realme Book Unboxing and First Impressions: The New Laptop Choice?

realme is officially entering the notebook market in the Philippines with the realme Book. As their first notebook to launch last month in India, it comes with a good list of specifications such as a 14.0-inch 2160 x 1440 IPS display, Intel 11^th Generation CPU, plenty of USB-C ports, and 65W PD charging.

realme Book – Unboxing

The realme Book’s box feels familiar but veers away from the traditional yellow coat that we expected from the brand. Contained within is the laptop itself, a USB Type-C to Type-C cable, a 65W PD wall adapter, and documentation.

A Premium Aluminum Chassis

realme’s first notebook is clad in a slim, 1.9mm aluminum shell, which feels solid and premium to the touch. It doesn’t feel cheap and it does feel rather hefty despite only having a 14.0-inch frame. The only branding outside is a simple realme logo on the shell of the display.

Opening the notebook reveals a butterfly-style 60% backlit keyboard and a rather large trackpad underneath. At the top-right hand side is a power button with a fingerprint scanner for Windows Hello. realme has also removed some of the partner branding found on other notebooks for a much cleaner overall design.

3:2 Display with Minimal Bezels

The notebook is veering away from the standard 16:9 display and instead using a screen with a taller 3:2 aspect ratio. Resolution has been increased as well to 2160 x 1440, which presents more pixels compared to the 1920 x 1080 notebooks we find in the market.

realme has also shaved the screen’s bezels to only 5.3mm at the sides and 8.45mm at the top to achieve 90% screen-to-body ratio, which is higher compared to the MacBook Air M1 (2020) of only around 79%.

The realme Book’s display is fairly good given our brief time with it. Colors are decent and everything looks crisp thanks to its higher resolution. The panel does lack anti-glare coating but fortunately, its brightness is strong enough to reduce any reflections.

Up-to-Date Internals

Inside the realme Book’s chassis is Intel’s 11^th Generation Tiger Lake CPUs. Two variants will be available: a Core i5-1135G7 model and a Core i3-1115G4 variant. Both models will come with 8GB LPDDR4x RAM and 256GB and 512GB of SSD storage, respectively.

The Core i5-1135G7 we have for review come with all the latest connectivity available for laptops such as a Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C port and a USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port. It’s also nice to see a trusty USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-C port on the realme Book as well as a 3.5mm audio jack. As for wireless connections, the i5 model comes with WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.

What Else Is There?

The realme Book also comes with a couple more extras, which includes a speaker system tuned by Harman Karon and dual microphones with noise cancellation courtesy by Elevoc Vocplus.

Charging is done via its USB Type-C port at the side and supports 65W PD charging. The brand estimates its battery to last around 11 hours while watching 1080p videos or 8.5 hours in a regular office day.

First Impressions

We’ve only had a short time with the realme Book but it like it can deliver a premium experience thanks to the combination of its aluminum chassis and 14.0-inch 2160 x 1440 display while performance is decent thanks to its updated internals.

We’ll keep testing the brand’s first notebook in the coming days and reserving our full opinion until its review embargo is lifted.

realme Book Price and Availability

realme Book Review: A Solid Notebook for the Price

The realme Book will be launched in the Philippines on September 23, 2021 alongside the realme GT Master series. You can watch the launch via realme Philippines’ official Facebook page or YouTube channel.

realme Book Specifications