If gaming is your priority for a smartphone, the Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro is aimed squarely at you. This enormous mobile gaming beast combines impressive performance with an expansive high-quality display and enough stamina to keep you gaming for days. It even has a built-in fan to keep cool, programmable buttons, and highly customizable gaming software. All of this comes at a relatively affordable starting price of $649 (£579) for the 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage model if you buy direct from Nubia.
There’s always a catch with aggressively priced phones. Assuming you don’t mind the enormous, angular design, which isn’t very pocket-friendly, you may balk at the slightly janky software, the inconsistent camera performance, or the lack of wireless charging. But remember that hardware like the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset here is generally only available in far more expensive phones.
Gamer Chic
I tested the transparent RedMagic 10 Pro, which Nubia calls Moonlight, and it’s an eye-catching industrial design with thick metal framing glass that affords you a view of some internals and RGB lighting that comes to life when you play games. There are vents on either side of the frame with a visible fan designed to keep the processor cool. This can be useful for longer gaming sessions, but it does make some noise, and you can sometimes feel the warm air venting.
Nubia has included customizable capacitive-touch shoulder triggers on the top edges when you hold the Redmagic 10 Pro in landscape orientation, and a shiny textured red switch that launches the gaming hub software by default. The rectangular profile and round power button remind me of Sony’s old Xperia design, but this is a much bigger phone and can prove tricky to fish out of a jean pocket. I’m talking 6.5 inches tall and 3 inches wide.
Photograph: Simon Hill
The Redmagic 10 Pro is smooth and super slippery, and has slid off tables, chairs, and my leg several times over the past couple of weeks. Surprisingly, the Gorilla Glass finish remains unscathed so far, but I fear for its long-term survival. Probably best to use the clear case that comes in the box. With fan vents, limited water resistance is to be expected, and it won’t survive a dunk.
It’s worth noting that the entry-level Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro is only available in opaque black or white (Shadow or Lightspeed), and you have to shell out more for the transparent models ($799), though you do get a spec bump to 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. If you crave the sci-fi gamer aesthetic, stretch for the transparent model.
Supersize Me
Photograph: Simon Hill
It’s a big brute, but the size of the Redmagic 10 Pro affords gamers two important advantages. First, there’s an unbroken, almost bezel-free 6.85-inch AMOLED screen that is simply lovely. It has a slightly odd resolution of 2,688 x 1,216 pixels, up to a 144-Hz refresh rate, and brightness peaks of up to 2,000 nits. It’s ideal for gaming, watching movies, or web browsing. There’s a reasonably responsive fingerprint sensor at the bottom and a front-facing camera under the screen up top.
