After testing the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G for about two weeks and using the smartphone, I can confidently say that this is probably the best price-to-performance ratio you can get in the market right now. For a ₹ 34,999 price tag, this smartphone takes the fight to devices that are twice its price or even more!
iQOO has launched yet another smartphone with an outstanding price-to-performance ratio. The iQOO Neo 7 Pro comes as a smartphone centered towards the mobile gamers out there. The smartphone promises a lot. For example, one of the best gaming experiences with the help of an independent gaming chip, a premium AMOLED display, and more. The iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G is the "Pro" variant of the iQOO Neo 7 that was launched earlier this year, which itself had a gaming DNA.
So how much of an upgrade does the iQOO Neo 7 Pro offer in terms of the premium we pay on the device? How much of a difference does this secret Independent Gaming Chip offer? And finally, is the smartphone worth the ₹34,999 starting price? Let’s find out!
DESIGN
Design wise, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro looks very similar to its younger sibling, the iQOO Neo 7. The smartphone has a similar shape with the flat screen and a curved back. We also get the same square-ish dual tone camera module and a similar edge-to-edge hole-punch display. However, there are more premium touches here and there.
First and foremost, the vegan leather back panel, which we only get in the orange colour. While I’m not sure if I like the colour, the vegan leather back provides a very premium in-hand feel. The orange is a bit too bright for my liking, but the golden hints here and there go with the orange colour well. We get a golden frame, the iQOO logo is golden on the back panel, so the colour combination is nice, but we aren’t sure how many people will prefer this over more traditional colours.
The weight of the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G is also pretty good. The smartphone is lightweight at just 197 grams, which makes it easy to carry and hold on to, for longer gaming sessions. Overall, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro has a very familiar design, which is very similar to its younger sibling, the iQOO Neo 7.
DISPLAYComing to display, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G uses a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with an FHD+ resolution. The display on this smartphone is pretty much the same as the one on the iQOO Neo 7, so the experience is also similar. The FHD+ resolution is pretty much standardised in this segment with most devices having similar resolution. Here, we get a 1080 x 2400p resolution, which makes for a 381ppi pixel density. The detail and sharpness is as good as any other smartphone in this range.
While in terms of details and sharpness this display fares well, it does feel slightly dull in terms of the vibrancy and brightness as compared to some of the competing devices. For example, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro’s display isn’t as bright as competing devices like the OnePlus Nord 3 5G, which showed a maximum brightness of 868 nits in our Lux Meter test. The iQOO Neo 7 Pro showed a maximum luminance of 707 nits, which is even below the slightly cheaper Poco F5.
However, luminance is not everything. In terms of colour accuracy, this display is right up there with the competition. The iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G showed very impressive colour accuracy in our testing. The smartphone showed a brilliant DeltaE of 1.5 in the colour checker analysis in sRGB colour profile, which is too good for a smartphone. DeltaE signifies the error in the colours on a display, which means the lower it is, the better. For perspective, a DeltaE of under 4 is considered good for smartphones.
Even in the grayscale test, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G showed impressive results in the sRGB profile. Here, the RGB balance is very good and even with an Average Gamma of 2.27 and an average DeltaE of 1.7.
In DCI-P3 tests also, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G performed well, but the results weren’t as great as the sRGB colour profile. In the colour checker analysis, the smartphone showed an average DeltaE of 3, which is again pretty good, but since lower is better, it doesn't seem as good as the 1.5 DeltaE in the sRGB colour profile. It is also important to note here that the DCI-P3 tests were ran in the “Bright” colour profile on the smartphone, so we are not sure if it was actually the P3 colour profile.
Overall, this is a brilliant display. Yes, the display doesn’t seem as bright and as vibrant when put next to smartphones like the OnePlus Nord 3 5G, the Oppo Reno 10 Pro, or even the Poco F5, but the colour accuracy is brilliant, the responsiveness with the 120Hz refresh rate is absolutely slick, and we get nice and sharp details on this AMOLED panel. Good stuff.
PERFORMANCE AND BATTERYComing to performance, this is where iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G feels the most at home. The smartphone comes with Qualcomm’s second-latest flagship chip, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 paired with up to 12GB of RAM. Further, we also get an “Independent Gaming Chip,” which acts as a secondary chip that supports the SD 8+ Gen 1 to offer a more seamless and smooth gaming experience, without putting much stress on the main chip.
The Independent Gaming Chip (IGC), is basically a hardware solution for frame rate interpolation, where the smartphone forces extra frames in games to be able to offer the highest possible FPS for a longer period of time. While there is no way to test this IGC independently, the gaming experience on the smartphone felt super smooth. I played games like Call of Duty: Mobile and Battleground Mobile India on the iQOO Neo 7 Pro, and the experience was nothing less than absolutely slick.
During my gaming sessions, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G kept the frame rates constant and the gameplay was absolutely smooth even on the highest graphics and frame rate settings. It did heat up a bit during long gaming sessions, but never was it “too hot to handle.” One thing I’d like to mention again here is that the weight of the smartphone made the gaming experience more than comfortable and I was able to hold on to the smartphone for long hours without things getting uncomfortable. Coming to benchmarks, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G, as expected, left the competition in the dust with some of the highest numbers we have ever seen on any mid-range smartphone. The iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G easily sets a new performance benchmark in this segment, coming above some of the most powerful smartphones in this range. Devices like the OnePlus Nord 3 5G and Poco F5, which were some of the top performing devices in this range now don’t seem as astonishing after the iQOO Neo 7 Pro’s numbers.
On AnTuTu, the smartphone gave an impressive score of about 1.23 million, which is not only the highest in the mid-range segment, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G also beats some flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S23 series, the Vivo X90 Pro, and even the iQOO 11, which is iQOO’s flagship for this year itself. This just proves how good of a performer the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G is.
On Geekbench, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G scored 1723 points in the single-core test and 4430 points in the multi-core test, which is again one of the highest in its segment and even above a few flagships of this year. Impressive. On PCMark Work 3.0, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G’s performance wasn’t up to the mark. The smartphone scored 11485 points, which is very good, but not the highest we have seen in the mid-range.
In GPU-based benchmarks also, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G leaves the competition in the dust. In fact, the smartphone punches above its weight here as well, with a 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme score of 2661 points, and the highest GFX Bench scores in the tests we ran on the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G.
So the performance of the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G is the best we have seen on a mid-range smartphone in a long time. It not only beats its competition by a margin, but takes the fight to the flagships of today with a solid performance across benchmarks and GPU tests. Brilliant stuff.
The battery on the iQOO Neo 7 Pro is also good. We get a 5,000mAh battery, which also seems optimised for gaming. For example, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G did not drain much battery while gaming or watching content, but the smartphone drained a significant amount while using GPS. In one hour of GPS navigation, the smartphone drained about 9 percent of the battery, but a 15-minute gaming session only drained 3 percent of the battery, which is very good for a smartphone.
The charging, however, makes up for any minor rough edges with the battery optimisation. The iQOO Neo 7 5G comes with 120W fast charging. I tested this from 0-100, and the smartphone only took 29 minutes to charge fully. Beautifully fast.
CAMERA
The camera on the iQOO Neo 7 5G is also decent. The smartphone comes with a triple rear camera setup, which has a primary 50-megapixel shooter, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide angle lens, and a 2-megapixel macro lens. The images from the primary shooter are very good. The smartphone clicks sharp and detailed images, just the colours are a bit washed out.
The portraits from the smartphone are also very good, just at times I found the edge detection to be a bit inaccurate, and here also the colours seem a bit washed out.
In low light shots also, the iQOO Neo 7 Pro performs well. Here also, the images remain sharp and detailed, and the colour retention is also okay, but not the best out there.
What I didn’t like about this camera is the ultra-wide shooter. The images in ultra-wide look slightly more soft as compared to the sharp images out of the primary shooter. The colours here are also a bit too saturated for my taste, which further makes it seem like the photos aren’t accurate.
VERDICT
So after testing the iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G for about two weeks and using the smartphone, I can confidently say that this is probably the best price-to-performance ratio you can get in the market right now. For a ₹ 34,999 price tag, this smartphone takes the fight to devices that are twice its price or even more! So in terms of performance, the numbers speak for themselves.
Apart from this, we get a familiar design with a premium touch, a very colour accurate display, and on top of that, a pretty decent camera which will do very well if your usage is casual and mostly for social media. The battery is also optimised towards performance, and the 120W fast charging is as fast as it gets on a smartphone in this range.
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