For today's review, I have in my hands the latest Nubia mobile, the Redmagic 7Pro mobile phone. Running Android 12 coated in Redmagic OS 5.0, this 8th gen Snapdragon 5G phone comes locked and loaded with 16GB of Ram and a plentiful 256GB of onboard storage with which to play or do anything you wish!

Presented in a stunning box that incorporates holographic colouring, comic book art panels and red metallic inlaid logos, the packaging exudes a style and edginess that beckons you to open it up and check out its incredibly engaging contents. Within the box you get a signature red USB-C to USB-C charging cable, a 65w GaN fast charger USB-C plug, a handy clear silicon case and of course the main event; the Nubia Redmagic 7 Pro (NX709J) 5G, dual sim mobile phone in this case, in obsidian colourway!

The phone itself is a sleek 10mm thickness with a whopping 16.6cm x 7.7cm form factor, which is slightly taller than my iPhone 12 Pro Max, and allows for the superb 6.8" AMOLED screen to produce a gorgeous 120Hz, 20:9 ratio, 1080 x 2400 resolution image with roughly 387 ppi density, a brightness of 600 nits, and the ability to display around 1 billion colours!

Booting it up for the first time the firmware was updated to the highest possible level Android 12, with Redmagic's OS build number at version 3.02, and after a week or so of testing a new update, named NX709J_UNCommon_V3.07 dropped, so I updated it immediately. Unfortunately, there were no patch notes or changelog viewable on the device, it would have been great to know what's new, what got changed, or what was updated, and additionally, I didn't notice any major differences and no security updates were applied according to the system settings security patch dates.

Tech Specs:

Model: Nubia Redmagic 7 Pro NX709J 5G
Released: Feb 2022
Dimensions: 166.3 x 77.1 x 10 mm (6.55 x 3.04 x 0.39 in)
RAM options: 8GB / 12GB / 16GB
Storage options: 128GB / 256GB / 512GB / 1TB (Not expandable)
Display: 6.8" AMOLED, 120Hz, 600 nits
Resolution: 1080 x 2400 pixels, 20:9, 387 ppi
CPU: 4nm Octa-core Qualcomm SM8450 Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (4x1.80 GHz Cortex-A510, 3x2.50 GHz Cortex-A710, 1x3.00 GHz Cortex-X2)
GPU: Adreno 730
Cameras: 64 MP, f/1.8, 26mm (wide), 1/1.97", 0.7µm, PDAF, 8 MP, f/2.0, 120˚, 13mm (ultrawide), 1/4.0", 1.12µm, 2 MP, (macro), 16 MP Selfie under-display HDR
Sensors: Fingerprint (under display, optical), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
Sound: Stereo Loudspeaker, 3.5mm headphone jack, 32-bit/384kHz audio, BT 5.2, A2DP, aptX, LE
Battery: 5000mAh (not removable), Fast charging 135W, PD 3.0
Cooling: Rear fan, right-side exhaust
Connectivity: GPS, NFC, Bluetooth 5.2, Dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6e, USB-C

Taking a walk around the physicality of the device, you have your 3.5mm jack on the top side along with a microphone and speaker, the left edge is minimal but exciting; housing just one single red sliding switch, and the bottom of the device incorporates a second speaker to facilitate stereo audio in a landscape configuration, a further microphone hole, and the dual sim tray slot. The right edge houses the majority of the gadgetry with the twin pressure-sensitive triggers bookending the fan vent, the volume buttons, the power button and another microphone hole. The rear of the phone is home to the camera module that is comprised of three lenses and an LED flash, a series of air intake slots and two spunky RGB lights to indicate charging, gaming, or whatever you want really!

The cameras come three-fold on the rear with a main 64MP wide lens for general snapping, an 8MP ultrawide 120˚ lens for epic scenic mastery and lastly a 2MP macro lens for getting up close and personal. All told these are capable of recording video at up to 8K resolution and between 30 to 240FPS depending on the modes you employ to assist your creativity. The under-display front-facing selfie camera is a more than adequate 16MP with full HDR capabilities and can aptly record video at 30FPS in full 1080p clarity!

I really liked how the images were captured on the Redmagic 7Pro. The warmth and realistic representation and faithful recreation of the scene are all captured here, and there seem to be less grainy shadows than on the iPhone, each in their default modes. Colour saturation is less dramatic than on iPhone too but looks more realistic to what was there in the moment, overall it's a matter of personal preference when it comes to the picture shoot out, but I have to admit the Nubia takes a stunning photo!

(iPhone 12 Pro Max sunset shot)

(Redmagic 7Pro Sunset shot)

The TikTok generation is fully catered for in the camera department too with amazing night-time features such as features such star trail, starry sky and light draw, and multitudinous other modes that facilitate on the fly creativity with effects such as multi-exposure, slow motion, time-lapse, clone, trajectory, macro, 3D, zoom blur, freeze frame, and even more modes that do things so you don't have to, including 'Phantom' to add ghostly trails to videos, 'Art camera' to instantly apply art filters over images and 'Hitchcock' camera mode feature that automatically zooms on a subject while you draw the camera away from it!

Packing a dedicated integrated cooling fan that exhausts on the right-hand side of the phone, you know that the Redmagic 7Pro is not going to hold back in that department, and thanks to the 4nm Octa-Core Qualcomm SM8450 Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 paired with an Adreno 730 GPU, you know you're in for a treat. The cores are grouped as a single 3.00GHz Cortex X2, a cluster of 3 2.50GHz Cortext A710's and a further four 1.79GHz Cortex A510's this phone is out to prove itself the top dog in a sea of gaming phone possibilities. The cooling fan certainly made a difference during testing with the phone idling around 23-27 degrees on the PA, PA1 and SDR-MMW and MMW_PA1/2/3, and under average use and just about hitting 28 degrees while testing the camera and video features, enabling the cooling modes dipped those temps back down to the average idle temps in just a few moments. Underload playing games for a while and with no cooling active the phone reached the high 30's but with the cooling fans on, and whilst in game mode, it never topped 32-33 degrees across the 6 sensors, but you will certainly need to turn up the volume a little to compensate for that exhaust though.

Amongst its other features, the Redmagic 7Pro also comes with an under-screen fingerprint sensor, 500Hz triggers, and a dedicated game mode switch on the left-hand side that toggles the mobile into a dedicated gaming beast. Flipping that alluring bright red shiny enabler flips the orientation of the screen to landscape, freezes anything and everything else in the background and automates the cooling solution based on your preferences. You have a nicer on the ear quiet cooling mode and a more audibly intrusive higher-powered cooling mode that really vents any excess heat away from the internals. This mode also brings up a dedicated gaming carousel UI, within which you can add apps and games, making this fully customisable and easily configurable.

The screen quality is mightily impressive with a 120Hz always-on display and some really nice colour combinations and minimalist UI choices throughout the Redmagic OS 5.0 overlays. I really enjoyed everything I threw at it; streaming movies, playing games, reviewing photos and movies in the gallery, everything looks well saturated, with fluid motion and no ghosting or tearing visible on everything I threw at it.

The always-on display works beautifully with the under-display fingerprint scanner, which doubles as a green LED driven optical heart rate monitor too, which means you can unlock your phone in comfort without having to rely on a pin. Facial recognition is also very fast--and I mean lightning fast. No sooner had I faced the device and hit the power button, than it was unlocked and ready to rock. The speed of unlocking is similar to that of the iPhone with its 3D facial tracking, which I thought was pretty impressive.

The sound from the stereo speakers is rather flat and tinny but it is incredibly loud, far more so than I ever expected. It really projects via those loudspeakers and using VLC to playback movies, even at 60% volume with no boost it's exceptionally loud and crisp. In terms of flatness, there isn't much bass warmth, the speakers sound great but it's certainly lacking that certain something to kick it up a notch and take it to the next level. I know people connect their phones to portable speakers, and the sound level and quality are easily as good as using one of those, I just hoped for a little more bass to make it really pop.

Oddly I couldn't find any EQ settings within the general phone settings to adjust the loudspeaker sound profile, which was strange considering the level of detail that has gone into the graphical and efficiency elements of this device, that sound should come up short in terms of customisation for external speakers, and sure, you have the EQ plugin for gaming, but that really only affects connected headsets rather than the loudspeakers. In all honesty, this is about my only gripe with this entire device, and it's honestly not even THAT big of an issue. In comparison my iPhone 12 Pro Max sounds far better in the external stereo audio department, with a better sound profile being projected from the speakers and more warmth overall.

Personally, as an emulation enthusiast, I opted to run this little pocket rocket through its paces with the latest and greatest emulators available for the Android architecture. I tested out the core pillar of the emulation scene: Dolphin, went a little off-piste with Citra and lastly entered into new realms with the new kid on the block Aether: the PS2 emulator.

Starting off with my standard testing benchmark, I opted to load up an emulation taxing Wii game, and an equally taxing GC title to push the phone to its limits. My go-to with these things is to test Nintendo's Super Mario Galaxy 2. The reason for this is two-fold: firstly the game is incredibly finicky to emulate and secondly, there is, unfortunately, no way to currently play this title on Nintendo's latest generation of consoles.

Nintendo came oh-so-close with Super Mario 3D All-Stars on the Switch by offering the original SMG, which was incredibly fun to play, but I wanted more, I want to replay that nostalgic extra portion of the SMG universe that is the sequel, and wouldn't it be great to be able to play it on the go? The good news is that the game ran astonishingly well locking a respectable 44-59 FPS throughout, only dipping that low in the more overly action-packed scenes,  which in my opinion is more than playable. This was all done at stock level, with no tweaking apart from the FPS overlay, and definitely no unofficial builds being used at this time to boost performance in any way. With motion controls mapped to the gyro and the triggers in place, the game runs really well without any additional hardware such as a Bluetooth controller, as long as you can manage the onscreen buttons and analogue stick.

Testing the Simpsons Road Rage for Gamecube I was surprised about just how smooth and playable the gameplay was with the  default Dolphin loadout. The Redmagic was maintaining a respectable 27-31 FPS during FMV, and 55-60FPS with the occasional dip to the low 20s during intense action and smoke effect-laden moments such as your car being on fire whilst handbrake turning through lanes of traffic and burning vehicles ahead of you. There was also a little noticeable audio stutter and stretching in places, but it wasn't persistent, and it has to be said that again; I had not optimised or messed with any of the settings in Dolphin, this is all stock, so it could definitely be improved with caching and frame rate tweaks.

Testing Tekken Tag Tournament on AetherSX I was literally aghast at just how playable it was with widescreen patches and FPS overlay during my tests. The game often hit 103% speed, and never seemed to falter below 97% speed, even with Eddy Gordo flailing around like a mad man and the frame limiter turned on. AetherSX runs incredibly well and really impressed me with its early builds bringing near-flawless speeds to the smaller ISO games in my library, but wow it's really staggering that you can now effectively play PS2 games on the go! I would recommend a Bluetooth controller for this emulator though, as there is a heck of a lot of buttons on screen and removing that clutter and having full ergonomic access to a physical controller really makes it feel better.

Citra is one I have wanted to test for a while, but again, never had the hardware for it, so this time around I opted to give it a whirl and hope for the best. Firing it up I managed to get Link Between Worlds running at a pretty respectable 53-59 FPS running at 95-120% speed with minor audio issues, though in the menus there is a definite audio looping stutter and loading screens and menus chop the frame rates down to the 40s and dip to 60% speed. The screen is obviously small, and the screenshot above doesn't do it any justice, but overall, it was a more than reasonable playing experience for yet another emulated console on the go!

The triggers are superb and offer 500Hz pressure sensitivity too so you could potentially use them for games that used analogue triggers, such as Super Mario Sunshine or even the pressure-sensitive accelerator in Gran Turismo 4. While the screen is definitely large enough for casual use, nothing will truly replace the feeling of tactile buttons, a D-Pad and fully functional sticks.

When connecting a controller and using a gaming clip, you almost inadvertently fashion the Redmagic 7Pro into the ultimate mobile gaming beast. Depending on which pad you connect and which accompanying applications you use you could remote play your PlayStation 4 or 5, you could dabble in some Gamepass with an Xbox Pad or you could simply use Steam Link and play PC games, or of course play native Android games on the move, the possibilities are truly endless!

Overall, emulation on this device is pretty much the best I have ever experienced. With a multitude of emulators available on the Android ecosystem you can emulate every handheld from Gameboy to PSP and 3DS, and every console from the Game and Watch up to and including Dreamcast, Wii, GC, PS1 and now, most impressively, PlayStation 2! To have all this at your fingertips and for it to play ever remotely well is a fantastic thing to behold, but remember the state of emulation will always be the weakest link in the chain of having fun on these devices, no matter how many cores and GB's of ram you have; you can never really improve emulation with a beast-mode device, just perhaps bolster the framerates and polish it up a bit around the edges. However, going forward, and with more demanding emulators your device will be future-proofed and more capable than older, less beefy ones when the updates flow.

Benchmarking the Redmagic 7Pro, I wasn't sure what the outcome would be, but to my utter disbelief, it completely outperformed everything else on the list. With a Single-core score of 1252 and a Multi-core score of 3864 on Geekbench 5.4.4; the 7Pro actually thrashed the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G by over 300 points in single-core and over 750 points on multi-core. Comparatively the ASUS ROG Z01QD Phone I recently reviewed came up with 541 single and 2377 multi, and the Xiaomi 11T hit 789 single-core and a multi-core score of 2941.

The Redmagic 7Pro by Nubia is a wonderful device that is jam-packed with intuitive and easy to understand features. Things like the stock built-in fan controller, the heart rate monitor, and the dedicated game mode switch take the usability of this thing through the roof, even before you start tweaking the smaller fine-grain aspects such as screen gamut, refresh rates, and which apps to isolate and automatically fan the CPU to for best performance. With a starting price of around 650 Euros / £550, it doesn't break the bank when you factor into the purchase the fantastic camera spec, the sheer beauty of the device's design language and UI and its quite frankly outlandishly good performance. As a day to day device, it goes without saying that this is an absolute stunner, especially with its mere 15 minute charge time. As an advocate for emulation on the go; The Redmagic 7Pro is nothing short of essential, in my opinion, for emulation up to and possibly exceeding Playstation 2 levels (depending on the emulator's pedigree). Going forward I would love to see how the Switch emulator Skyline is handled by devices like this, and even something like the now discontinued Mikage 3DS emulator could have been stunning to test. For general gaming too, this device is a must for those who want a wolf in sheep's clothing; it may look relatively unassuming at first glance, but my goodness it has a really powerful engine under that hood for games like The Room series, Infinity Blade 3, Asphalt 9, Fortnite, Dead Trigger 2, Genshin, World of Legends, PUBG, COD Mobile and the such!