Realme Narzo 70 Turbo review: a stylish, affordable gaming device

The Realme Narzo 70 Turbo is the brand’s latest entry in the sub-Rs 20,000 market and is another performance-centric offering that’s aimed towards gamers. Realme’s equipped the phone with some pretty nifty gaming-oriented features like GT Mode, a 6,050 sq. mm vapour chamber, and a ProXDR OLED display. That’s not all there is to it, as the phone delivers on other essentials like battery life, decent charging speed, and satisfactory cameras. I’ve been using the phone for some time now, and I’ll walk you through what day-to-day life looks like with the Narzo 70 Turbo. 

Verdict

The Realme Narzo 70 Turbo delivers solid performance for everyday tasks and gaming, offers good battery life, fast charging, and a vibrant display. Its cameras perform well in daylight, although low-light shots could use improvement. If you’re after a phone that delivers satisfactory all-around performance under Rs 20,000, the Realme Narzo 70 Turbo is a good option.

Design and display

The Realme Narzo 70 Turbo comes in three colours: Turbo Yellow, Turbo Green, and Turbo Purple. I received the Yellow variant, which the brand says is Motorsport inspired. I personally think it resembles Bumblebee from Transformers, with a yellow middle band and black bands towards the sides.

The camera module is a square in the top centre with a grey band around its perimeter. The volume and power buttons are on the right side, and surprisingly, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, along with a speaker. At the bottom, you’ll find the SIM tray, Type-C port, and the second speaker grille. With an uncommon IP65 rating, the phone offers decent protection against water and dust. 

As for the display, it flaunts a 6.67-inch OLED panel with FHD+ (1,080 x 2,400p) resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and an impressive 2,000nits peak brightness. Realme’s OLED display delivers vibrant colours, and its typical 600nits brightness is great indoors, while the peak brightness is perfect for outdoor visibility. I didn’t encounter any legibility issues in my use both indoors and outdoors.

I compared the Realme Narzo 70 Turbo’s display with the CMF Phone 1 and iQOO Z9s, both of which feature AMOLED panels, and found the experience to be quite similar. The Realme display is slightly more vibrant, but there’s no major difference between them. In any case, you’ll be happy with the screen quality. I also tested the rainwater touch feature, and it worked as expected, very useful if you find yourself in the rain!

Cameras

The Realme Narzo 70 Turbo comes with a 50MP AI camera and a 16MP front snapper. Daylight shots are satisfactory, offering good detail, sharpness, and a wide dynamic range. The colours are slightly boosted, giving images a vibrant, social media-ready look. Its low-light performance isn’t its strong suit, with softer images lacking the same detail as their daylight counterparts.

Selfies come out well, with accurate skin tones and decent detail, though the skin texture can sometimes appear a bit smooth. Video recording is decent for the price, with the rear camera supporting up to 4K at 30fps. There’s no OIS, so video stability isn’t the best, and it’d be good to keep expectations in check.

Daylight

When comparing the daylight shots between the Realme Narzo 70 Turbo and CMF Phone 1, a few differences stand out. The Realme Narzo 70 Turbo produces more vibrant images with better clarity. Its dynamic range is also slightly better, showing no noise in darker areas, which the CMF Phone 1 struggles with.

The iQOO Z9s’ images appear soft, even without zooming in, and lack the same level of detail. Overall, the Realme Narzo 70 Turbo clearly delivers sharper and more detailed shots in daylight than the iQOO Z9s.

Portrait

In portrait shots, both the Realme Narzo 70 Turbo and CMF Phone 1 handle edge detection well, though the Narzo 70 Turbo has a slight edge. Both phones preserve skin texture, but the Realme’s image has better colour balance, while the CMF Phone 1 boosts contrast too much, affecting the skin tone.

Comparing the Realme Narzo 70 Turbo and iQOO Z9s side by side, there’s a clear difference in colour science. The iQOO Z9s produces more vibrant portraits, with slightly better skin texture reproduction and clarity. It also captures skin tone better than the Realme Narzo 70 Turbo.

Selfie

In selfies, the CMF Phone 1’s skin tone is more accurate in comparison to the Realme Narzo 70 Turbo, which adds a slight red hue to the skin. The former also has better skin texture reproduction and a clearer image, which becomes apparent once you zoom in. 

The iQOO Z9s takes very soft selfies, with muted details and a smoothed-out skin texture, when compared against the Realme Narzo 70 Turbo, the differences are very apparent. 

Low light

In night shots, the Realme Narzo 70 Turbo offers more accurate colour reproduction compared to the CMF Phone 1. The CMF Phone 1, however, delivers clearer images, especially when you look at details like the tree leaves. That said, the Narzo 70 Turbo handles exposure and lens flare better.

When compared to the iQOO Z9s, the story is similar. The iQOO Z9s produces sharper images but goes overboard with colour correction, turning the night sky into an unnatural deep blue. The Realme Narzo 70 Turbo strikes the best balance for colour accuracy among the three phones.

Performance

Realme highlights performance as one of the key strengths of this smartphone, so it’s only natural we thoroughly test it out. Let’s talk a little about the specifications first. The MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Energy SoC powers the phone along with up to 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. The phone is quite smooth in day-to-day use and I didn’t really encounter lag in my usage. Regular tasks like social media, YouTube streaming, and browsing the web were a breeze on this phone. In performance benchmarks, the device delivers great scores that position it alongside segment leaders like the iQOO Z9s, Vivo T3, etc. 

We also tested out the phone using popular titles like COD: Mobile and BGMI to gauge its gaming prowess. Realme claims the phone can deliver 90FPS in some popular games, and the ones I mentioned before are supported. While we did not manage to achieve the golden number “90,” you can easily expect 80+ FPS in both these titles at their “Low + Ultra” and “Smooth + Extreme+” graphical settings, respectively. Do note that you’ll need to turn on GT mode to squeeze out these numbers.

If you’re a gamer, you’ll be very happy with the phone’s gaming performance. There’s a large vapour chamber at work too, which helps bring down internal temperatures while gaming. The device logged an increase of 20.8 degrees Celsius for 1.5 hours of gaming. The phone gets fairly warm, despite the large vapour chamber. 

Software

The Realme Narzo 70 Turbo runs on Realme UI 5.0 based on Android 14 right out of the box. It comes with multiple Hot Apps folders filled with games you probably won’t play, which can take a bit of time to remove completely. There are also plenty of pre-installed apps, making the app drawer feel cluttered, but you can uninstall most of them. The UI is well-optimised for the 120Hz refresh rate and includes a range of smart features, such as a File Dock, floating windows, and Windows Link.

The AI Smart Loop is a new feature that helps you quickly share text and images across supported apps by dragging, selecting, and dropping them. You also get Air Gestures, which can help you perform basic functions like picking up or hanging up an incoming call hands-free, although I don’t find it too practical. The smartphone promises 2 years of OS upgrades and 3 years of security updates, which is standard at this price point. 

Battery and charging

A standard 5,000mAh battery powers the Realme Narzo 70 Turbo with 45W fast charging support. In our PCMark battery benchmark, the phone lasted around 9 hours and 34 minutes, a score that’s a little behind its peers with the same battery capacity. For instance, the Realme 13+ which features the same chipset, also has a similar PCMark score of 10 hours and 37 minutes, which could mean the battery optimisation needs a little more work. Going by real-world usage, the device registered a total battery drain of 22 percent in 2 hours of heavy use, which includes gaming and streaming.

The battery drain is slightly lower compared to its peers, so you can expect a regular screen-on time of around 5-6 hours on moderate usage levels. The phone has a 45W fast charger included in the box, and it takes 64 minutes to charge the device completely from 20 percent battery capacity. The charging speed is on par with other competitors and decent enough for its price bracket.

Final verdict

The Realme Narzo 70 Turbo comes in three variants: 6GB+128GB, 8GB+128GB and 12GB+256GB, which are priced at Rs 16,999, Rs 17,999 and Rs 20,999, respectively. At its price, the key competitors of the device include the CMF Phone 1 (review) and iQOO Z9s (review). Both phones pack the same Dimensity 7300 chipset, so their performance is similar. The CMF Phone 1 has a unique design and customisable rear panels, along with a clean stock Android experience, while the iQOO Z9s offers a bigger battery.

Where the Realme Narzo 70 Turbo scores is its overall performance, especially for everyday use and gaming. It also offers good battery life, fast charging, and a capable display. The cameras deliver satisfactory results in daylight, although low-light shots could be better. If these features appeal to you, it’s definitely a choice worth considering under Rs 20,000.

Editor’s Rating: 7.5 / 10

Reason to buy:

Reasons not to buy: