realme 14 5G Review

We’ve witnessed how the realme 14 Pro+ 5G performed last month. From its innovative color-changing rear panel, capable triple camera setup, to solid performance.

And today, realme is now unveiling the more affordable sibling. Let’s all find out what’s special with this newest addition to the realme 14 lineup.

Design and Construction

Starting with design, the realme 14 5G is drastically different from the Pro series. 

If you were to recall the design of the realme 14 Pro+ 5G which we have reviewed earlier this year, it shows a circular camera module, exuding a more premium look. Turning to the realme 14, it showcases a mecha design in silver colorway.

It has a futuristic look that gives more appeal to gaming. Let’s see if it holds up to that area later on.

Looking for other designs? Thankfully this model is also available in two other colors: Storm Titanium and Warrior Pink. 

These other options are more minimalist in terms of the design at the back panel, unlike this the silver colorway as it features a bit of geometric elements aside from having the brand’s moniker at the lower right.

The realme 14 5G is quite big to grip, but is lightweight, weighing only 196 grams.

For buttons and ports, the power button, which pops in a saturated orange tone, and volume rocker are placed on the right side of the phone, while the other side remains neat. At the bottom, you’ll see the type-C port, speaker grill, and SIM card slot. Up top, you’ll find the microphone and the other speaker on the earpiece.

For biometrics, the phone supports both facial and fingerprint recognition. They both register quickly, but for a better and secure protection, I always use the in-display fingerprint sensor.

There’s also a pulse light… or what they call the Victory Halo Light. This new light feature lights up depending on the current operation. For example, it lights up when you’re charging, playing a game, flipping the phone, alarms, and including notification. For added layer of protection, the realme 14 has an IP69 rating, making it resistant to water and dust.

Display and Multimedia

Moving on to the display, the realme 14 5G sports a 6.67-inch AMOLED display running at a smooth 120Hz refresh rate. Navigating from one task to another feels buttery smooth, especially when I’m reading some news, skimming posts on socials, and while playing games.

I find the upper and lower bezels a bit thick, but not to the point that it gets distracting.

And talking about our viewing experience, the phone has a nice balance of colors, deep blacks, and contrast. The realme 14 5G delivers a nice and smooth experience when we were watching music videos and movies. Honestly speaking, we’re satisfied with how I used it everyday and using it outdoors didn’t become a problem to me, thanks to its peak brightness of 2,000nits.

And if you were to ask me about the audio, it’s definitely, featuring a 300% speaker volume, but to be frank, it lacks clarity and bass in this department. When you put the volume to the max, it really deteriorates the sound quality. But having it at 150% to 200% volume level, you can achieve a decent audio experience on its dual speaker.

Cameras

Now, let’s talk about the camera. Don’t be fooled by the lenses of the realme 14 5G, it only carries a 50-megapixel main shooter with OIS and the other one here is unknown to us. realme only mentioned the primary camera, but we’re presuming that this is either a depth or a monochrome sensor. The main lens is placed in a rectangular island together with the sensor, LED flash, and pulse light.

Up front, the selfie camera is a 16-megapixel with a f/2.4 aperture. Both cameras do capture nice images and videos. We took a lot of snaps in a bright and dark setting, and glad to say, it performed well. Although, just a heads up, if you’re planning to shoot up to 5X zooms, the image quality starts to degrade by that point.

Nonetheless, we loved how our photographs turned out well. After the image processing, you can see the amount of colors and clarity enhancement were at a nice level.

Aside from enjoying the cameras, you can also use AI on your images. There are AI Erase and AI Remove Reflection that work smoothly; you can also use AI Clear Face by enhancing your face textures even; and if you have blurry photos, it has an AI Unblur feature. So, less hassle when composing your images.

The rear camera can shoot up to 4K at 30fps maximum, while the selfie camera can shoot up to 1080P at 30fps.

For those who are looking for the sample shots and clips, check the gallery below

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering the realme 14 is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 chipset configured with 12GB of RAM and another virtual RAM of up to 14GB with 256GB of internal storage.

Using it as a daily driver, it handled a lot of tasks pretty well. Jumping from one app to another was smooth and opening a lot of apps didn’t make it lag at all. Playing games such as Mobile Legends and Honor of Kings, both ran well. Everything is maxed out, set at a higher graphics, and it just played smoothly.

For graphics-intensive titles, we tried playing Zenless Zone Zero. We did experience a bit of stutter at a low to mid-level graphics, but it was still manageable. 

With the help of GT mode, it boosted the phone’s performance, but power consumption increased in this mode, so the battery drained a lot faster. 

So, to get a stable, consistent frame rate, we had to keep the graphics settings low. We did notice a slight heating as time passed by from continuous consumption, but it’s not that big of a deal.

Now, for our benchmark tests, it did score over 700k on Antutu with the rest of our benchmark tests shown below.

OS, UI, & Apps

The realme 14 5G is running on the latest Android 15 skinned with realme UI 6.0 on top. The UI is nice and easy to navigate. You can find all the AI-powered editing features I said earlier, like the AI Erase, AI Clear Face, and AI Unblur feature.

You can also customize your widgets and app icons through the system. Yes, you can find some bloatware apps here and they could be a little bit distracting, but again, you have the option to have them removed by simply uninstalling them.

The realme 14 5G also has AI Summary and Circle to Search feature which makes life easier if we’re doing tasks that can be done with these helpful features.

As for update policy, we don’t have any official information about the software support for now. But on a historical basis, realme usually provides two to three years of software updates.

Battery and Connectivity

Jumping onto the battery, the phone has a large 6,000mAh unit with support for 45W wired charging. Using it for the entire day didn’t let us down. The battery has kept up with all the activities we’ve gone through, and we even used the realme 14 5G to do some of our tasks. 

For those who wonder how many hours can the phone last, in our PCMark battery test, the phone lasted 18 hours and 38 minutes. That’s from 100% to 20%, and after that, the phone gave me about 6 to 7 hours to completely drain the unit, on regular use, of course.

With its bionic cooling system, you can use the phone while scrolling through apps and playing games without the fear of it heating up. And with the addition of bypass charging, it can help reduce the device temps and enhance the battery life span for longer usage.

But again, it will still depend on the user’s lifestyle or case use.

Conclusion

To wrap this up, the realme 14 did a good job. We were able to use it for daily grind like scrolling through media, watching our favorite movies and music videos, checking mails, reading news, and playing games.

Although some may find the camera and audio a bit lacking due to absence of a telephoto nor an ultrawide, it was still able to produce decent quality outputs and solid performance.

All I can say is that the realme 14 can be your daily buddy.

realme has officially launched the realme 14 Series 5G in the Philippines today, April 29, 2025.It is now available in stores and online with a starting price of PHP 14,999.

realme 14 5G specs:
6.67-inch AMOLED display, 120Hz refresh rate
2000-nit local peak brightness
Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 4
Up to 12GB RAM
Up to 512GB storage
Rear Camera:
– 50MP f/2.65 periscope (Sony IMX882), OIS
– Monochrome Sensor/Depth Sensor
16MP selfie shooter
Dual nano-SIM
5G, 4G LTE
Bluetooth 5.2
USB Type-C
Under-display fingerprint sensor
IP68 / IP69 dust and water resistance
Dual stereo speakers
realme UI 6.0, Android 15
6,000mAh battery 45W charging (wired)
196 grams (weight)
Mecha Silver, Storm Titanium, Warrior Pink (colorways)