Red Magic Titan 16 Pro review

07 October 2024

The Red Magic Titan 16 Pro is the gaming brand's first laptop, but it's a real beast. From its sturdy aluminum unibody chassis to the RGB-lit logo and keyboard, this gaming machine is made for those who need maximum performance.

Coupled with a spacious 16-inch display and armed with a 14th-generation Intel Core i9-HX processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 laptop graphics with 8 GB VRAM, this powerhouse will handle all of the modern AAA games you throw at it as well as just about any demanding productivity task like 4K video editing or 3D rendering.

All that power comes with a $1,699/€1,759/£1,599 price tag. So how does the Titan 16 Pro perform and what kind of downsides are there with 16-inch gaming laptops? We did our usual tests and were left impressed with the performance, build, and display but the constantly spinning fans and subpar battery endurance are a couple of weak points.

Design, build quality, I/O

There’s no beating around the bush, Titan 16 Pro is a gaming laptop through and through. As you’d expect RGB lights are everywhere from the logo on the back of the display, and the Red Magic branding front and center on the inside of the display hinge to the full-sized RGB-lit keyboard.

This chunky laptop weighs 2.4 kg and measures 24mm at its thickest point but it’s got a sleek profile and aluminum unibody that feels premium and gives little to no flex. It also comes bundled with a hefty charging brick, which is one of the largest power supplies we’ve seen. It weighs an additional 860 grams bringing the carrying total to well over 3 kg - not exactly backpack-friendly.

While Titan 16 Pro makes 13-14-inch ultrabooks seem like toys, it’s not that much larger than competing 16-inch non-gaming laptops. We had a MacBook Pro 14 sitting around and compared the two side by side.

Our review unit comes in Eclipse Black with a stealthy matte finish but it picks up smudges from your fingers very quickly, especially in the area around the trackpad.

In terms of I/O, you get a decent number of ports most of which are located on the back of the device. These include - 3x USB-A ports (2x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1) as well as 1x USB-C port (Thunderbolt 4) with support for Power Delivery and DP Alt mode. You also get 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x SD UHS-II card reader, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a gigabit ethernet port.

Wireless connectivity is handled by Intel's AX211 network card with 2x2 MIMO antennas offering Wi-Fi 6E with 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz bands and Bluetooth 5.3.

Being a gaming laptop, Titan 16 Pro comes with a proper cooling solution with two large fans flanking both sides of the keyboard which crank up to 4,500 RPM alongside 4x ultra-wide heat pipes (3 x 10mm + 1 x 8mm) and 13.8 CFM airflow.

Display

The Titan 16 Pro features a 16-inch IPS LCD with a 2,560 x 1,600 px resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, and a 16:10 aspect ratio. The BOE-made matte panel covers 100% of the DCI-P3 and sRGB color gamuts and offers a fast response time of 3 ms. It is also compatible with Nvidia’s G-Sync for minimal input lag

Red Magic is advertising 500 nits of brightness from the panel. We actually measured it to go higher, topping out at 545 nits in the middle of the display and around 500 nits in all other areas. The display did not show any signs of unequal backlighting and its viewing angles were more than decent as you'd expect from an IPS panel.

The bezels around the display aren’t the thinnest around but we certainly did not mind their size. The top area houses a 1080p webcam alongside the IR sensor required for Windows Hello biometrics.

General productivity tasks, browsing the web, and watching content on here felt great and the panel also felt right at home during gaming sessions thanks to its 240Hz refresh rate. We should mention that the display can only switch between the default 240Hz refresh rate and 60Hz without offering a 120Hz middle ground.

Keyboard, trackpad, audio

Red Magic equipped a full-sized RGB-backlit QWERTY keyboard with a dedicated numpad. One of the first things you notice is the weird gaming-inspired typeface - there are all sorts of lines, pointers, and other symbols that may look cool on marketing materials but are rather distracting in real use.

Another thing to note is the off-center spacing needed to accommodate the numpad. The biggest issue by far is the small Enter key, which was shrunken to accommodate the numpad. This likely won’t matter a whole lot while gaming but it's not ideal for regular productivity work. Key travel is good and the typing experience gets better once you get used to the off-center position.

The trackpad is decently sized and it's made from glass which always feels better than plastic. It has a solid click even in the top corners and we had no complaints throughout our review period.

The dual speakers 3D audio with DTS-X Ultra deliver loud and punchy sound that fills up the room. They are spaced on both sides of the keyboard and deliver engaging audio with spatial effect and decent bass.

Software and Performance

Titan 16 Pro ships with Windows 11 Home Edition. The only bit of additional pre-installed software is Red Magic’s Goper suite which allows you to adjust the various RGB lighting components, and toggle between the performance modes and fan output.

Intel's 14th Gen Core i9-14900HX processor Raptor Lake CPU has been tested extensively at this point so we won’t delve deeper here. It’s got a 140W max TDP and a constant 100W operating mode.

The CPU is joined by Nvidia's RTX 4060 laptop graphics card with 8GB GDDR6 memory and an advertised 140W max power draw. Not that you’d ever reach 140W values as Nvidia has purposefully limited the GPU to around 100W for most tasks including gaming. More on that shortly.

The rest of the components include 16 GB DDR5 single-channel memory which occupies one of the two memory slots and a 1TB Samsung PCIe 4 SSD of the M.2-2280 format. There’s a second SSD slot ready to take additional storage but we’d be more inclined in adding another RAM stick to see a meaningful boost in multitask performance.

The Samsung-made PCIe-4.0 SSD delivered great read and write speeds. It is split into C and D partitions by default.

Fan noise is something you’ll have to learn to live with the Titan 16 Pro. As soon as you turn on the device, the fans kick in and they only get louder if you start doing some productivity work or fire up a game.

We routinely clocked over 50dB with ease when pushing the laptop and people around you will notice all the commotion and probably ask if all that noise is coming from your laptop. The noise level dropped to around 35dB in idle mode which is still a bit more than we’re accustomed to.

During our benchmarking and gaming tests, the area above the keyboard routinely went over 46°C while the touchpad area peaked at just under 37°C. In idle mode the device was hovering below 30°C.

For our synthetic benchmark tests, we ran Geekbench 6.3.0 for both the CPU and GPU which yielded top-of-the-line results. We should mention that the laptop was set in its performance/gaming mode and hooked up to its power supply.

We also tested out the GPU with GFXBench and Titan 16 Pro delivered great results here too. We got impressive scores with over 500 fps in the 1080p tests, 240 fps in the 1440p tests, and over 100 fps in the 4K tests.

In our gaming tests, we pushed the Titan 16 Pro with Death Stranding Director’s Cut at 2,560 x 1,440px (QHD) resolution and maxed out toggles on all the graphics settings. We got an average frame rate of 138 fps with great stability and no noticeable lag. The GPU ran up to 102W of power and maxed out at 75°C temperature.

We also ran the older but still resource-challenging GTA IV at QHD resolution and maxed out graphics settings. We managed a stable 120 fps here but with some noticeable skipped frames here and there.

Titan 16 Pro did stutter in CPU-demanding games like Cuberpubk 2077 but Nvidia DLSS will offer improvement on that end as long as the game you’re playing is supported.

Battery life and charging

You'll want to sit around a power outlet with the Titan 16 Pro. The high-wattage CPU and GPU combo eat through the 80Wh battery cell like Joey Chestnut downs hot dogs at the competitive eating championships.

When freshly booted and with 99% battery charge, Windows reports 2 hours and 37 minutes of battery standby. We fired up Death's Stranding and managed to play for 1 hour and 28 minutes before the laptop powered off.

In our video streaming test which involved a 4K YouTube video at 100% brightness and 50% volume, Titan 16 Pro managed an unimpressive 4 hours and 24 minutes but that was in the balanced performance mode with the integrated Intel GPU.

You get 100W charging support, which is decently quick to fill up the 80Wh battery. Titan 16 Pro also supports USB-C charging but you’ll have to shell out a pretty penny for a charger powerful enough to handle its thirsty CPU and GPU combo.

Verdict

Red Magic's first gaming laptop can play any AAA game with high graphics settings and does so with a stable frame rate in most titles. It’s got a sturdy metal unibody chassis, a decently bright and spacious 16-inch IPS LCD with a fast 240Hz refresh rate. The free RAM and storage slots inside the laptop are great for future upgradability and the port selection is also pretty great.

The noisy fans were a persistent nuisance in our time with Titan 16 Pro even when the laptop was in idle mode. We’re aware that powerful hardware requires sufficient heat dissipation systems but most of the other gaming laptops we’ve reviewed never reached this level of noise. You’ll also need to carry the 860-gram power adapter wherever you go as the battery can't hold its own even with casual light browsing and video streaming.

While Red Magic lets you add a second RAM stick, it's a bit disappointing to see the device shipped with single-channel memory. We weren't fans of the keyboard layout which has a distracting typeface and a cramped Enter key.

A quick Google search reveals the similarly spec'd Lenovo Legion Pro 5i can be had for $1,500, while an Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 is currently $1,150. Overall, we’d say Red Magic Titan 16 Pro is a great first attempt in the gaming laptop market but at $1,699, we'd be more inclined to hunt for a better deal. However, Red Magic often runs pretty cool promos on its website so things might drastically change if you can avail one of those.

Pros

• Aluminum unibody, no keyboard flex
• Solid performance from Intel Core i9-14900HX and GeForce 4060 GPU
• Glass trackpad
• Good variety of ports

Cons

• Loud fans
• Subpar battery endurance
• Single-channel DDR5 memory
• Distracting keyboard typeface