RedMagic 9 Pro review – Ageing like a fine wine

Is the RedMagic 9 Pro the best gaming phone ever? The phone does have its flaws, but it’s close to being the perfect gaming smartphone you’ll ever need.

There are very few brands making gaming phones. It’s a niche segment dominated by two players, Asus and ZTE. While Asus has the ROG lineup of phones, ZTE dishes out gaming phones with monstrous specifications under the Nubia RedMagic brand.

We reviewed the ROG Phone 7 and the RedMagic 8S Pro sometime back, and now we have the latest addition to the family – RedMagic 9Pro.

Apart from the latest hardware specifications, the RedMagic 9Pro comes with an improved design and much-desired updates in software and camera performance, which puts the phone in a league of its own.

So, how does the RedMagic 9Pro fare in our detailed review? Let’s find out.

Key Specs

• Display: 6.8-inch AMOLED panel with 2480 x 1116 resolution, 1600 nits peak brightness, 120Hz refresh rate,
• CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC
• Memory: up to 16GB RAM
• Storage: Up to 512GB
• Battery: 6,500mAh unit with 80W fast wired charging
• Cameras: 50MP+50MP+2MP triple rear camera setup, 16MP Under display front cam
• OS: Android 14 with RedMagic OS 9
• Others: Under display fingerprint sensor, Stereo speaker, IR Blaster, headphone jack

Price and availability

The price of RedMagic 9Pro starts at $649 for the Sleet variant, which comes with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. Snowfall and Cyclone variants come with 16GB OF RAM and 512GB of storage and are priced at $799 each.

The retail pricing of RedMagic 9Pro is unique in itself. Despite all the upgrades the phone promises, the company has priced it similar to its predecessor. This is a pleasant surprise in a world where the price tags have generally increased, and the RedMagic 9Pro offers excellent value for the moolah you spend.

The RedMagic 9Pro will be available for preorder on December 27, 2023, and open sales for the international version will begin on January 3, 2024. It will be available via the official RedMagic website.

Design

RedMagic 9Pro’s design feels similar to its predecessors. However, it has been refined with each iteration. The company has retained the rectangular, boxy look and flat sides; the rear panel has gone through most chops and changes.

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The camera bump has been removed, and the phone sits flush on any surface. There are no bumps whatsoever. This is yet another trend that the company has avoided. With a flat front and back, the phone slides in and out of your pocket like a hot knife through a block of butter.

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The Snowfall and Cyclone variants have a transparent rear glass panel, while the Sleet one has a textured rear panel. The transparent rear panel also uses an RGB-lit “09” logo denoting the model. This also acts as a notification light and can be tweaked from the phone’s settings.

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All the buttons have been moved to the right side of the phone, where you have the two shoulder buttons with 520 Hz response rate, which also have RGB light strip embedded, a volume rocker, a circular power button, and the red-accent game mode slider. The exhaust fan is also housed on the right side of the phone.

The phone’s right side only has the other vent of the exhaust fan. There is an analog headphone jack, IR blaster, and a speaker at the top, while the sim card, a USB C charging slot, and another loudspeaker are at the bottom of the phone.

Overall, the design of RedMagic 9Pro seems familiar to those who have used the previous phones. However, the flat rear panel and larger shoulder buttons embedded with LEDs for notification give the phone class and a premium feel.

Using the phone in landscape or portrait mode for gaming or content consumption is a delight to the eyes, and most brands should adopt the notch-less design. Still, it has its challenges, which we will discuss in the camera section of this review.

Display

The front has a massive rectangular AMOLED display with uniform bezels around it. A centrally aligned selfie camera is up top, which is only noticeable if you look for it. Unlike the RedMagic 8S Pro, which revealed the selfie camera often, the one present on the latest iteration is nicely concealed, treating you with a notch-less 6.8-inch AMOLED panel.

Talking about acute numbers, this display has 1600 nits of peak brightness, meaning it can be easily read under direct sunlight. You also get a 960 Hz multi-finger touch response, making it ideal for gaming. This also means that this display is among the most responsive mobile displays you can find on the market.

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The display boasts a 2480 *1116 pixels resolution, and its near-bezel-less design means that you have a 93.7% screen-to-body ratio.

The display supports a 120 Hz screen refresh rate, and you can manually choose between 120, 90, and 60Hz refresh rates or set it to auto mode to adjust the refresh rate automatically based on the content you’re consuming.

You also have the option to change the color modes of the screen and out of the box; the display produces punchy colors, and the images look pleasing to the eye.

Software

The phone runs on Android 14-based RedMagic OS 9 out of the box, and we received a couple of updates during the testing period as well. The software is slick and modern. Interestingly, it has minimal third-party bloat. However, the same cannot be said about the company’s applications besides Google’s mandatory ones, which come preloaded.

Software on the RedMagic 9Pro seems to be extremely smooth and responsive compared to the previous two generations, with the one present on the RedMagic 8Pro being the choppiest of all.

There are many software options to tweak and play with out of the box. Though this could be overwhelming initially, it’s smooth sailing once done. The biggest gripe we had with the software was poor word-to-word translation from Chinese to English, which can be noticed. If you look closely, you’ll find grammatically incorrect phrases and spelling. Improper alignments of elements and text are also an eyesore.

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The phone ships with an IR Blaster, but you don’t have any native application pre-installed to use the feature. It was bizarre to find a Booking.com app present on the phone, but an app to make use of the IR blaster was missing.

The settings app hides a ton of software tweaks that let you get the most out of the phone. Unfortunately, even after so many iterations, the Settings app is not logically organized, and for the first timers, the RedMagic OS has a massive learning curve.

But once inside, you can tweak almost everything: the lights on the 09 logo at the back and the capacitive shoulder triggers, fingerprint animation, wallpaper, Always-on display, cooling fan, and more. Though some limitations may confuse you and cause you to question the company’s decision, this is not what you buy the phone for.

The red-colored slider button on the right side of the phone triggers the gaming mode, and once you’re in it, you’ll come across many customizations and tweaks that will impact your gaming performance. The shoulder buttons can be customized for each game, and while setting them up is a one-time task, it is worth it.

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Among other things, Game Space lets you monitor your CPU and GPU frequency, in-game fps, and more. These settings can be customized for each game or the game launcher. There are just way too many options and settings that you can play with, and if you end up with the correct combinations, your gaming experience will only improve.

Software updates will always remain one of the weakest aspects of the RedMagic phones. While the RedMagic 9Pro is running on Android 14, the RedMagic 8SPro is running on Android 13, and the 8Pro is on an older version of the OS. Both phones have yet to receive the latest security patch. Unfortunately, the RedMagic 9Pro is expected to meet a similar fate down the line.

Performance

The RedMagic 9Pro has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset under the hood. This chipset, coupled with 12GB or 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and RedMagic’s own Red Core 2 Pro gaming chip, lets you play any game without any issues.

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The phone scored an impressive 2,16,639 on Antutu Benchmark, and its single-core score on Geekbench was 2266, while the multi-core score was 7121. This is similar to the 7006 points and 2273, the iQOO 12 achieved. In comparison, the Galaxy S23 lingers around 5000 points on multi-core tests.

During the test period, we played games like Call of Duty, Modern Strike Online, and Genshin Impact and noticed a few things. Firstly, the phone was never under any stress whatsoever while playing these games under the highest settings. The frame rates never dropped below 60, and we didn’t notice any frame drops or lags.

Secondly, even after playing games for long durations or making the phone do various resource-intensive tasks like downloading movies, streaming songs, and editing videos on the fly, it only caused the phone to get slightly warm at maximum. The new and improved heat dissipation system, including the fan, was at work without getting noticed.

The phone has the new Ice 13 Cooling System that includes a vapor chamber plate under the screen and a fan that can clock speeds up to 22,000rpm to ensure that there are absolutely no heating issues.

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The phone could easily handle various applications in the background, and multitasking was a breeze. The addition of Face unlock is a welcome change, though unreliable. Fingerprint unlock was iffy initially, but the performance improved after the updates.

While the previous generation devices we tested were 5G capable, they lacked the necessary hardware, meaning we could not test 5G connectivity on these devices. But the 9Pro has all the requisite bands, and 5G works flawlessly in India, where we tested the phone.

The massive 6500 mAh battery pack meant you’d easily have over half the battery left by the end of a regular day of usage. We streamed a couple of movies and songs apart from playing games at maximum brightness, yet at the end of the day, we had almost 26% juice left, and we weren’t frantically looking for a charging plug.

The phone ships with an 80W charging brick, and you can change the phone from 0 to 30% in less than 20 minutes and a complete charge in about 40 minutes. This beats the charging speeds of most phones available globally, except just a few.

The stereo speakers on the phone are loud and can be a great aid while playing games. However, you might need to plug in a compatible headset to hear detailed and high-resolution audio.

Camera

One of the most improved features of the RedMagic 9Pro is its camera performance. Compared to its predecessors, the camera output on this phone is way better, and some shots in proper lighting conditions were as good as any other smartphone on the market.

It has a triple camera setup with two sensors, 50MP snappers each, and the third one is a 2MP macro sensor. On the front, you have a 16MP under-display selfie camera, which produces way better photos than the previous phones we tested. Not only were the images shot on the front camera detailed and rich, but they were also not washed out.

The phone’s camera app has many features, including the Pro mode, and lets you capture RAW images as well. The same is the case with videos as well.

Images shot from the primary 50MP sensor were detailed and rich with sufficient daylight. However, these were not as crisp as most phones in this price range. The wide-angle and zoom cameras left too much to be desired. While the images from the wide-angle snapper seemed washed out the macro sensor is avoidable.

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The performance of the selfie camera has improved drastically over the last few devices we’ve tested; however, it’s still a massive compromise you must make to get a notch-less display on the front. The low-light performance of the selfie camera was disappointing.

Though the overall results are not at par with flagship phones like the Galaxy phones, iPhones, or Pixels, considering the results are from a gaming phone, they are way better than just passable.

Final verdict 4.5/5

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The RedMagic 9Pro is a very well-rounded device, and unlike other gaming phones that are too obvious and use excessive RGB lights, this is very subtle. This, along with the raw power, massive battery, fast charging, a large brilliant notch-less display, and more than passable camera, makes the RedMagic 9Pro more than just a gaming phone.

If your regular usage includes a lot of media consumption, including watching movies, streaming music, multitasking, and playing odd games on the go, then this is a perfect device to consider.

If you’re a gamer who wants nothing but the best device in its segment and wants a no-compromise gaming phone, look no further than the RedMagic 9Pro.

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