Verdict: The Realme 7 VS POCO X3 NFC camera matchup shows just how much software and the chipset of a phone contribute to overall image quality. The Realme 7 has bright images that are oversharpened to make them pop, while the POCO X3 NFC has more natural-looking images at the expense of detail.
Before you dive into this camera comparison, please read our first hardware head-to-head with the POCO X3 NFC and the Realme 7 article first, here.
We’ve already gone through exhaustive detail on how the Realme 7 and its current mid-range rival, the POCO X3 NFC stack up to one another in terms of hardware, and today we’ll be taking a look how the cameras of both phones compare to one another.
The POCO X3 NFC and the Realme 7 are interesting phones to put against each other because both have the same image sensor in their main camera. Both phones sport Sony’s new 64-megapixel IMX682 sensor in an f/1.8 aperture lens.
The supporting camera stack is a little more varied though. The Realme 7 has an 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera, 2-megapixel macro camera, and a 2-megapixel black and white camera for portraits.
The POCO X3 NFC meanwhile, has a slightly better wide-angle 13-megapixel camera, and also comes with a 2-megapixel macro, and 2-megapixel depth camera.
Let’s take a look at the photos:
We commented back in the POCO X3 NFC VS Realme 6 camera comparison article that POCO’s offering artificially boosts both contrast and saturation to produce a more vivid image.
That’s still true in this photo comparison, but it looks like Realme also took the same route, though with worse results.
We earlier mentioned in our Realme 7 review that the phone had a tendency to overboost and oversharpen photos, which makes them look a little unnatural.
While that makes them pop in Facebook and social media, people looking for a more accurate representation of the photos they take might want to go with the POCO X3 NFC instead.
The upside to that is that you do see more detail in the photos with the Realme 7 because of how the phone handles the exposure VS the POCO X3 NFC.
The higher resolution wide-angle snapper of the POCO X3 NFC does result in better images since you’re seeing more detail in the shot.
There are times where the image processing of Realme results in a better shot, like this one of the Meerkat, but those times are rare.
When it comes to portraits the Realme 7 looks to have a more convincing Bokeh effect, and like previous images taken with the main shooter, saturation and brightness are boosted at the expense of color accuracy.
The POCO X3 NFC has a 20-megapixel selfie unit, while the Realme 7 has a 16-megapixel selfie shooter. Selfies taken with either phone look good, regardless of the resolution, though again images taken by the Realme 7 look artificially boosted – the POCO X3 NFC looks to have more accurate colors here.
As for as low-light performance is concerned, Realme has a bit of a small lead here VS the POCO X3 NFC, as the over-boosting on their photos finally pays off here.
Wrap-up and conclusions:
While both phones use identical sensors, the photos produced by both phones are drastically different.
The POCO X3 NFC produces better and more natural-looking photos compared to the Realme 7, which is saying something, as the phone tends to produce images that are already a bit oversaturated as it is, as seen on our previous Realme 6 VS POCO X3 NFC camera comparison article.
We’ve already commented on how artificial the images produced by the Realme 7 look thanks to aggressive over-sharpening and you can really see that in the images we shared above.
While some people generally like the photos produced by the Realme 7 over the POCO X3 NFC because of the details that pop, I personally prefer with more natural-looking photos as I can always edit them to have them pop more later.
The Realme 7 retails for Php 14,990 for the 8GB/128GB variant, while the POCO X3 NFC retails for Php 12,990 for the 6GB/128GB variant.
