cases. This wasn’t a problem in rear portraits though. During the nighttime, both flash and dedicated night mode help a lot.

As mentioned already, Night Mode does a fair job of brightening up the image while removing the noise.

The camera app is quick to open and lock focus. Besides the above things, it has Slow-Mo, Time-Lapse, Panorama, Google Lens support, 64MP mode, Expert mode, etc. Then there are features like Starry Mode, Dual-View Video, and the all-new Street mode. The lattermost one brings few funky filters.

Anyways,

Realme GT Master Edition Battery

Realme has stowed in a 4300mAh battery which ran for 11 Hr 15 Min in the PCMark Work 3.0 Battery Life test. For the size, this is quite a good figure. This comes bolstered by a 65W SuperDart adapter. So, even if the cell size seems not that big, the charger speed does more than makeup for it.

As always, I appreciate the build quality of the charger and cable.

And at last —

Review Verdict: Should you buy Realme GT Master Edition?

The new GT lineup replaces Realme’s X series of phones. And at the starting price of ₹25,499, here, you get a unique design, Snapdragon 778G processor, Realme UI 2.0, high-speed 65W charging, 120Hz sAMOLED display, 64MP rear camera setup, and a healthy suite of connectivity options which include 5G. From the outside, thus, the phone appears appealing and a decent choice for the dough. But when compared against the competition, it hasn’t made any masterstroke. So, you may buy it for a good all-around value at a mid-range price. Just don’t expect an X-Factor.

Reasons to buy

  • Dependable Snapdragon performance
  • Good Snappy AMOLED display
  • 3.5mm Jack
  • Unique and handy design
  • 5G future-readiness
  • 65W charging speed
  • Versatile camera setup

Reasons to not buy

  • Single speaker
  • No IP rating
  • UFS 2.2 storage
  • Not great for videography

Realme GT Master Edition FAQ

Q. Does Realme GT Master Edition has a dedicated microSD slot?

A. No, Realme GT Master Edition has no expandable micro-SD Card slot.

Q. What is the SAR value of Realme GT Master Edition?

A. Realme GT Master Edition SAR values are: 1.057 W/kg @ 1gm (Head) & 1.181 W/kg @ 1gm (Body)

Q. Does Realme GT Master Edition feature Gorilla Glass Protection?

A. No, Realme GT Master Edition doesn’t come with Gorilla Glass. Instead, it uses DragonTrail Glass protection.

Q. What are the 5G bands supported by Realme GT Master Edition?

A. Realme GT Master Edition supports the following bands: n1/n3/n5/n8/n28a/n77/n41/n78

Q. Does Realme GT Master Edition support dual-band WiFi?

A, Yes, Realme GT Master Edition supports dual-band WiFi 6 (2.4GHz + 5GHz).

Q. Does Realme GT Master Edition support VoWiFi or WiFi calling?

A. Yes, Realme GT Master Edition does feature VoWiFi.

Q. How many microphones are on the Realme GT Master Edition?

A. Realme GT Master Edition comes with two microphones.

Q. Which is the Android update on Realme GT Master Edition?

A. Realme GT Master Edition ships with Android 11 software. At the time of writing, it has the July 05 2021 security update. The Google Play System update is also dated March 01, 2021.

Q. Does Realme GT Master Edition feature 4K60 FPS?

A. The maximum video quality supported by Realme GT Master Edition is 4K30 FPS. So, no 60 frames per second here.

Q. Does Realme GT Master Edition support HD stream on Netflix and Amazon Prime?

A. Realme GT Master Edition has DRM L1 certification and I did HD streaming on Prime Video and Netflix. There is no HDR support though.

Q. Does Realme GT Master Edition support GCam or Camera2API?

A. Realme GT Master Edition comes with Level 3 Camera2API support for GCam.

Q. Does the Snapdragon 778G SoC within Realme GT Master Edition get hot?

A. In my usage, I didn’t come across anything which would worry me. Perhaps the Vegan Leather finish doesn’t let you feel the heat either.

Q. Does Realme GT Master Edition feature OIS?

A. No, Realme GT Master Edition doesn’t feature OIS.

Vasan G.S.Vasan G.S.
An inquisitive mind who spends a big chunk of the day keenly tracking every emerging detail and is responsible for quickly passing on important developments to Smartprix followers. He loves to stay in his bubble scripting his destiny involving amazing technology and people with good character, passion, and brilliance.

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2 Comments
User
Zayed
Anonymous
2 years ago

Cosmos black glass which material used its fully glass more chances crack ?

Reply
User
Arun Wilson
Anonymous
2 years ago

Where is Driving mode in this phone ?

Reply