Realme 16 Pro Malaysia review: Fun, no frills and budget friendly midranger
The Realme 16 Pro is one the Chinese brand’s newest midrange smartphones. While perhaps not as flashy as the Realme 16 Pro+, the regular Realme 16 Pro still comes with a bunch of nice features at this price point, along with a sleek looking design.
Having already taken on a number of midrange devices recently for review, it seemed only natural that we would take on the Realme 16 Pro as our latest challenge. With the competition heating up, how does the Realme 16 Pro stack up against them?
Premium design, soft to the touch
Right out of the box, the Realme 16 Pro feels exquisite. On paper, hearing that this has a ‘special polymer’ back panel isn’t particularly interesting. I mean, it’s just plastic right?
But this is really one of those situations where you have to feel it to believe it. Realme says that the 16 Pro offers a smooth, velvety feel, and it has definitely delivered here. It’s a little bit of a fingerprint magnet sure, but it’s certainly a unique feature and I definitely wasn’t expecting to be impressed by it. The chassis itself has a very one-size fits all situation going on, measuring 7.75mm thin and weighing in at 192g. Not the lightest, not the thinnest, but nothing wrong with it whatsoever.
Our review unit came in this Pebble Grey colourway, and while it’s certainly a sleek look, I do think the more fun option would be the Orchid Purple colour that’s also out in stores right now. That being said, I do like the look of that metal camera bump against the soft grey back panel. It’s a nice touch of flair and makes the Realme 16 Pro look a fair bit more high end than perhaps what it really is.
As for the display, you’re looking at a 6.78-inch AMOLED panel pushing a 2772 by 1272 resolution, with an up to 144Hz refresh rate and full coverage of the sRGB colour gamut in natural mode and full coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut in vivid mode. For the most part, it does exactly as you’d expect from a smartphone screen, being good enough for scrolling social media or for binge watching your favourite YouTube videos on the go, with HDR content also looking swell. Incidentally, despite being a 144Hz panel, most apps on it only go up to 120Hz anyway from what we can tell, though in practice it hardly makes a difference.
One thing I would say is that it does get really bright. By default, the screen only does about 600nits, but you can actually turn on ‘extra brightness’ in the settings allowing it to hit 1000nits, and in high brightness mode up to 1400nits. If we’re being honest you don’t need it to be that bright all the time, and indeed the Realme 16 Pro warns you that you’ll drain your battery faster if you turn on extra brightness. That being said, I really like that feature because now not only does the screen look great indoors, but it also looks great outdoors under our extremely hot sunlight.
All day battery life
The Realme 16 Pro features a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Max under the hood, with 12GB of LPDDR4X memory and up to 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. It comes with Android 16 out of the box, skinned with Realme UI 7.0 over it, and a guarantee of at least three major Android OS upgrades and four years of security patches. It’s not the best software support policy in the segment—the Samsung Galaxy A37 gets six major OS upgrades—but at least it’s a push in the right direction from Realme.
As for the performance itself, it’s mostly decent enough for everyday use. There’s no discernable lag when just using the device in everyday fashion; I can scroll, surf, text and watch stuff just fine with the Realme 16 Pro. Things get a little bit harder trying to run resource-heavy titles like Where Winds Meet, and I only got around 20-30fps in game. However, simpler games like TFT ran alright, with little to no stutters.
I was however a little peeved by the amount of bloatware on the Realme 16 Pro. Not only are the usual suspects of pre-installed software present on the Realme 16 Pro—Agoda, Shopee, LinkedIn, Bigo Live, Temu, etc—but I would also get notifications for ads from the pre-installed Theme Store app. For the most part you can uninstall them, but certain apps still can’t be removed leading to ads all over the place. Also, there’s a ‘search’ bar by default in my notifications panel for some reason. None of this is a major dealbreaker, but it is something to consider especially if you’re not tech savvy enough to uninstall the bloatware.
As for battery life though, the Realme 16 Pro delivers a solid all day battery life, with roughly 20 to 30 percent left in the tank by the time I head to bed. The 7,000mAh is pretty big, but maybe because I left the screen at too high a brightness for too long, I just thought I’d get even more you know. On the brightside, there’s still a fast 80W charger included in the box, although for some reason our review unit came with a China plug.
This camera works fine—most of the time
Moving on to the Realme 16 Pro’s cameras, it features a 200MP main camera using a Samsung HP5 1/1.56″ sensor flanked by an 8MP, f/2.2 ultrawide, along with a 50MP selfie camera on the front. And yes, before you ask, despite having the space for three cameras on the back there really is only two shooters there, with the third being an IR blaster. It’s nice to still see IR remote functionality on a smartphone, though it’s a little funny to aim it towards your TV or aircon as though you’re taking a photo of it.
Anyway, as for how the camera shoots, it’s fine for the most part. If you have enough light, the main camera actually takes fairly good photos, with solid details and close to true-to-life colours, with just a smidge of saturation. It’s a dependable enough shooter that should work just fine for taking a quick shot for social media or just for your own keepsake. Similarly, in 2x mode still does a pretty decent job, with little to no loss in quality while offering a nice bit of versatility.
In low light however, the Realme 16 Pro’s main camera isn’t particularly strong, perhaps due to the lack of sensor size. It does seem to lose some amount of detail, and the colours are a little off. Also, portraits become a tad worse too, losing its ability to capture true-to-life colours and skin tones. As for the ultrawide, the 8MP shooter isn’t great other than adding a bit of versatility to your options, while the selfie camera is a tried and tested dependable shooter from its predecessor.
A decent alternative choice
Overall though, despite the shortcomings, I still had quite a bit of fun trying out the Realme 16 Pro. Perhaps it’s because I don’t often get to review Realme devices, or maybe it’s because of that soft touch back (seriously, try it out in store when you’re in a mall), but the Realme 16 Pro did catch me off guard by being more than your average midrange smartphone.
I mean sure, it won’t win any awards for pure performance, nor do I think it has the absolute best cameras in its category, but it doesn’t do much wrong either. Priced at RM1,599 for the base model with 256GB of storage and RM1,899 for 512GB of storage, it’s ever so slightly higher than the Poco X8 Pro that has better raw performance but mediocre cameras, but is also quite a bit cheaper than something like the Vivo V70 that has better camera chops.
That puts the Realme 16 Pro squarely in the middle of things when it comes to the current midrange smartphone battle in Malaysia. And it might not be your first choice, the Realme 16 Pro is a pretty well balanced device all things considered that should at least be worth your time to check out if you’re currently looking for a new smartphone within this price range.
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