nubia Red Magic 9 Pro review

Unobstructed 6.8-inch OLED display

On the surface, the nubia Red Magic 8S Pro and the 9 Pro share the same 6.8-inch OLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and 10-bit color depth. However, nubia advertises a higher peak brightness of 1,600 nits (from 1,300 nits), saying it's BOE's Q9+ OLED panel. The resolution remains the same - 1116 x 2480px, which is a gaming-friendly resolution as it will make it easier for the GPU to render.

Unfortunately, there's still no HDR video support, which is a considerable drawback given that even some midrangers offer the Dolby Vision standard or HDR10+ at the very least. The good news is that the HDR works in the YouTube app.

In our usual set of tests, the panel turned out to be slightly better than the previous generation. We got up to 603 nits in manual mode, while in auto mode, the panel peaked at 1,016 nits. That's not nearly enough to compete with the best displays out there and some similarly priced handsets, and it's far from the advertised 1,600 nits.

Still, anything above 1,000 nits should be more than enough for comfortable outdoor use, even on a bright sunny day. Maybe not for gaming, but for browsing, reading, chatting, etc.

On a more positive note, the UD selfie camera is excellently implemented, and it's impossible to spot the lens when the screen is on. The display really is full-screen.

High refresh rate handling

The device offers four modes in total - 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz and Auto. The first three serve as a cap to the refresh rate, while the latter leaves the system to decide the appropriate refresh rate given the current scenario. The adjustment is pretty straightforward, though. The system will always go for the maximum refresh rate, be it system or third-party apps and system menus. Leaving the phone alone for a couple of seconds will reduce the refresh rate to 60Hz to preserve power. Running full-screen videos does the same as you don't really need 120Hz to watch a 24, 30 or 60fps video.

Battery life

The new Red Magic 9 Pro sports a bigger 6,500 mAh battery and presumably more efficient Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, compared to its predecessors. And the battery endurance shows.

We found the screen-on results to be excellent. The web browsing score is slightly lower than expected, but the video streaming and especially the gaming test show impressive runtimes. And with the handset performing great in all scenarios, the Active Use Score is respectable as well.

Charging speed

Unlike its predecessors, the global version of the Red Magic 9 Pro supports 80W fast charging via the Power Delivery 3.0 protocol. Using the device's included charger in the retail box, we got similar readings to the 65W charging on the Red Magic 8S Pro. In fact, the 9 Pro seems to charge slightly slower.

However, we need to consider the fact that the two handsets carry different batteries, with different capacities.

Still, the device offers more than decent enough fast charging, and you can top off the battery in just over 40 minutes. That's plenty competitive.

Speakers

The Red Magic 9 Pro is marketed with an improved set of stereo speakers with a large sound cavity and DTS: XULTRA sound tuning. The speakers are placed on each side when holding the phone horizontally and achieve an impressive -24.8 LUFS loudness.

But the speakers aren't just loud - they also offer excellent sound quality. The bass is deep, the highs are crisp, and the vocals are clear. There's minimal to barely noticeable distortion at higher levels, but as always, the sound quality is excellent.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.