Nubia Red Magic 5G

amazon Nubia Red Magic 5G reviews

Design

If you are to talk of the Nubia Red Magic 5G box, you don’t necessarily have the phone inside, but an empty space also has room for a USB-C cable that connects to the mains for charging and for data transfer, a 55W charging cup that has the potential to serve only the China market, and an 18 W charger for the remaining areas. Nubia says the 55W charger can be purchased separately in markets other than China.

While the entire mobile market has become inclined towards designs made with glass or glass simulation in recent years, the Red Magic 5G lives in symphony with glass and polished aluminum body. It is yet unclear what generation toughened glass is used on the front.

This Black review is that perfect blend between the minimalist-in-design, elegant-with the aggressiveness of the common Gaming Phone. The back has this eye-catching RGB light strip with the words along with the logo at the bottom, “Red magic.”

The rear glass curves from the center towards the edges without joining, giving it a firm grip while using it. The camera module will slightly protrude but be all but nearly flat with the rear glass, making it very delicate. It features a 64MP primary camera paired with a 2MP macro lens with the ultra-wide lens set apart at the bottom.

Perfectly designed, the frame has rounded corners that create a seamless hinge between the back and the front, without gaps or protrusions. In addition, the anodized aluminum material making up the chassis feels very smooth but isn’t quite good enough for a firm grip in hand.

On the left side is a 7-pin connector to which the gaming accessories can be attached, a fan grille, and a physical switch for Game Mode. The right side has the volume rocker and the power button. However, you will feel somewhat uncomfortable to the finger while pressing the thumb right on volume rocker instead of power key. Good thing, you don’t have to press it too much since the power button has an in-display fingerprint sensor.

Bottom of the Red Magic 5G are slightly curving inward to form the SIM tray, USB-C port, and speakers. The top edge still retains the 3.5mm jack. On the front, the screen has no defects, although a little thick on the posts top and bottom; for that’s where the selfie camera and the sensors lie. More importantly, the bezels are not far too thin so that one can easily grip it while enjoying a game.

In the whole, this smartphone has a very nice design, only the power button position and weight distribution are not perfect, as it has a little much at its top.

Display

The design of the front does not feature any “rabbit ears” water drops or “moles,” making handling more comfortable and safe when gaming in landscape mode and leaving no worries about silencing when the screen is accidentally touched.

The screen of the Red Magic 5G is very spacious with an overall size of 6.65 inches. It is an AMOLED display, with FH + resolution (1,080 x 2,340) and an aspect ratio of 19.5: 9, together with a super fast refresh rate of 144Hz. Well, it is the smartphone with the highest screen refresh rate being sold in the market right now; even the newly launched flagships of Samsung and OPPO are limited to 120.

However, it is claimed that mobile titles for Android do not support such high refresh rate screens, and that’s true for most of them. However, one can’t deny the increasing trend of high-refresh-rate content on smartphones in the future. The 144Hz screen also actually gives a much smoother feel to the scrolling and manipulating of applications.

The screen’s maximum brightness reaches 483 nits; with potential further increase in Max Auto mode to reaching 685 nits-just enough to ensure great comfort in an experience exposed most externally in high sunny environments. In addition to having quite accurate color then eye-catching in the screen, the average DE2000 in normal mode defaults to 5.4, while natural mode offers a slightly more accurate scoring of 4.6. You can also turn on Colorful Mode for extra vivid colors.

Battery Capacity

The Nubia Red Magic 5G holds a fairly large battery of 4,500 mAh. But it is less compared to the previous generation Red Magic 3 and 3S that had battery capacities of 5,000 mAh.

When using the phone at the default refresh rate, 144Hz on the actual time on screen when you know, it is less. If you switch to a 60Hz refresh rate, it will significantly increase battery life.

Besides, in 90Hz refresh rate, you can use it so as to conserve the battery for the screen in relatively smooth experience. About charging, if you buy the Red Magic 5G from outside of China using an 18W charger, the results will be very disappointing because it takes 30 minutes to charge from 0 to 33%.

Sound Quality

Similar to other smartphones that market themselves as gaming, Nubia Red Magic 5G has a stereo speaker setup. This phone is also one of the phones that provide very loud sound speakers in the test of speakers, the second place behind ROG Phone II.

Personally, I would say it has better bass in this phone. The sound quality of Red Magic 5G is good enough for most users.

Operating system and interface

Older versions of Red Magic UI really had a hard time with translating from Chinese to any other language, and this particular time wasn’t an exception. For instance, there has been no battery settings menu; you can’t even change the battery percentage on the upper right corner of the screen. However, Nubia says this is not the final version; an update is in the works to fix the bug.

The software looks and feels much like stock Android, with hardly any UI changes to speak of. A few color customizations for the settings menu make certain things somewhat easier. Besides, R ed Magic 5G has some interesting software features and gaming capabilities, which we will discuss in an upcoming section.

The first is an assortment of Always On Display clock styles and graphics. It can also show a short clip or GIF. Plus, you can set the refresh rate to 60, 90, or 144Hz. The best option is 90Hz for balancing battery life versus smooth experience.

Another RGB cool light for the back is given here. Its driver allows selection of various styles, colors, and gradients, as well as turning it on/off on message notifications, incoming calls, and playing games.

Along with augmenting the gaming performance, while charging, the cooler fan does cool the phone for good thermal management in order to shorten the thermal throttling, but this is effective only with the 55W charger of the device. Also, settings are provided on the device to control the speed of the fan.

You get two options: automatically adjusting the fan speed and maximum speed for quicker and efficient cooling. The sound of the fan is not too loud. Navigation gestures in Red magic UI provide for standard Android 10 navigation gestures or the use of virtual keys on the screen.

A menu called “anchor AI” will have the phone monitor CPU and GPU temperature, and automatically adjust cooling fan speed. Additionally, based on the application, the software will adapt the refresh rate of the screen-60Hz for static images and videos, and 144Hz for games.

Moreover, AI would learn user behavior over time to detect applications commonly used, allocate resources to them, and launch them faster. This new Neo AI also keeps an eye on the apps that users seem not to use and freezes them to save power.

The in-display fingerprint sensor in Red Magic 5G is considered to be insensitive, needing multiple unlock requests to recognize the device; the sensor is said to sit low on the display, making it awkward. One redeeming quality is that should you place your finger incorrectly, it will light up to show you where you need to put your hand.

Game Space Mode of Version 2.1

The different modes of game space 2.1 for users are very helpful for playing games. An easy list of games will be given, along with an easy switch to turn on/off both the rear LED lights and the cooling fan. Pulling the drawer open with quick struck settings through the right. The mere way of toggling fan, enabling 144Hz screen mode, call barring, and quick screenshot.

You can use Game Enhancements option to hypercharge CPU and GPU for improving gaming experience. However, this mode consumes more battery, makes the machine hotter, and increases the fan speed to keep the heat generation into the limit.

Some more settings are:

Photography.
Screen recording.
Fan control.
LED configuration.
Summary of your daily/weekly playtime.

Benchmarks and performance

Configuration and benchmarks

The Red Magic 5G integrates the Snapdragon 865 mobile platform with the Snapdragon X55 modem for the 5G connectivity. Snapdragon 865 is built using 7nm + EUV technique and is the most powerful octa-core CPU which comes featuring a single massive Kryo 585 core clocked at 2.84GHz, 3 identical cores running at 2.42GHz, and 4 Kryo 585 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. The most premium Adreno 650 GPU is used for graphics performance.

Not to mention, Nubia Red Magic has several memory options, with RAM up to 16GB LPDDR5-approximately 1.5 times faster than LPDDR4X memory-and storage memory up to 256GB UFS 3.0. These device benchmarks run in Game Space mode while saving the cooling fan.

I ran it on the CPU management application of Google Play, at heavy and persistent loads. The first run was under no cooling fan, while the second one had the cooling fan on maximum speed. Both runs lasted one hour.

Even without a cooling fan, the heatsink makes this device really good for task handling. There is no thermal throttling. The software records 228,610 average GIPS, average temperatures from about 61 to about 81 degrees Celsius, with the main core becoming the hottest.

In the case of the fan at full speed, average performance is 258.144GIPS, which is 13% more than when repeated during the same period. The temperature remained about the same; 60 to 84 degrees Celsius. The maximum temperature recorded was lower by only 1 degrees Celsius than without the cooling fan (92 degrees Celsius as against 91 degrees Celsius). It can be seen that the software did not use the help of the fan to reduce the temperature but rather maximized the performance.

Realistic gaming performance

When it comes to gaming experience, Red Magic has done a great job. However, for very few titles can you find support for frame rates above 60, let alone 144Hz. For our test, we selected Real Racing 3 (a title supporting 144Hz screens). The phone was able to hold 144FPS, which is the real kicker: the stability of the FPS is above 90%. The game feels really good; without doubt, the Red Magic 5G has set a new standard for the mobile gaming scene.

Next in line was Sky Force Reloaded-An Arcade game supporting screens operating at 120Hz. It surpassed our expectations with an average FPS of 120 and staggering FPS stability of 98%.

Cod Mobile seems to run fine with 100% FPS stability on the Red Magic 5G at 60FPS.

In PUBG Mobile, the device was again put to the test at 40 and 60FPS, and it conquered both tests without so much as a hint of lag.

Other than that, some of the titles included Mortal Kombat, Gear Club, Modern Combat 5, Shadow of Death, Hungry Dragon, Need For Speed No Limit, and Shadowgun Legends.

When it comes to temperature during gaming, the Red Magic 5G has a little warmth during prolonged heavy gaming, which is known. Still, with the cooling fan system, one can entirely maintain the temperature up to a level that will not harm much during gameplay.

where can you get a Nubia Red Magic 5G online

Nubia Red Magic 5G Gaming Phone, Android 10 Snapdragon 865 Unlocked Smartphone Phones, 6.65 inch AMOLED HD 144Hz Turbo Fan 64MP Mobile Phone, Cell Phones with Triple Camera, 4500mAh NFC(Red,8+128G): Buy it now

Camera

The Red Magic 5G is nowhere close to being aimed purely at gaming configurations. Instead, the camera system has also been greatly upgraded over that of the previous model. It features a triple rear setup that consists of a primary 64MP camera with f/1.8 aperture, 1/1.72-inch sensor size, 0.8µm pixel size, 8MP wide-angle lens, f/2.3, and macro lens, f/2.5. The selfie camera comes with 8MP resolution only with an f/2.0 aperture.

There are a lot of modes and effects in the camera app, among which macro mode and toggles between 3x, 5x, and 10x zoom are there. It has even a Pro mode with full controls of shutter speed, white balance, ISO, manual focus, and exposure.

Daytime photograph

There are minor improvements in photography in comparison with the preceding Red Magic 5G. The daylight shots have lots of noisy areas in them, but they aren’t as sharp and still remain rather soft. In most cases, images turn out to be very vibrant, detailed, and with a wide dynamic range.

Scene detection AI technology is also there to beautify color.

The camera app gives quick switch for 3x, 5x, and 10x zoom. Unfortunately, even the 3x zoom picture is out and doesn’t have much detail and unnatural.

The AI can improve the zoom image color but doesn’t improve the details.

On to the ultra-wide 8MP lens: the software makes this image sharp, compared to many other 8MP ultra-blacks available in the market.

Low Light Conditions

More evident are the disadvantages of the main camera while taking photos under low light conditions, where the pictures taken are mostly quite soft, but they have noise and most of the time lack sufficient details. However, colors look quite natural; neon light is well reproduced; and dynamic range is good even without using the night mode.

Brighter, more details with more eye-catching colors in Night Mode.

Photos from the ultra-wide camera lack a night mode, so they end up really grainy with almost no details.

Macro Shooting

Macro cameras have a problem: they do not have autofocus. As a result, the slightest movement, such as a leaf swaying in the breeze or an insect scuttling across the frame, could make an image immeasurably blurry. Nubia has therefore added a “magnifying glass” viewfinder: the captured subject is shown with a red outline while the image is still in motion. The viewer is free to move that magnifying glass as if it were a tool inside the viewfinder.

Well, it’s going to take time to create those beautiful close-up photos, which are very noisy, so if you’re patient enough, you’ll be able to create beautiful macro photographs in time.

Take a portrait

Portraits were sharp and with lots of detail, and skin tones looked pretty natural, shame the dynamic range was decent. Bad on the other hand is edge detection, which makes the subject look a little rough with respect to the backdrop; the software allows too much tolerance between the background and subject.

Selfie
The front camera exposes pure cosmetic speckled and photographic 8 MP selfies. Captured tones of the subject’s skin can be true.

Video
Just like the other flagships of Snapdragon 865, Nubia is also gearing towards recording 8K videos by the Red Magic 5G. Unlike its peers, which would shoot an 8K video at only 24fps, this Red Magic can up it to 30fps.

4K

4K video is good in terms of getting redder colors and has average dynamic range but nothing special.

1080p video has hardly anything different: identical color treatment to 4K, but less details

8K shiny footage looked sharper compared to 4K and was surprisingly smooth with good detail levels; burnout was bad.

This Red Magic 5G also has EIS electronic image stability for 4K video and looks reasonably steady. Even moving fast, the footage is jerkless and shake-free.

Conclusion

One of the biggest advantages of Red Magic 5G over all other competitors is its 144 Hz display. No other phone is selling in the market with that high refresh rate. That certainly will weigh in legitimacy among gamers toward this handset over other 120 Hz flagship contenders like it. Unfortunately, that still isn’t sufficient content available, so supporting this refresh rate.

In addition, this smartphone is very attractive and has interesting software tweaks that aid better gaming. Powerful hardware, stable performance, good heat dissipation would put Red Magic 5G on the top of the list for gamers.