nubia Red Magic 3s review

The shooter is just the one

Although the Red Magic 3s has seen some improvements compared to its predecessor, it doesn't deliver anything new in the camera section. There's still just the one 48MP sensor on board paired with a lens that has an f/1.7 aperture. There are no ultra-wides nor telephoto units. If that's not a clear indication that this is strictly a gaming phone, we don't know what is.

On the front sits a 16MP sensor coupled with an f/2.0 aperture while the pixel size of the sensor (2.0µm) is more than respectable.

Camera menus

Despite having just one camera, the camera menu is pretty rich. There are a lot of shooting modes to play around with, including a dedicated Macro mode and a Night mode.

Camera menus

Swiping left and right will cycle between different modes while the additional settings menu lets you shoot in 48MP resolution and change the video recording resolution. Nothing too fancy to find there. In fact, the portrait mode is being left out too.

Daylight samples

Using the only snapper on the back, the system outputs 12MP photos with rather good detail, punchy and contrasty colors. However, the apparent noise on every surface with uniform color and the oversharpening halos ruin the overall quality of the photos.

Standard 12MP samples

Dynamic range isn't one of its strongest suits either. The details in the shadows are crushed and images look underexposed in general.

48MP samples

Switching over to 48MP mode will only give you so much extra detail. In the process, the noise gets more prominent, and the oversharpening halos are more visible without having to zoom so much.

Low-light samples

Low-light samples taken with the standard photo mode don't look all that bad - punchy colors, contrasty and extracts plenty of information from the shadows. In fact, photos look brighter than we would expect without even resorting to night mode. However, photos look soft, and some highlights look blown out.

Normal low-light samples

The night mode restores the highlights and the shadows presenting a more balanced approach and tries to sharpen things up, but the latter isn't always the end result. Some of the samples look softer with the night mode, and there's plenty of noise too, especially in the dark areas.

Low-light samples with Night mode

Now let's take the time to compare the phone to some of its competitors in a more controlled environment.

nubia Red Magic 3s against the Asus ROG Phone II and the Xiaomi Black Shark 2 in our Photo compare tool

Selfies

The selfies are taken with the 16MP camera on the front and to our surprise, the camera does a lot better job relative to the main snapper on the back. The detail is nice, colors are natural-looking, and photos are generally sharp even though it uses a fixed-focus lens. Our only complaint about the dynamic range remains from the previous version.

Selfies

Video recording

The phone is capable of recording up to 8K HDR videos but only at 15 frames per second, so it looks quite choppy. The usual 2160p@30/60fps and 1080p@30/60fps modes are also available. And the processing is rather familiar - looks a lot like the stills we got. The detail is good, colors are punchy but aggressive oversharpening is still at play here. The dynamic range is not stellar either.

Full HD videos share the same processing as the 4K but with expectedly lower detail.

Sadly, there's no active EIS in 4K so expect shaky videos. There's no option in the menu as well.

And here's a handy comparison to other rivals in a more controlled environment.

2160p: nubia Red Magic 3s against the Asus ROG Phone II and Xiaomi Black Shark 2 in our Video compare tool