nubia Red Magic 9S Pro review

Display

Not much has changed about the Red Magic display for a few generations. It is an excellent 6.8-inch OLED panel made by BOE with square edges, without any rounding and absolutely uninterrupted, thanks to the under-display selfie camera. All of these are for the sake of a better gaming experience. The panel's model is Q9+ and its advertised peak brightness is 1,600 nits. There's also support for DC dimming.

It is a 10-bit display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The resolution remains the same - 1116 x 2480px, which is a gaming-friendly resolution as it's easier on the GPU than QHD.

In our tests, the panel was slightly better than the previous generation. We got up to 611 nits in manual mode, while in auto mode, the panel peaked at 1,058 nits. That's not nearly enough to compete with the best displays out there and some similarly priced handsets, and it's far from the advertised 1,600 nits.

Still, anything above 1,000 nits should be more than enough for comfortable outdoor use, even on a bright sunny day. Maybe not for enjoying top quality graphics, but it's plenty for browsing, reading and chatting.

On a more positive note, the UD selfie camera is excellently implemented, and spotting the lens when the screen is on is impossible. It uses fifth-generation tech to remain invisible. The display really is full-screen.

Unfortunately, there's still no HDR video support, which is a considerable drawback given that even some midrangers offer the Dolby Vision standard or HDR10+ at the very least. The good news is that the HDR works in the YouTube app as the phone still has decoders for HDR10 and HLG. The Red Magic 9S Pro also has the highest possible Widevine L1 DRM certification.

The display has a whopping instant touch sampling rate of 2,000Hz and an overall touch sampling rate of 960Hz. The shoulder triggers poll at 520Hz.

High refresh rate handling

The Red Magic 9S Pro offers four modes in total when it comes to refresh rate - 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz and Auto. The first three serve as a cap to the refresh rate, while the latter leaves the system to decide the appropriate refresh rate given the current scenario.

The adjustment is pretty straightforward, though. The system will always go for the maximum refresh rate, be it system or third-party apps and system menus. Leaving the phone alone for a couple of seconds will reduce the refresh rate to 60Hz to preserve power. Running full-screen videos does the same; you don't need 120Hz to watch a 24, 30 or 60fps video.

Battery life

The Red Magic 9S Pro has a large 6,500 mAh battery, just like its predecessor. We found that device to have excellent battery life, and the same goes for the new Red Magic 9S Pro.

As expected, the overclocked chipset does take its toll on battery life, though the impact is limited. You get 45 minutes or so less gaming time and, oddly enough, about two hours less video streaming. That bit was kind of surprising to us, but we did re-run the test and got the same result. Call time and web browsing are practically identical to the Red Magic 9 Pro's.

Our new Active Use Score is an estimate of how long the battery will last if you use the device with a mix of all four test activities. You can adjust the calculation based on your usage pattern using the sliders below. You can read about our current battery life testing procedure here. For a comprehensive list of all tested devices so far, head this way.

Charging speed

The Red Magic 9S Pro has a large 6,500 mAh battery, just like its predecessor, and it supports 80W charging over Power Delivery 3.0. Hence, it is hardly surprising that the two phones charge practically at the same rate.

With the provided charger in the box, we managed to get the Red Magic 9S Pro from dead all the way up to 49% in fifteen minutes. Thirty minutes on the charger resulted in an 85% charge, and a full charge took just 41 minutes. While not the fastest charging device around, the Red Magic 9S Pro is definitely one of the quicker phones to charge out there.

Speakers - loudness and quality

The Red Magic 9S Pro has a stereo speaker setup. A symmetrical one at that, with sound blasting from both the device's top and bottom. The two speakers use three-dimensional, 5-magnetic 1115K units with a 1.66c sound cavity.

The speaker system does not appear to be the same as its predecessor despite the largely identical hardware. The Red Magic 9S Pro is notably quieter than its predecessor at -26.3 LUFS. That still earns it a GOOD mark in our chart.

On a more positive note, the DTS: XULTRA sound tuning is still present, and the quality of the speakers is still excellent. The bass is deep, the highs are crisp, and the vocals are clear. There's some barely noticeable distortion at higher levels, but the sound quality is always excellent.

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.

Connectivity

The Red Magic 9S Pro is a dual SIM device with SA/NSA Sub-6 5G available on both Nano-SIM slots. It has dual-band GPS (L1+L5), GLONASS, BDS and GALILEO for positioning. Local connectivity options include tri-band Wi-Fi 7 (includes 6GHz band), plus Bluetooth 5.3 and NFC. There is also an IR blaster on the phone's top frame, which you don't see every day. There is also a 3.5mm audio jack, though no built-in FM radio receiver.

The Red Magic 9S Pro has a very capable USB setup as well - the Type-C port is backed by a USB 3.2 Gen 2 USB connection. That means it can candle data transfers at a theoretical max of 10Gbps. There is also Display Port over alt mode support for video output, which is quite uncommon in the mobile world and much appreciated. The Red Magic 9S Pro does not have a dedicated desktop environment of any sort, but that's not a big issue.

The Red Magic 9S Pro has a pretty full set of sensors. There is an STMicro lsm6dso accelerometer and gyroscope combo, an akm ak0991x magnetometer and compass combo and a sensortek stk3a7x light and hardware proximity sensor combo. A barometer is the only thing missing.