Realme C65 5G Review: Enter the 5G Universe

If you want blazing fast 5G speeds on a smartphone without breaking the bank, that’s the promise of the new Realme C65 5G. It sports a design language that’s all too familiar with Realme smartphones, a camera that can handle most things in daytime, an industry-first chipset, and an affordable starting price of Rs 10,499. But haven’t we seen all this before?

DESIGN

The Realme C65 5G bears a striking resemblance to new Realme P1 5G. It sports the same feathered back design, has flat sides and sits in the hand exactly like the P1. In fact, even the dimensions and weight are fairly similar with a 190g footprint and 7.89mm thickness. But there are some subtle changes. The SIM card tray has moved to the top, and the headphone jack finds its way to the bottom of the frame.

Realme C65 5G has a plastic body, which is what we expect at this price point, but it one-ups the competition with its IP54 rating. Most other smartphones in this range either skip the protection, or are capped at IP53. One thing that’s comparable with others in this price range is the side-mounted fingerprint scanner. It’s quick, responsive, and placed perfectly so my thumb landed on it each time without fail.

DISPLAY

The Realme C65 5G has a 6.67-inch IPS LCD panel, but strangely enough, Realme has degraded the resolution from its predecessor. The C55 had an FHD+ resolution, but the new C65 maxes out at HD+ (720x1604p). Realme does compensate the panel by giving a 120Hz refresh rate, which feels smooth while swiping and scrolling through the UI and other apps. It boasts a peak brightness of 625 nits, with no problem using the device indoors. But if you’re stepping out during the day with the sun at its peak, don’t expect to see much on the screen. It really struggles under direct sunlight. 

I can’t complain about the multimedia experience, however. There’s only a single bottom-firing speaker, but it gets loud enough. And if you still have a few wired headphones lying around, the 3.5mm audio jack is sure to elevate your experience. 

PERFORMANCE

The Realme C65 5G comes with an industry-first MediaTek Dimensity 6300 chipset, and it bulldozed through everything in its way. My review unit comes with 6GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB UFS2.2 storage; in my opinion, this is the only combination you should think about buying. Realme also offers 4GB+64GB and 4GB+128GB variants, but those variants can’t really compete with modern-day smartphone requirements.

During my testing, I played a few light games, browsed through social media, streamed a couple of football matches live on it as well, and never once did I feel like the phone was slowing me down. Don’t expect this to compete with smartphones priced higher, but in its category and price range, the Realme C65 5G punched well above its weight. Even in the sweltering heat, the Realme C65 5G didn’t get uncomfortably hot, and always maintained a pleasant surface temperature.

The 6GB RAM variant can also get virtual RAM expansion, effectively doubling it to 12GB, and the difference was visible while I was playing around with it.

CAMERA

The Realme C65 5G features a familiar circular camera island design at the rear. The main camera is a 50MP sensor with an f/1.8 aperture, paired with a 2MP secondary shooter. On the front is an 8MP shooter. The numbers are decent, and so is the performance. During daytime, I managed to get well-exposed shots with great colour reproduction. Surprisingly, close-up shots exceeded my expectations. But once the sun started going down, as did the image quality. There was a visible amount of noise, and I had to try a few times to get the shot I wanted. The front camera shots were nothing to write home about either.

Click here to see the camera samples.

BATTERY

Smartphones in this price range normally have good battery lives, owing to big capacities, frugal processors and displays that aren’t super bright. That’s what works for the Realme C65 5G as well with its 5000mAh battery. I am a heavy user and during my testing, the phone easily managed to last the entire day. If you’re a light user, be prepared for 1.5 days battery with ease. However, it’s a different story when it comes to topping it up, as the 15W charger, which comes in the box, takes well over 2 hours to take this phone from 0-100.

SOFTWARE AND UI

This is where most Realme phones lose the plot, and that’s what’s happening here as well. There are lots of pre-installed apps on the Realme C65 5G, and while you can uninstall them, the experience isn’t the best. What’s good is that it comes with Android 14 out of the box, and Realme has promised 2 years of OS updates as well as 3 years of security updates.

VERDICT

At a starting point of Rs 10,499, the Realme C65 5G manages to do more than what I expected of it. There are obvious caveats here, most notably the software experience and the charging speed. But none of these are deal-breakers. So, if you’re shopping for a great smartphone around Rs 10,000 and you want great 5G performance, then you should definitely consider the Realme C65 5G. Just make sure you opt for the 6GB RAM and 128GB storage variant.

 

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