The Realme 3 Pro, the company’s latest — and most specced-out — Android release on the market, is here, and it has impressed us greatly so far.

The phone starts at P12,990 (roughly $248 converted) in the Philippines for the base model with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, while the 6GB/128GB variant is priced at P14,990 ($286) — with an option to get it through Home Credit’s six-month loan plan with 0% interest. It comes in Carbon Gray, Nitro Blue, and Lightning Purple color variants, and is available at all Realme kiosks and stores nationwide.

SEE ALSO: Realme 3 Pro review: Pro performance and features for less and Android Q on the Realme 3 Pro: How to install, 1st impressions

We’ve published our full review recently. Today, we’re going to look at the prospect of using the Realme 3 Pro as a mobile gaming device and highlight the features that make it a must-consider option for discriminating gamers at this price point. Let’s start with the headline feature — that Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 inside the Realme 3 Pro that’s optimized for performance and efficiency.

Best of both worlds

The Snapdragon 710 sits above Snapdragon 600-series chipsets and below the flagship Snapdragon 800 lineup. It’s aimed at providing midrangers with top-shelf features, including a better image-signal processor that has advanced noise reduction and AI functionalities baked in as standard.

On top of that, it is built on a 10nm process. That translates into better power efficiency without compromising on speed, multitasking, and gaming. It uses an Adreno 616, GPU, which is 35% faster than the Adreno 512 graphics mated to the Snapdragon 660, and pairs two Cortex-A75 cores with six Cortex-A55 cores for less intensive tasks, for a total of eight.

In effect, this means the Realme 3 Pro is a real joy to use, with plenty of power to provide a fluid experience and run demanding titles like PUBG Mobile and NBA 2K19 at high settings by default. You can check out our gameplay video below to see how well this phone handles some of our favorite Android games.

Gaming on the Realme 3 Pro: PUBG Mobile, NBA 2K19 (5:58 mark), and Mobile Legends (10:46)

For benchmarks, we used the GameBench Community app, which is free to download from the Google Play Store, to get real-time frame rates. And the results didn’t disappoint. The Realme 3 Pro delivers between 50 and 60 frames per second when playing NBA 2K19 and Mobile Legends at the highest graphics settings, while PUBG Mobile runs at a solid 30 frames per second at high detail levels.

Extended gaming, short charging

The Realme 3 Pro has a 4,045mAh battery that provides us with up to two days of mixed usage without reaching for a charger. It’s also notable that the battery life is great when the phone is used for gaming.

If you play a match in Mobile Legend’s 5-on-5 mode, you lose roughly 6% of battery at max detail with High Frame Rate mode enabled, which is impressive, considering a typical match lasts for around 20 minutes. Playing PUBG Mobile at the High graphics preset for 30 minutes eats up about 8% of charge.

In addition to a smooth, responsive experience, gaming on the Realme 3 Pro doesn’t drain the battery the way most other phones at this price point would, and we think it’s an important distinction to make.

When it’s time to plug in, the 20-watt VOOC 3.0 fast charger that’s included in the box half-fills the battery in 30 minutes. A full charge takes approximately 80 minutes — still impressive.

Built for play

To provide smoother graphics performance and minimize visual interruptions on the screen while playing, the Realme 3 Pro comes with a gaming mode called Realme Game Space, which optimizes more than 40 popular games such as PUBG Mobile and can be toggled from the dedicated app on the home screen.

Some, not all, games will be automatically added to Game Space, but you can add practically any app you’ve downloaded or remove entries as you see fit.

From the Game Space app, you can block incoming calls and mute notifications for uninterrupted gameplay. You can also toggle between Balanced Mode and Competitive Mode, which prioritizes bandwidth for multiplayer games over background apps and optimizes system resources to ensure smoother visuals.

Nice and responsive touchscreen

Lower-priced devices typically make the biggest sacrifices in the screen department, but not the Realme 3 Pro. It is fronted by a nice 6.3-inch LCD touchscreen display with a small notch at the top and slim bezels along the sides.

The screen is quite tall in 19.5:9 aspect ratio and reasonably high res. Color accuracy is good, contrast is decent, and it can get pretty bright for outdoor viewing in lots of natural light. Text is rendered well, while 1080p videos look great.

It’s perfectly fine for gaming, too, big and sharp enough, and while you can’t expect a flagship-matching display with a high refresh rate at this price, it certainly does the job. If you’re going to be using this screen for touch controls, you’ll be pleased with how smooth the rounded front glass feels and how responsive it is to pressure.

Handling

Finally, there’s handling, which is often overlooked but no less important with respect to mobile gaming. The Realme 3 Pro feels nice to hold and handle, sporting a glass-like 3D curved back panel that reduces the chances of your hands cramping up when playing for extended durations in landscape mode.

After using the phone for a while, we can say that the Realme 3 Pro offers a great physical experience that also allows the internals to truly shine.

With the newest Realme 3 Pro, the company has shown its prowess to challenge the way we think about midrange handsets. Sure, plenty of them are affordable and have attractive designs, but so few of them can actually rival their top-tier counterparts when it comes to gaming performance.

If you’re after one of the best gaming handsets you can buy right now without burning a hole through your wallet, the Realme 3 Pro is definitely worth serious consideration.

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