The Nubia Red Magic is powered by Snapdragon 835 which is not the most powerful processor available right now but it is perfect for gaming. The smartphone features 8GB of RAM which is again great for multitasking. The camera, on the other hand, is a single lens shooter which may be a let down for some people. The smartphone comes with many gaming features which a gamer would like. We tested the Nubia Red Magic ourselves and got some mixed bag of results. So, if you are looking for a gaming phone then read this review before buying one.
Display
A good gaming machine can never be built without a good display where you can see every detail and colors to game on. The Nubia Red Magic did not impressed with the display, it is a regular IPS LCD display with Full HD+ resolution and 18:9 aspect ratio. The display has some bezels on the top and bottom side which is good for holding it down while gaming.
The quality of the display is on par with some mid-range smartphones which you can buy right now. There is no “extraordinary” feature served with this device’s display; no high resolution or high refresh rate. So, if you looking for something which you can boast then this display is not the one.
Design and Build
The Red Magic smartphone comes with the good build quality and best design factor you can find on a gaming smartphone. One thing about gamers is that they are obsessed with LED lighting (how do you think Alienware is so popular?) Nubia took good care of that necessary thing for gamers and put an LED strip on the back.
The LED strip is not just for show off, it also behaves as a notification LED. It lights up when a notification arrives and shows a little breathing animation. Also, Whenever you enable the gaming mode, the LED strip starts the animation. There are a bunch of animations to choose from in the settings menu.
Camera
The Nubia Red Magic comes with a single 24MP rear camera sensor which has a f/1.7 aperture size for low light photography. It lets you record 4K videos at 30 frames per second. The front-facing camera is an 8MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture size which let you take some decent selfies. The camera is not the best you can find on this price range but whatever you are getting is justified with all the other features you get with Nubia Red Magic.
Specifications
Coming to the most critical part of this smartphone, Gaming. The Nubia Red Magic is a gaming phone and it, of course, comes with the highest specifications you can find. It comes with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor which is a year old but still performs great. The RAM is 8GB, which is plenty of RAM for a gaming smartphone.
Gaming
The smartphone comes with a gaming mode which can be enabled by a dedicated sliding switch provided on the side of the phone. Enabling the game mode boosts the performance and making the game even smoother. During our testing, we didn’t feel any difference in gaming performance when the gaming mode is on or off. When you game for long hours, the smartphone heats up and the frame skip starts to occur in graphics intensive places. That’s where the Gaming mode comes into play, it keeps the framerate steady no matter how long you play on the phone. But it does drain the battery faster than when gaming mode is off. The gaming on Red Magic is just like magic and games loads even faster than some flagship smartphones with Snapdragon 845 chipset. All thanks to the plenty of RAM and the UFS 2.1 2 lane storage which keeps the smartphone snappy even after a long gaming session. The stock Android interface is just icing on the cake.
Heating
Heating is the part of this phone where the “Magic” seems to fade away. Nubia boasts that “Extra layers of graphite” and the Convex styled back to keep the smartphone cool. The smartphone gets heats up after few minutes of gaming, but it cools down pretty quickly once you stop gaming.
Battery
The battery on Nubia Red Magic is a 3800 mAh capacity battery which can give you a whole day of backup even with some gaming (without gaming mode) included. The smartphone gets juiced up more than 70 percent in about an hour and a half. The battery performance is satisfactory in Nubia Red Magic gaming smartphone.
Other features
The smartphone is a perfect balance between gaming and a regular smartphone, it does not look like “a perfect gaming” smartphone. You can turn off the LED strip on the back if you want to and it won’t bother you again. You can use this phone just as normally as any other smartphone.
Wrapping up
Nubia Red Magic is a great smartphone at this price range. It will provide you with all the gaming needs including RGB lighting effects. If the camera is not the second priority for you in a gaming smartphone then Nubia Red Magic is the perfect smartphone you can get at this price range.
