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00:00Hey guys, I'm Tom the Tech Chap and who needs cool transitions when you can just
00:04shove the box in front of the camera like that. But this is actually pretty
00:07special because this is the new Realme 8 5G. In fact here it is, here's one I made
00:12earlier. And this guy starts from just £199 which is ridiculously cheap for a
00:195G phone. So let's get into it and here we are with the famous Realme Yellow
00:24box and the headline specs include this new Dimensity 700 5G chip, a 90 Hertz
00:30screen, a big 5000 mAh battery and also a 48 megapixel triple camera setup.
00:55Now as for the phone itself we get a good-sized 6.5 inch screen. I've got the
01:01Supersonic Blue model here which is very snazzy looking. There's also a black and
01:05it is kind of cool that as the light hits it you have this almost 3D effect.
01:09It is plastic and it picks up smudges fairly easily but I quite like it. And
01:14actually if I bring in its siblings the standard Realme 8 and also the 8 Pro
01:18you can see the 5G model here is the only one without the big kind of garish
01:24dare-to-leap slogan and also that dual tone design. But which one do you think
01:28looks best out of the three? Now side-by-side you can see the 5G model is
01:33a little bit thicker and heavier than the other two. At 8.5 millimeters it's
01:36about half a mil thicker than the 8 and you'll also notice what looks like a
01:40similar quad camera setup but the top right lens is well actually not a lens
01:45at all it just says AI which is maybe a little bit misleading at first glance.
01:50Elsewhere we have a fingerprint reader built into the power button a single
01:54speaker on the bottom no dual speakers unfortunately but we do have a three and
01:58a half mil headphone jack and if I pop this open you see that we have a
02:02three-card tray so you can pop in up to two 5G SIM cards and a micro SD so you
02:08can actually boost the storage by a further one terabyte for all of your 4k
02:12poor family movies. I've used that joke like three times now I've got to stop
02:16doing that. And then up front we have this hole punch cutout for the selfie
02:20camera which also supports face unlocking but as you can see it is a
02:23little bit bigger than the one on the 8 and the 8 Pro. It really does seem like
02:29every decision Realme has made with this phone is to make it as aggressively
02:33affordable as possible because actually compared to last year's Realme 7 5G on
02:38paper at least this is actually a bit of a step down. Last year's phone had 120
02:43Hertz faster charging a quad camera setup but it was 280 pounds at launch
02:48although of course since then the 7 5G has been discounted so the difference
02:52between that and this isn't as significant anymore but if 5G is
02:56important to you presumably to make your phone a bit more future-proof and you're
03:00also on a very tight budget then this is incredible value. And it's in part thanks
03:05to being one of the first phones to come with MediaTek's new Dimensity 700 chip
03:10it's definitely a mid-range processor but it's actually fairly capable. To give
03:14you an idea if I bring in the Geekbench and the 3DMark results for all three
03:188 series phones the 5G actually has the fastest CPU although not by an awful lot
03:23and it does also fall behind the standard Realme 8's Helio G95 in the
03:28graphics department. But still it ran Call of Duty smoothly on medium high
03:32settings although Genshin Impact which is to be fair one of the most demanding
03:37games on mobile right now was playable but with the occasional frame drop and
03:41stutter. However the entry-level model of the 8 5G comes with just 4 gigs of RAM
03:47and 64 gigs of storage which is kind of understandable I suppose given the price
03:51but it is weird to see a 5G phone with just 4 gigs of RAM. They're usually kind
03:57of like mutually exclusive because generally you expect a 5G phone to be
04:01quite high spec but this is kind of flipping that on its head. I think I
04:04would probably pay a little bit more and get this with 6 gigs of RAM just
04:07makes it a little bit more future-proof especially maybe if you are buying this
04:10for its future-proof 5G capabilities and then you can always just drop in a
04:14microSD as well to expand the storage. But overall it felt fast and that was
04:19helped by the latest Android 11 and Realme UI 2 software which I actually do
04:24quite like and there's tons of customization options. But what really
04:29helps to make this feel faster is the 90 Hertz refresh rate screen. So here we
04:34are again kind of having to balance and make a decision between whether you want
04:38an AMOLED 60 Hertz screen like you get on the standard Realme 8 or a 90 Hertz
04:43LCD that we have on the 5G model. Personally I think it's more valuable to
04:49have a 90 Hertz refresh. I think you see that more often than you do an AMOLED
04:53screen which does give you better contrast ratios, better view angles but
04:57if you're using this at a reasonable sort of straight-on angle you're not
05:01using it you know from the side and you're not you know just concentrating
05:04on the black bars around the video generally in day-to-day you can't really
05:07tell that much difference and it still looks good it's an IPS and we have up to
05:11600 nits of brightness so it's easily usable outside. But what do you reckon
05:15would you rather go 90 Hertz LCD or 60 Hertz AMOLED? If you had to pick let me
05:20know in the comments below although of course we would all love both in an
05:24ideal world. But the benefit of having a 90 Hertz refresh and 180 Hertz touch
05:28sampling is the phone feels much smoother and more responsive. You can
05:33choose to keep it at 90 Hertz all the time but I like to keep it in auto mode
05:36so it adapts based on the app and should therefore save you a bit of battery. Now
05:41unfortunately where I live in the middle of nowhere in the southwest of England
05:44we don't have 5G here yet so I can't really test just how fast it can get and
05:49also the impact on the battery life although we do have some 5G battery
05:52saving modes built in but in my experience generally using this with 4G
05:57and Wi-Fi I'm getting to about 11 p.m. at night with 30% remaining which is
06:01pretty good and also one hour of YouTube at 50% brightness used 8% of the battery
06:06life. So the battery life is good although if you are using 5G that will
06:10have an impact on that as well but the downside really is the charger. We get
06:14this 18 watt charger in the box which is actually a downgrade from a 30 watt
06:19charger we get with the realme 8 or even last year's realme 7 5G had 30 watt
06:24charging so one bit of a bit of a strange choice going down to 18 here
06:28again I guess it's cost-saving. Now let's talk about this camera and a bit sadly
06:33we have lost the ultra wide lens which we get on the 8 and the 8 Pro but we do
06:37still have a 48 megapixel main camera plus a macro lens and also a black and
06:42white portrait lens which is designed to improve the quality and also the bokeh
06:46of portrait shots. You do of course have to adjust your expectations for a phone
06:51that costs just £180 but I think on the whole it does a good job. You can
06:56shoot in the full 48 megapixels if you want the highest resolution there's also
07:00a pro mode if you want to tinker and the ultra macro although as usual these
07:04tact on macro lenses don't really add a whole lot of value in my opinion. We do
07:10get a decent night mode though which actually works with both the rear and
07:13the selfie cameras which is always good to see although low-light photos can
07:17still be a little bit noisy and it does struggle with dynamic range. Having said
07:21that I think again given the price it's good enough as a quick point and shoot
07:25and I do also quite like the selfie camera it can lack a little bit in
07:28sharpness and detail but the exposure and the colors look good and this is
07:32with all the AI beautification modes turned off although perhaps I should
07:36have kept them on. And so that is the new realme 8 5G. The good stuff? Well we're
07:43getting incredibly cheap 5G, good battery life, that triple card slot with
07:48micro SD, dual SIM 5G, 3.5mm headphone jack which is nice. I think it looks
07:53pretty good as well and of course that 90 Hertz screen. So all in all a pretty
07:57good all-round phone with a ridiculously affordable price. Downsides? Well it's
08:02LCD, there's no ultra wide camera and also bizarrely we've had a downgrade in
08:07the charging speed. But overall if you want a solid dirt cheap 5G phone while
08:13there are a couple of compromises you can't really get much better than this.
08:16Although if you're not that bothered by 5G just yet and frankly I still don't
08:21know if it's really essential especially at this price point then I'd
08:24recommend going with a standard realme 8. It's only 60 Hertz but we do get an
08:28AMOLED screen, the Helio G95 chip is better for gaming, we also get a
08:33high-resolution 64 megapixel camera and an ultra wide lens along with an in
08:38screen fingerprint reader and also faster charging. My only feedback really
08:43is that the difference between the 7 and the 8 series perhaps isn't as clear-cut
08:47as it should be. It's a little bit complicated. Now if you fancy checking
08:50this out for yourself I'll leave links below and also as I say realme are
08:53running some really good launch deals right now so get in early if you fancy
08:57an upgrade. But what do you reckon? Would you be tempted to buy this and also do
09:01you think it's worth having 5G at this price point or well is it just a bit of
09:05a costly extra? Let me know what you think in the comments below and also if
09:08you did enjoy the video and want to see more of me, which hopefully you do, then a
09:12cheeky little subscribe and a thumbs up would be lovely. Thank you so much for
09:16watching guys and I'll see you next time right here on The Tech Jam.