major smartphone brands like Xiaomi

 We have seen how major smartphone brands like Xiaomi diversified their product portfolio to stay relevant in the tech space and grow their business. Realme is poised to give some competition to Xiaomi by aggressively venturing into audio, television and now into the laptop space. Presenting the Realme Book Slim, the company’s first laptop on offer.

As the name suggests, the Realme Book Slim is quite slim and lightweight, with 14.9mm thickness and weighing only 1.38kg. The notebook is well crafted with an aluminium alloy body, perfected with CNC milling, sandblasting and anodising to give it a smooth matte finish. The build quality feels premium for this range of a notebook. The device is available in two variants, one with a 11th Gen Intel Core i3 and the other with Core i5 processor and both variants are available in two colours — Real Blue and Real Grey. The laptop ships with Windows 10 pre-loaded and is eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 11 once it rolls out early next year. This review is based on the i5 model that we received.

The Realme Book Slim i5 variant includes one Thunderbolt 4 (USB 4), one USB Type-C (USB 3.2 Gen 2), and one USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 port along with a 3.5mm audio jack. The i3 variant loses the Thunderbolt port and instead houses a second USB Type-C 3.2 Gen2 port. The notebook uses a 14-inch 2k (2160 x 1440 pixels) IPS full screen with 3:2 screen ratio, making it a tall display, unlike the common 16:10 or 16:9 wide screens. This aspect ratio makes it optimal for Microsoft Office documents, which is probably the best use scenario for this notebook. Being an IPS display, it offers a wide viewing angle of up to 170 degrees. The screen offers 100 percent sRGB colour gamut and 400 nits of peak brightness.

The device uses a backlit keyboard with three levels of brightness and provides 1.3mm key travel for excellent feedback. The keys are large and spaced for comfort. A large trackpad complements the keyboard and a fingerprint sensor on the power button makes signing in fast and easier with Windows Hello. The i5 version sports Intel Iris Xe onboard graphics, while the i3 variant features Intel UHD graphics. Both the variants support up to 8GB LPDDR4x RAM. While the i5 model ships with a 512GB PCIe SSD and features Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, the i3 variant houses a256GB SSD and incorporates Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.1 for connectivity.

Coming to sight and sound, the device houses an HD camera and offers DTS stereo sound delivered by two Harman speakers. The device offers dual mic noise cancellation for calls, making it perfect for online meetings and classes in the current work-from-home scenario. The speakers deliver excellent sound output during multimedia playback and meetings. The laptop is powered by a 54Wh battery and ships with a 65W power adapter. This switching power supply is compatible with 30W Dart Charge, making it unnecessary to carry an extra charger for your compatible smartphone while on a trip. Realme claims up to 11 hours of battery life, and the device offered close to that during our review. The fast charger delivers 50 percent charge in 30 minutes. Though the notebook is not likely to be used in video editing or gaming, Realme has designed a dual fan ‘Storm Cooling System’ with dual heat pipes of 8mm and ultra-thin high-speed fans. The fans always ran quietly during our tests, without making their presence evident.