If the games Your priority For a smartphone, the Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro is aimed squarely at you. This formidable portable gaming beast combines incredible performance, a spacious, high-quality display, and enough stamina to keep you gaming for days. It also has a built-in fan to keep cool, programmable buttons and highly customizable gaming software. All of this comes at a relatively affordable starting price of $649 (£579) for the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage model if you buy directly from Nubia.
There is always a problem with Phones at competitive prices. Assuming you don’t mind the bulky, angular design, which doesn’t fit in a pocket, you might balk at the slightly clunky software, inconsistent camera performance, or lack of wireless charging. But remember, hardware like the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset here is generally only available in much more expensive phones.
Gamer Shake
I tested the transparent RedMagic 10 Pro, which Nubia calls Moonlight, an eye-catching industrial design with a thick metal frame that lets you see some of the internals and RGB lighting that comes to life when gaming. There are vents on both sides of the frame with a visible fan designed to keep the processor cool. This can be useful for long gaming sessions, but it does make some noise, and you can sometimes feel warm air venting.
Nubia has included customizable capacitive shoulder triggers on the top edges when you hold the Redmagic 10 Pro in landscape orientation, and a bright red switch launches the Game Center software by default. The rectangular shape and rounded power button remind me of Sony’s old Xperia design, but this is a much larger phone and can be difficult to get out of a jeans pocket. I’m talking about 6.5 inches long and 3 inches wide.
The Redmagic 10 Pro is very smooth and slippery, and has slid off tables, chairs, and my legs several times over the past couple of weeks. Surprisingly, the Gorilla Glass finish has not been affected 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 holes, water resistance is expected to be limited, and it will not survive submersion.
It’s worth noting that the entry-level Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro is only available in black or opaque white (Shadow or Lightspeed), and you have to spend more for the transparent models ($799), although you do get a spec bump of $16. GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage space. If you crave the aesthetics of sci-fi games, reach for the transparent model.
I grew in size
It’s a big beast, but the Redmagic 10 Pro’s size offers gamers two important advantages. Firstly, there’s an unbroken, almost bezel-free 6.85-inch AMOLED display, which is simply gorgeous. It has a somewhat strange resolution of 2688 x 1216 pixels, and up to 144 Hz refresh ratePeak brightness reaches 2000 nits. It’s perfect for gaming, watching movies, or browsing the web. There is a responsive fingerprint sensor at the bottom and an under-display front camera at the top.
The other advantage of the large size is the battery. The Redmagic 10 Pro has a massive 7,050 mAh battery that can last for days between charges, even extending to two days of heavy use. Now, you don’t get any wireless charging, but there is a red USB-C cable and 80W charger in the box, and you can fill the battery from empty in about 40 minutes.
Nubia has been a huge success on the performance front as well. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite can handle any of the latest Mobile games It is supported by fast RAM (LPDDR5X) and storage (UFS 4.1). I played a mix of Diablo Immortal, 80 days around the worldand Asphalt 8 For several hours on the Redmagic 10 Pro, it never broke a sweat, although the fan noise can be distracting when running this processor. Benchmark results were excellent across the board, and you’ll be hard-pressed to get this level of performance elsewhere without spending more.
Discounts and negatives
Perhaps the main compromise here is the camera. You can get good shots with the 50-megapixel main camera in good lighting conditions with plenty of detail, although it tends toward over-the-top, unnatural colors and can struggle in very bright areas. The sensor’s decent size and aperture allow for stable low-light shots, and they also have optical image stabilization, although I found that moving subjects often looked blurry. Unfortunately, the 50MP ultra-wide camera doesn’t match as well (there are significant color differences), and produces softer, noisier shots.
The 2MP macro lens is useless. The 16-megapixel front camera under the screen is fine for solo selfies, but you need adequate lighting, 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, though I’m not a fan of the Nubia’s processing, and Portrait mode sometimes messes around the edges of subjects when trying to apply that bokeh blur.
Nubia’s Red Magic OS is much improved over previous versions, but I prefer Android 15. Nubia’s Android look is loud and frankly unpleasant. It’s all very big, full of confusing options that you have to click to understand. There’s a lot of useless bloatware out there, so I’d recommend cleaning up and switching to the Google suite where you can. Fortunately, this is mostly possible, and you’ll also find Google Gemini on board.
One useful software feature that stands out is Nubia’s Game Space, where you can tweak and customize all kinds of settings to get the hardware look and feel you want, create configurations for different games, and delve into an impressive library of plug-ins. Although the additional buttons are easy to use, I preferred pairing the Redmagic 10 Pro with Mobile game console.
One of the biggest downsides of the Redmagic 10 Pro is Nubia’s disappointing commitment to updating: you’ll only get one Android version upgrade, two Redmagic OS updates, and three years of security updates, which is much less than usual.
If gaming isn’t your top priority, you’ll find several comprehensive options at our site Best Android phones guide. The most obvious competitor to the Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro is Asus Rog Phone 9it features superior software, a better display, wireless charging, and an IP68 rating, but it starts at $1,000. Ultimately, for the price, the Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro is probably the best display and performance combo gamers can buy right now.