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If you’re into gaming and gaming smartphones, chances are you’ve heard of RedMagic. This company has been releasing them for quite some time now, and the latest of which we’ve been playing with for a while now. The phone in question is called the RedMagic 8S Pro, and in this article, you’ll find our review of the device after several weeks of use.
Now, before we get down to it, let’s talk about the company real quick. RedMagic did focus mainly on gaming smartphones thus far, but the company is looking to expand. It released a pair of earbuds recently, and some other products. More such devices are coming. It’s also worth noting that RedMagic is doing its best to adapt gaming smartphones to regular users these days, so that they appeal to a wider audience. The RedMagic 8 Pro and 8S Pro are actually great steps in the right direction, and in this review, you’ll see why. Let’s get to it.
Table of contents
– Hardware
– Display
– Battery
– Performance
– Camera
– Software
– Verdict
RedMagic 8S Pro Review: Hardware / Design
The RedMagic 8S Pro has one of the best designs of a phone this year, in my opinion. Why? Well, for several reasons. First and foremost, it doesn’t have a display camera hole or a notch. RedMagic went for an under-display camera here, and it did the right thing, in my opinion. Also, the bezels around the display are not thick at all, and they’re almost uniform. The bottom bezel is ever so slightly thicker, barely at all, really.
On top of that, the phone is not too heavy for its size at 228 grams. It could have been a lot heavier considering the size and everything that RedMagic included. It’s pleasant to hold, and despite the fact it has flat sides all around, they’re not cutting into your hand. it’s also less slippery than your regular glass and metal slabs, not to mention that your fingerprints on the back will be less visible. Well, at least on this metallic silver model that I ended up reviewing.
All that combined with the 3d nano etching finish on the glass back makes this phone a really compelling package to look at, and well… hold and use. It looks unique, it feels great to hold and use, and it’s also just the right size. You can take full advantage of its display while gaming, thanks to the fact it has an under-display camera. I was truly immersed while I was gaming, but more on that later. That under-display camera is far from good, though. We’ll talk more about that in the camera section, but if you don’t really care about selfies, you probably won’t care.
The best of all is that this phone doesn’t exactly scream “gaming phone” straight away. It actually looks like a really nice, regular smartphone, which is the way to go, in my humble opinion. I’ve truly enjoyed this design, and was really glad to get back to phones without display holes and notches. This is the first such phone I’ve handed since… well, the OnePlus 7 Pro, if I’m not mistaken.
Accessories
There is a 65W charger in the box, which we’ll talk more about in the battery section of the review. A case, unfortunately, is not included in the package. Well, at least it wasn’t in my box, and this is a global variant, with sealed packaging, so… yeah. If you want to use a case, you’ll need to get it separately.
RedMagic 8S Pro Review: Display
The RedMagic 8S Pro features a large 6.8-inch fullHD+ (2480 x 1116) AMOLED display. This is a flat AMOLED display that offers a 120Hz refresh rate, and its brightness gets up to 1,300 nits. Thus far, it looks like a nice display, but nothing special. Well, considering this is a gaming smartphone, this thing has a much higher touch sampling rate than your regular smartphone. While most smartphones, mid-range and high-end phones offer a 240Hz touch sampling rate (in rare occasions double that), the RedMagic 8S Pro offers a 960Hz touch sampling rate. This panel has a 20:9 aspect ratio, and is protected by the Gorilla Glass 5.
In use, the display is really good. It’s extremely responsive, and looks very nice too. The colors are great, vivid, and the viewing angles are also really good. The only negative I’ve noticed is the brightness outdoors. Just to be clear, this is not a dim display, not at all. At 1,300 nits it’s actually very bright, but there are noticeably brighter displays out there at this point, some that go over 2,000 nits. You can use it outdoors without a problem, but in direct sunlight, it could use more of a kick in the brightness department. Do note that I’m nitpicking a bit here, as this is a gaming smartphone, so I’m looking at it from a gamer’s perspective, even though not many of you will game outdoors all that much. Other than that, the display is great, in basically every way.
RedMagic 8S Pro Review: Performance
Spoiler alert, the RedMagic 8S Pro offers outstanding performance. That is not really all that surprising, however, as this is a gaming smartphone, and it’s made to be a powerhouse. It’s fueled by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, but an overclocked version you can find inside the Galaxy S23 series. RedMagic also included up to 16GB of LPDDDR5X RAM inside the global model, and up to 512GB of UFS 4.0 flash storage. That is actually the model we tested.
In addition to that, you’re getting an ICE 12 multi-dimensional cooling system. You’ll find a 20,000 RPM high-speed turbofan inside here, and a cooling air duct. There are 59 fan blades in total included here, and each is 0.1mm thick. That fan can be manually activated when needed, by the way, and it has been tested for a lifespan of 30,000 work hours. There’s graphene included under the display, and a copper foil too, not to mention various other cooling components. This made is made for gaming through and through.
Regular, everyday performance is very smooth regardless of what you’re doing. And the same actually goes for gaming. We’ll talk about the software aspect in a separate category, but you can play basically any game on this phone without a problem. That includes the most demanding games such as Genshin Impact. During longer sessions the phone does get warm, but cooler than basically any other phone I’ve used this year. The heat was never the problem here, to be quite honest, and I rarely even fired up the aforementioned fan.
I’ve played quite a few games on the phone, including Genshin Impact, Asphalt 9, Real Racing 3, Call of Duty, Subway Surfers, and more. What I’ve noticed is that most games ran at 60 fps, while some can go at 90 fps. Genshin Impact, for example, ran at 60Hz, while Call of Duty went up to 90 fps. Regardless of the game, this phone handled everything beautifully. You have a ton of granular settings in RedMagic’s built-in gaming suite, which I’ll focus more on in the software section. It’s worth noting that you can access this software while you’re in-game, and can set settings for each game separately. Granularity is the key.
RedMagic 8S Pro Review: Battery
RedMagic managed to squeeze in a 6,000mAh battery inside this phone. Needless to say, that’s quite the capacity, and if you add to the equation that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is included too… well, you’re getting a rather compelling combo for battery life. RedMagic, of course, included some of its own optimizations, and the battery life here is outstanding. If you’re not gaming here, this is a two-day battery phone, even if you’re not exactly a light user. I won’t talk about specific screen-on-times, as this is a gaming phone, and the gaming aspect will play a huge part in the battery life department, of course.
Even with heavy gaming, on my test days, the phone managed to last until the end of the day. You can, of course, kill it in a day if you really want to and if you’re constantly playing graphically-intensive games, as is the case with any phone. The point is, the RedMagic 8S Pro offers some of the best battery life results we’ve ever seen, at least as far as high-end phones are concerned. We’re not counting in Oukitel’s crazy 10,000mAh battery smartphones, of course. I’ll even go as far as to say that this may be the best battery life in any Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phone, at least in line with the ASUS ROG Phone 7 series.
If you do manage to deplete its battery life ahead of time, don’t fret. The RedMagic 8S Pro supports 80W wired charging in China, and 65W wired charging in its global variant. We’ll focus on 65W wired charging, as we’ve tested the global model. It’ll take you only 35 minutes to fully charge this phone, from 0 to 100%. Needless to say, that’s plenty fast, especially considering this is a 6,000mAh battery we’re talking about. You can get over half a charge in only 15 minutes.
To make things even more interesting, RedMagic included something called ‘Charge separation’ in this phone. That feature redirects the power from the charger to the hardware, and bypasses the battery. That will save you battery life in the long run, if you play games while the phone is charging, of course. Why? Well, it reduces battery heat.
RedMagic 8S Pro Review: Camera
There are three cameras on the back of the RedMagic 8S Pro. A 50-megapixel main camera (f/1.9 aperture, PDAF) is backed by an 8-megapixel ultrawide unit (120-degree FoV, f/2.2 aperture, 1.22um pixel size), and a 2-megapixel macro camera (f/2.4 aperture). On the front, you’ll find a 16-megapixel under-display camera (1.12um pixel size). RedMagic upgraded the main camera here compared to previous-gen models, and that’s a good thing, of course. It now uses a 1/1.57-inch unit, Samsung’s GN5 ISOCELL sensor.
The camera UI is really good, actually. You can simply swipe left and right to switch modes. That’s how every camera UI should be laid out, for ease of use. Additional settings are nicely laid out too, once you enter that menu (top-right corner). Yes, the Pro mode is also here, though it works only with the main camera. That is not all that surprising, to be quite honest. All in all, no complaints here.
Alright, what about the image quality? First and foremost, do note that this is a gaming smartphone. We usually don’t have high camera expectations for gaming smartphones. The same was the case here, but the phone did perform better than I expected, as long as you’re using its main camera. Images during the day are really good. The colors are punchy, and the images end up looking sharp, producing plenty of detail. There is no 2x toggle in the viewfinder, as RedMagic probably doesn’t want you to crop in on the main camera. You can still pinch to zoom, though.
Nighttime shots with the main camera are also quite good, actually. There’s enough detail, good sharpness, and the colors are not bad either. Where it suffers is dynamic range. It’s not bad per se, but it’s not great either. Night mode can get triggered automatically, but it doesn’t do that all that often. So, switching to Night Mode manually may be the best choice.
The main camera on the phone is definitely worth noting, but the ultrawide one, not so much. The sensor is simply too small to be able to produce great results. You can get decent shots when there’s plenty of light in a shot, but they also do look a bit too soft, while the colors are not great either. These images do look considerably different than what the main camera provides. When it comes to night shots, the Night Mode is not available for the ultrawide camera. These shots lack detail, they’re soft, and overall not the best.
What about the selfie camera? Well, we didn’t expect much here, as it’s placed under the display. We got exactly what we thought we would. The images are not the best. They’re too soft, and the colors are off. The detail is also not great. Just to be clear, they’re usable, but you’ll end up with images that look like they’ve been taken with a mid-range webcam. Considering this is a gaming phone, this sacrifice is more than understandable, though. Having a clear canvas for gaming is the main priority here.
In terms of video recording, well, it’s good. The phone supports video recording up to 8K at 30 fps. 4K videos go up to 60 fps. The end result is good, but it could use some processing. Overall, though, not bad, it’s better than we thought, that’s for sure.
RedMagic 8S Pro Review: Software
When this phone arrived to the office, the thing I actually wondered the most about is the software. The RedMagic 8 Pro, the 8S Pro’s predecessor, had some software-related issues aka bugs, which is why I was wondering what we’ll get this time around. To my surprise, the RedMagic really worked out the kinks, and RedMagic OS 8 is a joy to use. When it comes to gaming phones, I always try to use them as regular devices first, just to get a feel for them, before getting down to gaming tests. This one did well in that regard.
RedMagic scraped some dead weight from the previous version of the software, and optimized the whole experience. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still not your close-to-stock Android experience or anything of the sort, but it works really well. Everything feels a bit more polished. It looks a bit more like stock Android, while there are still a ton of features that you can delve into, especially customization features. You can tweak the UI to your liking, ranging from clock styles and themes, to icons and lock screen details. Even the always-on display options are here, and they’re actually good. Let’s not forget the LED light on the back that you can utilize too, which is not something we see on many phones these days.
Let’s get down to what many of you are most interested in… gaming features. The RedMagic 8S Pro comes with ‘Game space’, which is basically an in-game dashboard that you can call upon. This dashboard has a ton of settings that you can utilize, and it allows you to set different settings for different games. Everything will be saved and fired up when you launch that specific game. All you have to do is do a double swipe from either the top left or top right side when you’re gaming, and you’ll get access to this dashboard.
Many options here are a single tap or swipe away, while others are just a menu away. You can tweak the FPS settings, sensitivity settings, resolution options are at your disposal, and more. You can also store screenshots in the Game Shorthand sub-section of Game Space, for example, while RedMagic also offers Plugins. There are many of them, but the translation issue is still present in this section.
From Game Space, you can also activate shoulder triggers (which are pressure-sensitive, by the way) on the phone. There are two of them, and they can come real handy during gaming, especially when it comes to shooters and similar first-person or third-person games. I’ve enjoyed using them most in Call of Duty Mobile, they surely did help a lot for reloading and shooting, at least in my case. You can map them to do whatever you want, in any game.
Thanks to the X Gravity feature, you can map external devices, that is also built in here. We’re only scratching the surface here, really. There are tons of options available in Game Space, you can tweak pretty much anything you want. You can even decide whether to keep the fan on here, or to disable it for specific games. If we’re talking about graphically-intensive titles, we do recommend using that fan, and even if you hear it during gaming, it’s worth it in some cases. A streaming option is available, and so much more.
RedMagic 8S Pro Review: Should you buy it?
So, should you buy the RedMagic 8S Pro? Well, we really can’t give you a yes or no answer here, it all depends on what you value in a phone. Truth be said, the RedMagic 8S Pro has a really competitive price tag. The most affordable model costs $649, and comes with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB of UFS 4.0 flash storage. That variant is all-black. The ‘Platinum’ and ‘Aurora’ models come with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Those two models are metallic silver and black with a see-through back, and they do have different price tags. The ‘Platinum’ costs $779, while the ‘Aurora’ model costs $779. Those are still truly appealing price tags. If you like gaming on your phone, and you do appreciate great performance above everything, the RedMagic 8S Pro may be the phone for you. The fact it doesn’t have a display camera hole, and has a ton of gaming features is a huge plus. If you like taking a lot of pictures, on the other hand, this may not be the device for you. The main camera is good, but not great, and that one is the only one worth noting. You have to ask yourself what exactly do you need from a smartphone, and go from there. One thing is certain, though, this is a great gaming smartphone, and its price tag is just right.
You should buy the RedMagic 8S Pro if you:
– Love gaming on your phone
– Appreciate different, but great-looking design
– Hate display holes & notches
– Need an LED notification light on your phone
– Like to play games with a controller attached to your device
– Want a truly powerful smartphone, but don’t want to spend $1,000 on it
– Like big phones, but don’t want them to be too heavy
You shouldn’t buy the RedMagic 8S Pro if:
– Take a lot of pictures with your phone
– Use a selfie camera a lot