The realme 16 Pro+ 5G was introduced in the Philippines late last month, along with the rest of the realme 16 Series 5G. The highest-specced variant of the latest realme number series doesn’t disappoint as far as its camera goes.
But it was announced to come with a hefty PHP 43,999 price tag for the lone 12GB+512GB memory configuration. The realme 16 Pro+ 5G does have a premium-looking design and comes with a premium camera, but is it worth the beyond PHP 40K pricetag?
realme 16 Pro+ 5G Review
Full Specifications
| Display | 6.8-inch FHD+ curved AMOLED 144Hz refresh rate |
| Processor | Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 |
| GPU | Adreno 722 |
| RAM | 12GB |
| Storage | 512GB |
| Rear Camera | 200MP main (Samsung HP5, 1/1.56-inch, OIS) 50MP 3.5x telephoto (OIS, up to 120x zoom) 8MP ultrawide |
| Front Camera | 50MP (4K Video @ 60 fps) |
| Battery | 7000mAh80W Ultra Charge |
| OS | realme UI 7 (Android 16) 3 years of OS upgrades 4 years of security patches |
| Colors | Master Gold |
Unboxing Experience
Unboxing the realme 16 Pro+ 5G was quite straightforward. It gets the usual inclusions that you expect from a realme device, like a silicone case, 80W wall charger, and USB-A to USB-C cable.
Surprisingly, though, it is no longer in the iconic realme yellow box. Instead, it has a silver box with the brand on the upper right, a blue AI logo on the upper right, and 5G at the lower bottom. The center is the 16 Pro text, which immediately catches your attention, as it should.
If this is where realme will be moving forward, I’ll miss the yellow box. It just stood out and had the personality of realme as a brand. The silver box, though, looks elegant and is a more fitting box for the very stylish realme 16 Pro+ 5G.
Build and Design
The realme 16 Pro+ 5G is designed in collaboration with Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa. In the Philippines, the device comes in Master Gold, which is said to be inspired by nature and combined with metallic elegance and dubbed “Urban Wild Design”.
The back panel uses Bio-based silicone and has a nice textured feel. This is definitely eye-catching and absolutely stunning. This, coupled with the glossy gold finish on the side and the camera module, which the company calls Metal Mirror Camera Deco, makes it look so premium and elegant.
The bio-based silicone back is among my favorite finishes in the back panel of current smartphones because it is very easy to grip and doesn’t even attract fingerprints at all.
What attracts fingerprints, though, is the camera module, as it is a glossy metal. I mostly used it with the silicone case, thus helping avoid fingerprints on the sides, leaving the camera island the only glossy element exposed. Quite unfortunate, but its aesthetics, for me, trump the hassle of cleaning the island every so often.
The realme 16 Pro+ 5G is built around a 6.8-inch FHD+ curved AMOLED with a 144Hz refresh rate, which I will get to later in this review. This makes it pretty average in this era of smartphones, and one I really can’t complain about.
The buttons of the device are found on the right-hand side of the display, while on the bottom are the USB-C port flanked by the microphone and SIM card tray on the left and the speaker grille on the right.
If you use the phone without the case, the buttons aren’t quite as tactile because of their slim pill-shaped design, brought about by the slim sides of the curved panel.
Multimedia Experience
The realme 16 Pro+ 5G is built around a 6.8-inch FHD+ curved AMOLED panel with a 144Hz refresh rate. I’m not the biggest fan of curved displays, and it’s pretty much the same for this device. Based on my experience, there are some accidental touches in everyday use. It also makes it harder to interact with UI in video games that sit on these curved edges. This, of course, is a personal preference.
The faster 144Hz refresh rate on the panel is just fun and gives a more premium experience. This, coupled with the stereo speakers, makes watching videos fun and immersive. However, I wish the secondary speaker could have been a separate speaker on top of the device rather than sharing the earpiece.
That said, though, I think the audio quality is pretty average, which is neither here nor there. If you want more sound, the realme 16 Pro+ 5G features Ultra Volume, allowing you to boost the volume up to 300%.
Performance
Under the hood, the realme 16 Pro+ 5G is equipped with a Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset that handles all the processing. There is also only one memory configuration at 12GB RAM and 512GB storage, which I think is a good sweet spot for a mid-range device.
Before I get to my experience, I’ll share the results of the realme 16 Pro+ 5G in a variety of benchmarks like the overall AnTuTu and PCMark, CPU-oriented Geekbench, and GPU-centered 3DMark. I’ve matched it with devices within its price range and released within the previous year.
Given the price of above PHP 40K, I think realme could’ve offered a bit higher chipset like a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 or similar. However, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 is still a pretty capable chipset.
The Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 pretty much handled all the games that I threw at it pretty well. This includes Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Honor of Kings, Call of Duty Mobile, Honkai Star Rail, and Genshin Impact.
Clearly, it aced the first three at max settings with no hiccups. This was even at longer play sessions. These are also titles that support high frame rate gaming.
I was able to play Honkai Star Rail at the highest graphical settings, but I definitely felt the device heat up a bit during longer play and farming sessions. Although it could also be the hotter temperatures that we have now, coupled with me using it with the included silicone case.
The same could be said for Genshin Impact. So if you’re planning to play the two HoYoverse titles in longer sessions, I suggest playing them at Medium. I’d rather lower the resolution if it means less overall heating.
Camera
Now I get to what I consider the highlight of the realme 16 Pro+ 5G, aside from its design, of course. As the top-specced member of the latest realme number series, it’s no surprise that its camera system shines through.
It boasts a LumaColor camera system headlined by a 200MP Samsung ISOCELL HP5 sensor. The main camera is joined by a 50MP 3.5x telephoto lens that offers up to 120x SuperZoom and an 8MP ultrawide snapper.
If you’re curious, LumaColor handles matching color and brightness data, and it ensures that skin tones look natural and that the lighting between the foreground and the background is balanced.
The LumaColor system and the main shooter are such a good combination. I think it also does such a clean job of distinguishing the foreground from the background to create stunning portrait shots.
The 3.5x telephoto lens gives the realme 16 Pro+ 5G more flexibility when taking your shots. Especially since it also has 120x Super Zoom. I didn’t quite use it for everyday shots, but I saw myself using it more to take photos of the moon. There is more AI processing with SuperZoom, understandably, which is why I specifically used it to take shots of what I couldn’t with my current device and my own camera.
The last of the camera system is the 8MP ultrawide lens. It simply allows you to get more of the landscape or the setting. But aside from that, it’s a pretty solid shooter.
Rounding it out, the camera system of the realme 16 Pro+ 5G is a 50MP front lens that offers shooting at 0.8x, 1x, and 2x. If you’re like me and still prefer to take selfies with the front camera, this is a very practical option to have. Sometimes you just want a tighter shot for a selfie, and sometimes you just want to have a bit more of what’s behind you or friends in your photos.
If you want to see some of these photos in full, I’ve uploaded them here.
Battery
The realme 16 Pro+ 5G is equipped with a large 7000mAh battery and supports 80W Ultra Charge.
Before I get to my real-life experience, here are the results of running it through the PCMark Battery Test. It runs the device through continuous simulated tasks, including scrolling through websites, video editing, and watching videos until the battery hits 20%.
In case you’re curious, I ran the test three times, one for each of the display modes of the device – Adaptive, High, and Standard.
| Display Mode | Time |
|---|---|
| Adaptive Refresh Rate | 24 hr 13 min |
| High (144Hz) | 23 hr 11 min |
| Standard (60Hz) | 24 hr 49 min |
My experience with the realme 16 Pro+ 5G felt pretty close to the benchmark results. I mostly used the device in Adaptive mode to get a good mix of a smooth viewing experience and a bit more battery life than the High refresh rate mode.
In case you do want to fully drain the battery, charging the device from 0% to 100% with the included 80W Ultra Charge charger took about an hour, which, in all honesty, isn’t that bad.
Software and AI
On the software side, the realme 16 Pro+ 5G runs on realme UI 7 on top of Android 16. realme has committed to 3 years of Android updates and 4 years of security patches, which is pretty average.
realme UI feels very familiar if you’ve used ColorOS or OxygenOS before, and that’s not a bad thing. Aside from the bloatware that realme UI gets out of the box, there’s a lot to love and appreciate about realme UI 7.
On the surface, the level of customization that you get and the amount of tuning you can do to get your UI to where you want it from the get-go is actually amazing. It’s among my favorites in Android skins.
Meanwhile, deeper in, there’s a plethora of AI features. This includes features that help make your photos a bit more creative and cleaner, with features like AI Glare Remover, AI Ultra Clarity, AI Eraser, AI Recompose, and AI Edit Genie 2.0, to name a few. Additionally, it comes with other features like AI Recording Summary, AI Outdoor Mode, and AI Translate.
AI Edit Genie 2.0, in particular, is pretty fun to use, allowing you to choose between AI LightMe, AI StyleMe, and AI Inspiration. AI LightMe changes the lighting in your photos.
AI StyleMe, on the other hand, gives you options to change the styling of your photos by changing the seasons or totally changing it by making it into a Modelling Photoshoot, 3D Emoji, or Cartoon Shot. Lastly, AI Inspiration runs the photo through AI, and it gives you what it thinks it can change to improve the photo. If you don’t quite like its idea, you can type in your own request.
These AI features are things that you can totally miss out on if you don’t like tinkering with your shots, but I think they’re quite fun to give your social media posts some personality.
The other AI features are also polished, like AI Eraser and Remove Reflections, or AI Glare Remover. Making these features actually usable rather than gimmicky.
Verdict
To answer my question at the beginning of this review, is the realme 16 Pro+ 5G worth it? I think it will depend on your use case.
If you’re mainly looking for a high-performance device for gaming or other more demanding tasks, I think there are better devices that offer stronger performance at this price point, as seen in the benchmarks.
However, if you’re looking for an overall solid daily driver and coming from devices two or three years back, this could be worth checking out. Even more so if you’re specifically looking for a device that can take stunning photos to capture your favorite moments, either for your personal album or for your social media.
And I think that’s where the realme 16 Pro+ 5G really shines, its camera, as it is still a member of the realme number series. The LumaCouple technology and the 200MP main camera, I think, are enough to at least give it a try when you can at the physical stores and see if it suits your needs. Let’s not forget the variety of AI features, allowing you to polish your photos and even give them a different flair on top of other AI-powered features.
Then there’s the large battery and 80W Ultra Charge support. Its durability throughout an average day makes it an optimal option as a solid daily driver.
The PHP 43,999 price tag doesn’t make it the most affordable device, but the design, cameras, and AI features are unique enough to make it stand out in the pretty crowded mid-range market.
If you’re interested in checking the realme 16 Pro+ 5G and the rest of the series, visit the official realme Shopee and Tiktok.
Ram found his love and appreciation for writing in 2015 having started in the gaming and esports sphere for GG Network. He would then transition to focus more on the world of tech which has also began his journey into learning more about this world. That said though, he still has the mentality of "as long as it works" for his personal gadgets.
