RedMagic 11 Pro review

Design and handling

The RedMagic 11 Pro's design is nearly identical to the 10 Pro. You still get the transparent back design with two of the available color options. We have the Transparent Silver Subzero, but you can also get it in Transparent Black Nightfreeze.

If you are a fan of the straight, blocky design, you will fall in love with the RedMagic 11 Pro. It feels like a solid slab of glass and metal with no bumps. The camera hardware on the back lies flush, and looks really cool.

The transparent paint jobs in this generation now reveal the liquid cooling system called AquaCore. The coolant pipes are exposed and are, in turn, transparent as well. Once you run a game with the cooling fan on, the coolant starts flowing, and you can see it on the back of the phone.

Another upgrade to the design is the RGB LED lighting. You can spot the LEDs on the cooling fan and logo, and there are a few around the sides, including the shoulder triggers. They light up as well.

Speaking of buttons, the right side of the phone feels a bit overcrowded as it houses not just the volume rocker and the power button, but also the physical Game Space switch that launches the gaming mode. We were often confused about which button to press when pulling out the phone.

RedMagic 11 Pro

The level of durability has been upped quite a bit, coming from the previous generations. The RedMagic 11 Pro now features a Gorilla Glass protective sheet on the front, and despite its open design with an active cooling solution, the chassis is IPX8-certified against water.

The middle frame is once again made of aviation-grade aluminum. You will also find the pressure-sensitive shoulder triggers for gaming along with the air vents for the cooling fan.

The bottom houses the SIM card tray. The SIM card slot can house up to two SIM cards. There is no support for eSIM.

The 3.5mm audio jack is up top.

RedMagic 11 Pro

The pressure-sensitive shoulder triggers for gaming get a little upgrade this year. They now support 520Hz touch sampling rate, the fastest ones in the industry according to nubia, although we can't think of another phone that has one of those anyways. Additionally, the shoulder triggers can now be used in games in portrait orientation.

The RedMagic 11 Pro also gets new haptics to improve the gaming experience even further. The so-called 4D vibration feedback is still on the menu, but it's compatible only with select titles like PUBG.

Interestingly, despite the massive increase in battery capacity and the addition of wireless charging coils, the phone's thickness hasn't changed. It's still on the thick side - 8.9mm, but it has been this way for a few generations now. That's quite impressive when put into perspective.

The under-display fingerprint reader is business as usual. It works relatively well and we had no major hiccups.

All in all, the design hasn't changed much, but it has been refined, and the new liquid cooling element on the back looks cool if not else. And you now get Gorilla Glass and higher IPX8 ingress protection.