With the advent of the Internet of Everything era, entering the PC field has become an indispensable part of mobile phone manufacturers’ transformation of IoT and building a complete ecosystem. Not long ago, Realme also launched its first notebook Realme Book, all of which are set at a price of 4000-5000 yuan, and there are many highlights such as 2K productivity screens and CNC drilling and cutting fuselages. In this issue, let’s take a look. As a young brand that has performed extremely well in the mobile phone market recently, can realme bring the same surprise experience this time?
Design
The realme Book uses an aluminum alloy body, and the metal A surface with precision sandblasting is simple and elegant. The realme mirror LOGO is placed on the left side of the A surface, which is full of texture and comfortable to the touch.
Realme Book uses a 14-inch 3:2 ratio 2K screen, which can display more vertical content than the traditional 16:9 ratio, bringing higher efficiency for browsing and office. The camera is directly above, and the screen ratio reaches 90%, which is in line with the overall screen design trend of the mobile phone industry. The 8GB memory version we got this time is a standard mirror screen, and the 16GB version is a glass full-fit mirror screen.
The body of the realme Book uses CNC diamond cutting technology. The edge of the C-side feels relatively round. This is very good. The thin and light books of many big manufacturers at the same price still have a cut feel.
The keyboard supports three levels of backlight, the key travel is relatively short at 1.3mm, but the rebound force is not bad. The sliding feel of the touchpad is acceptable, and the area is relatively large. It supports multi-finger gesture operation driven by Windows Precision. The power button integrates the fingerprint unlock function.
The opening and closing angle of the shaft is relatively close to 180°, which can meet the daily use of most users. There are two USB-C ports on the left side of the machine, both of which support PD charging, and the one near the shaft is the Thunderbolt 4 protocol. It is not like some notebooks in the same price range. It is equipped with the 11th generation Intel Core™ i5 processor but is simply equipped with a Thunderbolt interface. It is also worthy of recognition. On the right is a USB-A and 3.5mm headset interface.
Realme Book is pre-installed with a genuine Windows 10 operating system and Office software, with a built-in TPM 2.0 module, and will also support free upgrades to Windows 11 in the future. Microsoft officially announced that from October 5, 2021, eligible Windows 10 PCs will be upgraded to Windows 11 for free. In addition to the excellent experience brought by the realme Book itself, Windows 11 will also bring a brand new Windows experience, aiming to bring users one step closer to what they love.
In general, the realme Book continues its consistent design concept for mobile phones, with an appearance and texture that surpass the same level in the price range, and the thickness of 14.9mm and the weight of 1.38kg also make it easy to carry.
Hardware
Realme Book is equipped with the eleventh generation Intel® Core™ i5-1135G7 processor, the architecture code is Tiger Lake-U, 4-core 8-thread, 8M L3 cache, and the acceleration frequency can reach 4.2GHz single-core and 3.8GHz full-core. The CPU-Z single-core/multi-core test results are comparable to the seventh-generation desktop-level Intel® Core™ i7-7700K high-end processor, which is already very powerful for a thin and light office laptop.
The memory is a dual-channel 8GB Samsung LPDDR4x 4266MHz high-frequency specification, reading and writing are higher than 60,000 MB/s, and the performance is excellent. Since the nuclear display uses memory as video memory, and DDR4-3200 memory is still commonly used in thin and light books at the same price, realme Book using high-frequency memory will have more advantages in graphics performance.
The graphics card is the eleventh generation Intel® Core™ i5-1135G7 integrated Intel® Iris™ Xe high-performance graphics card, with 80EU (GPU-Z misidentified as 96EU) and an acceleration frequency of 1300MHz.
In the Time Spy test representing DX12 game performance, realme Book scored 1580 points, which was significantly higher than the average score of the same processor and core display, which shows the importance of high-frequency memory to the performance of the core display.
The panel model identified by the screen according to AIDA64 is P140ZKA-BZ1 from Chimei (Innolux), with a resolution of 2160×1440, supporting 100% sRGB, 330 nits brightness, 8bit color depth, 1500:1 contrast, and a native response time of about 30ms. Very good standard among the thin and light notebooks in the same class.
The hard drive is a 512GB Samsung PM991a, which is a mid-to-high end PCIe3.0x4 solid-state drive. It has an excellent performance in both continuous read and write speeds and random read and write speeds.
Realme Book has a built-in 54Wh battery. In the PCMark 10 modern office test, the total battery life can reach 8 hours and 50 minutes.
It is worth mentioning that Realme Book is also a notebook certified by the Intel® Evo™ platform, which means that it supports Thunderbolt 4, wake up in seconds after opening the cover, and Intel WiFi6 wireless network card, especially when it is not plugged in, it can still maintain office performance. Not all notebooks equipped with Intel processors can do this.
We use CineBench R23 to test the rendering performance under power and battery power respectively. It can be seen that there is almost no difference in performance scores between the two. The realme Book, which is powered by battery only, still scores high scores of single-core 1339cb and multi-core 5494.
Gaming Test
Although the realme Book is biased towards office positioning, since it performs so well in the benchmark test, you might as well take a look at how it performs in several online games.
First of all, in the “League of Legends”, even if the 2K resolution and the highest picture quality are full, it can guarantee that the laning period will not be less than 100 frames, and the team battle can basically be maintained above 80 frames, and the performance can be said to be quite smooth.
In the more stressful 3D FPS game “CS:GO” (default high quality, as shown below), Realme Book has an average of 44 frames at 2160×1440 resolution, and at 1050P resolution, it can still guarantee smooth games at around 70 frames.
In “The Original God”, after repeated attempts by the author, I set it to the default picture quality + 1440×900 window mode, and it can run stably to 50-60 frames in most scenes.
In general, Realme Book is still a battle if we want to play some mild online games and entertainment while we are in office.
Multi-screen
As a mobile phone brand, realme’s important purpose for entering the notebook field is naturally to create a unified and complete IoT ecosystem, and cross-screen interconnection is an indispensable part of it.
Realme Book has a built-in cross-screen interconnection client. After the mobile phone turns on the cross-screen interconnection, you can pair and cast the screen when you are close to it. It supports Realme GT, Realme GT Master series, and other models equipped with Realme UI 3.0 and ColorOS 12 in the future.
After the mobile phone screen is cast, we can use the mouse and keyboard to operate the mobile phone on the computer screen. Pictures, videos, and documents of the two pieces of equipment can be transmitted across screens through simple drag and drop operations.
At the same time, the message notification and clipboard between the two devices can also be interconnected, which doubles the efficiency of a multi-device office.
Cooling & Dismantling
Use AIDA64 to perform a 30-minute CPU stress test at a room temperature of about 25°C. The realme Book’s CPU temperature finally stabilized at 66°C, the power consumption was 21W, and the frequency was 3.82GHz, which is a full-blooded performance. At the same time, the surface temperature is very low, the highest temperature is less than 40°C, and the high-frequency operation area such as WASD and arrow keys is only about 30-32°C, and the noise performance is also very low.
At the same time, we also carried out CineBench R15 continuous 30 rounds of tests. In addition to the 927 points of the first trigger of the short-term turbo frequency, the follow-up can also stably keep floating between 753-849, and the continuous high-load scene performance is stable.
Next, let us take a look at the inside of the notebook. The disassembly of the realme Book is very simple. You only need to remove the visible screws on the surface to open the bottom cover. There are no screws hidden in the footpads, but a Torx screwdriver bit is needed. We can see that the area of the air inlet on the D side is still relatively large.
Realme Book’s internal workmanship and wiring are regular, which is no less than the standard of first-tier manufacturers. The heat dissipation specifications are dual fans and dual heat pipes, and both heat pipes are very thick, which is considered a more luxurious heat dissipation specification in thin and light notebooks. At the same time, the soaking plate also covers the southbridge and the power supply, and the heat pipe adopts a semi-black design (to facilitate the heat dissipation from the fan). The two detailed designs also help the heat dissipation of the whole machine.
In general, the realme Book’s heat dissipation material is sufficient, and the actual performance and temperature performance are also very stable. But for users with higher performance requirements, it is a pity that its default performance release is relatively conservative. According to experience, this set of heat dissipation has at least the potential to solve the power consumption of 28-35W, and the realme Book does not provide a higher performance mode to allow the Xe core display to be more fully utilized, and there is no unique version that can be selected.
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Verdict
Realme Book is the first show of realme in the PC field. It has a price that is close enough to the people. In terms of appearance, workmanship, screen, performance, heat dissipation, and many other aspects, it has brought dazzling performance beyond traditional brand products of the same level. Based on the basic experience, it has quite strong strengths. With the continuous enrichment and improvement of the cross-screen interconnection ecosystem in the future, it is believed that realme’s notebook products can gain stronger market competitiveness. For the actual purchase, it is recommended that you buy the 16GB version. On the one hand, the price difference is not big, and the fully-fitted screen will make the texture of the whole machine a new level.