RedMagic 9S Pro review

Of all of the manufacturers within the area of interest gaming cellphone market, RedMagic may simply be some of the spectacular. Whereas the others have slowly began making an attempt to cater to the center floor, changing into an increasing number of like your run-of-the-mill premium Android, RedMagic’s unwavering dedication is clear, particularly in its newest providing, the RedMagic 9S Professional.

This factor is for players, and it doesn’t want an promoting marketing campaign stuffed with teenagers taking part in PUBG Cell to show it. With its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset powering rip-roaring efficiency, a set of finely tuned play-orientated software program options, and a crystal clear show that occupies as a lot of the entrance of the cellphone as potential, this factor is greater than able to compete with the very best gaming telephones available on the market. With that in thoughts, let’s get into the finer particulars.

Worth and availability

The RedMagic 9S Professional arrives on the worth of $649 / £579 for the 12GB of RAM and 256GB of reminiscence Sleet colorway model, or a barely larger price of $799 / £709 for the 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage Snowfall and Cyclone designs. For this assessment, we’re utilizing the Snowfall mannequin.

Early chicken pre-orders start on the official RedMagic web site on July 23, with the complete launch approaching July 31. It’s additionally value stating that one other 12GB+256GB mannequin is coming later this 12 months within the type of the Frost colorway.

Specs

Options and software program

As a gaming cellphone, a lot of the RedMagic 9S Professional’s promoting level options are aimed in direction of players, and as one myself, I can recognize that. These options all fall beneath the Sport Area umbrella, which you’ll be able to simply launch with a purple swap on the facet of the cellphone. When you’re in, there’s a plethora of instruments at your disposal.

The Sport Area opens on its customized launcher, with all of your titles able to go on the left of the display screen. From right here you may soar right into a recreation or mess with efficiency and GPU settings, in addition to sensitivity, smoothness, and stabilization. When you’re in a recreation, you get the Sport Area overlay. The choices within the overlay range from easy issues, like rotation lock and display screen recording, to extra advanced instruments, like key remapping and audio equalization. It’s all-encompassing, and I wracked my mind pondering of something RedMagic might presumably add to the equation with little success.

My solely qualm with Sport Area is that it may be a contact overwhelming, particularly with all of the newly added choices. The overlay has so many instruments and doodads that I find yourself spending longer than I ought to simply messing round with issues to see what they do. Admittedly, Sport Area is an possibility, not a necessity, on the subject of taking part in one thing like Honkai Star Rail, Diablo Immortal, and even Sweet Crush, so you continue to get top-tier efficiency when you desire the vanilla expertise. Nonetheless, it is perhaps good to have a contented medium that provides you the choice to alter some essential settings with out the entire added and sometimes complicated extras.

By way of the working system, the RedMagic 9S Professional runs the most recent model of RedMagic’s customized OS pores and skin of Android 14. It’s a fairly clear UI, and whereas it’s nonetheless not up there with Samsung’s One UI or Apple’s iOS working techniques when it comes to ease of use, it’s an enchancment on a few of the maligned RedMagic skins of the previous. As ever, there’s a little bit little bit of bloatware – when will cellphone manufacturers perceive I don’t want Reserving.com pre-installed? – however it’s hardly egregious and takes simply a few minutes to scrub up.

Exterior of the play-orientated options, the 9S Professional nonetheless has loads to supply that you just may anticipate from a contemporary smartphone. There’s the security measures, with each a fingerprint sensor and facial recognition software program for unlocking your cellphone. You’ve additionally obtained the swanky new Z-SmartCast system, permitting you to solid out of your cellphone to a PC monitor at as much as 120fps. Exterior of that, you’ve obtained reside wallpapers too, which is at all times a pleasant contact.

Design

Not like the most recent ASUS Rog cellphone, which has gone for a extra impartial look, the RedMagic 9S Professional nonetheless screams “I’m a gaming cellphone” in its design. This won’t be in style with neutrals, however I’m a fan of the flat futuristic aesthetic, whether or not it’s within the silvery Snowfall colorway I’ve obtained or the Sleet (black), Cyclone (black however totally different), and Frost (white) options.

Once I say futuristic, I actually imply it. Whereas the 9S Professional falls into the ‘huge outdated rectangle’ class of smartphones, it’s not a brick. It feels streamlined, partly due to the lacking digital camera bump and flat edges. Exterior of the subtly curved corners, it’s all straight traces and proper angles. You’d assume this may make for a barely uncomfortable type issue, however it doesn’t. It suits properly into the hand, and people rounded corners I simply talked about go an extended method to make it so your arms don’t tire after fifteen minutes of gaming.

Earlier than shifting on from the cellphone’s design, I’ve to say the flat shoulder buttons, that are a wise inclusion from RedMagic. For those who’re a fan of shooters, these are an absolute godsend, providing you with a method to fireplace at will with out obscuring the display screen along with your finger. The shoulder buttons, in addition to the fan, additionally profit from some funky RGB lighting, which provides to the gamer aesthetic this factor is so clearly aiming for.

Show

The RedMagic 9S Professional’s show is, as you may anticipate for a gaming cellphone or something that’s going to price you in extra of $700, stellar. It’s a 120Hz 6.8-inch show that makes use of BOE’s Q9+ luminescent materials, one thing I admittedly have by no means heard of earlier than, to ship crystal clear visuals. Importantly, Gorilla Glass 5 safety retains this superb show protected – in spite of everything, it’s no use having such a pristine display screen if it’s going to shatter on even the slightest of impacts.

By way of brightness, you’re a peak of 1,600 nits, which is loads brilliant for gaming indoors. Often, I’d give this a little bit of a greater take a look at beneath daylight to see if there’s a lot glare, however you may thank the wet British summertime for making that not possible this time. Nonetheless, I shut all of the curtains and turned on all of the lights in my home for a man-made brightness take a look at, and even at medium settings, the show remains to be simply discernable, so that you shouldn’t have any points taking part in in a well-lit setting.

The 9S Professional additionally provides a large quantity of display screen area, with a 93.7% screen-to-body ratio providing you with as a lot show actual property as potential, obstructed solely by the slimmest of bezels across the very fringe of the system. Like all the things else on the cellphone, aside from a few buttons, this show is completely flat, so when you’re one of many many who nonetheless can’t get on with a curved display screen, there are not any worries about that right here.

Cameras

I’ve come to not anticipate a lot from the cameras on gaming-orientated telephones, however with the RedMagic 9S Professional, I’m gleefully shocked. This system comes with two cameras on the again, a 50MP primary digital camera full with optical picture stabilization and a 50MP ultrawide. As ever, I’ve used my fluffy marvel boy Floyd for instance of the primary digital camera high quality, and as you may see within the picture beneath, the cameras are greater than succesful.

Admittedly, I’m not a lot of a photographer, however there’s an actual depth to the photographs you may seize on the 9S Professional, as evidenced by the intricacies within the colours of my pup’s coat. The one photos I’ve taken that match that stage of element are from flagship units just like the Honor Magic6 Professional, my present Android of alternative, or final 12 months’s Xiaomi 13T Professional. Contemplating each these units are very camera-centric, this can be a fairly huge win for the most recent RedMagic gaming cellphone.

There’s additionally a 16MP selfie digital camera, which is ok. Even for a tool at this worth level, not all the things might be excellent, and this front-facing digital camera isn’t. Don’t get me flawed, it’s greater than able to taking some first rate social media-worthy pictures, however it’s not going to blow your thoughts, and the sweetness filter adjustments your face greater than you may like. I’m already a fairly skinny man, however the filter made my face thinner, which says one thing a little bit troubling about magnificence requirements and selfie cameras that requires way more nuance than I can go into right here.

Efficiency

Because the RedMagic 9S Professional is a gaming cellphone, we anticipated unbelievable efficiency, and that’s simply what we obtained. The 9S Professional makes use of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, the very best obtainable on the time of writing, to run video games like Zenless Zone Zero and Diablo Immortal with ease, even on the highest settings. Enhance your FPS to the max, stick that refresh charge on 120Hz, and put each in-game graphics possibility on excessive – the 9S Professional can deal with it.

I might simply run out of superlatives speaking about how this factor offers with even probably the most demanding video games, however put merely, the body charge is clean, the visuals are outlined, and even the audio is particularly lush due to twin 1115K audio system, that are able to getting good and loud. It’s all you may ask for in a bespoke gaming smartphone, and the efficiency high quality lays down a gauntlet inside the trade area of interest that opponents are going to battle to maintain up with.

Not solely is that this factor able to any recreation you throw at it, however it’s obtained a complicated cooling system to verify the system doesn’t grow to be too scorching to deal with in the course of a spherical of Fortnite or a boss battle in Honkai Star Rail. Don’t get me flawed, even despite the ICE13.5 cooling system, the factor can get a little bit toastier than you may like, however you may hear the fan pulling its weight and it makes certain the factor by no means really overexerts. I ought to level out that when you can hear the fan, it’s not obnoxiously loud, it simply whirrs away within the background and you may simply masks it by turning up the in-game audio a contact.

Battery

Let’s begin this part by speaking in regards to the charging speeds of the RedMagic 9S Professional, that are frankly ridiculous. Utilizing the 80W charger the cellphone comes with – I do know, a cellphone coming with its charger, in 2024 no much less – you may juice from flat again as much as 100% in simply over half an hour. Even for a comparatively premium cellphone just like the 9S Professional, these are fast speeds, beating out the ASUS Rog Telephone 8 Professional by slightly below ten minutes, whereas laying waste to the Samsung Galaxy S24’s one-hour-plus juicing time.

Okay, so the charging speeds are nice, however what in regards to the battery life itself? It’s additionally fairly unbelievable. The 6,500mAh battery itself is a little bit of a beast and is considerably greater than that of the ASUS ROG Telephone 8 Professional, Xiaomi 14, and Honor Magic6 Professional. In fact, a large battery isn’t value its salt if it doesn’t maintain its cost, however the one contained in the 9S Professional does, providing not less than two days of juice with sporadic use.

To place the factor to the take a look at, I timed how a lot battery it makes use of throughout a single hour of gameplay with the best settings, utilizing Hoyoverse’s Zenless Zone Zero because the take a look at topic. In these 60 minutes, the battery diminished from 78% to 54%.

Actually, that sounds worse than it’s. Consider that is the cellphone operating at its highest potential settings – we’re speaking 120Hz, 60fps, and with the ‘rise’ efficiency setting energetic within the Sport Area – and you can also make the battery final for much longer with extra affordable settings. Even with that mentioned, these numbers equate to round 4 hours of play at most settings, which is greater than might be mentioned for even some transportable consoles, not to mention different smartphones.

Must you purchase the RedMagic 9S Professional?

Merely put, in order for you the very best gaming cellphone in 2024, it is best to get the RedMagic 9S Professional. Its futuristic design, top-tier efficiency, superb show, and flabbergasting charging speeds provide one thing that feels correctly fashionable, and I can simply see it changing into my go-to for testing any cell video games sooner or later. It’s additionally a good bit cheaper than its primary competitors, the ASUS ROG Telephone 8, which is at all times a pretty promoting level.

As ever, there are a few caveats. This can be a gaming cellphone that doubles down on its gamers-first ethos, so when you’re searching for AI options such as you may get with the most recent Samsung and Google Pixel telephones, you’re not going to seek out them right here. It’s additionally value saying that whereas the cameras you get are greater than succesful, there’s no macro or telephoto lens, so when you’re one thing of an newbie smartphone photographer, this won’t be the one for you.

Options

If I haven’t bought you on the RedMagic 9S Professional, listed below are some potential options.

Samsung Galaxy S24

If you need a cellphone that may deal with demanding video games and has a little bit extra to supply when it comes to enjoyable AI instruments, the Samsung Galaxy S24 is an apparent various. The S24 advantages from Samsung’s barely cleaner One UI working system, in addition to seven years of software program and safety updates, however as you may anticipate, the gaming efficiency isn’t fairly as spectacular as it’s with the RedMagic. If you need the complete lowdown, see our Samsung Galaxy S24 assessment.

ASUS ROG Telephone 8 Professional

I’ve made a number of comparisons between the ASUS ROG Telephone 8 Professional and RedMagic 9S Professional on this assessment, which is smart on condition that they’re the 2 greatest gaming telephones of 2024 to date. The large distinction between the 2 is that the ROG Telephone has an extra 32MP telephoto lens as a part of its triple digital camera set-up. Exterior of that, each are unbelievable units for gaming, and it comes right down to your opinions on each manufacturers when deciding which to go for. For extra particulars, try our full ASUS ROG Telephone 8 Professional Version assessment.