nubia Red Magic Nova review

Display

The Red Magic Nova features a 10.9-inch display with 2,880 x 1,800 pixels or 312ppi density. It supports up to 144Hz refresh rate and up to 840Hz touch sampling. There are no notches or perforations.

The panel is IPS LCD, and its maximum brightness is advertised to be 550 nits. It supports a wide color gamut, and while it is not officially as HDR panel though some apps list it as HDR10 capable.

We have completed our display measurement and the maximum brightness in both automatic and manual mode is 517 nits. We also measured the minimum brightness at white color - 3.4 nits.

Finally, the screen offers good enough black levels (0.44), and the contrast ratio turned out to be 1175:1.

The screen supports up to 144Hz refresh rate. The available refresh rate modes include Auto, 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz and 144Hz. The Auto mode uses 120Hz for when displaying Android OS and various non-gaming apps and switches to 144Hz for games and benchmarks. It reverts to 60Hz for static images.

The other models - 90Hz, 120Hz and 144Hz - use the preset that their names suggest for the Android UI and all compatible apps, and go down to 60Hz for static screens.

YouTube is the only app to show HDR10 streaming as an option, but the HDR effect is not that good.

Battery life

The Red Magic Nova is powered by a 10,100mAh battery, adequate capacity for this size of a tablet. The slate scored an excellent Active Use Rating of 10:51h with solid times across all individual on-screen tests.

Charging speed

While there is a version of the Red Magic Nova that supports 120W charging, most of the world, including Europe, is getting the tablet with an 80W power adapted. As per the official website, a full charge should be reached in 55 mins.

There is an option to use the fan when charging, which should boost the charging speed by reducing the heat. You can opt for balanced cooling or maximum fan speed. Since the balanced option is the default and probably will be the preferred one, we kept it that way for our testing.

The charging of the Nova's 10,100mAh battery is quite fast. The 80W power adapter recharged 38% in 18mins, 66% in 30mins, while a full charge took exactly 58 minutes. This is in line with the official numbers and quite fast for a tablet.

Speakers - loudness and quality

The Red Magic Nova has four speakers placed two by two on each of the shorter sides. They are equally loud and sound the same.

This audio setup scored a Very Good mark for loudness. The sound is nicely deep and there is good bass and great vocals, though the high-frequency range is somewhat lacking.

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.