Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro Review: Value for Gamers

If the game is your priority for a smartphone, the Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro is aimed directly at you. This huge mobile gaming beast combines impressive performance with an expansive high-quality display and enough stamina to keep you playing for days. It also has a built-in fan to keep cool, programmable buttons, and highly customizable gaming software. All 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 catch with aggressively priced phones. Assuming you don’t mind the huge, angular design, which isn’t very pocket-friendly, you might run into slightly clunky software, inconsistent camera performance, or a lack of wireless charging. But remember that hardware like the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset here is usually only available in much more expensive phones.

Gamer Chic

I tested the transparent RedMagic 10 Pro, which Nubia calls Moonlight, and it’s an attractive industrial design with a thick metal frame glass that gives you a view of some internals and RGB lighting that comes to life when you play. There are vents on each side of the frame with a visible fan designed to keep the processor cool. This can be useful for longer gaming sessions, but it makes a bit of noise, and sometimes you can feel the hot air.

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

Photography: Simon Hill

The Redmagic 10 Pro is smooth and super slippery, and has slipped off tables, chairs, and my leg several times in the past two weeks. Amazingly, the Gorilla Glass finish remains undamaged so far, but I fear for its long-term survival. Probably better to use the clear case that comes in the box. With fans, the limited resistance to water is to be experienced, and it will not survive a dunk.

It’s worth noting that the entry-level Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro is only available in matte black or white (Shadow or Lightspeed), and you’ll have to shell out more for the transparent models ($799), although you’ll get a spec bump to 16. GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. If you want the sci-fi gamer aesthetic, go for the transparent model.

Supersize Me

Photography: Simon Hill

It’s a big deal, but the size of the Redmagic 10 Pro offers gamers two important advantages. First, there’s a seamless, nearly bezel-less 6.85-inch AMOLED screen that’s simply beautiful. It has a slightly odd resolution of 2,688 x 1,216 pixels, down to a Refresh rate of 144 Hzand brightness peaks up to 2,000 nits. It is ideal for gaming, watching movies, or web browsing. There is a fairly responsive fingerprint sensor at the bottom and a front camera under the screen at the top.