Friends+Design
- Beautiful, attractive, premium glass design (Gorilla Glass 5 on the front and back), with a modern gradient finish at the back - identical to the Realme XT
- The phone is also marginally smaller than the Realme X and is lighter too at 183 grams, which gives it a very balanced in-hand feel
- The glass on the back is of the glossy kind, but it barely registers any fingerprints or smudges and it isn’t very reflective
- The in-display fingerprint sensor is snappy (the fastest in this price bracket), as is the facial recognition
Display
- Excellent 6.4-inch FHD+ (1080x2340) Super AMOLED display with a dewdrop notch - again same as as the Realme XT - it has vibrant colours, deep blacks, good sunlight legibility, and good viewing angles - one of the best displays of this price range
- Also comes with Widevine L1 standard, which means videos on platforms like Netflix and Prime can be seen in crisp HD resolution
Software
- ColorOS is fairly streamlined, and packs fast animations that help the phone feel snappy - there are of course several add-on features too, compared to what you would get in stock Android
- The UI also isn’t ad-strewn as recent Xiaomi phones have tended to be
- There is, as usual, some bloatware that comes pre-installed (but most of it can be uninstalled)
Performance
- Excellent, butter smooth performance backed by the powerful Snapdragon 730G (15% faster than the Snapdragon 730 in graphics performance), which makes the Realme X2 one of the best-performing phones in this price range, especially for gaming - even ahead of the Redmi K20 in benchmarks - the Realme X2 breezes through pretty much any task you throw at it and is also an excellent smartphone to game on - even heavy games like PUBG Mobile, COD Mobile run consistently smooth
Camera
- Very good quad-camera setup at the rear - 64MP primary + 8MP ultra-wide + 2MP macro + 2MP depth sensor
- The primary 64MP camera works (by default) on a 4-in-1 pixel binning technology that combines four 16MP shots to offer one bright and detailed photo
- The primary camera capture some really attractive photos in daylight, offering good brightness and clarity - with HDR enabled, the camera offers a wide dynamic range
- The ultra-wide-angle camera comes in handy if you want to capture a wider frame of view or want a different perspective on the subject (but there is some noise even in daylight conditions)
- The camera also supports Nightscape (Night mode), which comes in handy in low-light conditions, and helps improve picture clarity
- The Realme X2 also does a very good job when using Portrait mode - edge detection is excellent thanks to the dedicated 2-megapixel depth sensor and details are crisp
- Good video recording quality - image quality is good, and there is also stabilisation at 1080p (but not at 4k) - video bokeh feature also works very well and it can maintain a very accurate edge detection with busier backgrounds (low light video recording could have been better though)
- Very good selfies from the 32MP front camera - it captures very good portrait selfies with crisp edges and background properly blurred - there is also night mode for selfies and it works pretty well
- Overall, Realme X2 has one of the best cameras under 20k category, arguably right behind the Redmi Note 8 Pro & Redmi K20
- The macro lens is ordinary - you will be able to get really close to the subject, but detail levels in the images are low
Audio
- Good speaker - verbal audio sounds clear enough even in max volume, and the audio is loud enough for you to hear the phone ring from another room
Battery
- Good battery life with a large 4000mAh battery - you will get about 1.5 days of moderate use
- There is super-fast, class-leading 30W VOOC 4.0 fast charging support - you can charge up the Realme X2 from 0 to 100% in an hour with the supplied charger
Verdict
- Realme has yet again managed to craft an excellent package with the Realme X2, especially if you want to do heavy gaming - Realme’s strategy of bring high-end features like the 30W VOOC Charging & in-display fingerprint sensor to a mid-range phone makes the Realme X2 a very compelling phone to buy
- Having said that, the competition is neck-to-neck - there is Redmi K20 which offers a full notch-less display, even more polished design and slightly better camera at a similar price (at the cost of slower 'fast' charging) - and if you are on a tight budget, the cheaper Redmi Note 8 Pro is also a very good option as long as you don’t care about the AMOLED display and an in-display fingerprint sensor
