nubia Red Magic 9S Pro review

Synthetic benchmarks

It's all about performance with the Red Magic series, which is why the Red Magic 9S Pro exists in the first place - as a home for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 "leading version" chipset. As we already mentioned, the regular Red Magic 9 generation already had a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. However, that was the tamer AB version.

The Red Magic 9S Pro has the SM8650-AC variant, also known as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy mobile platform. The SM8650-AC can turbo its prime CPU core to 3.4GHz instead of 3.3GHz, and the Adreno 750 GPU goes up to 1GHz.

The CPU setup is a modern four-cluster one with one prime Cortex-X4 core, going up to 3.4GHz at the helm, 5x performance Cortex-A720 based cores at up to 3.2 GHz, and 2x efficiency Cortex-A520 based cores clocked up to 2.3 GHz. The Adreno 750 GPU features Adreno Frame Motion Engine 2.0, which can generate frames for smoother playback, and there's Unreal Engine 5.2 support.

AI is front and center in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It all starts with the AI Engine, which supports multi-modal generative AI models and popular large language models for speech recognition - the chip can run up to 20 tokens per second for instant AI assistant responses. Qualcomm boasts that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 packs the world's fastest stable diffusion, which can generate an image in a fraction of a second. AI is used to enhance the camera's abilities as well. For example - Semantic Segmentation can enhance the vibrancy and detail of images in real-time, while Night Vision video can brighten a dark scene.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 inside the Red Magic 9S Pro is paired with LPDDR5x memory, working at up to 4800 MHz. Speaking of memory, the handset comes in 8 GB/256 GB, 12 GB/256 GB and 16 GB/512 GB configurations. You have to buy the phone in Snowfall or Cyclone colors to get the 16 GB of RAM, though. For the record, we have the latter version in our office. The storage is, of course, UFS 4.0.

Now, let's look at some actual benchmark scores.

Starting with GeekBench and some CPU benchmarks, we wouldn't say that the "leading version" of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 does anything special over the regular version. We already kind of knew that based on the performance of devices like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, which also has the AC version of the chipset. However, now we can directly compare the Red Magic 9 Pro and the new Red Magic 9S Pro with their similar cooling setups and power profiles and prove that the difference in peak performance is minimal at best and often in favor of the regular chip rather than the boosted version.

The compound AnTuTu is what nubia used to hype up the Red Magic 9S Pro with claims of top scores as high as 23,669,542. In our testing, however, we never managed to get near that advertised number, and, mind you, we tried our best. However, the Red Magic 9S Pro does score well in line with the Red Magic 9 Pro, which means that we are at least pretty consistent in our results and methodology.

Regardless of the particular score, the Red Magic pair still sits at the very top of our current benchmark score chart, only challenged by the ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro and only in its top X Mode+ performance mode with the AeroActive cooler attachment. Plus, our ROG Phone review unit had a whopping 24 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage, which matters in this benchmark.

While the overclocked prime CPU core on the chipset clearly doesn't make much difference to benchmark scores, the overclocked GPU does, as evidenced by 3D Mark. With its 1GHz Adreno 750 GPU, the Red Magic 9S Pro is leading the pack in GPU tasks.

The key takeaway is that the Red Magic 9S Pro outperforms most smartphones out there in short benchmark tests and utilizes the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 to the fullest. Let's see how it performs under prolonged loads, though.

We've discontinued GFXBench graphics benchmarking as the app is often banned/blacklisted on the phones we receive for review. The graphics performance ranking in 3D Mark is just as meaningful, so we suggest you refer to that one instead.

Cooling system and sustained performance

nubia is once again updating the cooling system of its Red Magic lineup, and this time around, it's called the ICE 13.5 cooling system. It promises up to 19.5 degrees C cooling potential, compared to 18 degrees in the Red Magic 6 Pro. This is mostly thanks to a new frost-cooling gel within the 10-layer materials cooling system. The new frost cooling gel increased cooling efficiency by 20%.

The handset features a 10182 mm2 vapor chamber under the display. The upgraded cooling system offers straighter airflow for the fan, which leads the hot air out without letting it sit around the CPU. The fan can now spin at up to 22,000 RPM and is apparently quieter than its predecessor. We wouldn't exactly call it inaudible, but it is fairly easy to drown out with audio from the speakers.

Frankly, we weren't too impressed with the long-term cooling performance of the Red Magic 9 Pro, and the Red Magic 9S Pro isn't much better. In fact, without the fan on, it throttled all the way down to 63% of its initial performance after 60 minutes, while the Red Magic 9 Pro came down to 65%. The performance chart looks pretty choppy and uneven as well.

CPU stress test without fan

Turning on the cooling fan at maximum speed significantly improves heat dissipation and lets the CPU breathe a little. As you can see, the CPU still dips below 70%, but it can maintain higher clock speeds overall. Still, we find the clocks a bit unstable - notice the apparent fluctuations on the graph.

CPU stress test with fan

Sadly, the device wasn't able to pass the 3DMark Wild Life GPU stress test. It overheated before it was able to complete a full 20-minute cycle, with or without the cooling fan.

Even though the device maintains great performance considering the demanding flagship SoC, it's surprising that the 9S Pro can't handle prolonged loads better.

High refresh rate gaming performance

Historically, HRR gaming on Android has been hit or miss. So it's no surprise that most games we've tried are capped at 60fps and can't utilize the full potential of the 120Hz display. We used Android's built-in screen refresh rate counter and Game Space's FPS counter to see which games actually reach more than 60fps.

While the phone forced some titles at 120Hz, most were stuck at 60fps, including PUBG Mobile, Genshin Impact, Mobile Legends, Asphalt 9, etc.

Some games were compliant, though. Call of Duty reached 90fps while Air Force 1945, Sky Force: Reloaded and Real Racing 3 saturated the 120Hz display.