Realme GT Neo 3 review (150W): Better than the OnePlus 10R?

Realme GT Neo 3 review summary:

Editor rating: 3.65/5

Realme is in the news every other week for a new launch. In the month of April alone they launched half a dozen products across categories. Among those slew of products Realme GT New 3 has been the latest one.

The GT series newcomer is aimed to woo customers who are looking for a flagship experience under Rs 40,000. Will Realme’s flagship killer for 2022 succeed? Let’s find out in our Realme GT Neo 3 review:

Realme GT Neo 3 Review: Design and Build Quality

• Glass front and back
• Polycarbonate frame
• lightweight
• Feels solid
• Gorilla Glass 5 and AG glass back

Time and again Realme has managed to surprise us with its distinct design choices. This time the Realme GT Neo 3 follows the language established with original GT phones. It’s a good-looking smartphone that has a GT racing-inspired strip running from top to bottom on the rear panel. I have had the opportunity to look at both Nitro Blue and Sprint White color options up close in person. Of course, white being one of my favourite colors, I decided to opt for the white variant. If you don’t find the racing track-inspired strip appealing, you can check out the Asphalt Black color option with a more subdued look sans the racing stripe.

The GT Neo 3 back panel doesn’t pick up finger grease which ensures its pristine look. The rear panel also houses triple cameras sitting upon an island which makes it a little wobbly on a flat surface. Having said that, that’s also true for almost every phone on the market.

Flip to the front, and you will find it is mainly dominated by the large screen with a center punch hole for the selfie camera. In fact, it offers over 94 percent of screen to body ratio which means you will have an immersive viewing experience. The screen has Gorilla Glass 5 protection on top. The phone has a power button on the right and volume up and down buttons on the left edge.

One of the primary GT Neo 3 highlights for me is its light and comfortable in-hand feel as compared to other similar-sized and specced phones. Despite a tall screen and large battery it only weighs 189 grams in total. The built quality of the GT Neo 3 remains top-notch. The polycarbonate frame is solid and ensures the phone doesn’t flex under pressure. The rear panel is made of a material produced by mixing different types of glass to ensure durability doesn’t become an issue here. What about protection against water? Well, Realme shied away from taking IP certification but says it has properly sealed all the ports to ensure water doesn’t intrude that easily.

Realme GT Neo 3 Review: Display

• 10+ bit AMOLED screen
• 120 AMOLED
• Better Calibration

The GT Neo 3 comes with a Full HD+ AMOLED screen which is clearly one of the better screen (if not the best) Realme has offered in the Indian market. It is bright, color-accurate, and sharp. The screen supports a 120Hz refresh rate and does look really smooth while scrolling through news feeds or social timelines.

Touch response also has been top-notch thus far and I have no reasons to feel that it will change in the future. At this point, it is worth informing you that it’s not an LTPO screen so while you can select between 60Hz and 120Hz it won’t go down to 1Hz like its more premium sibling GT2 Pro.

While talking to us, Realme also explained that it has used a dedicated display processor which swings into action while gaming to offer frame interpolation to offer smoother visuals during the gameplay.

True to AMOLED characteristics, the Realme GT Neo 3 screen delivers excellent viewing angles and almost infinite contrast. There’s ample brightness so it can be viewed even in harsh sunlight. In the past couple of weeks, I thoroughly enjoyed the Realme GT Neo 3 screen as it served me well.

Realme GT Neo 3 Review: Software and Performance

• MediaTek Dimensity 8100 5G SoC
• Realme UI works well
• Too many bloatware apps

Realme’s software invokes mixed feelings in me. While Realme UI feels fluid, functional, and feature-rich, unnecessary pre-installed apps and their spammy notifications are a bit of a deal-breaker for me. These bloatware apps are a compulsion for Realme to make a product like GT Neo 3 economically viable for them but they have to somehow address the issue of notification which impact user experience adversely. At the time of writing this review, I find more than a dozen unnecessary apps on my phone competing for a slot in the notification shade. Thankfully, you can remove most of these apps.

As for the performance part, the GT Neo 3 is driven by an octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 8100 5G SoC which in terms of performance comes close to Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset. The chipset includes four performance cores Cortex-A78 clocked and four Cortex-A55 efficiency cores @2GHz. It is coupled with Mali-G610 MC6 which handles all the graphics.

The phone performs on the expected lines. The Realme GT Neo 3 can handle anything that you can throw at it. It can do everyday tasks effortlessly. There’s a GT model that tends to optimize the phone for heavy tasks.

For your better understanding, we ran several benchmarks on the phone, and here are the results:

I also tried several AAA games and to my surprise, I found that games are not optimized for Dymensity 8100. Games like BGMI and CoD Mobile run in medium presets by default. The Mali GPU used here is not at fault here as, Genshin Impact which is another resource taxing game, performs well here. The problem here is game optimization for MediaTek chipsets which has been an area of concern over the years. We hope Realme and MediaTek will reach out to game developers to optimize their titles for Mediatek-based phones.

Realme GT Neo 3 Review: Camera

The Realme GT Neo 3 includes a triple camera setup at the back including a 50MP, 8MP ultra-wide-angle, and a 2MP macro camera. For selfies, you will find a 16MP camera flushed into a punch hole in the front. The primary 50 MP camera gets both optical and electronic image stabilization. Realme has loaded the GT Neo 3 camera with several other features including dual video, ultra macro, tilt-shift, and more. You also get a Pro mode.

The primary rear camera outperforms the other two sensors. It delivers sharp images with good dynamic range. Colours accuracy of these images can be questioned here but if you are not a purist these images will work for you.

The ultrawide camera also takes decent images in the daytime. Colors science also differs here from the main sensor.

I would suggest you switch to night mode if you click images with the main sensor in low-light conditions. With night mode, it is able to capture decent details, colors, and has better metering.

The front-facing 16 MP came is also an able shooter delivering detailed photos in bright light. I also manage to click great portraits with a well-balanced bokeh effect. 

Overall, I would say Realme GT Neo 3 primary rear camera and selfie camera are quite impressive. On the downside, the ultrawide camera is sub-par and the macro lens is nothing to brag about.

Realme GT Neo 3 review: Battery

The GT Neo 3 150W variant that I have for review packs a 4,500mAh battery inside. I was quite happy with the battery life during my course of usage. I was able to extract little less than six hours of screen on time, which is not bad considering the battery capacity.

If that’s not good enough for you, the fast charging speeds will surely makeup for the loss. The one I have comes with a 160W charger which dispatches 150W power to refill GT Neo 3 battery. It only takes 5 minutes to refill it to 50 percent and 10 mins to refill it up to 80 percent.

Verdict: Should you buy Realme GT Neo 3?

The Realme GT Neo 3 150W variant is one of the best smartphones priced under Rs 45,000. In my opinion, the Realme GT Neo 3 outscores the OnePlus 10R, Moto Edge 20 Pro, and iQOO 9 SE. It offers reliable innards with an excellent screen and mind-blowing charging speeds. The main rear camera and selfie camera also manage to hold their ground with aplomb.

The GT Neo 3’s biggest weakness is its software. It has unnecessary pre-installed bloatware and duplicate apps that can spam you with notifications. Realme offers only two future OS upgrades which is great but still falls short of the four-year promise that Samsung is offering with its flagship and mid-range phones launched in 2022. We hope Realme fixes these software annoyances with future updates.

Reason’s to buy:

• Appealing looks  
• Excellent screen
• Reliable performance  
• Mind-blowing charging speeds 

Reason’s to not buy:: 

• Bloatware
• Limited OS upgrades
  No IP rating

Realme GT Neo 3 FAQ