Hey guys, I’m Roland, the Techusiast, and here’s my review of the nubia REDMAGIC 8
Pro gaming smartphone. Let’s get started!
The new nubia REDMAGIC 8 Pro looks stunning with its square redesign. There are no more curves,
resulting in a refreshed feel. It has a lot of gaming characteristics, especially this
Void model, which, if you ask me, looks the best between the two models that are available. It’s
worth keeping in mind that the REDMAGIC is a large device, and despite me loving the design and feel,
it’s very hard to handle with a single hand. The front and back have glass panels,
and the matte chassis is made from aviation aluminium. The red accent color
also compliments the gamery aesthetics, making the device feel more premium and
better suited for its intended target audience. When it comes to the buttons and ports, it has
everything you need. Volume rocker on the left, alongside the vent for the fan, and the power
button and Game Space Center slider on the right. There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top,
for those still relying on the good old cable. On the back, the phone even sports a full-fledged
LED strip that can shine any of the seven pre-selected colors for the
pre-made occasions you select. This lets you choose certain gradients, and solid colors
with effects when listening to music, playing games, or charging your devices. It’s neat,
and an excellent addition to improve the overall feel. It’s a beautiful device, and even though i’m
not a heavy gamer myself, it looks stunning, and it’s got to be my favourite phone design in 2023.
I have the top-specced REDMAGIC 8 Pro with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. The phone
is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, and the Red Core 2 chip, responsible for handling audio,
RGB lighting, and haptic feedback. All in all, it’s a top-specced device
with the latest and most powerful chip that is available in early 2023,
and it performs as you’d expect. Games run well, and multitasking is efficient and smooth. I have
never encountered a sluggish behaviour or any lag, even when playing for well over an hour.
It’s worth noting that despite playing for multiple hours at the same time,
the device didn’t overheat, and the fan always kept it at a cool temperature. The back of the
device never heated up to the point where it would’ve been uncomfortable to hold,
and although the fan can be heard in a quiet room, it’s not as loud as a
laptop cooling solution, and listening to the game will draw out most of the noise.
Generally speaking, the device performed the way you’d expect. It’s a gaming smartphone, and
it has a lot of power and cooling capability to keep things under control. It provides excellent
performance, regardless of the graphics and tasks you throw at it. I’ve played with Genshin Impact,
Brawl Stars, Diablo Immortal, and League of Legends, and the REDMAGIC 8 Pro is simply
one of the best, the smoothest, and the most fun I’ve ever had playing games on a mobile device.
If you’re a gamer looking for the absolute best, this will boost your experience to the next level.
And now, onto the display. The REDMAGIC 8 Pro comes with a massive 6.8-inch AMOLED screen
and 120Hz refresh rate. The screen offers excellent viewing angles, accurate colours,
and multiple colour profiles. I never had an issue with the screen,
and it’s worth noting that P3 and sRGB are also supported and completely optional
in the settings. The slim bezels also make the device more aesthetically pleasing, and
the under-display camera cannot be seen with the naked eye, unless you specifically look for it.
It’s really well hidden, making the display even more immersive and fun
to use. Speaking of the fun, playing outside is also a non-issue, as the screen tops out
at 1300 nits of peak brightness, providing an enjoyable experience, even in direct sunlight.
Overall, the display is stunning, and it’s excellent for consuming media,
playing games, multitasking, and general browsing. I never had an issue with it, and
I’m happy to report that it’s one of the best screen’s I’ve ever used on a gaming smartphone.
If there’s an area where nubia smartphones often fail, it’s the software. Previous REDMAGIC
devices often had issues with the brightness slider, poorly translated texts in settings,
notification frustrations, and more. While those are still here, nubia seems to have taken a few
steps to address some of those problems. Sadly, the aforementioned problems are still here,
but at least, it’s good to know that it doesn’t affect the performance when playing games.
Before I get ahead of myself, I also want to emphasise that nubia claims to support its
gaming smartphones for 1.5 to 2 years maximum, and it will generally provide at least one major
OS update. This means that the REDMAGIC 8 Pro will receive Android 14 when it comes out,
and security-wise, it will be maintained until at least the middle of 2024.
When it comes to the general user interface of the device, it’s everything you expect from a standard
smartphone. It’s pretty barebones, but the device sports Android 13, and there are a few new
features, such as Material You color, that apply to the lockscreen and notification shade. Sadly,
there’s still no real option to further customise these settings to your liking, but once again,
it’s a good step in the right direction. What’s neat is the ability to change the
cooling fan settings. You can either turn it on or off, and change the speed by switching
from auto mode to fast cooling. The latter will ramp up the fans even more, providing
cooler temperatures and faster heat dissipation. This meant that i never experienced throttling,
and the REDMAGIC 8 Pro was always comfortable to hold, even after long gaming sessions.
But the fan isn’t the only gaming-specific feature on this device, and the RGB lighting
can also be customised and personalised. The RGB light strip lets you choose from four
pre-set colours, and three gradients. These can be set for various things,
such as receiving notifications, watching videos, listening to music, and charging the
device. I wish there were more options, but the ones provided by default do a great job.
When it comes to gaming-specific features, there are a lot under the hood. The REDMAGIC 8 Pro,
once again, proves itself as one of the best gaming phones on the market with features
that can be deemed as essential by mobile gamers. There’s an option to change the display’s colors,
GPU settings, and even the touch sampling rate on a game-by-game basis. There are also
520Hz shoulder triggers on the side of the device that can be customised, once again,
for every single game, individually. There are many plugins built-in, each offering
a different functionality from providing a crosshair, to key remapping, sound equalizer,
and even macro settings. It’s really powerful, and if you’re an avid gamer wanting to take your
mobile gaming to the next level, this might just be the device you’ve been waiting for.
Gaming smartphones aren’t known to have good camera setups, and while that’s partially
true for the REDMAGIC 8 Pro, there are a few areas it excels. First and foremost,
it has a decent triple-camera setup. It consists of a 50MP primary, an 8MP ultrawide, and a 2MP
macro sensor. There’s also a 16MP under-display front-facing camera, but more on that later.
The primary camera performs better than expected. Daylight and nighttime shots almost always capture
plenty of details and true-to-life colours. The shadows and dynamic range aren’t always perfect,
but it performs well in most low-light and brightly-lit conditions. If you’re after a
tap-and-shoot camera, this likely isn’t it, as it might require a tiny bit of editing every once in
a while, but it’s still great for the most part. Portrait shots are also decent, and the subject
detection and separation work like a charm. The blur and bokeh effect looks good, and while it
won’t make you a professional photographer, it’ll do a great job most of the time.
That, however, is where the good part of the story ends. The ultrawide camera is where things get
dark. The wide shots often end up lacking detail and are too soft. While using the ultrawide,
focusing will become very challenging, especially in darker environments and in low light. It’s
unimpressive, to say the least, and you’re better off taking a few steps back, if you can.
The under-display selfie camera work great in during daytime,
in brightly lit spaces where there’s plenty of natural light,
but there are some overexposure issues that tend to wash out colours and lose detail.
It’s usually good enough for group photos and selfies in good lighting conditions, but it
falls short in low-light. That being said, it’s still acceptable for video calls and streaming.
The nubia REDMAGIC 8 Pro is a true two-day device. It has a large 6,000 mAh battery with support for
65W fast wired charging. I often ended most days with 55% to 65% left in the battery,
and almost always made it to next day with the same charge. It was truly a challenge
to drain this thing, and it changed my habit of charging in the first week of using it.
A quick 20-minute top up can almost always charge you back to full, or to about 70% to 80%,
giving you plenty of room for activities, such as gaming, watching movies and videos, browsing,
and of course, using your favourite social apps. Nubia claims the REDMAGIC 8 Pro can
fully charge up in less than an hour, and I was able to get a full charge in about
41 to 42 minutes on several occasions. While the charging isn’t as fast as its
predecessor, it’s worth mentioning that it has a much larger battery, providing one of the longest
battery life I’ve ever experienced with a modern smartphone. If you’re after a device that can take
a beating and charges up fast, the REDMAGIC 8 Pro will do an excellent job keeping the lights on.
The nubia REDMAGIC 8 Pro is an excellent successor to the REDMAGIC 7S Pro, released
late in 2022. It’s an excellent gaming phone with awesome gaming-centric features. It also
has a beautiful hardware to prove its worthiness, and it has a lot of gaming characteristics and
aesthetics, it still feels elegant and bold. The REDMAGIC 8 Pro has excellent haptics,
great performance, a true two-day battery, a bright and beautiful display, and fast charging.
Games have never felt as smooth on mobile as they did on the REDMAGIC, and it’s the
most fun I’ve ever had playing games on a phone. However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. The
REDMAGIC line is still flawed with software problems that have existed and date back to
at least two generations, and it’s unclear when they’ll be fixed, if ever. You know how
the saying goes, don’t buy a product on the premise of it getting updated in the future,
buy it for what it is today. If you can live with the issues, it’s an excellent device. Otherwise,
I would suggest you wait for the next generation, or see if nubia manages to address these problems.
Aside from the problems, the REDMAGIC 8 Pro is an excellent gaming phone,
but not a great smartphone. If you’re after the best gaming experience that money can
buy – at an affordable price – then the nubia REDMAGIC 8 Pro is a device I can recommend.
There you have it. I hope you found this video useful. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a like
if you enjoyed this video. With all that said, thank you for watching. I’ll see you next time.