nubia Red Magic 8S Pro review

A familiar triple-camera setup with 50MP main shooter

The Red Magic 8S Pro sports a fairly new main camera sensor - it's the same one from the previous 8 Pro, but it's a huge upgrade over the last couple of Red Magic generations before that. The handset now uses a Samsung GN5 50MP ISOCELL sensor. It's 1/1.57" in size with 1.0µm pixels, and it's paired with an f/1.9 lens.

The secondary camera remains the same as before - 8MP, f/2.2, 1/4.0", 1.12µm with 120-degree FoV (13mm) ultrawide shooter. Last and least of all, there is a 2MP fixed-focus GalaxyCore GC02M1 macro camera on the back of the Red Magic 8S Pro.

The Red Magic 8 Pro has an under-display selfie camera. Nubia says it is a second-generation unit developed with BOE (the display manufacturer) to improve the camera's peak brightness and color accuracy. We can confirm that they've done a great job at concealing the camera. There's no way to notice it in day-to-day usage.

Regarding hardware, the selfie camera is the same 16MP OV16E1Q as found on the Red Magic 7 Pro and some other devices like the ZTE Axon 30 and Axon 40 Ultra. It is a 1/2.8" sensor with 1.12µm pixels and fixed focus.

Camera menus

The camera menu is business as usual. Camera modes switch with a simple swipe left and right in a carousel formation. The additional settings menu is placed in the upper-right corner of the viewfinder, and the dedicated Pro mode offers quite a few settings to tinker with.

Camera app

The camera menu is business as usual. Camera modes switch with a simple swipe left and right in a carousel formation. The additional settings menu is placed in the upper-right corner of the viewfinder, and the dedicated Pro mode offers quite a few settings to tinker with.

Camera app

When shooting macro, you get a small magnifier, which you can move around the viewfinder, but more importantly - it has focus peaking. It allows you to hit the right focusing distance instead of guessing. We found this feature to be particularly useful since there's no autofocus support. We only wish that the macro camera gets a toggle of its own.

Interestingly, the Pro mode works not only with the main camera but also with the ultrawide, but not the macro cam or the selfie.

Daylight photos

Main camera

The main camera seems competent enough to produce nice stills with punchy colors, plenty of detail and good sharpness.

Daylight main camera samples

Interestingly enough, there's no 2x zoom toggle, so nubia probably doesn't want you to zoom crop from the main camera. You can still zoom in and out with pinch-to-zoom gestures. Here are some brief examples of the 2x zoom capabilities.

Daylight main camera samples

Ultrawide camera

As one would expect, the ultrawide photos are largely unimpressive. The tiny sensor can barely capture decent enough photos, and only if the lighting conditions are ideal. Either way, we are met with pretty soft-looking images with not enough detail and with limited dynamic range. Colors are quite dull, too, not even close to the main camera's processing.

Daylight ultrawide camera samples

Macro camera

The macro shots are okay to some extent. The tiny 2MP sensor struggles to deliver a good level of detail, and colors are washed out, but the sharpness is decent.

Macro camera samples

Low-light photos

Main camera

The nighttime photos are also pretty decent with good contrast, noticeable fine detail, good sharpness and punchy colors. Once again, though, we found the dynamic range to be limited as highlights are sometimes clipped, but the overly dark shadows are hard to miss.

Low-light main camera samples

The Night mode can be triggered automatically, although we didn't see that happening very often. You can always force it for better nighttime stills. Dynamic range is largely improved by lighting up the shadows and fixing the highlights. Unfortunately, the Night mode goes overboard with the sharpening and contrast, making everything look gritty and overprocessed. Overall, images look fine, but some may find them a bit too much.

Night mode main camera samples

UIltrawide camera

There's no Night mode on the ultrawide camera and the standard Photo mode just doesn't cut it. Images are extremely soft, dark and without any detail. It's hard to recommend shooting with the ultrawide at night.

Low-light ultrawide camera

Portraits

The portraits in good lighting are pretty solid. They have plenty of detail, they are sharp enough, and the colors are more or less accurate. The faux bokeh effect is convincing, and the edge detection is really good, even with more complex backgrounds.

Portrait samples

Here's how the primary camera on the nubia Red Magic 8S Pro stacks against the rest of the competition in the controlled environment of our Photo Compare Tool.

nubia Red Magic 8S Pro against the Asus ROG Phone 6D and the iQOO 11 in our Photo compare tool

Selfies

The selfie camera, being behind the display, produces sub-optimal images. Although far from unusable, there are glaring issues with the stills. The colors are off and softness is present all-around with an unsatisfactory level of detail. It appears that nubia was trying to tackle the issue by adding sharpness, but that's just not enough.

Selfies

Still, on a gaming-first phone like the Red Magic 8S Pro, we understand that an uninterrupted edge-to-edge display experience naturally precedes a great selfie camera.

Video recording

Just like its predecessors, the handset supports up to 8K@30fps video recording, while 4K videos can go up to 60fps. You have the option to turn off stabilization if you are shooting with a tripod and you'd need the extra field of view.

Starting with the 8K footage, it is pretty solid with little to complain about. It seems raw, though, as nubia hasn't applied any additional processing to the video.

The 2160p video, for example, looks slightly sharper (albeit with less detail due to the lower resolution) and with more color to it. Once again, we would have wished for a wider dynamic range, and contrast seems just slightly off.

Here are two videos with EIS and without to see the difference. We find the EIS competent as it smooths out the bumps quite nicely.

Once you are done with the real-life scenarios, take a look at our video compare tool to see how the nubia Red Magic 8S Pro stacks against the other phones we've reviewed.

nubia Red Magic 8S Pro against the Asus ROG Phone 6D and the iQOO 11 in our Video compare tool