The 108MP Realme 9 is a pixel-packing smartphone bargain

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Another haul of bargain-tastic phones are Europe- and UK-bound, courtesy of Chinese budget experts Realme. The global versions of the Realme 9 and Realme 9 5G have been revealed alongside the brand’s first tablet in the West, the Realme Pad.

We were recently impressed by another 9-series phone – the Realme 9 Pro+, probably the best camera phone you can buy at its price. The newly announced 9 and 9 5G cost a bit less than the Pro+ though, starting at £249.

Starting with the vanilla Realme 9, its 108MP rear camera introduces a shiny new Samsung sensor. It’s arriving in Quality Street Toffee Penny yellow colours (or Sunburst Gold, as Realme prefers us to call it), and is one of the lightest phones around. It weighs in at 178g, and measures 7.99mm thin.

The rest of the Realme 9’s specs are pretty tasty for the price. It’s got a Full HD, 6.4in AMOLED screen protected by Gorilla Glass. It gets bright at 1000 nits, and has a smoother 90Hz refresh rate. Add an in-display fingerprint sensor, huge 5000mAh battery, Snapdragon 680 chipset and 8GB RAM into the mix, and it’s easy to excuse the lack of 5G when you get change from £250.

Connectivity conundrum

The Realme 5G is a little less impressive than the vanilla Realme 9 if you ask us, despite its superior power and faster mobile data speeds.

It’s loaded up with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G, 4GB RAM and either 64GB or 128GB storage, which is fair enough. But it misses out on the under-display fingerprint scanner in favour of a side-mounted power button combo. The 50MP Samsung JN1 sensor is also less of a headline grabber.

Most notably, the 9 5G’s 120Hz screen is an LCD panel, and there’s no ultra-wide camera. Still – 5G. Hurrah? Hmm.

Big screen, small price

The final Realme reveal is the new Pad Mini, an HD tablet that sports a slender 7.59mm thin profile, stereo speakers, and an 8MP camera that should do just fine for basic snaps.

It’s powered by a Unisoc T616 processor, and is set to cost €179.99 (roughly £150) in Europe. To us that looks like a challenge to Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets, seeing as it ships with full-fat Google Play Store goodness.

While a UK release date and price is yet to be confirmed, you can be sure it’ll be affordable when it eventually lands here.