realme narzo 50A Prime Review Philippines: Form Over Function?

realme narzo 50A Prime Review Philippines: Form Over Function?

narzo 50A Prime Review Philippines

Review Verdict: Despite a striking design, the narzo 50A Prime falls short in terms of price-to-performance in the Philippines. It does not help that the vanilla narzo 50 offers better value for a few thousand Pesos more. 

Pros

  • Clean design
  • Great battery life

Cons

  • Not the best processor choice
  • No wall charger included

realme narzo 50A Prime Review Philippines Specs

  • Unisoc T612 processor
  • 4GB LPDDR4X RAM
  • 128GB internal storage
  • 6.6-inch Full HD+ IPS display
  • 50-megapixel f/1.8 main camera with PDAF, 2-megapixel f/2.4 macro camera, 2-megapixel f/2.4 mono camera
  • 8-megapixel f/2.0 selfie camera
  • 4G, LTE
  • WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, side-mounted fingerprint scanner
  • 5000mAh battery
  • 18w wired charging
  • Android 11, realme UI R edition

narzo 50A Prime Review Philippines

Aside from the narzo 50, realme also has a narzo 50A Prime that positions itself between the narzo 50A and narzo 50i. At under Php 8k, the narzo 50A Prime is going against a tough budget crowd–but does it make the cut?

Packaging and Contents

The phone comes in a simple blue box with narzo branding. Inside, you’ll find the unit itself, a USB-C cable, SIM ejector tool, and documentation. Making the narzo 50A Prime’s packaging strange is that you don’t get any charger–you’ll have to supply that yourself instead.

narzo 50A Prime Review Philippines

Design

The narzo 50A Prime keeps it sleek with its smooth back panel. The camera bump is quite large, and part of the area has a starburst finish, giving the narzo 50A’s back panel a two-tone look.

Unlike the more expensive narzo 50, the 50A prime has a sleek and slim overall design with flat edges similar to the latest iPhones. This gives the Narzo 50A prime an even more premium look.

The volume rocker and SIM card tray are located on the left side, while the power button–which doubles as a fingerprint scanner–is located on the right side. At the bottom, you have a USB-C port, loudspeaker, and headphone jack.

Display

The narzo 50A Prime has a 6.6-inch screen with a Full HD+ resolution (2408×1082), a 90.7% screen-to-body ratio, and a 180Hz touch sampling rate. While the screen is not stellar in any way and is far from an OLED display, we’re glad to get a Full HD+ resolution on the narzo 50A Prime.

With a huge screen, watching movies or playing games are more entertaining. There is no need to worry about the picture quality, the IPS LCD screen is able to produce good colors and sharp details.

Like the narzo 50, you get a single bottom-firing speaker on the narzo 50A Prime. Overall audio fidelity is passable for a budget device, though you’ll have to manage expectations when it comes to cranking up the volume.

narzo 50A Prime Review Philippines

Cameras

The narzo 50A Prime’s triple rear camera setup is similar to the narzo 50, though the depth sensor is downgraded to a paltry 0.3-megapixel sensor. Despite using the same 50-megapixel sensor found on the narzo 50, photos taken on the narzo 50A Prime are not as great–it’s hard to get a bright and well-detailed image, especially in low-light situations, and you need to have a steady pair of hands to avoid blurred images.

The same can be said with the front camera, which is an 8-megapixel shooter. It’s hard to take detailed photos and it struggles in low-light scenarios. Typical with budget phones, you’ll have to manage your expectations in taking decent shots with the narzo 50A Prime.

 

Internals and Battery Life

Powering the narzo 50A Prime is a Unisoc T612 processor that is paired with 4GB RAM and 128GB internal storage. The T612 performs lower than the two-year-old Helio G80 and G85 when it comes to GPU performance, making the chip not suitable for heavy gaming.

Because of its modest internals, the narzo 50A Prime uses an R Edition of Android 11-based realmeUI. This basically means that the realmeUI version used on the narzo 50A Prime is toned-down to make it smooth and optimized despite the low-end internals.

You get a 5000mAh battery inside the narzo 50A Prime. We got a score of 21 hours and 10 minutes in PCMark’s battery test, which is very good for a budget phone. While you don’t get any charger, it’s nice to know that the narzo 50A Prime supports up to 18w wired charging.

narzo 50A Prime Review Philippines

Wrap up and Conclusion

Despite offering a promising spec sheet, the narzo 50A Prims is in a tough spot in the budget segment in the Philippines due to its processor of choice. We have yet seen a Unisoc processor that can go head-to-head against chips from more established brands like Qualcomm and MediaTek, and the narzo 50A Prime’s rivals offer a better set of internals for roughly the same price.

If you are a fan of the narzo series, you’re better off going for the narzo 50 that offers a better set of internals for a few thousand pesos more.

narzo 50A Prime Review Price Philippines

The narzo 50A Prime has a price tag of Php 7,999 in the Philippines. You can get one on Lazada or Shopee.

 

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