You may have heard about Realme’s flagship killing GT series. But their GT NEO phones
aim to offer even more value than that- and we have the newest model, the Realme GT Neo 3.
The Neo 3 doesn’t have a top tier chipset, but it’s still feature packed- so is this the better
deal over the regular GT 2 model? I’m Will for GSMArena and let’s find out in our full review.
The Realme GT Neo 3 lineup may seem a bit toned down compared
to this year’s Realme GT2, but they still deliver some pretty solid specs.
The vanilla Neo 3 comes in a couple of varieties. There’s one with a 5,000 mAh battery and 80W
charging, and THIS more pricey version which has a smaller battery, but crazy fast 150W charging.
There are 3 standard color options available, but if you want to get fancy, there’s a Naruto
themed special edition for fans of the popular series, that comes in a scroll shaped container.
The Naruto phone is of the fast charging variant,
and besides the signature design there’s a special themed UI. Neat stuff!
OUR GT Neo 3 is in the vibrant Nitro blue finish,
which is quite eyecatching. It’s no surprise that a phone named GT has some racing stripes on it.
The back of the device is made of curved glass, and the finish is soft and smooth to the touch.
It does a decent job of hiding fingerprints, too. The frame here is made of plastic,
and overall the phone is pretty easy to handle- it's neither heavy, nor thick.
You don’t get any ingress protection here. But there is one neat feature-
the NFC antenna covers 360 degrees around the top of the phone, for easier contactless payments.
On the front is a 6.7" AMOLED display with a 1080p resolution,
Gorilla Glass 5 protection, and a fast 120Hz refresh rate.
The fast refresh rate acts to make your swiping and scrolling smoother,
and it can dial down to 60Hz when you’re not interacting with the screen, to save energy.
Higher tier LTPO panels can dial down further, and you don’t get support for
high framerate gaming here. But otherwise, this display really is quite premium.
Of course you get the great contrast, since it’s an AMOLED. But there’s also 10 bit color depth,
and support for HDR10 plus. Realme has gone above and beyond with this display’s color accuracy too.
Whites and grays are accurate without the tint we often see elsewhere.
Plus the brightness is impressive for this price range.
We measured a maximum of 460 nits in manual mode,
and this can boost up to around 800 nits in auto mode- plenty for comfortable viewing outdoors.
Under the display sits an optical under display fingerprint reader. It’s quite
responsive- our only complaint is that the placement is lower than you’d expect.
Just like the other Realme GT phones, the Neo 3 has a pair of stereo speakers, with the top
one doubling as the earpiece. The speakers earned a score of GOOD on our loudness test,
and the sound quality is decent for the price, with some noticeable bass.
For storage, you get the option of 128, 256, or 512 GB,
but that’s not expandable through microSD.
The interface of the GT Neo 3 is Realme UI 3.0, based on Android 12-
the same as what you’d find on Realme’s other new devices.
It brings mostly cosmetic changes on top of your typical Android UI.
Of course you get recent Android features like the privacy dashboard,
which makes keeping track of and managing your permissions much less of a headache.
There are plenty of options to customize the looks of the interface, too,
from minor tweaks to entire themes.
And gamers get a handy in-game overlay which allows you to manage things like
do not disturb options and even performance settings on the fly.
The chipset is what makes the Realme GT Neo 3 stand out from the other models.
It’s technically lower tier, but the performance here had us surprised!
The phone packs a Mediatek Dimensity 8100- this is in contrast to Realme GT2,
which runs on the Snapdragon 888 of last year’s flagships. You’d expect benchmark scores on the
Neo 3 to fall behind, but in fact it’s able to hold its own against other flagship killers
in both CPU and GPU tests! Its multi core CPU performance is particularly impressive.
And what’s even better, at least for gamers, is the thermal management. Like the other
new Realme GT’s, the Neo 3 has an advanced passive cooling system, and sustained performance is
much more stable here than what you’d get on your typical flagship.
So overall, this “downgrade” of a chipset is actually quite competitive, especially for a midranger.
Like I mentioned before, our GT Neo 3 is the variant with the smaller 4500mAh battery.
It was able to earn a score of 102h in our battery life tests- just average for a midranger.
But with this model Realme more than makes up for any shortcoming as far as battery life goes,
with a huge 150 watt power brick that comes in the box.
It might seem absurd, or even reckless, but Realme claims it’s quite safe, and won’t catch on fire.
Anyway, it might just be the fastest charging we've ever seen on a phone.
We were able to charge the GT Neo 3 from 0% to full in only 16 minutes!
That's even faster than what we’ve seen from Xiaomi and other competitors.
Now on to the cameras, which include a 50MP main cam with multi directional phase detection
autofocus and OIS, an 8MP ultrawide cam, and a 2MP camera for closeup macro shots.
The quality from the main cam is great- photos are sharp and detailed, with nice looking colors.
Even indoor scenes with less than perfect lighting conditions come out looking good.
In general the Neo3 seems to go for a more contrasty look-
exposure is overall on the darker side. The dynamic range is still wide enough though.
Portrait shots come out okay, but we would have liked them a bit sharper.
Still the color reproduction is generally good, and the edge detection is solid.
The quality from the ultrawide cam is just mediocre. You get punchy colors,
and the photos are usable, but these are soft and lacking in detail.
The 2MP macro cam is in a similar spot. It’s nice to have for the sake of a different perspective,
but the photos aren’t great. They’re washed out looking with not much detail.
In low light, the GT Neo 3 will add some automatic night mode processing to photos from the main cam.
The results are pretty good. - the photos are sharp enough, with plenty of detail,
nice looking colors and low noise. Highlights and light sources are well balanced too.
Like the daylight photos, exposure is overall on the darker side,
which results in a contrastier, more natural look, but might not work well in some situations.
There is a dedicated night mode you can toggle on, and there’s not much of a difference quality wise,
besides a slightly brightened up exposure in some scenes.
Without the Night mode, the ultrawide camera is hard to recommend.
Images are noisy, extremely soft and washed out looking.
The Night mode boosts overall quality a lot by removing a lot of the noise,
improving the sharpness and widening the dynamic range. It’s far from ideal, but it’s usable.
The 16MP front facing cam is same as both last year’s model and this year’s GT2.
To our surprise, the quality of selfies is much better here- they’re well-exposed,
sharp and detailed, with wide dynamic range.
Moving on to video recording. 4K footage from the main cam is downright impressive,
with excellent detail, contrast, and dynamic range,
and nice looking colors. The exposure is a little dark though.
The ultrawide cam is limited to 1080p recording, and the quality is underwhelming.
There’s visible noise and the dynamic range is on the narrow side.
So, that’s the Realme GT Neo3. It offers plenty of flagship killing features,
including the high refresh rate AMOLED, stereo speakers, and great main and selfie cameras. And
even though the chipset isn’t TOP tier, it’s able to provide surprisingly competitive performance.
The other highlight feature here is the blazing fast charging-
unfortunately you’d only get it on THIS version of the phone which is more expensive.
Actually, its around the same price as the Realme GT2, which the Neo 3 is trying to out-value.
So in the end, the Realme GT Neo 3 is a great flagship killer phone, but unless you cut the
charging, it doesn’t provide more bang for your buck than the GT2- it’s just different. Still,
it’s worth a recommendation. Thanks for watching and see you on the next one.