nubia Red Magic 6 review

Synthetic benchmarks

As the rest of the 2021 flagships, the Red Magic 6 is equipped with the latest and greatest from Qualcomm - the Snapdragon 888 chipset. The SoC is based on the 5nm manufacturing process and employs an octa-core CPU with an unusual configuration. It has one big Kryo 680 Prime core clocked at 2.84 GHz, a separate cluster of three Kryo 680 Gold cores ticking at 2.42 GHz and a third Kryo 680 Silver cluster of four cores running at 1.80 GHz. The Prime core is based on ARM's Cortex-X1 architecture, the Gold cores are Cortex-A78 derivatives and the Silver ones are Cortex-A55-based.

The GPU on board is the Adreno 660 and the Red Magic 6 has a total of three memory configurations - 8GB/128GB, 12GB/128GB and 12GB/256GB. We got the base configuration and is important to note that there's no microSD card slot expansion and the system uses a speedy UFS 3.1 storage standard.

And here are the results from our usual set of benchmarks.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Asus ROG Phone 5
  3710
• Asus ROG Phone 5 (X Mode)
  3709
• OnePlus 9
  3629
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 6
  3586
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  3489
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  3476
• nubia Red Magic 5S
  3386
• OnePlus 9R
  3117

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 9
  1129
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 6
  1124
• Asus ROG Phone 5 (X Mode)
  1121
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  1110
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  1091
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  1085
• OnePlus 9R
  969
• nubia Red Magic 5S
  927

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• OnePlus 9
  715196
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 6
  708853
• Asus ROG Phone 5 (X Mode)
  708531
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  708216
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  668722
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  622276
• OnePlus 9R
  617766
• nubia Red Magic 5S
  557210

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Asus ROG Phone 5 (X Mode)
  72
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  71
• OnePlus 9
  70
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  67
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  66
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 6
  63
• OnePlus 9R
  57
• nubia Red Magic 5S
  54

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Asus ROG Phone 5
  59
• Asus ROG Phone 5 (X Mode)
  59
• OnePlus 9
  58
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  54
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 6
  50
• OnePlus 9R
  49
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  33

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Asus ROG Phone 5
  43
• Asus ROG Phone 5 (X Mode)
  43
• OnePlus 9
  43
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 6
  40
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  37
• OnePlus 9R
  34
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  24

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  43
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  40
• Asus ROG Phone 5 (X Mode)
  40
• OnePlus 9
  40
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 6
  37
• OnePlus 9R
  31
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  22

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Asus ROG Phone 5
  32
• Asus ROG Phone 5 (X Mode)
  32
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 6
  30
• OnePlus 9
  30
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  28
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  26
• OnePlus 9R
  23

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 6
  28
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  28
• Asus ROG Phone 5 (X Mode)
  28
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  28
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  25
• OnePlus 9
  22
• OnePlus 9R
  22

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  5757
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  5744
• Asus ROG Phone 5 (X Mode)
  5740
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 6
  5714
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  5673
• OnePlus 9
  5667
• OnePlus 9R
  4154

It was expected to see the Snapdragon 888 coming out on top along with other smartphones running the same chipset. The difference between other Snapdragon 888-powered phones is negligible and we also tried running the same benchmarks with the cooling fan turned on. The results were inconclusive and essentially without change. This is because the cooling fan would help boost sustained performance rather than improve peak performance as you'd see in the next section of the review.

Sustained performance

This is supposedly the Red Magic 6's specialty carrying that iconic, built-in cooling fan. This time around, however, the company is giving us a bit more information on how they built the cooling system.

The internals rely on a big vapor chamber, cooling graphite thermal pad, aviation-grade aluminum heat sink and copper foil for additional thermal conductivity. It's all put together by a thermal gel too. The total cooling surface area is supposed to be 21.6 sq.mm.

All of this is aided by the cooling fan that has 59 aircraft-grade, 0.1mm aluminum blades that can go up to 20,000 RPM. Nubia has rated the fan's lifetime of at least 30,000 hours so you can rest assured that it won't fail that easily.

So we ran an hour-long stress test with maximum CPU load with and without the cooling fan to see the difference.

Cooling fan ON vs OFF

As you can see from the results in the stress test, the cooling fan provides enough airflow to keep the device running at a higher speed for longer. Without the fan, the Snapdragon 888's CPU had to default to about 85% of its performance whereas the fan allowed the CPU to keep about 94% of its maximum performance.

But to make sure we are on the same page, a couple of things to consider here. First and foremost, we ran the test with the maximum fan speed, which is pretty noisy as we already pointed out. Secondly, this is a highly unlikely scenario as games don't really pin the CPU at maximum frequency for so long. Still, the phone passed the test with flying colors.

Also, notice how the performance drops steadily without any sudden drops in performance. This means that over time, your framerate may drop but gradually. If there are any sudden spikes, the CPU would throttle aggressively and then ramp up once the temperature returns to normal. Then the cycle repeats. This would ultimately lead to choppy gameplay. Luckily, the Red Magic 6 handles those kinds of situations well enough.

And in case you ask why we are running a CPU load test, the answer is simple - the CPU is the main heat generator. The GPU doesn't contribute to the overall heat as much so the CPU-only stress test is good enough to assess the device's performance over long periods of time.

Gaming performance and HRR handling

Gaming performance was excellent. We didn't notice any sudden frame drops or lagging issues even with more demanding games. You can be assured that the Red Magic 6 can handle pretty much everything you throw at it. Now when it comes to refresh rate support, we were surprised to find one game that supports 165Hz while most of them capped at 120Hz. It's still not the full 165Hz but even 144Hz phones struggle with compatibility, let alone 165Hz devices such as the Red Magic 6. We were also delighted to see that some of the games we tested last year on the Red Magic 5S can now run at 120fps.

Let's start with one of the popular PUBG Mobile title, which is unfortunately capped at 60fps. Even messing around with the graphics settings didn't yield any results.

Next on the list are the just as popular Call of Duty Mobile and Dead Trigger, both of which are capped at 120fps. The same goes for the arcade type Sky Force: Reloaded and Ace Force. The only game that utilized the full 165Hz is Real Racing 3. This game seems to play well with HRR phones for quite some time because last year it was the only title to go up to 144Hz, on the Red Magic 5S, that is.

Refresh rate in games

This time around, we have more than a few games going even beyond 90Hz, which is a sign that the Android gaming segment starts to mature.

Surely, you might be able to find more games willing to push the boundaries of the HRR display but we went with one of the most popular examples. The compatibility issue is still at hand, though, as the majority of games settle for 60fps, so keep this in mind when buying.