RedMagic 9S Pro Review

My last experience with a RedMagic phone in 2021 was underwhelming, to say the least. It had all the specs, but was bogged down by glitches, some design stumbles, and weak cameras. With the RedMagic 9S Pro, the brand is back with some more knowledge under its belt. RedMagic is still shooting for value, with the phone starting at $649 while including a high-quality display, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading Version chip, and an impressive design. The test model sent over bumps up to $799 but gets more RAM, storage, and a special rear design. Given all the RedMagic is packing, it’s still putting up a clear value, and this go around, it doesn’t run into nearly the troubles that plagued its 2021 counterpart.

RedMagic 9S Pro – Design and Features

The RedMagic 9S Pro makes a statement. Right out of the box, it’s visually striking in a way so few phones are lately. And that design doesn’t make the gaudy sins of fellow gaming phones. It’s a bit bold, but shows some compelling industrial inspiration. Like the Nothing Phone, the back of the RedMagic 9S Pro is clear, letting you see through to an internal backplate with screws here and there. You’re not seeing directly through to the SoC or battery or anything like that, but it still makes for an engaging aesthetic. RedMagic highlights the Snapdragon chip inside, and shows off a small cooling fan that pulls air in and exhausts it through vents on either side of the phone.

The cooling fan is illuminated when operating but otherwise blends in almost perfectly with the vertical camera stack. The gray and silver industrial look of the rear blends neatly with a matte silver frame with tightly curving corners. The right side of the RedMagic 9S Pro has a lot going on. In addition to one vent, it includes a low-profile volume rocker; a shiny, round power button that’s textured in a way reminiscent of a camera shutter button; a shiny red switch that kicks in the phone’s special gaming mode; and two small recessed sections at either end that serve as capacitive shoulder buttons for gaming. Those shoulder buttons also have lighting underneath that can serve as notification or status indicators, with flashing, breathing, or steady lighting and seven different colors as options.

On the bottom of the phone, you’ll find the typical USB-C port (albeit a fast USB 3.2 one with DisplayPort capabilities) and one speaker as well as a SIM card tray that can hold a pair of nano SIM cards. The top of the phone also sees some action with another speaker port, a 3.5mm headset jack, and an IR blaster which lets the phone act as a remote control for a variety of devices. RedMagic has effectively loaded this with whatever you might need from a phone. It does make it a bit on the bulky side, measuring 9.47mm thick – a bit thicker than the Galaxy S24 Ultra, though it’s actually a few grams lighter.

The weight and size make sense when looking at the rest of what RedMagic has packed in. Inside, it has squeezed a 6,500mAh battery, which is 30% more than the Galaxy S24 Ultra. A 6.8-inch display stretches across the front of the phone with slim, delightfully even bezels all around. The display features a hidden fingerprint scanner underneath the screen’s surface. It also hides a selfie camera underneath the display with pixels actually sitting atop the camera. I’ve seen this in practice before and been underwhelmed, but RedMagic has almost nailed it here. That camera is practically invisible underneath any kind of content that isn’t a bright, single color.

The display itself is an impressive AMOLED panel with a 1116 x 2480 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and 1600-nit peak brightness. It looks great, offering ample brightness, vibrant colors, sharp and smooth visuals, and an uninterrupted picture thanks to that hidden selfie cam. In Clint’s raid on the yakuza in Avenger’s Endgame, all the qualities of the display play together wonderfully, enjoying the poignant contrast, rich color and bright highlights of neon and muzzle flashes. Plus, a sharp, large picture never hurts.

Purchasing Guide

The RedMagic 9S Pro comes in a few different configurations and colors. The model tested here is the 16GB+512GB configuration with the Snowfall colorway, which is available now for $799 from RedMagic (also available on Amazon). The same configuration is also available in a darker color scheme called Cyclone for $799. RedMagic has two 12GB+256GB configurations for $649. Those come in a bold white Frost color or a dark Sleet color, but in addition to the steps down in memory and storage, both models also change the rear design, no longer including the transparent back. The RedMagic 9S Pro should not be confused for the RedMagic 9 Pro, which features a very similar design, configuration options, and is almost the same phone, but the RedMagic 9S Pro offers an upgraded Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading Version, upgraded display, and enhanced cooling while confusingly selling for the same prices.

RedMagic 9S Pro – Software

The RedMagic 9S Pro comes running Android 14, which is good to see. But it doesn’t have quite the same promise of long-term and speedy updates that made such waves when it came from Samsung and Google. In addition to only getting a guarantee of one Android OS update, at the time of testing in early August, the phone was still on a May 1 security patch. RedMagic claims “We do regular updates every 1-2 months for 2+ years with at least 1 Android OS update” in the product FAQ regarding software support, so it appears either a little slower than expected or simply releasing updates a ways after they come out.

By default the system comes with a “Hyper Futurism” theme with backgrounds and icons that are rather technological in style and harken back to much older versions of Android. For those who want a little more tame iconography, there’s a “Glassy Rhythm” theme that fits the bill.

Beyond the operating system itself, RedMagic actually has a fairly clean setup. There are very few extra apps pre-installed beyond the common suite of Google apps. There’s a custom voice recorder, a Private Space app for securing files and apps behind an extra password, an app called Goper for linking up with RedMagic peripherals, a compass app, and the Booking.com app. RedMagic includes its own browser in addition to Chrome, and it has a special game launcher utility that comes with an additional app called Mora, which is a virtual companion.

RedMagic 9S Pro – Gaming and Performance

The RedMagic 9S Pro is made for gaming, and it has the hardware for the task. It’s not running the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 but rather a souped-up version of it called the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading Version. This, combined with active cooling, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage ready it for ample performance and a load of games. Naturally, everyday operation is a breeze, with the phone not struggling in the slightest, and it all plays out smoothly on the 120Hz display.

The RedMagic 9S Pro will happily run Genshin Impact or Zenless Zone Zero at maxed out settings and dialed up to 60fps smoothly. It really shows little hint of struggling. Playing Zenless Zone Zero for over 30 minutes, the cooling was able to keep up, with the phone only reaching the mid 90s (Fahrenheit) and remaining comfortable to touch. The active cooling fan helps whisk away heat, and it’s largely inaudible over audio coming from the phone.

Fancy cooling or not, the phone was still no match for the demands of Genshin Impact’s massive download, installation, and shader compilation, the heft of which saw much of the surface of the phone reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and with a hot spot of 105.6 degrees. This hit the front and back nearly equally. Even a considerable amount of the frame measured up at about 100 degrees. So there’s still some room for improvement, but that’s a considerable load and the phone performed it quickly.

In benchmarks, the RedMagic 9S Pro shows off the goods. It was able to rip out a Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 6267 that beat the OnePlus 12, and its Vulkan graphics performed better than I’ve seen from both the OnePlus 12 and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, hitting as high as 17,596 on average. Its graphics hold up well in 3DMark too, with a Wildlife Extreme score of 5381, Steel Nomad Light score of 1836, and Solar Bay score of 9239, all of which again come out notably ahead of the OnePlus 12 and — a real kicker — even beat the iPhone 16 Pro Max. It’s a proper beast, but these performance numbers do rely on that active cooling and the phone running in the “Rise” performance profile. With the fan running but the Rise profile disabled, performance wound up significantly lower and less consistent. CPU performance keeps up though, so the ability to maintain high everyday performance and preserve energy when you’re not gaming, and then rev into high gear when you are, will likely be a benefit. Switching performance modes is easy, too, given RedMagic has built a toggle switch right into the side of the phone.

The active cooling and performance profile aren’t just giving the RedMagic 9S Pro a flat performance boost, though. They also give it impressive sustain. Running 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Light Stress Test, which repeats the benchmark 20 times in a row, the RedMagic 9S Pro managed scores ranging from 1719 to 1833 points, so even on its slowest run it could top the OnePlus 12 and flirt with the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s best score.

One concern for the RedMagic 9S Pro is cellular performance. It has some gaps in network coverage for the bands used by US carriers, and when I connected it to T-Mobile, I was greeted with an alert that the phone was only partially compatible with the network. My signal wasn’t always great, but I was still able to see respectable download speeds over 100Mbps even in those conditions and reached over 300Mbps with full reception elsewhere. Upload speeds remained weak, though, failing to break 1Mbps. It’s definitely worth comparing the bands your carrier uses in your area against the supported network bands listed in the phone’s specs to see if you’ll be properly covered.

The speakers are loud, but can run into some issues at max volume. There’s some ducking going on, which is all too noticeable while listening to complex mixes, as extra instruments coming in or out will see the volume of other parts shift suddenly. The mids are too loud and harsh at max volume anyway. Still, the speakers aren’t bad at all if you dial back the volume, and they have a satisfying frequency response, with a small helping of bass that goes a long way for music, movies, and games.

All of this performance is pulled out of a massive, 6500mAh battery that has no trouble running all day even with some heavy lifts through the day. For recharging, the phone comes with an astounding 80-watt charger that promises a full charge in 35 minutes. The RedMagic 9S Pro isn’t overly strict about what it charges from either, with it readily accepting high-wattage charging from a 65-watt USB-C laptop charger I had handy.

RedMagic 9S Pro – Cameras

For gaming phones, I’ve learned not to expect much from the cameras but am always pleasantly surprised when they offer even one decent sensor. The RedMagic 9S Pro manages that with its primary sensor, though it’s paired with an ultra-wide and selfie camera that fall short in comparison. The RedMagic 9S Pro also sticks a large watermark on its photos by default, so that’s best turned off right away lest you only realize it after a big photo shoot with the new phone.

Here are the cameras the RedMagic 9S Pro packs:

50MP, 1/1.57″ sensor, f/1.88, Laser AF, OIS, EIS50MP ultrawide, f/2.216MP Selfie, f/2.0

The main camera has a 50MP sensor that bins down to 12.5MP. It provides pleasingly crisp photos with natural, vibrant colors. It can skew a little dark, but it avoids looking unnaturally brightened or introducing unsightly noise into images. A flip side of that darkness is that images can have rich contrast. Since there’s no telephoto sensor, the main camera is also tasked with any zoom photography, but it’s not up to the task. Even just bumping up to a 2x digital zoom, the image starts to soften, and anything beyond that is unsightly.

The ultra-wide is an OK pairing. Its colors aren’t crazy far off from the main sensor, though it adds a green tint that’s not present on the main sensor. It doesn’t look nearly as sharp as the main sensor either, and further succumbs to darkness. It’s best reserved for bright scenarios where capturing a large scene or landscape is paramount and highlighting an individual subject isn’t. Zooming in on the photos shows grainy details far sooner than doing so on the main sensor does.

The selfie camera on the RedMagic 9S Pro is stealthy, hiding behind the display very effectively, but that comes with some drawbacks. It’s not a very sharp shooter in spite of its 16MP resolution. Even in excellent lighting conditions, the selfie camera ends up with softened details. It looks decent, but not great. It can struggle with bright highlights as well, leaning into overexposure.

All in all, it’s an underwhelming camera system, but with at least the main sensor available to pull some weight, it’s not a complete fail. Considering the OnePlus 12 is available with a far better camera system and not dramatically worse gaming performance though, the RedMagic 9S Pro will be a hard sell for anyone who wants respectable cameras alongside their gaming.

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