Realme 14 Pro+ Review After 7 Days! *Not For Everyone*

Hey guys, so this is the realme 14 pro plus. You might recognize it as the color-changing phone. My Instagram page is full of people putting this phone in ice and cold water. Apart from its unique design, I believe the realme 14 pro plus is a good overall package under 30,000 rupees. But it's not all great here. There are a few things about this phone that's just like a B or B minus. So let me break down all of that for you guys. The good, the bad and the ugly aspect. Okay, let me start with this color-changing design. Here, realme has included something called thermochromic pigments on the back panel which picks up blue hues as the temperature drops. So when you put this phone in water below 16 degrees or place an ice pack on it, the blue color starts looking darker. But at the same time, I found this to be a bit of a gimmick over time. It was interesting to me at first but now I just don't care about it at all. Plus what I will say is this is a really solid design. It feels much better than last year's realme 13 pro plus or even Xiaomi's redmi note 14 pro plus for that matter. It's more premium and robust at the same time. It is military standard 8n edge compliant and realme claims that it is shock resistant. So even if you do this, chances are this phone is not going to shatter. Plus you get all kinds of IP ratings here. IP66, IP68, IP69 which is a first in realme's mid-range phone by the way. So that is nice too. I just wish this screen had stronger gorilla glass victus 2 protection instead of gorilla glass 7i. But other than that, I won't really complain. I actually think that this is the most premium looking phone under 30,000 rupees right now. The display on this thing is nice too. The color reproduction, the touch response and everything is really good. You get high pwm dimming, the 120 hertz refresh rate works well and the higher 1.5k resolution makes everything look sharp and crisp. It's 1200 nits of high brightness means that it's bright enough in indoors as well as outdoor conditions too. So visibility is not a problem here either. The only issues I found here are number one, there is no HDR video playback support on OTT platforms and number two, HDR videos on YouTube don't appear as bright. Just look at this video playback comparison between the realme 13 pro plus and the realme 14 pro plus. I am sure you can spot the difference right away. Now I know this is something that can be fixed with updates but I have already received about two updates on this phone after I have started testing it. So I hope third time's the charm. And talking of updates, I think realme needs to step up a bit. Maybe follow nothing or oneplus's paths and provide at least three years of updates on their number series. Right now they are only offering two years which is a bit less for a phone that costs 30,000 rupees. Good thing is that it boots on android 15 unlike the redmi note 14 pro plus but still I think they can do better. Here I found the realme ui 6 to have a bit smoother transitions and a bit of visual change here and there but at the same time the bluetooth situation remains the same. There are some that cannot be uninstalled at all so what you can do is disable them that way you will not have to deal with the unnecessary notifications. Moving on, over the years realme's number series have become more design and camera focused and performance is not really something they shine at. I mean the snapdragon 7s gen 3 for 30,000 rupees. I mean yes it is an improvement over the snapdragon 7s gen 2 but this chipset is clearly not meant for gaming. For instance the realme 13 pro plus could barely provide 30 fps in games like genshin impact in high settings but the realme 14 pro plus can reach about 45 fps. Similarly you can get slightly better fps in pubg as well with the phone remaining considerably cool but that is all the performance that you can expect from this phone. I have even noticed slight lags while opening app folders and a hint of delay while opening and installing apps sometimes. So if you're someone who prioritizes performance over everything else this is simply not the phone that you should get. Instead you can go with options like the realme gt 60 or the nord 4 with snapdragon 7 plus gen 3 or the poco f6 with the snapdragon 8s gen 3 but if you don't care about the fastest performance so much and you want something that is a good camera phone instead the realme 14 pro plus is actually the best option for the price. Especially while clicking portraits its 3x periscope lens does a nice job of handling skin tone and highlights on the face. I even compared it with last year's 13 pro plus and realme has indeed optimized the camera for portraits slightly better. You can see better details and exposure management with the 14 pro plus so that is nice. Realme has also included something called a color spectrum sensor here which in a simple sense helps manage white balance in images. Now I have clicked more than 100 photos from this phone and I wouldn't say it does a fantastic job because the white balance is off sometimes but that said the images have good color reproduction and sharpness so I won't complain. I even shared some of its samples on social media and people had good things to say about it too. The primary lens does a fantastic job during night time too. The images have nice details, the exposure management is good so nice shots even at low light conditions. Likewise the selfies look decent too. There is a little bit of sharpening being done but the skin tone and background looks nice so no complaints there as well. But what I will complain about is the ultra wide camera. I mean the realme 14 pro plus is not a performance centric smartphone I get that but I think if you're not focusing on one aspect you need to make other things better. Like Thanos said so yeah realme could have definitely given a higher resolution ultra wide angle sensor here so that the camera performance was more versatile. As things stand this measly 8 megapixel sensor is the reason number one you are getting average ultra wide angle images during daytime as well as night and number two you cannot shoot 4k videos with it so every time I am shooting a nice 4k video from the primary camera and I want to switch to the ultra wide I have to shoot at 1080p. Also the snapdragon 7s gen 3 does not support 4k 60 fps recording so the max you can shoot from the main and front camera is 4k 30 fps. The quality of the 4k 30 fps videos are nice and stable with good exposure management. There's a bit of a movement wobble but nothing significant. The videos come out quite nice from this phone. Okay lastly I have a few more things to cover like the battery life. The realme 14 pro plus has a huge 6000 milliamp hour battery and even on heavy usage I have been easily getting over 8 hours of screen on time with this phone so easily 1.5 days of battery life plus it charges pretty fast like within 55 minutes with its 80 watt charger. Likewise I forgot to mention earlier but this phone has a good stereo speaker setup along with crisp and punchy haptics thanks to its x-axis vibration motor. It is not Oppo's ohaptics technology like you get with realme's GT series so you don't get feedback when interacting with all the UI elements but it is impactful enough so I will not whine about it so much. So overall the realme 14 pro plus is definitely not the most balanced mid-range phone mainly because of its average performance and a lack of a good ultrawide lens but I think this is a great option for someone who likes flaunting a nice design and wants good camera for shooting portraits and selfies. It also has a good battery backup and an excellent display for the price so overall it's not an overpriced phone like we saw with the redmi note 14 pro plus but at the same time I think realme could have become the king if they had provided at least a better chipset here that would have really killed the oneplus nord 4 and the motorola edge 50 pro like in every aspect. Alright everybody that was all for my full review of the realme 14 pro plus let me know in the comments below if you have any questions about this device and while you're there don't forget to subscribe to our saying this I'm Pratima Adhikari and thank you so much for watching.