If the game your priority for a smartphone, the Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro is addressed to you. This massive mobile gaming beast combines impressive performance with a wide high-quality display and enough durability to keep you playing for days. It even has a built-in fan to stay cool, programmable buttons, and highly customizable gaming software. All of this comes at a relatively affordable starting price of $649 (£579) for the 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage model if you buy directly from Nubia.

There is always a catch with aggressively priced phones. Assuming you don’t mind the big, angular design, which isn’t very pocket-friendly, you can ignore the slightly janky software, the inconsistent camera performance, or the lack of wireless charging. But keep in mind that hardware like the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset here is generally only available in more expensive phones.

Gamer Chic

I tested the transparent RedMagic 10 Pro, which Nubia calls Moonlight, and it’s an attractive industrial design with thick metal framing glass that gives you a glimpse of some of the internals and RGB lighting. to live when you play. There are holes on either side of the frame with a visible fan designed to cool the processor. It might be useful for longer gaming sessions, but it can make a bit of noise, and sometimes you can feel the hot air blowing out.

Nubia includes customizable capacitive-touch shoulder triggers on the top edges when you hold the Redmagic 10 Pro in landscape orientation, and a shiny textured red switch that launches the gaming hub software by default. The rectangular profile and round power button remind me of Sony’s old Xperia design, but this is a larger phone and can be difficult to fish out of a jean pocket. I’m talking 6.5 inches tall and 3 inches wide.

The Redmagic 10 Pro is smooth and ultra-smooth, and has knocked off tables, chairs, and my leg several times in the past two weeks. Surprisingly, the Gorilla Glass finish has remained intact so far, 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 survive a dunk.

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 shell out more for transparent models ($799), even if you get a spec bump to 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. If you want a sci-fi gamer aesthetic, stretch the transparent model.

Supersize Me

It’s a big brute, but the size of the Redmagic 10 Pro gives players two important advantages. First, there’s an uncut, almost bezel-less 6.85-inch AMOLED screen that looks great. It has a slightly stunning resolution of 2,688 x 1,216 pixels, up to a 144-Hz refresh rateand brightness peaks up to 2,000 nits. It’s great for gaming, watching movies, or browsing the web. There is a reasonably responsive fingerprint sensor at the bottom and a front-facing camera below the screen at the top.

Another big advantage is the battery. The Redmagic 10 Pro has a whopping 7,050-mAh battery, and it can go days between charges, even after a few days of heavy use. Now, you don’t get any wireless charging, but there is a red USB-C cable and an 80-watt charger in the box, and you can fill the battery from empty in about 40 minutes.

Nubia has also gone big on the performance front. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite can handle any of the latest mobile games and backed by fast RAM (LPDDR5X) and storage (UFS 4.1). I play a mixture of Devil Immortal, 80 Days Around the Worldand Asphalt 8 for several hours on the Redmagic 10 Pro, and it never broke a sweat, although the fan noise can be distracting if you work with that processor. Benchmark results are excellent across the board, and you’ll be hard-pressed to get this level of performance elsewhere without spending more.

Compromises and countermeasures

Perhaps the main compromise here is the camera. You can get decent shots with the main 50-megapixel shooter in good lighting conditions with plenty of detail, though it has oversaturated, unnatural colors and can struggle in bright areas. place The decent size sensor and aperture allow for solid low-light shots, and it has optical image stabilization, though I found that moving subjects often looked blurry. Unfortunately, the 50-megapixel ultrawide isn’t very uniform (there are significant color differences), and it produces slower, noisier shots.

The 2-megapixel macro lens is useless. The under-screen 16-megapixel selfie camera is OK for the odd selfie, but you need decent light, or you can expect a lot of noise. There’s a Pro mode if you want to tinker, and various effects and filters in the camera app, although I’m not a fan of Nubia’s processing, and the portrait mode sometimes messes up the edges of subjects when trying to apply that bokeh blur.

Nubia’s Red Magic OS is much improved compared to previous versions, but I prefer stock Android 15. Nubia’s Android skin is loud and frankly bad. Everything is huge, and it’s full of confusing options that you have to click through to understand. There’s a lot of useless bloatware, so I’d advise cleaning up and switching to the Google suite where you can. Fortunately, this is mostly possible, and you’ll also find Google Gemini onboard.

A useful software feature to look out for is Nubia’s Game Space, where you can tweak and customize all sorts of settings to get the look and feel you want for the hardware, create configurations for of various games, and explore an impressive library of plug-ins. . While additional buttons are available, I prefer pairing the Redmagic 10 Pro with a mobile game controller.

One of the biggest cons of the Redmagic 10 Pro is Nubia’s disappointing update commitment: You only get one Android version upgrade, two Redmagic OS updates, and three years of warranty. -security update, which is less than usual.

If the game is not important, you will find many good options in ours Best Android Phones guide. The most obvious opponent for Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro is Asus ROG Phone 9and it boasts superior software, a better display, wireless charging, and an IP68 rating, but starts at $1,000. Ultimately, for the price, the Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro is probably the best value display and performance combo gamers can buy today.