Realme Narzo 50A review: battery life, but is it enough?

Launched in February this year, the Realme Narzo 30A still offers good value for money (Rs 9,999 for the 4GB RAM and 64GB variant). It combines a practical design with decent daylight camera performance and good battery life. However, a lot has changed since then and other brands have managed to deliver even more value. The Infinix Hot 11S, for example, has a 90Hz refresh rate display, stereo speakers, and good specs for Rs. 10.999.

The Realme Narzo 50A is not the successor to the Narzo 30A (review), it is a completely different model that fits comfortably between the Narzo 20 (from Rs 10,499) and the more expensive Narzo 30 5G (review) (from Rs 14,999). … After using the Realme Narzo 50A for a week, it’s clear that it delivers excellent battery life. However, compare it to similarly priced smartphones such as the Infinix Hot 11S and Redmi 10 Prime (Review) and it isn’t a clear winner. Is it good enough for someone looking for a basic budget smartphone with good battery life?

Realme Narzo 50A Price in India

Realme Narzo 50A is available in two colors: Oxygen Blue and Oxygen Green. There are two options to choose from. 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage are available for Rs. 11,499, but you can also buy it with 128GB storage for Rs. 12,499. If you decide to tackle the Narzo 50A, the 128GB storage option offers a better value than the competition, mainly because the Redmi 10 Prime variant with 6GB RAM and 128GB costs a lot more in rupees. 14 499.

Realme Narzo 50A design

The Realme Narzo 50A adheres to the familiar design principles of the company with a simple yet practical polycarbonate back panel. The back has a fine groove texture that helps to hold it in the hand, which is important because this is a large and heavy 207g smartphone. The rear camera module extends to the center of the phone and encloses the fingerprint reader. Since it doesn’t protrude much from the rest of the back, I often struggled to find a barely recessed fingerprint reader.

The back panel of the Realme Narzo 50A is made of polycarbonate.

The matte surface of the plastic case, together with the fine grooved texture, protected the back of the smartphone from smudges. What I didn’t like was how massive this device felt in day to day use. The 6.5-inch display features a waterdrop notch. It is a stain magnet and I found it difficult to keep it clean as these stains were not easy to wipe off.

Realme Narzo 50A specifications and software

The Narzo 50A offers the MediaTek Helio G85 SoC, but with 4GB of standard LPDDR4X RAM in two storage options, 64GB and 128GB. The phone has a dedicated microSD card slot for expanding storage (up to 256GB). Communication standards include Wi-Fi ac, Bluetooth 5 and various satellite navigation systems.

The Narzo 50A triple main camera includes a 50MP main camera.

The Realme Narzo 50A runs Realme UI 2.0 based on Android 11. From a visual point of view, it is no different from what is available on other Realme smartphones. The focus of the user interface is on customization. There are also many preinstalled third-party apps, most of which can be uninstalled. While third-party apps never sent any annoying notifications (unless I activated them), the theme store never stopped sending one or two promotional notifications daily. I was also a little surprised to see ads in the default File Manager app (there are two such apps).

Realme Narzo 50A performance and battery life

Realme Narzo 50A showed 55 and 16 frames per second in the GFXBench T-Rex and Manhattan 3.1 benchmarks, respectively. It also scored 356 and 1352 in Geekbench’s single and multi-core benchmarks.

When it comes to gaming, the Narzo 50A is good for casual games, but demanding games didn’t run smoothly. Call of Duty: Mobile could be played with the default low graphics and medium frame rate settings. The phone also got hotter quickly when playing games, after which performance was severely degraded. Asphalt 9: Legends performs better, but with dropped frames and some lag, especially when there is a lot of action on the screen. If you’re looking for a budget gaming device, then the Infinix ‘Hot 11S is definitely the best choice.

6.5 ” LCD HD + Realme Narzo 50A is clear enough

The waterdrop notch on the Narzo 50A looks a bit dated when compared to the perforated displays offered by the competition. At HD + resolution on a 6.5-inch display, I was surprised to find that text and icons look crisp enough. The viewing angles are decent and the display is bright enough outdoors.

What was a little disappointing was the Widevine L3 certification, which only considered the playback quality of SD streaming video. Content streamed on Amazon Prime Video and Netflix didn’t look harsh. There are no stereo speakers, but one speaker is loud and clear enough for watching movies and making calls. If you’re using your smartphone as your primary device for watching videos, the Redmi 10 Prime offers the best Full-HD + display along with Widevine L1 certification for HD playback quality.

The Realme Narzo 50A has an 8MP selfie camera.

The Narzo 50A 6000mAh battery lasted two days with regular use, including photography and casual gaming. With little use (calling and messaging), the phone can last up to three days without recharging. Our HD video battery test lasted 30 hours and 12 minutes, which is great even for such a large battery. With no improvement in terms of charging, the included 18W charger allowed the phone to fully charge a fully depleted battery in 3 hours 5 minutes.

Cameras Realme Narzo 50A

The Narzo 50A is equipped with a 50MP main camera, a 2MP portrait lens for calculating depth, and a 2MP macro camera. Selfies are processed by an 8-megapixel front camera. The camera interface remains unchanged. Video recording is limited to 1080p @ 30fps for both the front and rear cameras.

Realme Narzo 50A daylight camera samples. Top: primary; medium: ultra wide angle; below: close-up (click to see full size)

Pictures taken in daylight were low in detail. Even at low magnification, the textures looked flat on the screen. The dynamic range is decent and the colors are pretty neutral. The selfies came out with good detail and dynamic range, but looked a little overly sharp.

Realme Narzo 50A Selfie Camera Samples. Top: Auto, Bottom: Portrait mode (tap to see full size)

Edge detection when using portrait mode was below average, which gave me a haircut and blurred my ears at times. Macros shot with a 2MP macro camera weren’t very good either, looking overly sharp and dramatic with high contrast.

The level of detail dropped even more indoors and when shooting indoors with artificial lighting. Night mode was able to cut out the glare from bright streetlights when shooting in low light, but these photos lacked depth and did not look sharp.

Examples of Realme Narzo 50A low 0ight cameras. Top: Automatic Low Light Mode; bottom: night mode (click to see full size)

The video looked pretty average with a decent amount of detail, but came out pretty wobbly due to the lack of stabilization. The low-light video showed a lot of blurry highlights and a lot of noise with fuzzy details.

Verdict

Despite its problems, the Realme Narzo 50A can still be a good smartphone if all you need is top-tier battery life and you only run basic apps. However, it’s hard to ignore the competition, most of which provide better performance and hardware at similar prices. The Infinix Hot 11S offers a Full-HD + 90Hz display, smooth software, and two speakers for Rs. 10.999. There’s also the Redmi 10 Prime (Review), which offers the best video streaming experience with Widevine L1 support, stereo speakers, four rear cameras and a 6,000mAh battery and costs Rs. 11999 for the 4GB RAM and 64GB storage variant.