Realme Narzo 60 5G First Impressions: Enough of an Upgrade?

The Realme Narzo 60 5G arrives more than a year after the launch of its predecessor, the Narzo 50 5G. Given the long gap, we expected it to pack in some serious upgrades over the previous model like its more expensive sibling, the Narzo 60 Pro 5G (First impressions). The new phone gets a brand new design which closely follows the Realme 11 Pro series, however, not much else seems to have changed on the inside. I've spent a few hours with it, so let's take a closer look at what's new.

About that design, the Realme Narzo 60 5G has seen a big jump in terms of quality. It no longer feels like a budget device but more like a mid-range smartphone. The Cosmic Black finish that I received has a flat chiselled appearance, with a flat rear panel and mid-frame which are made out of polycarbonate.

The Realme Narzo 60 5G has been given a complete overhaul in terms of design, compared to the previous model

Holding it up, it's really hard to tell that this is a budget device until you press the power button and light up the display. This is when you will notice an abnormally thick chin at the bottom, which kind of ruins the otherwise modern appearance of the phone.

Thankfully, the 6.43-inch SuperAMOLED, full-HD+ display is of the hole-punch variety and does not sport an ugly water-drop style notch. The display has shrunk a bit from last year's 6.6-inch panel, but has the same resolution and 90Hz refresh rate. Realme claims that the display now uses a new "diamond pixel arrangement" which according to the brand improves its PPI, making content appear sharper.

The massive, yet flattened, circular camera bump on the Realme Narzo 60 5G only holds two cameras, out of which, just one is accessible to the user. This would be the 64-megapixel primary camera, which seems like an upgrade over last year's 48-megapixel shooter. The second camera seems to be a monochrome sensor for gathering depth data when using portrait mode. The selfie camera has been upgraded to a 16-megapixel shooter from last year's 8-megapixel camera.

The Realme Narzo 60 5G has two rear-facing cameras

As for the processor, it has been upgraded to a MediaTek Dimensity 6020, which is a fairly new SoC compared to the Dimensity 810 in the previous model. However, a closer look at its specifications and it's easy to tell that there isn't much of a difference between the two, however, I will reserve my final opinion after putting it through its paces in our review.

Realme ships the Narzo 60 5G with Realme UI 4.0, which is based on Android 13. The phone does come with several preinstalled third-party apps and plenty of bloatware. Realme has thankfully retained the 5,000mAh battery which still supports 33W fast-charging. You also get a 33W charger in the box.

Here's what you get in the box of the Realme Narzo 60 5G 

While I expected features such as stereo speakers and an IP rating to show up on this year's Narzo number series model, there's really not much happening with the Narzo 60 5G save for its overhauled design. The rise in price seems to be justified given that the base variant, which is available at Rs. 17,999 comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, compared to 6GB RAM available in last year's top-end model. Given that this segment is still quite competitive with smartphones from iQoo, Vivo and OnePlus at the top, it will be interesting to see how this new model holds down the fort.