In case you missed it, narzo has stepped away from the shadows of realme to become its own smartphone brand. It also recently introduced the newest addition to its entry-level lineup: the narzo 50i Prime.
For under P5,000, narzo’s latest offering promises users an affordable device that is loaded with must-have mobile features and reliable performance.
Sounds promising? Let’s see how the narzo 50i Prime fares in the real world and whether it’s a real value-for-money smartphone.
Design & construction
The narzo 50i Prime has a very on-trend form factor: boxy with rounded corners and a large camera module at the back. Our Dark Blue unit looks clean and sleek, but it’s also available in a fresh Mint Green colorway.
It has a professional, no-nonsense look that’s easy to like. This smartphone is light to carry at 182g. Still, it feels solid to hold and easy to handle at only 8.5mm thin.
All buttons are well-placed on the right side of the phone. It’s a little disappointing that this phone still uses a microUSB port, but can be forgiven at this price point. There’s also a 3.5mm audio jack, although you don’t get free earphones in the package. There’s also no power brick bundled with the device, only the charging cable.
Display & multimedia
The 6.5-inch display uses an IPS LCD panel with a 720 x 1600 resolution—typical of phones at this price point.
Text appears clear and readable and viewing angles are good. Meanwhile, pictures and videos are not that crisp and vibrant but still good overall.
Camera
The narzo 50i Prime comes with a single 8MP camera at the back, which churns out decent snapshots under good lighting conditions. The resulting photos appear clear but a little more sharpness can’t hurt. The colors also look a bit muted. Images taken in low-lit scenarios are okay for the most part and some noise is expected.
For videos, the max resolution is 1080p at 30fps. The main camera can adjust brightness accordingly but it sometimes has a hard time focusing on the subject.
In front, the 5-megapixel camera takes good selfies in favorable lighting conditions.
Performance
We didn’t expect much from this phone in terms of performance so it was quite a surprise that it was able to handle heavy and high-resource graphics-intensive games like Call of Duty: Mobile and Mobile Legends. You will start to see some slowdown when running multiple demanding apps simultaneously but that’s expected.
The narzo 50i Prime is powered by a Unisoc T612 processor on a 12nm octa -core node and 3GB of RAM.
If you plan to get this phone, you need to prepare to spend extra on a microSD card for additional memory space. That’s because out of the box, the narzo 50i Prime only has 32GB of internal storage and apps and games can easily fill that up. Thankfully, it has a triple card slot to accommodate 2 SIM cards and the external memory card.
This phone runs on realme UI based on Android 11. It’s the R Edition so some features like Game Mode or Split Screen will not be available.
A 5,000mAh battery keeps the lights on for this phone. When fully charged, it can last over two days of basic use (Wi-Fi/mobile data on, texts and calls, social media, and Web browsing; 50% screen brightness). Charging from below 20% to 100% can take up to 3 hours max.
Speed says
All things considered, the narzo 50i Prime brings decent specs and performance at an affordable price point. It’s a good buy for first-time smartphone owners, students, light users, and those on a budget. While the display and camera are nothing to write home about, they’re pretty much par for the course. On the upside, overall performance is decent and the large battery capacity is a big plus.
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