if gaming Whatever your preference for a smartphone, the Nubia RedMagic 10 Pro is targeted exactly at you. This massive mobile gaming beast combines impressive performance with a huge high-quality display and enough stamina to keep you gaming for days. It even has a built-in fan to keep it cool, programmable buttons, and highly customizable gaming software. All this comes at a relatively affordable starting price of $649 (£579) for the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage model if you buy direct from Nubia.
there's always a catch aggressively priced phonesAssuming you don't mind a huge, angular design that's not very pocket-friendly, you might be put off by the slightly janky software, inconsistent camera performance, or lack of wireless charging. But remember that hardware like the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset here is usually only available in more expensive phones.
gamer chic
I tested the transparent RedMagic 10 Pro, which Nubia calls Moonlight, and it has an attractive industrial design with thick metal framing glass that gives you a view of some of the interior and RGB lighting that comes to life while playing games. There are vents on either side of the frame with visible fans designed to keep the processor cool. This may be useful for long gaming sessions, but it does make some noise, and you can sometimes feel a rush of hot air.
Nubia includes customizable capacitive-touch shoulder triggers on the top edges and a brightly textured red switch that launches the Gaming Hub software by default when you hold the RedMagic 10 Pro in landscape orientation. The rectangular profile and round power button remind me of Sony's older Xperia designs, but this is a much larger phone and getting it out of a jeans pocket may prove difficult. I'm talking 6.5 inches long and 3 inches wide.
The RedMagic 10 Pro is smooth and extremely slippery, and has slipped off tables, chairs, and my feet several times over the past few weeks. Surprisingly, the Gorilla Glass finish is still intact, but I fear for its long-term survival. It's probably best to use the clear case that comes in the box. With fan vents, limited water resistance is expected, and it won't protect against stings either.
It's worth noting that the entry-level Nubia RedMagic 10 Pro is only available in opaque black or white (Shadow or Lightspeed), and you'll have to pay more for the transparent model ($799), though you get a spec bump to 16 . GB RAM and 512 GB storage. If you crave a sci-fi gamer aesthetic, head towards the transparent model.
Super Size Me
It's a big brute, but the size of the RedMagic 10 Pro gives gamers two important advantages. First of all, it has an uninterrupted, almost bezel-free 6.85-inch AMOLED screen that is just beautiful. Its resolution is a bit awkward at 2,688 x 1,216 pixels 144-Hz refresh rateAnd the brightness is up to 2,000 nits. It is ideal for gaming, watching movies or web browsing. There's a reasonably responsive fingerprint sensor at the bottom and a front-facing camera below the screen above.
Another advantage of going big is the battery. The RedMagic 10 Pro has a large 7,050-mAh battery, and it can last for several days between charges, even a few days of heavy use. Now, you don't get any wireless charging, but there is a red USB-C cable and 80-watt charger in the box, and you can fill the battery from empty in about 40 minutes.
Nubia has also gone ahead on the performance front. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite can handle any of the latest mobile games And is backed by fast RAM (LPDDR5X) and storage (UFS 4.1). i played a mix of diablo immortal, 80 days around the worldAnd asphalt 8 Worked on the Redmagic 10 Pro for several hours, and never broke a sweat, although fan noise can be distracting when you work on that processor. Benchmark results were excellent across the board, and you'll struggle to get this level of performance anywhere else without spending more.
Agreements and Cons
Perhaps the main compromise here is the camera. You can get good shots with plenty of detail in good lighting conditions with the main 50-megapixel shooter, although it leads to overly saturated, unnatural colors and can struggle with very bright areas. The decent sensor size and aperture allows for solid low-light shots, and it has optical image stabilization, although I found that moving subjects often appeared blurry. Sadly, the 50-megapixel ultrawide doesn't match up well (there are significant color differences), and it produces more soft, noisy shots.
The 2 megapixel macro lens is useless. The under-screen 16-megapixel selfie camera is fine for the odd selfie, but you need good lighting, or you can expect a lot of noise. There's a Pro mode if you like to tinker, and various effects and filters in the camera app, though I'm not a fan of Nubia's processing, and the Portrait mode sometimes blurs the edges of subjects when trying to apply Bokeh. Makes a mess around. Foggy.
Nubia's Red Magic OS is much better than earlier versions, but I would prefer stock Android 15. Nubia's Android skin is sharp and frankly obnoxious. Everything is huge, and full of confusing options that you have to click on to understand. There's a lot of useless bloatware out there, so I'd advise you to clean up where possible and switch to Google's suite. Thankfully, this is mostly possible, and you'll even get Google Gemini included.
One useful software feature that stands out is Nubia's Game Space, where you can change and customize all kinds of settings to give the hardware the look and feel you want, creating configurations for different games and plug-ins. One can visit their impressive library. , While the extra buttons come in handy, I preferred the Redmagic 10 Pro's addition of mobile game controller,
One of the biggest drawbacks of the Redmagic 10 Pro is Nubia's disappointing update commitment: You'll only get one Android version upgrade, two Redmagic OS updates, and three years of security updates, which is far less than the standard.
If gaming isn't paramount, you'll find many more all-round options at our best android phones Guide. Nubia is the most obvious rival to the RedMagic 10 Pro asus rog phone 9And it boasts better software, a better display, wireless charging, and an IP68 rating, but starts at $1,000 more. Ultimately, for the price, the Nubia RedMagic 10 Pro is probably the best value display and performance combo that gamers can buy right now.