Realme 14 Pro Plus Review: A Camera Champion With Features for Everyone

It’s been over six months since I reviewed the Realme 13 Pro Plus, which means following the traditional six-month launch cycle updates. Realme is back with its latest smartphones in the prestigious number series: The Realme 14 series. This time, I got my hands on the Realme 14 Pro Plus, the premium option in the series.

Due to the shorter launch cycles, most new smartphones have been iterative updates for several years. However, Realme 14 Pro Plus is set up from its predecessor with useful updates and downgrades. I have used the Realme 14 Pro Plus 5G for over two weeks.

From my experience, the Realme 14 Pro Plus has incredible cameras and doesn’t miss out on other specifications, which most camera-centric smartphones, like Vivo, generally miss. It has an attractive design, a quad-curved display, a massive 6000 mAh battery, and good performance. So, should you get the Realme 14 Pro Plus, the discounted Realme GT 6, or its predecessor, or should you save some cash and get the Realme 13 Pro Plus? Let’s find out in this review.

Realme 14 Pro Plus Specifications

Before going to the review, here are the specifications of the Realme 14 Pro Plus in comparison with the Realme 13 Pro Plus 5G.

Realme 14 Pro Plus Unboxing: What’s in the Box?

If you buy the Realme 14 Pro Plus, along with the mobile in the box, you get:

• 80W SuperVOOC fast charger.
• USB Type A to Type C cable.
• SIM Ejector tool.
• Protective case and user guide, as well as warranty information.

Design and Build Quality: A Color-Changing Back

Realme has been putting much effort into the design for the last few years. Be it the GT series or the number series, they differentiate themselves by offering unique designs that separate themselves from the competition.

We liked the Explorer Red edition of the Realme 12 Pro Plus, and we saw a Monet-inspired design on the Realme 13 Pro Plus and the impressive Emerald Green variant with the leather back. With the 14 Pro Plus, Realme has gone further and included a color-changing back panel in the Pearl White variant. The back panel contains thermochromic pigments that change color from white to blue when the temperature drops below 16 degrees.

It is a cool feature to show your friends. However, I live in Southern India. The temperature usually doesn’t go below 16 degrees here, so I cannot showcase cold temperatures to my friends unless I put an ice pack on the back panel and show them what the smartphone can do.

That’s said, It’s not a dealbreaker for me. Even without the temperature reactive feature, the Pearl white variant looks stunning in real life, with a marble ceramic texture and gold-plated aluminum frame, which reminds me of the always-favorite OnePlus 7 Pro Almond color.

The Realme 14 Pro Plus comes in three color variants: Pearl White (the only variant with the color changing back), Bikaner Purple, and Suede Gray. If you want to buy, I highly recommend the Pearl White color variant; It is also available in the base variant. The gold finish on the aluminum frame and camera module and the texted finish make it a premium-looking smartphone.

The phone also has an impressive build quality. It has a glass back, a round camera module housing three cameras, and a three-tone flash design. It has rounded corners, a slightly bigger display with uniform thin bezels on four sizes, and a quad-curved display. Due to the wider design, the phone is compact to hold; it doesn’t look taller and fits perfectly even for small hands, despite the increase in the display size.

It comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 7i protection on both front and back, which can withstand scratches and minor drops. It comes with a pre-applied screen protector. Realme also includes a TPU case to protect your smartphone from scratches and minor drops.

Despite the slight increase in display size from its predecessor ( from 6.7 inches to 6.8 inches), Realme 14 Pro Plus is very comfortable to hold in hand. Thanks to its quad-curved, rounded corner and slimmer design, despite holding a 6000 mAh battery inside, the smartphone feels sturdy in hand and offers the best in-hand feel compared to any other Realme phone I have used in the past.

The phone is certified with IP66/IP68/69 certification for water and dust resistance, which can withstand dust ingress and press water jets and submersion in water up to 1.5m for 30 minutes. No worries if you accidentally drop it in the sink or are caught in the rain.

Display: Bigger, Sharper, and Beautifully Vibrant

Realme has bumped up the display size on the 14 Pro Plus to 6.83 inches, slightly larger than the 6.7-inch screen on the Realme 13 Pro Plus. The resolution also sees an upgrade, now supporting up to 1.5K with 2800 x 1272 pixels and a 450 PPI pixel density. It comes with a 240 Hz touch sampling rate. As for brightness, the display maxes out at 600 nits during regular use, reaches up to 1200 nits for HDR content, and can hit a localized peak at 1500 nits, lower than the 2000 nits on the 13 Pro Plus. However, it is still plenty bright even under the direct sunlight.

Thanks to the slimmer bezels and Quad curved display, the 14 Pro Plus display has a 93.8% screen-to-body ratio and looks stunning. The OLED display is sharp and vibrant and is excellent for viewing content for reading, daily use, or media consumption.

The display is protected by Gorilla Glass 7i on the front, which can resist scratches and accidental drops. It also has a handy aqua touch display feature that ensures the screen stays responsive even when wet. It is a useful addition to all BBK-owned devices like Oppo and Vivo, preventing annoying jitters from accidental touches from water droplets.

Realme UI also has some useful software tweaks that let you customize the display further based on your preference, like changing the color tone, adjusting the white balance, and more, A feature missed on the HMD fusion. The increased brightness, sharp screen, and ultra-slim bezels on all sides with rounded corners make the display one of the best elements on the Realme 14 Pro Plus with a sharp, vibrant OLED panel. The display also supports HDR 10; it HDR video playback on YouTube but not on Netflix. It also supports widewine L1 support for watching HD content on streaming platforms.

Performance: Smooth for Daily Tasks, Decent for Gaming

Realme 14 Pro Plus is powered by a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor, a slightly improved processor over the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 used in the Realme 13 Pro Plus. At the same time, it’s not a big performance jump; it is significantly better in day-to-day tasks like browsing, watching media, switching between apps, and light gaming with no noticeable lags or stuttering compared with Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 found on the Realme 13 Pro Plus. Regarding heavy gaming, The phone handles high graphic intensive gaming titles like BGMI without breaking a sweat.

The improved performance of the 7s Gen 3 in the Realme 14 Pro Plus is due to the upgraded CPU architecture. Unlike the 4×4 configuration on the 7s Gen 2, the 7s Gen 3 uses one prime core, three performance cores, and four efficiency cores. The prime core is a single Cortex A720 clocked at 2.4 GHz, and the three performance Cortex A720 cores are also clocked at 2.4 GHz. The four efficiency Cortex A510 cores clocked at 1.8 GHz. The new architecture improves performance while efficiently using the same battery as the 7s Gen 2.

However, the Snapdragon 7s Gen is the low-tier variant of the whole 7-gen series. Its performance doesn’t quite match the performance of the Snapdragon 7+ Gen series (7+ Gen 3) found on devices like the OnePlus Nord 4 and the recently discounted Realme GT 6T (7+ Gen 3>7+Gen 2>7 Gen 3>7 Gen 1> 7s Gen 3>7s Gen 2). Those feel like true flagship performances. Still, Realme 14 Pro Plus offers reliable performance for most day-to-day tasks.

While the Realme 14 Pro Plus is excellent for regular use and occasional gaming, It falls short compared to devices like the Realme GT 6T, the Oneplus Nord 4, and the Poco F6, which comes with more powerful processors, making them better house for gaming and multitasking.

Realme 14 Pro Plus Performance and Benchmarks:

Cameras: Sharp Photos and Stunning Portraits, Even in Low Light

Realme 13 Pro impressed me with its camera performance, quickly raking one of the favorite smartphones under 30000 just after Vivo v30 (3.7/5 in our review). With the Realme 14 Pro Plus, Realme has jumped to the top thanks to the new IMX sensors, which deliver impressive results, especially in this price segment.

The Realme 14 Pro Plus camera setup remains the same in number but has new Sony IMX sensors, which are found on most flagships. It comes with three lenses. The primary camera is now the 50-megapixel camera with a Sony IMX896 wide camera with an f/1.8 aperture and a 1/1.56 large μm pixel size with optical image stabilization and multidirectional PDAF for accurate focusing.

The standout 50-megapixel periscope lens with 3x optical zoom supports up to 120x digital zoom and is enhanced by Realme AI image clarity. Surprisingly, it also gets optical image stabilization, which is much needed and handy while capturing far zoom-in shots. Finally, an 8-megapixel camera with a 120° field of view is impressive in daylight but struggles in low light because of the lower megapixel count.

Here are a few samples I took from the 14 Pro Plus. For the full samples without any compression, here is a Google Drive link to check all the photo samples shot from the Realme 14 Pro Plus without compression.

The primary camera with the 50-megapixel Sony IMX896 sensor captures sharp, well-balanced images with natural colors. The pictures have plenty of details with close-to-real-life colors (Sometimes slightly saturated), which you can adjust in the camera settings if you prefer a more neutral mode.

The images above are the best demonstration of the camera capabilities of the Realme 14 Pro+. It is a challenging situation with bright and dark areas and the water reflections and shadows under the bridge under the golden hues of the sunlight. Realme has done an incredible job balancing all these elements. The colors are slightly saturated (even negligible if you are not picky), offering the best image quality overall.

Going into the details, the camera handles the bright sun on the right side well without overexposing. However, maintaining the details on the darker water areas and shadows under the bridge are also captured without underexposing. The picture is sharp and has clear details; even when zoomed in, you can see the water ripples on the right side without missing too much detail.

The best part of this camera setup is that, in most cases, with good lighting conditions, Images from the primary camera have close-to-natural colors in the image. It is challenging for any camera since it has dual sky colors and maintains realistic colors, but Realme has produced the colors very close to real life.

The camera also handled highlights and reflections well, especially in the image above. The bridge’s shadow in the water, the reflections of sunset in the water, and the reflected sunlight in the rock are also well-handled.

Overall, it has an impressive dynamic range, handling highlights and shadows without overexposure and retaining plenty of details. However, there is a slightly noticeable noise when you zoom into the picture, but overall, it does take great pictures. The same goes for any image you shoot in low light. Realme 14 Pro Plus continued to impress. The photos remain sharp, with plenty of details close to natural colors, making it a reliable option for all scenarios.

Be it any photo, the shots from the primary camera on the Realme 14 Pro Plus consistently deliver impressive results with dynamic range, details, sharpness, and color accuracy. For instance, look at the image below. It has the same challenging situations for the camera, and the 14 Pro Plus continues to impress with its ability to handle complex lighting and maintain sharpness and natural colors overall, making it an excellent choice for taking features of landscapes and also for people even in low-light conditions.

Low-light portrait shots in the Realme 14 Pro Plus are also handled well. Take the image above, for example, which I captured in portrait mode around 6 PM with low light. The picture seems softer compared to the previous photos, but the overall quality is impressive, with the precise subject, impressive bokeh, good lighting, and impressive natural colors.

The portrait shots are also impressive, matching DSLR portrait photography. As you can see from the two images above, these are shot on Realme 14 Pro Plus using the portrait mode of the primary camera using the standard zoom. In both cases, the subject is focused, with plenty of details on the subject’s hair and clothes, even for a low-light shot with an excellent edge section, making the subject stand out from the background.

The camera captures highlights and shadows without losing details, making the lighting well-balanced. The best part is that the skin tone appears natural, even realistic, without oversaturation, even in low light. However, in some cases, the slightly oversaturated, especially in the low light, makes it darker than it should be.

As you can see from the left image, the black T-shirt is oversaturated, making it darker, and the right produces close-to-natural colors because of good lighting conditions. Overall, Realme 14 Pro Plus also excels at portrait photography, offering sharp subject focus, excellent bokeh, and natural color reproduction while retaining plenty of details of the subject.

The 3X periscope lens also captures plenty of sharp details and handles bright and shadowed areas well without overexposure. From the image below, you can see and read the text in the pictures, which has plenty of details. It also retains details, and the dynamic range is well-handled here, differentiating between the bright and low-shadowed areas. It also handles the bright, visible sky without overexposure. The colors on the 3X periscope lens are vivid; however, there is a good balance between saturation and realism. For example, the red parking sign bar looks vibrant without oversaturation.

However, it is not a continuous zoom, which means the results vary depending on the zoom level. For example, at 1x, the photo is taken using the primary camera with impressive details and natural-looking colors. At 2x, the camera relies on the digital zoom version of the primary camera but still captures plenty of detail without losing the quality. At 3x, it shifts to the dedicated periscope lens, where images look slightly soft but retain the details, and for the rest, it uses the digital zoom of the periscope lens.

The 8-megapixel wide-angle camera is decent in low light conditions for capturing shots, though it struggles in very low light conditions, bringing up more noise. The colors, details, and sharpness of the 8-megapixel camera are not as sharp as those taken from the primary camera. However, they retain a good amount of information with decent sharpness and quality, and the colors are close to natural, similar to the color tones captured on the main two cameras and the front camera. The wide-angle camera also makes noise in low light, especially in very low-light conditions. Apart from this, it delivers decent overall picture quality.

It can record videos up to 4K 30 fps from the rear camera and capture slow-motion video up to 1080p at 120fps. It also supports Portrait video mode, which is limited to 1080p. Similar to photos, videos from the Realme 14 Pro Plus also look better with plenty of details, and the colors in the videos look natural and authentic to life. It also does a decent job in low light, retaining particulars; however, in pitch-dark conditions, just like any camera, the noise kicks in, thus reducing the quality.

The front camera on the Realme 14 Pro Plus remains relatively the same as on the Realme 13 Pro Plus. It comes with 32 megapixels with an aperture of 2.4 and a 90-degree field of view. It can record videos in 4K at 30fps and 1080p at 30fps and now includes gyro-EIS stabilization for better stabilization in the front camera. The front camera also captures decent and good-looking images in daylight with plenty of details, good dynamic range, and close-to-natural-looking colors.

Battery Life: All-Day Battery Life With Massive 6000 mAh

Battery life isn’t a concern for modern smartphones. Many will come with a massive battery size and fast charging support. The Realme 14 Pro Plus 5G has a 6000mAh battery and 80W wired fast charging support. It doesn’t have wireless charging, but it can charge a massive 6000mAh battery in an hour.

On average, I got around 6 to 7 hours of screen-on time, which is decent but not an exceptional number considering it’s a massive 6000mAh battery. However, my usage includes setting the screen resolution and brightness at high and setting the screen to a 120Hz refresh rate all the time, which can contribute to faster battery drain.

For lighter uses like browsing, watching movies, and light gaming, the phone can easily last a whole day without needing to recharge, but if you are a heavy user, use it for intensive gaming and multitasking, you will need to use it in by the evening. The 80W fast charger in the box can fully charge the device in 1 Hour and 24 min from 0-100%. It also has a Smart Rapid charging mode, which charges your device faster (in less than an hour) but may degrade battery health over time.

Sound Quality: Decent Audio, but Could Be Better

Realme 14 Pro Plus features dual stereo speakers and dual-mic noise cancellation. The speakers’ sound quality is decent and loud enough for general use. However, you must increase the volume to 100% in noisy environments. The audio from the speakers sounds muffled at higher volumes and unclear. Also, it doesn’t have Dolby Atmos support.

However, it supports Bluetooth 5.2 and is compatible with popular codecs like aptX, AAC, and LDAC, improving audio quality with wireless headphones. It also supports Google Fast Pair for seamless connection. The dual microphones for noise cancellation work fine for decent calls. However, in my testing, I found background noise in WhatsApp calls, which can be fixed with a software update.

In addition, Realme UI 6.0 also includes a clear audio feature that filters out ambient noise from your surroundings, which works fine in most cases. It also works for regular calls and during meetings and WhatsApp calls. I highly suggest you leave it on since I faced background noise while taking calls on WhatsApp. The sound quality is decent, but I am not particularly impressed with the feature.

Software: Feature-Packed UI With a Few Quirks

Realme 14 Pro Plus comes with Android 15 based on Realme UI 6.0 out of the box. The UI feels snappy, with smooth, fluid animations. Realme UI 6.0 has plenty of features for personalizing your experience. It also has a handful of impressive useful AI features, especially the AI Eraser 2.0 in the Photos app. It is handy for detecting and removing wanted objects and now supports eliminating people from the image. Also, there is an AI Ultra Clarity mode, which enhances the details of the features.

However, these are not on-device AI features. These rely on cloud-based AI models, meaning you will need an active internet connection to use them. Since the images must be uploaded to the cloud for processing and sent back to the device, it can be a privacy concern if you want to use these AI features on sensitive images.

Another primary concern with the Realme smartphone, especially the budget models, is the inclusion of bloatware. Realme 14 Pro Plus also comes with preinstalled apps, including the Hot App and Games, along with apps like Agoda, App Market, Facebook, Snapchat, and Amazon, which can be uninstalled. Realme also has some dark patterns, encouraging you to use Glace for Realme to showcase unwanted notifications on the lock screen, which you must turn off while setting your device. Pay attention to the Recommended Services mode and disable Global Search, Quick Connect, Live Alerts, AI Smart Low Content, Ever Service, and Enhanced Intelligence Service.

It also seems like third-party apps aren’t optimized for the new wider aspect ratio. Third-party apps, including YouTube and other bottom navigation apps, seem to overflow from the border, making them slightly harder to interact with. I have shared the feedback with the Realme team, and we should get an update that hopefully fixes this in the next update.

Since it’s a Realme OS, it also comes with a handful of features, including theme options, Always-On Display customization, and Dual Mode Audio, which lets you connect a pair of earphones and wireless devices simultaneously and listen to them. A heart rate measurement tool that works decently and has an Eject Water feature, which helps eject water from the speaker.

The device ships with Android 15 and promises two years of major Android updates and three years of security updates.

Storage and connectivity: Downgrades

Like the predecessor, Realme 14 Pro Plus comes in three variants. The base variant now starts at 8GB + 128GB, a downgrade compared to the previous 13 Pro Plus, which started the base variant at 256 GB. The other two variants include 8GB+256GB and a higher variant, 12GB+256GB.

Surprisingly, Realme removed the NFC from the 14 Pro Plus, making all your NFC tasks incompatible with this device. However, it comes with UFS 3.1, which has faster read and write speeds and doesn’t have microSD support.

In terms of connectivity, Realme 14 Pro Plus supports dual 5G mode, standalone, and non-standalone 5G networks, and it is compatible with a wide range of 5G bands. It also supports the 5G standard, has a USB Type-C 2.0 port, and supports OTG, which allows you to connect peripherals such as keyboards and external devices.

Realme 14 Pro Plus Review Verdict

Realme 14 Pro Plus comes in three variants: the base model starts with 8GB and 128GB starting at rupees 29,999/-, and the 8GB+256GB starting at 31,999/-. The higher variant, 12GB with 512GB of internal storage, starts at 34,999/-. There are also some decent card discounts for a limited time, and you can get up to 5,000 if you purchase the Realme 14 Pro Plus.

If you are looking for the best camera smartphone with all-around performance under 30000, Realme 14 Pro Plus might be the best choice. It takes excellent pictures and has all the solid features required for a daily drive. The competitors of Realme 14 Pro Plus will be its own Realme GT6 and also the recently launched Redmi Note 14 Pro series, the OnePlus Nord 4, and the Moto 50 Pro. Here is the decision matrix to help you make the right choice.

To summarize, if you are looking for great cameras and stunning displays, smooth day-to-day performance, fast charging support, a snappier UI, and a sleek design, the Realme 14 Pro Plus is the best option. The recently announced Redmi Note 14 Pro (4.1/5) Plus is also the best option if you are looking for an all-rounder with cameras. You can get the Realme GT 6T (4.0/5) or the Poco F6(4.0/5) for gaming and decent cameras. On the other hand, the OnePlus Nord 4 (4.1/5) is also the best option if you’re looking for faster performance with a smoother Oxygen OS. Moto Edge 50 Pro offers a decent performance with a stock Android experience.

Buy Realme 14 Pro+