RedMagic 9S Pro and Nubia Z60 Ultra: A Tale of Two Powerhouse Smartphones

RedMagic 9s Pro review: Cheap and powerful gaming phone

The RedMagic 9s Pro is the latest entry in Nubia's line of smartphones aimed at gamers who want a mobile device that excels at gaming on the go while also providing the kind of functions you'd expect from a smartphone. That's what makes gaming phones so interesting as a sub-genre of handsets. They have many of the same features as a standard phone, but pushed to the max, as a good gaming phone needs a powerful chip and a fully-featured display, alongside a battery that can last for hours. The Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro sets the standard in the regard, serving as a great gaming device and a more-than capable phone. Does the RedMagic 9s Pro measure up? It certainly has a lot to offer users for a very reasonable price. However, it's essentially the same device as the recent RedMagic 9 Pro, with the same issues as that handset. As great as its screen might be, the RedMagic 9s Pro suffers from a lackluster camera and requires accessories to bring out its, which might turn many people away. Find out why in this RedMagic 9s Pro review. RedMagic phone's pricing can be odd, mainly because the device maker tends to lock hardware specs behind color. So, if you want 12GB of RAM with 256GB of storage, you buy the Sleet model, which will cost you either £579 or $649. Meanwhile, if you want the 16GB of RAM model with 512GB of storage, you have to buy the Cyclone or Snowfall colors, which will cost you £709 or $799. There is also an upcoming Frost color option which should have the same cost and the same specs as the Sleet model. Locking the specs behind the color is odd, but the RedMagic 9s Pro's price is pretty good and reasonably reflects what you get with the device. The RedMagic 9s Pro shows off an angular design filled with hard edges and flat surfaces. It comes with a 6.8-inch display set in a flat rectangular design. This screen and back glass are both protected by Gorilla Glass 5 coating, so it should stand up against potential scratches. The cameras are also placed under the glass, meaning that the back of the phone feels seamless when you're holding it. One interesting addition to the RedMagic 9s Pro is the RedMagic ICE 13.5 Cooling system which keeps the RedMagic 9s Pro as cool as possible, no matter what the phone is doing. I honestly didn't notice the cooling when using the phone, at least until I started playing a few more intense games. If you've ever actually played many heavy-duty games on your phone, you know that handsets can get hot, but the RedMagic 9s Pro remains cool to touch even after gaming for a long time. However, I should note that to help get this level of cooling, the phone has a lot of open gaps in the bezel to allow airflow. This means the RedMagic 9s Pro has no IP rating, leaving the phone vulnerable to water and dust. You'll need to be careful when using it and keeping it in your pocket. The RedMagic 9s comes with the standard power and volume buttons on the side, alongside the two 520Hz capacitive shoulder buttons that you can map for use in many games. Speaking of games, you can also see the textured switch that boots the phone into Nubia's gaming UI. there is also a USB-C port at the bottom of the phone and a headphone jack at the top. Unfortunately, RedMagic didn't add a charging port on the side of the phone to allow for more comfortable charging during gameplay. One odd design choice is the two speakers situated at the top and bottom of the phone. While these work fine normally, they get covered up when you hold the phone in landscape mode to play games; as a result, the sound can be bit muffled. It also means that the sound isn't aimed toward you during gaming sessions, which leads to a bit of loss of immersion. The RedMagic 9s Pro comes with a 6.8-inch AMOLED screen with a 2480 x 1116 resolution and a 1,600-nit peak brightness. That's an impressive feature set that puts the gaming phone roughly on par with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, but it's essentially the same as the prior RedMagic 9 Pro. In some regards, that's no bad thing, especially on a gaming phone, but it might lead you to wonder why you don't just go with the other device. The RedMagic 9s Pro offers 120Hz refresh rate which is impressive, and matches other leading gaming phones like the Asus ROG Phone 8. However, there's no option to push the RedMagic 9s Pro screen to a higher refresh rate. In truth, this isn't that much of an issue as you would be hard-pressed to find an available game that requires anything above 120Hz, and if you do, then a phone really isn't the best place to play it. The resolution on display here is gorgeous, and the gaming mode makes sure the phone gets as much as it can out of the screen. Add to this the minimal bezels, and it's pretty immersive although, as with most smartphones, there is still the issue of your fingers needing to be on it to actually control the game you're playing. At least the capacitive shoulder triggers do lessen this problem. This sense of immersion is helped by both the front camera and the fingerprint sensor being located under the display, meaning your gaming experience isn't hampered by cutouts. Front camera performance isn't great as a result, and the fingerprint sensor is temperamental at best, which is annoying because the touchscreen otherwise works perfectly. The RedMagic 9s Pro comes with two rear cameras -- a 50MP main camera and a 50MP ultrawide camera. There is also the previously mentioned 16MP front camera under the display. Unfortunately, the cameras are one of the weakest parts of the phone, with each underperforming compared to rival devices. I tested the camera with the Google Pixel 8a, which comes with a 64MP main camera and a 13MP ultrawide, alongside a 13MP selfie camera, but costs $150 less than the RedMagic. This Pixel also happens to be the best camera phone under $500, so it shows how the RedMagic 9s Pro's camera performance falls short. On paper, this should mean that, while the Pixel 8a's main camera has the edge with megapixels, the RedMagic 9s Pro should have far clearer ultrawide and selfie images. However, that's not what I found when comparing images. To test the main camera I took an image of a walking man statue in Paddington. As we can see, the the Pixel 8a image is slightly darker than the RedMagic 9s Pro, which leads to the statue looking more detailed. There's also less blowout on the lighting in the corner, with the RedMagic being painfully bright where the sun shines. The ultrawide cameras have a similar problem, with the Pixel 8a showing more color depth compared to the RedMagic. It also looks like the shadows on the RedMagic are darker on the balconies which ends up hiding many of the features from view. The selfie camera on the RedMagic might be the weakest one on the phone. If you look at the two images, you can see that the RedMagic has a real issue with pixelating the light, making it look very strange. This has been an issue with RedMagic for a while, and it's depressing to see that it still hasn't been fixed. The colors also look washed out, with the Pixel 8a looking far more natural and lifelike. The RedMagic 9s Pro also has a macro camera which is... present. It isn't terrible, and it shows off the colors on the red flowers nicely, but it seems kind of flat textutally. Overall, it's evident that the RedMagic 9s Pro just doesn't make the most of its camera hardware. If you are looking for a gaming phone that's also a top camera phones, then this is not the device for you; there are better options at multiple price points, whether it's the gaming-capable OnePlus 12 flagship or the more affordable Motorola Edge Plus (2023). The RedMagic 9s Pro comes with an overclocked Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is referred to as the Leading Version. That system-on-chip ups the core CPU to run at 3.4GHz (instead of the normal version's 3.3 GHz speed) and ramps up the GPU. Added to this is the 12GB or 16GB of RAM, depedning on which model you buy, which can then be improved by sacrificing some of the memory. For instance, I can add a further 12GB to my 16GB of RAM to help boost performance. When we ran the RedMagic 9s Pro through the Geekbench 6 CPU test, it scored a pretty decent result. The device had an average single-core score of 2,288 and an average multi-core score of 7,076. If we compare this to other smartphones' scores, the RedMagic 9s Pro looks pretty impressive, though we'd expect that from a phone built specifically for gaming. The above table compares the RedMagic 9s Pro to several other phones, including the previous RedMagic 9 Pro. As is evident, Snapdragon phones struggle to compete with the iPhone 15 Pro Max in the single-core score. All of them managed to blow Apple's latest device out of the water with relative ease in the multicore test, though. It's interesting to see the comparison between the RedMagic 9s Pro and the previous RedMagic 9 Pro, with the 9s managing to beat its predecessor in the single-core score, but posting the worse multicore result, which indicates that the RedMagic 9 Pro is getting more out of the baseline Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 than the overclocked version. The same thing occurs with the Asus ROG Phone 8, which struggled in the single-core test but far exceeded the 9s in multi-core performance. However, it should be noted that the Asus was in X mode for the test, which boosts the phone's performance for a better gaming experience. GeekBench scores only really tell half the story, so the real question is how the phone runs day by day. I watched videos on both YouTube and other streaming sites like Netflix at full 1080p with no drop in quality and no stuttering. I also managed to stream games from Xbox Game Pass, and I saw no drop in quality for games like Gears of War 5. Finally, I tested Genshin Impact to see how the phone handled it -- there were no drops in frames or stuttering, which is precisely what you want from a gaming phone. We also run our devices through 3D's Wildlife Extreme Unlimited GPU test, which tests how smoothly a device runs graphically intense scenes. As is evident, the RedMagic was able to easily handle the tests, with the phone scoring higher than the Asus and the Samsung Galaxy S24, and easily outstripping the iPhone 15 Pro Max. We can also see the general power of the Snapdraogon 8 Gen 3 when setting it to export a video on Adobe Rush. Like other Android phones, it managed to export a video in a matter of seconds even with a filter. While it wasn't as fast as the iPhone, it still exceeds what most people will require the phone to do while editing, but, sadly, the RedMagic is paring this phone with such generally terrible cameras. Unfortunately, one major weakness of the phone is the storage options available. While 256GB and 512GB are generally decent options for a phone, they don't match the gaming focus of the device. For instance, the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro offers storage up to 1TB, which means more games on your phone. The RedMagic 9s Pro is a battery powerhouse. Seriously, this thing does not turn off. The Phone comes with a 6,500 mAh battery, which is huge. For reference, the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro only comes with 5,500 mAh and the Samsung Galaxy S24 comes with 4,000 mAh. Combine this massive battery with the known power conservation that Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chips excel at, and you have a phone that you can happily run all day with no issues. I ran the phone for more than 3 hours playing a video, and it barely dropped by 15%. It was the same while playing games, where I played everything from Xbox Game Pass to basic apps and didn't have to stop every hour to quickly charge the phone, which happens a fair amount on my iPhone 14 Pro Max. According to RedMagic, it is possible to get around 56 hours out of the device without needing to charge during regular use, which I can believe based on my anecdotal use of the phone. When you do need to charge the RedMagic 9s Pro, you won't have to hang around long thanks to the 80W charger supplied with the phone. I got the phone up to about 70% after having it charge for 30 minutes and managed to get it to full charge after a little more than 45 minutes. It's impressive, and exactly what someone looking to play games needs from a phone. However, there doesn't appear to be any wireless charging, which is a bit disappointing for a modern smartphone. The RedMagic 9s Pro comes with RedMagic OS 9.5, which runs on Android 14. The actual UI is fine, if a bit dull. The phone has the same general home screen layout as other Android devices. I will say that the basic options for the phone's wallpaper are a bit meh, and very stereotypically "gamer" in design, to the phone's detriment honestly. That said, it is certainly an improvement over how RedMagic's OS used to look, and Android 14 is a perfectly good base for any OS. I didn't have any issues swapping apps, and navigating the menu was pretty simple and fluid. There's even the Goper app which improves the connection with any other Nubia devices. However, I will say that the base browser on the device is pretty hideous so I would recommend downloading Chrome as soon as possible rather than using what comes on the device to browse. There are a couple of special features with the RedMagic phone, and they're interesting to say the least. The first is the physical gaming switch near the volume and sleep button. When you flick this switch, you're taken to Nubia's Game Space UI. Here you can launch games and adjust the fan, CPU and GPU settings to get the most out of your gaming experience. It's simple enough, but it does feel a bit surplus to requirements sometimes and it's annoying that it can't function with the Game Pass app. Speaking of gaming, you have the tactile shoulder buttons on the RedMagic 9s Pro, which can be set by using the in-game UI. This is accessed by dragging your finger on the side of the phone. Having the option to set the built-in shoulder buttons makes shooting games much easier to play on the phone, even without a controller. I suppose I should mention one of the stranger additions to the phone, Mora. That's a built-in AI virtual companion that you can access by entering the Game Space UI, which will then put an app on the home page. For the most part, Mora functions as another game on the phone, but one that doesn't offer much. You can dress her up and make use of an AR camera. She can also talk to you, and functions as an alarm clock to wake you up. Thankfully you don't have to use her or have her standing on your home screen, especially not if you plan on being in polite company. While the RedMagic 9s Pro works fantastically as a gaming phone, it suffers as a regular phone. The cameras are just bad, to the degree that they take away from the other parts of the phone and will certainly turn some people away. It's especially upsetting to see that there is still no telephoto lens on the phone, something we do see on the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro and the Galaxy S24. Meanwhile, others might be turned off by the lack of an IP rating and the threat that dust and water pose to the phone, which has been lessened massively in current smartphones. That's not to say there aren't any strengths. One of the biggest pros is tht the RedMagic 9s Pro's design just looks cool. It's sleek but feels hardy and it's comfortable to hold for long periods. It does lack some of the more interesting RGB light features seen on the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro or the Nothing Phone (2), but the ones that are there are interesting enough. While the RedMagic UI is a bit generic, it does what it needs to and the gaming features, chip, Battery life and RAM all help the RedMagic 9s Pro to stand out as a gaming device. If you want to focus on mobile gameing then the RedMagic 9s Pro would be a fine option. But if you want a top phone that also happens to play games, then there are better options out there.

Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Version review: big battery and impressive power without the ultra price

Why you can trust Tom's Guide Our writers and editors spend hours analyzing and reviewing products, services, and apps to help find what's best for you. Find out more about how we test, analyze, and rate. The Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Version's mouthful of a name is worth remembering, as it's a novel attempt to crack the flagship phone establishment. The original Z60 Ultra launched earlier this year, but this updated edition is here to remind us why Samsung and Google dominate. Leading Version refers to the Nubia's main upgrade -- a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading Version chip, which is the most powerful chip currently available to Android phones. Nubia rounds out the package with a huge battery, some imposing cameras and a head-turningly low price. But with tough competition that can beat the Nubia on certain sides of photography (especially for selfies) and on software quality, this isn't a must-buy phone for users wanting the best Android phones for the least amount of money. Instead, it's more of a specialized pick for performance-minded buyers who don't mind a drastically different look for their phone and their photos. And you'll see why when you read this Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Version review in full. The Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Version is on sale now from $649/£649 for the basic 8GB RAM/256GB storage version. If that's not enough memory for your needs, you can instead spend $699/£729 for 12GB/256GB, $779/£829 for 16GB/512GB, and finally $879/£929 for the maximum amount of 16GB RAM and 1TB storage. In its standard guise, the Z60 Ultra Leading Version is surprisingly cheap, offering similar or better specs than Android flagship phones such as the Google Pixel 9 or Samsung Galaxy S24 but for nearly 100 bucks less. Even the larger memory variants are priced to come in under the top-tier flagship phones like the Galaxy S24 Ultra or Pixel 9 Pro XL, an obvious benefit for the value-minded buyer. Nubia appears to have taken this year's flat-sided phone design trend to an extreme with the Z60 Ultra, giving it a slab-like design with sharp corners and decorations everywhere. That includes the huge rear camera block (featuring not one but two further protrusions for extra camera lens room) that loves to catch on your pants pocket as you put the phone away. There are two colors on offer, and neither one is particularly subtle despite their plain black and silver base colors. The white version has a marbled design, but with the top third of the phone still colored black, which makes for an odd contrast. The all-black model I tested looks far more cohesive, and the striped pattern is neater-looking even if it's still quite eye-catching. The unusual details don't stop there. One is the Custom Sliding Shortcut button, a slider that quickly opens the camera by default, but can be assigned to activate/deactivate other common features like the flashlight or silent mode. It's not as slick as the iPhone 15 Pro's Action button, nor a versatile, but it can be just as useful. There's also an IR blaster on the phone's top edge for activating devices that use traditional remote controls as well. And beneath the screen you'll find an under-display camera, apparently the sixth-generation of such a component. It's near-impossible to spot unless you very deliberately shine bright light on it, meaning that most of the time you get a true flawless display experience. The actual display covering this camera is an impressive one -- a 6.8-inch AMOLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, and a 1,500-nit rated brightness that would put it between the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Pixel 9 Pro XL's brightness levels. The Z60's screen also features 2160Hz PWM dimming, which, in theory, helps reduce eye strain if you're frequently staring at the screen. One area where this display stumbles is resolution. The 1116 pixels-wide screen is higher than the 1080 required for FHD, but lower than the 1440p needed for QHD, the effective standard for flagship-grade displays. There are no alterations between the cameras of the original Nubia Z60 Ultra and the new Leading Version we have to test here. And that's completely okay, since the specs were already impressive. The Z60 Ultra Leading Version carries 50MP main and ultrawide cameras, a 64MP telephoto camera with 2.4x optical zoom and a 12MP under-display camera on the front. For our first comparison, we have a hanging basket of flowers, taken with our second phone, Galaxy S24, a device similar in price to the Nubia despite it not being an Ultra model itself. The Nubia's image is quite a bit darker, and also has a noticeably different magnification compared to the S24, despite me standing in the same spot for both photos. However, its detail level is just as good as the Samsung. A severe color difference can be seen if you look at the comparison of the Underground platform sign taken by the Z60 and the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL. The Pro XL's here standing in for the Pixel 9, another phone roughly as expensive as the Nubia that uses the same main camera as its Pro siblings. There's a lot less color in the Nubia photo, though you do have a little more definition in elements like the brick walls. Since I had the Z60 in my pocket while passing a steam train at London's Victoria station, I also got this comparison against the iPhone 15 Pro Max. It's another washed-out image from the Nubia, and the increased contrast isn't as much of an advantage this time. Another anaemic-looking image can be found in this ultrawide sample of a cottage in Hyde Park, again against the Galaxy S24. The S24's camera wins both in terms of color and contrast this round, plus its wider lens made it easier to fit the cottage in shot. Zooming in on the spire of the nearby St. James' Church, we have the closest comparison of all the photos we'll see in this section. The Nubia's still clearly aiming for sharpness over richness of color, but when pointing your camera at a near-monochomatic subject with lots of little details to appreciate, it complements the more intense colors of the Galaxy S24 nicely. The Z60 Ultra touts larger pixels than in its under-display cameras compared to previous components used by Nubia and its related companies. But it's still clear from shots like the one above that it's not ready for prime time. It's brighter than the Galaxy S24 version of this image, which could be worth something in certain circumstances, but the way it smooths out huge amounts of detail in my skin and hair, plus its less accurate bokeh effect, is far from idea. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading Version chipset apparently made such an impact on Nubia that it decided to use part of its name for the phone it dropped it into. And why wouldn't it? As of late 2024, it's as good as chips get for Android phones, with more power and AI potential on offer compared to the standard 8 Gen 3. The benchmark results above show that the Leading Version chip isn't a flat power increase. In fact the Galaxy S24, which uses a custom "For Galaxy" version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, beats the Nubia on both the Geekbench CPU and 3DMark GPU tests. The Google Pixel 9's Tensor G4 silicon doesn't put up much of a fight, however, and while the iPhone 15's A16 chip offers similar CPU performance and much better processing times for video, it's way behind in the graphics benchmark. Under normal conditions, I didn't really notice the increased power of this Leading Version chip. What I did notice however was that it made the Z60 get really hot while running games. Granted there's been a heatwave in the U.K. as I tested, but the phone really struggles to keep cool once it gets going. At least it does still run the games well and stably though, with Genshin Impact proving to run particularly smoothly even at maximum settings. As we mentioned above, you have a choice of 8GB, 12GB or 16GB for RAM in the Z60 Ultra Leading Version, and 256GB, 512GB or 1TB for storage. This ranges from being on par with rival phones to being considerably more, with 8GB/128GB still the default for several phones even in the flagship category. Continuing this phone's trend of offering dramatically big specs, the Z60 Ultra Leading Version contains a 6,000 mAh battery. As well as being larger than average, the Z60's battery uses a more advanced silicon-carbon build, rather than the typical lithium-ion found in other phones. Using our YouTube battery drain test, 3 hours of video playback ate up about 19% of the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Version's battery. That beats the similarly-sized Galaxy S24 Ultra's 21%, and narrowly loses to the OnePlus 12's 18%, although with a 20% larger battery than both of these phones, the Z60 appears to be less efficient with its more spacious power cell. There's an 80W charger in the box, and this is the best way to charge the phone. In our testing, this charger could power the phone from empty to 30% full in 15 minutes, 57% in 30 minutes and 100% in 59 minutes. A little on the slow side considering the wattage of the charger, but understandable because of the greater capacity it has to fill. Android 14, in the guise of MyOS 14.0, runs things on the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Version. This is a skin of Android that keeps things fairly simple, allowing you to focus on the hardware over the software. That's not to say you get nothing in the way of software toys. Nubia's still using the basic Google-supplied AI tools like Magic Editor, plus a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff for its photography. It's nowhere near as sophisticated as the stuff that Google kept for the Pixel 9 series, but they are certainly worthwhile inclusions. Sadly I can't ignore the Z60's poorly-translated menus and interfaces, a complaint I've made so many times in Nubia, ZTE and RedMagic reviews I can only assume the company has no interest in fixing it. The menus aren't in complete gibberish English that makes them impossible to navigate, but it gives the phone a rough edge that you wouldn't expect from an Ultra-designated phone, and that you'd never see from a mainstream flagship device. The Nubia Android update policy offers at least three rounds of full Android upgrades, with no sign of extra years of just security updates. That's quite weak these days, with an equivalent phone from Samsung or Google offering over double that lifespan with their seven-year offers. Big specs plus a good price can sometimes make for a great phone, and it certainly gives the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Version a high base level of quality. You don't find batteries of this size or camera sensors of this resolution on many phones, let alone for half the price you'd expect. Power and endurance, and to an extent cameras, are the highlights of the Z60 Ultra Leading Version. So if a toybox of AI features, overall photo consistency or software update schedules are at all on your radar, then check out the Google Pixel 9 or Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra first, and perhaps the OnePlus 12 if you want to find a middle ground between value and features. Perhaps if Nubia had been willing to upgrade more elements of the Z60 Ultra Leading Version, it would have stood more of a chance against the best in the business. But as it stands, it'll have to settle for being trapped in the middle of the flagship phone pack, rather than leading it.