Verdict
The Red Magic 7S Pro is an incredibly powerful gaming phone with silken physical command and a relatively reserved flavour , but it reach some weirdly non - gaming - friendly blueprint decision , and its software remains a mess .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
ZTE ’s erstwhile gaming phone submarine sandwich - brand Nubia seems optical maser - focus on an iterative release docket . Every six month or so you’re able to calculate your bottom one dollar bill there ’ll be a fresh preposterously brawny , distractingly chunky , and surprisingly well - price equipment to consider .
The latest of these is the Nubia Red Magic 7S Pro , which add the recent Qualcomm central processor and a dyad of other hardware trick to an otherwise conversant package .
It would have been nice to see the brand refining some of the argumentation ’s long - standing rough edges , and this still is n’t a phone we ’d recommend to most people . But there ’s no denying it ’s a secure option for any hard-core wandering gamers who would prefer to understate the gaudy gamer aesthetic .
Design and Screen
Nubia phones traditionally assume a look that could almost be delineate as insidious within the decidedly un - subtle world of fluid play . The Nubia Red Magic 7S Pro is braggy and blocky , and you ’d intimately believe there ’s RGB inflammation , but it ’s not massively eye - catching like theROG Phone 6 .
Unfortunately , it does tramp back some of the aesthetic improvements made in last twelvemonth ’s Nubia Red Magic6S Pro , in the main with its size . With dimensions of 166.3 x 77.1 x 10 mm , it ’s far from demure , and a weight of 235 guanine have in mind that you ’ll never have to chuck your sac to check whether you ’ve pick your speech sound up .
From the front , the Red Magic 7S Pro is positively demure . The telephone set ’s bezels are unusually minimum for a gaming phone , and the tolerate - out purpose brandish is an under - display selfie camera .
While the Red Magic 7S Pro is the most normal looking gaming phone from the front , however , I ’m not sure this coming was the correct one . Having a modest forehead means that you notice the slimly thicker Kuki , which somehow makes the earpiece sense cheaper . It lacks the correspondence of its herald , too .
You do n’t get dual front - facing verbalizer either , which is a by all odds non - gamer - friendly decisiveness . TheRed Magic 7 Proand Red Magic 6S Pro did n’t have this either , and it go on to be a second of an oversight on Nubia ’s part .
Beyond that , the selfie camera merely is n’t very good . But we ’ll talk about that further in the camera division .
The hindquarters of the telephone set has a shiny blackened finish inlay with a vaguely militaristic angular metal home , which sports a combat camo finish . There are lite - up RGB lights either side of that plate , which flash when you have notification .
I ’ll leave it to you to conclude whether you think RGB ignition is ever a good thing in a phone . It ’s very much part of that gamer aesthetic , which patently has its devotee .
The sound ’s thickness can be at least partially explain by the inclusion , once again , of a cooling fan . This boots up rather noisily whenever a relevant gaming app is lead off , and there are visible blowhole on the veracious edge and the rear of the phone .
Another important inclusion on the correct - hired man edge is a pair of consecrated 520Hz capacitive trigger clit , which can be mapped to hold in functions in games – or at least , in those that permit you to fine tune and remap controls . In competitory shooters like CoD Mobile and Apex Legends Mobile , this is a actual secret plan modifier . Having dedicated control for aiming down sights and shot give a definite competitive sharpness , and makes the games more haptic and thus fun to boot .
On the polar edge to these buttons lies a Game Boost Switch clit , which instantly boots up Nubia ’s Game Space tool . This card lets you max out the earphone ’s performance setting when play sure game , as well as configuring the sensitivity of the shoulder buttons , aline the sound output , and more .
You also benefit from a 3.5 millimeter earpiece sea dog , which is a normal feature to have in a play earpiece , where low-spirited - latency personal audio is imperative ( and too rarely considered in Bluetooth earphones ) . There ’s still noIPsplash - underground rating though , which is a ignominy .
The Red Magic 7S Pro is breast by a declamatory 6.8 - inchAMOLEDdisplay with a 120Hz refresh rate . This is n’t as smooth as the ROG Phone 6 , or even the Red Magic 6S Pro , both of which go to 165Hz . treasured few game in reality take advantage of such a high refresh charge per unit , however , so I can understand the decision .
Conversely , this video display does support up to a 960Hz touch sample charge per unit , which makes it extremely reactive to your stimulant . The aforementioned Red Magic 6S Pro will only hit 720Hz , so you ’ll have to count up which flavour of Hz is the more of import to you .
There ’s a 1080 x 2400 maximal resolving , which is just right for a gaming phone . More pixels intend fewer frames per secondly , after all , and steady depicted object look plenty needlelike at this resolving power .
One criticism that I have of the screen is that it does n’t get massively bright , with Nubia itself only claim that it goes up to 600nits . It ’s not uncollectible , exactly , but I found myself crank the luminance Pseudemys scripta flop up to well-nigh - full even when indoors .
Camera
Gaming phonesdon’t tend to have great cameras . It ’s just a fact that this is one of the first specs to suffer in service to those extra performance - enhancing component part .
Unsurprisingly , the Red Magic 7S Pro ’s camera system is pretty much unchanged from the Red Magic 7 Pro and even last twelvemonth ’s Red Magic play phones . It ’s extend by the same 1/1.97 ” 64MP across-the-board detector with an f/1.8 aperture , which is accompanied by the same 1/4.0″ 8MP ultrawide .
There is no telephotograph , with only a mean 2MP macro sensor to back those main cameras up . It all call “ mid - kitchen stove ” .
You get a similar level of performance to previous Red Magic cameras . contingent and photograph are acceptable in good firing , but the results drop quite a bit in gloomy light . The included Night mode is n’t the worst I ’ve seen , but the result are decidedly lower - mid - range , with plenty of dissonance and a ecumenical want of sharpness that you associate with a lack of OIS and bog - standard algorithmic program .
The main camera on theOnePlus Nord 2 T , theRealme 9 Pro Plus , and of course thePixel 6amake mincemeat out of the Red Magic 7S Pro – all for less than £ 400 .
The ultrawide typify a considerable step down in active compass and exposure , with cooler colour and much big detail . 2x zoomed shots are actually quite useable here , thanks to that surplus of pixels , but cultivate in any further brings the noise .
All of this is compounded by Nubia ’s go on insistence on watermarking blastoff by default . yield the evident deficiency of photographic chops here , it feels like a strangely braggadocious move to shout about the camera .
Selfie shots are truly atrocious . It ’s not so much the humble 8MP sensing element that ’s been used , but rather the fact that it ’s been position under the display , entail that it just does n’t get the same unimpeded Christ Within as a ‘ normal ’ selfie cam . The result is fantastically diffuse shots with terrible pic , overblown highlight , and wash out skin tone .
Performance
The Red Magic 7S Pro ’s cardinal strength is its functioning . The transposition up to theSnapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1is pretty much the whole reasonableness it exist as a replacement to the already very equal to Red Magic 7 Pro .
Together with 12 , 16 , or a staggering 18 GB of RAM , it ’s a speech sound that reign the benchmark . An average Geekbench 5 single - core score of 1314 and a multi - core score of 4124 pitches it right up there with the ROG Phone 6 near the top of the tabular array . It only really fall behind theiPhone 13family in this regard .
GPU tests are similarly telling . Like with the similarly fit ROG Phone 6 , the Red Magic 7S Pro prove to be too powerful for some of our 3D Mark benchmarks , maxing out for the Slingshot Extreme and Wild Life tests .
One run it did return a sexual conquest for was Wild Life Extreme , which is a high - grade art execution exercise . Here it scored 2832 , which again is adequate to the ROG Phone 6 . TheSamsung Galaxy S22 Plus , by direction of a comparison , make 1926 . The iPhone 13 Pro scored 2944 , while an non - gaming phone with the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 Saratoga chip that will go nameless for trade embargo understanding scored 2804 .
Perhaps more singing is the Wild Life Extreme Stress Test , which launch the aforementioned test 20 times consecutively . The Red Magic 7S Pro ’s score remained unco consistent from loop topology 1 to 20 , whereas the non - gaming Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 telephone set and the iPhone 13 Pro both dropped off dramatically as thermic throttling kicked in .
In hardheaded play condition , I was able to run for Genshin Impact at the very gamy configurations , with the frame rate set to 60fps , with hardly a stammer to the silky - legato frame pace . This was with the C.P.U. cranked up to the top ‘ Rise ’ define in the Game Space carte du jour .
It ’s under such extended strain that the 7S Pro ’s noisy cooling fan and oversized heat dissipation scheme really show their worth . Where slim flagship phone have to throttle way back after a few sustained moment of gameplay , the Nubia 7S Pro can maintain its level of carrying out .
The Storage provision runs from 256 GB at the low end , which is impressive in itself , through 512 GB and 1 TB . It ’s a well occupation , really , given that there ’s no expandible storage .
This is typically the part of the review where I tell you that all the great computer hardware in the world ca n’t quite overcompensate for Nubia ’s terrible software . And while I ’d love to say that the Red Magic 7S Pro is the telephone set to buck that trend , well , it is n’t .
While the sound runs on Android 12 , there ’s valued little evidence of Google ’s glib O here . The domicile screen is dominated by hulking expectant widget for the cooling fan , a read-out of today ’s game time , and your heart pace . None of which is of any economic consumption whatsoever .
You ’ll note that my French telephone shots do n’t show any of these . That ’s only because I could n’t make for myself to use the phone in this nonpayment fashion on a day - to - day cornerstone . It ’s excruciatingly clunky and wasteful , and leaves valued little space for useful day - to - day apps .
The Red Magic 5.5 software is buggy , too . I picked up on occasional stutters on the habitation screen and when browsing vane subject , which is inexcusable given the level of performance on tap here .
Elsewhere , the Battery options screen refused to tell me how much screen - on prison term I ’d had in a day , which is rather irritating when account such fact and physique is part of my job .
The fingermark sensor was initially quite unresponsive , too . It was fixed by a reset and remap , but you really should n’t need to do such a thing in a forward-looking speech sound .
Elsewhere , it ’s the usual casing of regretful translation . When the battery life discourage notification pops up , you ’re inquire to hit a push button containing the word ‘ sleep with ’ . It all just feels very slap - dash .
Battery life
Nubia has equipped its earpiece with a 5000mAh stamp battery . That ’s normal for a even phone , but is n’t all that big for a play phone . The Asus ROG Phone 6 is more distinctive with its 6000mAh cell .
In worldwide habit , however , that ’s not a problem . I was able-bodied to get through a full day of moderate usage with around half a armored combat vehicle left .
There ’s a notable caveat here , however . As I note in the previous section , the buggy Regmagic 5.5 software intend that I ’m ineffective to tell you how much screen - on sentence I care to get through in a day .
While I ’m on the topic of hemipteran , I mention another strange one in that the Red Magic 7S Pro resist to fast - charge when I ran it completely dry . It would reload at a hugely inhibited rate until I reset the charging process .
What I can say is that the phone ’s bundle - in 65W courser begin the phone from 1 to 59 % in 15 minute , and up to 93 % in 30 transactions . It hit 100 % in around 35 minutes .
Another slight downer is that the Red Magic 7S Pro does n’t admit wireless charging , though this is quite distinctive of a gambling phone . Manufacturers tend to favour meaty cooling organization and fast charging , and to economize money elsewhere . It ’s a fair trade - off for a gambling - focused crowd .
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Should you buy it?
. Sustain top - level performance and dedicated buttons make this one of the best pick out there for free-enterprise gamers
. Red Magic ’s UI is a mess of squat icons , superfluous widgets , irksome bug , and hapless translation
Final Thoughts
You wo n’t feel anAndroid phonethat ’s more powerful than the Red Magic 7S Pro right now . Its Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 microprocessor chip , coupled with a monstrous cooling scheme and bag of RAM make it the match of theROG Phone 6for free burning public presentation .
mate that with reactive controls and a heavy , immobile exhibit , and you have a fine phone for competitive gamers . Meanwhile the design , while bulky , is n’t quite as in - your - cheek as certain gaming phone contender .
However , not all of Nubia ’s decisions make sensation . Opting for an in - display selfie camera rather than a balanced design and dual front - firing speaker does n’t talk to a strict gambling focussing , nor does the lack of an outstandingly declamatory battery .
All in all , while the Red Magic 7S Pro is a more - than - solid alternative for hardcore mobile gamers , the ROG Phone 6 is far more sturdy and just plain better at what it does .
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