Red Magic Nova unboxing

When you think of a tablet, you're likely thinking of an iPad. But you may draw a blank when it comes to a gaming tablet. Well, Red Magic wants to change that with the Red Magic Nova - a full-fledged gaming tablet with true gaming credentials.

The Red Magic Nova made its global debut this week, and it comes in a single color - Midnight. It ships with a USB-C cable and an 80W charger.

Before we get to specs, let's discuss the looks. The Red Magic Nova is more subtle than the phones coming our from the company. There are no flashy color accents and the LEDs are reduced to the Red Magic logo and a tiny circle around the built-in fan and only when it's operational.

The chassis is classy and understated and has a feeling of quality.

Upfront sits an ample 10.9-inch 1800x2880px IPS LCD. While some people may lament the lack of an OLED panel, at least this is a 144 Hz unit. It's also a fine panel with crisp visuals and good if not amazing brightness.

The Red Magic Nova runs the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading Edition with a 3.4GHz prime core and a GPU frequency of 1GHz - the highest-clocked variants of the SoC around. The Qualcomm chip comes with either 12 GB or 16 GB of RAM.

The 10,100mAh battery is good for 10 hours of gaming or nearly 19 hours of daily use.

Red Magic built a 9-layer cooling system with a 3D heat pipe, a circulation aid duct, a dissipation alloy, graphene, copper foil, thermally conductive gel, and a 20,000 RPM internal fan. We have to say that it's barely audible when in use.

There's also the Red Magic Game Space 9, which tunes the system for performance.

The Red Magic Nova will go on sale on October 16, starting at $499/€499/£439 for the 12/256GB model and $649/€649/£559 for the 16/512GB unit. We will share more first hand impressions with the tablet in the following weeks.