The title of ‘Best gaming phone’ has arguably never been more up for grabs than it is in 2024. While Asus turned out a solid pair of smartphones with its ROG Phone 8 series, it also took several steps towards the mainstream that arguably diluted the appeal of those devices to gamers.
As the only other company regularly turning out gaming phones, Nubia is best poised to take advantage of this change in priorities from the category leader. The Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro, which was released earlier this year, was something of a bargain, offering top-end performance, built-in fan cooling, and physical controls in a mid-priced package.
Now the Red Magic 9S Pro is here, offering incremental improvements over the 9 Pro for the same price. We could probably just copy and paste our Red Magic 9 Pro review in at this point, and most of what we said about that phone would still be accurate.
(Image credit: Future / Jon Mundy)
There’s a strong argument to be made that this is a needless update, with a nigh-on identical flat-edged design (complete with mappable capacitive trigger buttons), the same 6500mAh battery with 80W wired charging, and the same dual 50MP camera system backed by a 2MP macro sensor.
Even the chip that runs the show is pretty much the same, albeit this ‘Leading Version’ of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is clocked slightly higher than before. There’s either 12GB or 16GB of RAM, depending on the variant you opt for.
To accompany this slightly overclocked component, Nubia has stuck in an upgraded ICE 13.5 cooling system, which adds a new frost cooling gel into the equation.
Unfortunately, Nubia’s decision to stick with the same basic design means the Red Magic 9S Pro has the same flaws as its predecessor. While it’s nice to have an unimpeded 6.8-inch FHD+ AMOLED display, Nubia’s implementation still means that you get a terrible in-display selfie camera.
You also have to put up with Nubia’s less-than-brilliant custom Android UI. It’s much better than it was only a couple of years ago, but if you’re after an elegant day-to-day experience, you’re better served spending similar money on one of the best mid-range phones on the market.
Despite the lack of anything really new, however, the Red Magic 9S Pro somehow finds itself in a straight shootout with the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro as the best gaming phone on the market. Given its clearer focus on gaming, as well as its superior value proposition, it might just scrape the win.
Nubia Red Magic 9S Pro review: price and availability
From $649 / £579 / Australian customers can buy from Red Magic’s global store in USD
Early-bird offer from July 23 to July 30, 2024
The international version of the Red Magic 9S Pro will be available from July 23, 2024. For its first week on sale, an early-bird offer will be running that enables purchasers to secure a $30 / £30 discount.
There will eventually be four color/storage variants on offer, starting with the entry-level Sleet model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for $649 / £579. The Cyclone and Snowfall models – both of which ship with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage – cost $799 / £709.
The fourth Frost model won’t hit shops until mid-September 2024, and will be another entry-level option, with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for $649 / £579.
That pricing is identical to the Red Magic 9 Pro – all that’s different is the addition of the extra entry-level Frost option.
Value score: 5/5
Nubia Red Magic 9S Pro review: specs
Nubia Red Magic 9S Pro review: design
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Gorilla Glass 5 front and back, aluminum frame
Dead-flat shape
520Hz capacitive shoulder buttons
Dedicated gaming mode switch
With this being an S-series device, the Red Magic 9S Pro looks and feels nigh-on identical to the Red Magic 9 Pro before it. It’s exactly the same size (164 x 76.4 x 8.9mm) and weight (229g), which means you’re dealing with a phone that hits Galaxy S24 Ultra levels of unwieldiness.
This is one of the most angular phones you’re likely to find, with flat surfaces all around. Even the camera module is integrated into the Gorilla Glass 5 back, while the Gorilla Glass 5-coated front doesn’t exhibit so much as the slightest hint of curvature.
The thick, flat frame is formed of aluminum, which gives the phone a solid feel, and this vast rim houses more points of interest than you might be accustomed to. Most of these are located on the right edge, where you’ll find a pair of 520Hz capacitive buttons (with integrated LED lights) that can be mapped to controls in many games.
These buttons flank one of two vents for the integrated cooling fan, a long volume rocker, a nicely tactile circular power button, and a dedicated gaming mode switch that boots the phone into Nubia’s gaming UI.
(Image credit: Future / Jon Mundy)
The top edge of the phone, meanwhile, houses a 3.5mm headphone jack, which I’d suggest is an essential inclusion in any serious gaming phone. The opposite edge houses a USB-C port, but there’s no secondary charging port on the longer side, as we’ve seen on older ROG models (but not, alas, the ROG Phone 8).
Those two shorter edges also house the phone’s stereo speakers, which isn’t the most gaming-friendly of decisions. It’s generally better to have these be front-firing, as it’s too easy to block them with your hands when you’re holding the phone. The output is extremely loud and clear, but it lacks the controlled nuance and depth of more expensive phones.
The rear of the phone adopts the same kind-of-transparent design as the 9 Pro. I say ‘kind-of-transparent’ because if you look closely, precious little of the phone’s inner workings are actually exposed here – there’s a symbol depicting the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 ‘Leading Version’ chip and some vaguely circuit board-evoking sections, but only a window showing the cooling fan seems genuine.
The most impressive part of the Red Magic 9S Pro design is on the front, where minimal bezels and the lack of a notch result in a 93.7% screen-to-body ratio. Admittedly, that doesn’t necessarily make for the best gaming experience – we’ve already discussed the benefits of front-firing speakers, and it’s always handy to have something to hold onto as well – but it certainly looks impressive.
Design score: 3.5/5
Nubia Red Magic 9S Pro review: display
(Image credit: Future / Jon Mundy)
Large 6.8-inch screen
FHD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate
BOE Q9+ luminescent material
Under-display selfie camera
Without wishing to sound like a stuck record so early in the review (believe me, there’s more to come), the Red Magic 9S Pro display is identical to that of the Red Magic 9 Pro. That is, it’s a large 6.8-inch OLED screen with a 2480 x 1116 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate.
That’s not the fastest screen on a gaming phone – the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro hits 165Hz – but given that relatively few mobile games will even support frame rates of up to 120fps, this is verging on being a non-issue.
Nubia stepped up the vibrancy with the 9 Pro screen, and the 9S Pro benefits from the same BOE Q9+ luminescent material. Translation: the colors are particularly punchy, and those concerned about a faithful video playback experience will want to dial things back to the more muted ‘Soft’ mode.
In peak conditions, this screen is capable of hitting 1600 nits. With auto brightness turned off and the brightness cranked up to the max, I recorded a top brightness of 447 nits – again, very much in keeping with the 9 Pro.
As already mentioned, one of the most striking things about this display is that it’s completely unimpeded by a front-facing camera. Aside from the likes of the Sony Xperia 1 VI, most modern phones lump you with a notch of some kind, but the Red Magic 9S Pro has an in-display selfie camera to preserve that pristine canvas.
Display score: 4/5
Nubia Red Magic 9S Pro review: cameras
(Image credit: Future / Jon Mundy)
50MP main with OIS this time
50MP ultra-wide, 2MP macro
16MP in-display selfie camera still terrible
Up to 8K video
Guess what? Nubia hasn’t changed the Red Magic 9S Pro camera set-up one jot. Which means it remains a secondary concern, in a way that will be familiar to anyone who’s owned a gaming phone before.
You get the same 50MP Samsung GN5 as we’ve seen in the past few models, which is actually a decent enough component – if not a particularly fresh one. It was the sensor that led the way back in the Galaxy S22 days. This is backed by OIS and a 7P lens, meaning there are seven plastic elements.
The Red Magic 9S Pro turns out reasonably sharp and vibrant shots in good lighting, although Nubia’s color science does punch colors up somewhat. The night mode shots I took didn’t turn out particularly great though, with a weird grainy texture to the skies that suggests a processing issue.
Indeed, these night shots didn’t look as good as the ones I took with the Red Magic 9 Pro earlier in the year, which perhaps points to a software issue. Hopefully, an update will clear this up.
There’s also a 50MP Samsung JN1 ultra-wide sensor here, but it doesn’t turn out particularly good results. There was often a massive disparity in the clarity and tone between these two main sensors, with the ultra-wide turning out much dimmer, murkier snaps.
The video specs are pretty solid, with the phone’s flagship processor enabling up to 8K/30fps, 4K/60fps, or 1080p/240fps. The footage I captured seemed steady enough, though panning around 180 degrees on a sunny day led to some slightly clunky exposure adjustments.
If there’s one big casualty of Nubia’s decision to go with an all-screen front, it’s the 9S Pro’s 16MP under-display selfie camera. Selfie shots are truly abysmal, as they were in previous models. Detail, exposure, and dynamic range are worse than even a modern affordable phone with a regular front-facing camera.
Camera score: 3/5
Nubia Red Magic 9S Pro review: camera samples
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Nubia Red Magic 9S Pro review: performance
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Slightly faster Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip ‘Leading Version’
12GB or 16GB RAM of LPDDR5X RAM
256GB or 512GB UFS 4.0 storage
Some concerning throttling issues
Nubia finds itself in a bit of a tricky position with the 9S Pro, because Qualcomm hasn’t released its customary ‘Plus’ chip update. This means that the fastest chip available remains the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which already powered the Red Magic 9 Pro. Awkward.
The solution, it seems, is to effectively ‘do a Samsung’ and use a slightly overclocked version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Nubia calls it the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip ‘Leading Version’, but it’s essentially the same chip with a performance core that runs to 3.4GHz (rather than 3.3GHz) and a GPU that runs to 1GHz (rather than 900Hz).
If that sounds like a minimal upgrade, well, it is. Indeed, with the same 12 or 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM as before, the regular range of CPU and GPU benchmark results I obtained turned out broadly the same as the 9 Pro.
Of course, that still means that the Red Magic 9S Pro is one of the fastest phones on the market. It’s more than capable of running even the most advanced games on top graphical settings at fluid frame rates, though so is any other flagship Android phone or iPhone from the past couple of years.
There is one point of concern here, and it relates to sustained performance. Nubia claims to have improved the 9S Pro’s cooling system, with an ICE 13.5 set-up that renders the phone 1.5 degrees cooler than before.
In practice, however, the Red Magic 9S Pro seems less stable than its predecessor. Running a couple of the 3D Mark Stress Tests (Wild Life and Solar Bay), which are 20 consecutive minute-long intensive GPU workouts, the results were surprisingly variable. They never got much higher than 80%, suggesting a fair degree of throttling is in play.
That’s a decent enough score for a regular phone with only passive cooling, but it’s well short of the high–90s scores I was getting with the 9 Pro. Even the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro can hit the low-’90s, and that phone doesn’t have a built-in cooling fan.
Given the nature of the hardware, this would seem to be either a software issue or a problem with that higher-clocked chip. Hopefully a swift update can fix it, as this isn’t something you want to see in a gaming phone.
Performance score: 4.5/5
Nubia Red Magic 9S Pro review: software
(Image credit: Future / Jon Mundy)
Red Magic OS 9.5 on Android 14
Ugly UI, but it works
Powerful Game Space dedicated gaming UI
The Red Magic 9S Pro gets Red Magic OS 9.5 layered on top of Android 14, and it offers a broadly familiar experience. From a pretty sticky start, Nubia’s Red Magic OS UI has worked its way to being half way passable. It’s no longer the mess of oversized fan widgets and poorly translated text that it used to be.
Let’s not be in any doubt, though, that this isn’t a particularly appealing UI. The wallpapers have that tiresome ‘gamer’ aesthetic about them – all neon flourishes, metallic surfaces, and sharp angles, like a close-up shot of a Transformer’s clenched bicep.
There’s still a charmless Browser app, which also doubles as a charmless news feed app, and the Booking.com app still comes preinstalled for some reason. Still, none of these tedious elements is exclusive to Nubia’s custom UI these days.
In general use, Red Magic OS 9.5 is just fine to use. The home screen isn’t flooded with too many pointless apps. Even the home-brewed Goper app is justifiable if you’ve invested in one of Nubia’s accessories.
Everything runs smoothly, app switching is snappy, and unlocking the phone is a swift and relatively painless process. I didn’t get any of the sort of glitches that can occasionally be seen in Red Magic UIs, including the previous version.
As always, Nubia’s Game Space UI is a big feature here. Activated by a physical hardware switch on the side of the phone, it serves as a launching point for installed games, as well as a means for customizing fan, CPU, and GPU settings. You can also tweak screen sensitivity settings here, as well as adjusting screen ratios on a game by game basis.
Another aspect of this is an in-game UI, accessible with a drag from the side of the screen, which lets you do things like map those air triggers to particular controls. Being able to assign aim and shoot to specific buttons makes games like Warzone Mobile way better to play.
The Red Magic 9S Pro also supports up to 120fps wireless PC projection, now given the name ‘Z-SmartCast’, though I was unable to put this to the test.
In short, the Red Magic 9S Pro’s software is as clean, stable, and powerful as we’ve seen from Nubia, though there’s still loads of room for improvement. I still far prefer the elegant Asus approach as seen in the ROG Phone 8 Pro, which offers users the choice of a more custom UI or one that’s closer to stock Android.
Software score: 3.5/5
Nubia Red Magic 9S Pro review: battery life
(Image credit: Future / Jon Mundy)
6,500mAh battery
Clears a full day of intensive use with ease
Fast 80W wired charging
Nubia is stuck with a 6,500mAh dual-cell battery for the Red Magic 9S Pro, which is just peachy. That’s way larger than your average non-gaming phone battery, and is even more capacious than the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro’s.
Like the Red Magic 9 Pro, this phone has the potential to last two days when used moderately. On one typical day of fairly intensive usage, with 5 hours 30 minutes of screen on time, I was still left with 44% left in the tank.
Naturally, given the phone’s gaming focus, this extra capacity is really intended to get you through a full day even when you indulge in an intensive gaming session or two. The Red Magic 9S Pro is more than up to the task here.
You still get 80W charging straight out of the box, which is another area that hasn’t improved from the 9 Pro. It’s not quite as swift as it might seem, thanks to that larger-than-average battery. I was able to get a full charge in a little over 45 minutes, which is broadly in line with the Asus ROG Phone 8 family.
Unlike the Asus ROG Phone 8, you don’t get wireless charging here. That’s not typically a feature that hardcore gamers are looking for, however. They’re more likely to be pleased by the 9S Pro’s ability to run directly off the wall charger when plugged in, without going through the battery. That’s potentially better for the battery, not to mention mitigating potential heat buildup while gaming.
It would have been nice to have also had that secondary USB-C port on the opposite edge to the Air Triggers, though, which would have made for a more comfortable charge-while-you-play experience.
Battery score: 5/5
Should I buy the Nubia Red Magic 9S Pro?
Buy it if...
Don't buy it if...
Nubia Red Magic 9S Pro review: also consider
The Nubia Red Magic 9S Pro is a great-value gaming phone, but there are still some excellent alternatives to consider.
Asus ROG Phone 8 The Asus ROG Phone 8 isn’t as cheap as the Red Magic 9S Pro, but it’s far nicer to use as a phone day-to-day. Besides a more mature design, it’s got wireless charging and a reasonable camera.
Poco F6 Pro Do you want to pay even less money for your gaming-ready phone? The Poco F6 Pro can run all the latest games very well indeed, but costs about £80 less than the Red Magic 9S Pro, and is more pleasant to use day to day. Mind you, we haven't reviewed it yet.
How I tested the Nubia Red Magic 9S Pro
Review test period = 1 week
Testing included = Everyday usage, including web browsing, social media, photography, video calling, gaming, streaming video, music playback
Tools used = Geekbench 6, GFXBench, 3DMark, native Android stats, bundled Nubia 80W power adapter
The Xiaomi 14 is unquestionably in the running to be one of this year's top compact flagships, even if it is a little larger than the iPhone 15 and Samsung Galaxy S24. The phone boasts Qualcomm's best and brightest Snapdrgon 8 Gen 3 chip, a camera system that's been developed in collaboration with Leica, and a sizable battery with impressively fast 90W charging.
Xiaomi was actually first to market with an 8 Gen 3-powered phone, with the Xiaomi 14 series first debuting in China back in October 2023. As of February 2024, the company confirmed that both the Xiaomi 14 and Xiaomi 14 Ultra would be going global (the Xiaomi 14 Pro isn't getting an international release, but that's not as much of a loss as you might think), with the phones touching down in late February and mid-March, respectively.
There's more than a passing resemblance between this phone and the Xiaomi 13 – both phones have a prominent square main camera bump, and they have near-identical dimensions, with the new phone's fractional weight increase a result of the larger rear camera system and bigger battery. Xiaomi's fit and finish is up there, but the mirror-polish straight-sided design is decidedly more iPhone 14, than iPhone 15, which won't be to everyone's taste.
The 6.36-inch display has received a gamut of nice upgrades – there's a resolution bump between generations, while the move to an LTPO panel facilitates a true 1Hz to 120Hz variable refresh rate for greater power efficiency. It's a significantly brighter panel too, also trumping the figures promised by Apple and Samsung's latest.
This marks the fifth generation of flagship phones (if you include the company's mid-year 'S' refreshes) on which Xiaomi has collaborated with optical specialists Leica. For the most part, the user experience offered up by the camera remains much the same as last year's– including the ability to shoot in Leica Vivid or Classic color profiles, but the underlying hardware has been upgraded significantly, with a larger 50MP main sensor sporting a wider aperture, and backed up by two additional 50MP sensors (an ultra-wide and a 3.2x telephoto), which collectively deliver better light, detail, dynamic range, and color reproduction than previously.
(Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)
Even without flicking the 'high performance mode' toggle on, the Xiaomi 14 benchmarks among the top tier of the current Android pile, which translates to excellent real-world performance, whether multi-tasking or gaming. For all the raw grunt and software optimization the 14 clearly serves up though, the refreshed HyperOS user experience still falls foul of the same convolutions found in the previous MIUI; quirks that newcomers to the brand, and even some veteran Xiaomi users, would likely scratch their heads at when trying to perform certain actions or find particular features.
With this being 2024, there are also a raft of AI features that debut on the Xiaomi 14 series – from AI-generated portraits to semantic search in the gallery app – however, at the time of writing these features remain in beta, with access to them requiring approval from the Xiaomi Community admins, meaning most users won't be able to enjoy these new features and enhancements out of the box until later in the year.
Battery life is a highlight: for all that the Xiaomi 14 delivers, the increased capacity year-on-year also means the phone offer impressive longevity, surpassing the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S24 in terms of screen-on time, and leaving mainstream rivals in the dust when it comes to a full recharge, which takes a matter of minutes, rather than hours.
It's true that Xiaomi's new flagship starts at a higher asking price than both Apple's and Samsung's comparable models, the iPhone 15 and the Galaxy S24, but it also comes with twice the storage, meaning in like-for-like comparisons (using UK pricing for the 256GB model in each case), it's actually the best-value compact flagship of the bunch. One caveat is that despite having been given an 'international' launch, the Xiaomi 14 – like all of the company's phones – remains unavailable in the US and Australia, with third-party retailers or import being the only real way to get ahold of Xiaomi handsets in those countries.
Xiaomi 14 review: Price and availability
Priced from £849 / €999
Released October 2023 – China only, February 25, 2024 – internationally
Limited to no availability in US and Australia
Every time Qualcomm announces a new flagship mobile chipset, I'm always curious to see which phone maker will be first to market with a phone toting said cutting-edge silicon. In the case of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, it was Xiaomi, with the Xiaomi 14 and 14 Pro first debuting in China back in October 2023. However – as with previous generations of Xiaomi flagship – international audiences would have to wait.
It wasn't until a dedicated event in Barcelona in February 2024, ahead of MWC 2024 that we'd have a clear picture of the 14 series' international rollout. This event also served as a release announcement, with the phone being made available on February 25 across various markets, including the UK and Europe.
The Xiaomi 14 Pro didn't make it beyond China, but the gap between the 14 and 14 Pro in terms of specs and features is far smaller than it was with the previous 13 series, making the Pro's absence from the international stage far less of an issue this generation, especially with the Xiaomi 14 Ultra also available.
Despite throwing around words like 'international' and 'global' at the phone's February announcement though, Xiaomi's presence in the US and Australia only extends to smart home and lifestyle products, with its smartphones remaining distinctly absent. This means that, outside of importing or purchasing from fringe third-party retailers, you won't readily be able to pick up the Xiaomi 14 locally, and that's before taking into account whether it supports the carrier bands for local networks.
As for pricing, while a starting price in the UK of £849 places it well above the baseline price of key rivals like the iPhone 15 ($799 / £799 / AU$1,499) and Samsung Galaxy S24 ($799 / £799 / AU$1,399), those phones both come with just half the amount of storage (128GB).
In like-for-like comparisons against the £849 (equivalent to $1,070 / AU$1,640) 256GB base Xiaomi 14, both Apple's and Samsung's 256GB rivals actually cost more, at £899 and £859 respectively.
Value score: 5 / 5
Xiaomi 14 review: Specs
Xiaomi 14 review: Design
(Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)
Color choice affects finish
Squared, polished aluminum alloy frame
IP68-certified against dust and water
Fans of the Xiaomi 13 will appreciate what the company has done with the design of its successor – or rather what it hasn't done. The overall look of the two phones is much the same, although the 14 sports a hardier build, with tougher Gorilla Glass Victus and IP68-certified dust and water resistance, but elsewhere the dimensions to weight have remained consistent (a larger main camera system and battery have added a couple of grams).
Versus those aforementioned mainstream rivals, Xiaomi's latest is a little thicker and heavier by comparison, but is still small and comfortable enough to be considered a 'compact' flagship, and while the iPhone 15 series has embraced more rounded sides this generation, the Xiaomi 14 retains the iPhone 14 Pro line's straight-sided, mirror-polished aluminum surround, for better or worse, depending on your taste (I like the look but hate the fingerprints).
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The Clous de Paris guilloché detailing around the Xiaomi 14's camera
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A close-up on the Xiaomi 14's Jade Green glass back
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The Jade Green variant featured in this review is the most head-turning colorway on the international stage, with the white model featuring a tasteful silver frame and the black option serving up textured – instead of polished – color-matched rear glass, which better repels fingerprints at the expense of a little grip. The only color that appeared in China but is missing from the global gamut of colorways is 'Snow Mountain Pink.'
Despite its similarities to the last model, Xiaomi has added interest around that new larger rear camera, with what it's dubbed a Clous de Paris (that's a hobnail pattern to you and me) to add a little interest. While it's not the only phone maker that has turned to classic analogue watch styling for design inspiration, this particular adornment is one I wouldn't every expect to find on a phone, and it serves as an aesthetic through-line with the recently-release Xiaomi Watch S3, too.
The flat 6.36-inch 'CrystalRes' C8 AMOLED fronting the Xiaomi 14 is a new panel of company's own design (manufactured by TCL), offering across-the-board upgrades over the same-sized screen on the Xiaomi 13, while also keeping it competitive against 2024 competitors.
First and foremost, it's sharper than the display on its predecessor, pushing past Full HD+ to a 1200 x 2670 resolution at the same size, upping pixel density from 414ppi to 460ppi, and making it as pin-sharp as the iPhone 15's Super Retina XDR OLED panel. It's also brighter – a lot brighter – with a peak of 3,000 nits (the Xiaomi 13 peaked at 1,900 nits) supports the Dolby Vision and HDR10+ standards. There's also a quoted full-panel high-brightness mode of 1,400 nits (up from the 13's 1,200 nits), which in real-world use ensures the screen is still comfortably visible against a bright sky. I just wish every phone adopted the reduced reflectivity of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra's display.
Regardless, the hits don't stop, with the move to an LTPO panel greatly improving power efficiency, as the refresh rate can now scale far more dynamically, depending on what you're doing on your phone. For context, the Xiaomi 13 could only switch between 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz, so its successor's ability to rove anywhere between 1Hz and 120Hz is a welcome upgrade.
(Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)
The screen serves up pleasing visuals across photos, video streaming, and gaming, and Xiaomi includes a wealth of controls for tinkering with the display experience. By default the phone is set to 'Original Color Pro', but there are additional color profile presets like 'Vivid' and 'Saturated' alongside the ability to force the display to operate in the DCI-P3 gamut or sRGB, and that's before you touch the independent sliders covering things like RGB values, hue, saturation, contrast, and gamma.
There are arguably too many display control on offer as, alongside the above, you can also tweak color temperature, toggle adaptive color temperature adjustment, which adjusts the color temperature relative to ambient lighting, toggle DC dimming for more comfortable low-light viewing, choose between multiple reading modes, add texture and color temperature controls to a grayscale viewing experience, and even have AI step in to upscale videos, enhance photos in your gallery, add HDR viewing to SDR content, and add frames to certain video content for smooth playback.
Display score: 4.5 / 5
Xiaomi 14 review: Software
(Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)
First phone to debut HyperOS out of the box
Runs on top of Android 14
4 years of OS + 5 years of security updates
MIUI is out and HyperOS is in, with the Xiaomi 14 series being the first of the company's phones to debut this revitalized user experience out of the box. If you watched the phone's launch, you'd be forgiven for assuming that HyperOS is something totally new, but in real-world use you'll be hard-pressed to spot any major differences with MIUI at a glance.
Xiaomi says that HyperOS follows a new 'Alive' design philosophy, boasting real-time rendering on certain graphical elements, alongside a color palette "based on natural hues" and while it's unquestionably more consistently fluid and responsive, the general look and feel still feels decidedly MIUI.
Nevertheless, that performance uptick across load times and animations might have something to do with the fact that despite its similarities to MIUI, Xiaomi has rebuilt HyperOS almost entirely. Not only does it take up almost a third less space on-device than its predecessor, it has new underpinnings to enable greater cross-platform interconnectivity with the company's wider product ecosystem, from its wearables and tablets, to its newfound push into automotive – even its debut car, the Xiaomi SU7, comes running its own build of HyperOS.
Back to the Xiaomi 14 though, and as before the user experience is feature-packed and serves up a decidedly different form than a lot of other smartphones out there. By default, there's no apps drawer, notifications and quick settings live behind swipe-down gestures from the top left and right corners of the screen, respectively (very iOS), swiping down on your home screen summons a device-wide search, while swiping up reveals Content Center, featuring links to news and YouTube video. There's a lot going on.
The Security app on the Xiaomi 14 does a lot more than just keep your device secure. (Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)
Provided that you're willing to put in some time to learn, HyperOS serves up a lot of flexibility and practically endless personalization too, although it's easy to get lost in disparate controls and settings screens. There's also a degree of bloat out of the box, with various third-party apps – like Booking.com – which can be uninstalled but ideally wouldn't be there to begin with. As for first-party apps, plenty of those could be considered bloat too, with multiple ways to perform seemingly the same action. The App Vault, Cleaner, Game Center and Security apps, for example, all help boost memory performance. Why do users need four different ways to access this feature, Xiaomi?
There are, of course, welcome additions too, like Game Turbo, which handles notification suppression, as well as relevant device controls (over things like brightness), when gaming and even includes a voice changer. Meanwhile HyperOS' Gallery app offers Google Photos integration native, which is a rare and handy bonus.
(Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)
Of course, this wouldn't be a 2024 flagship phone without some AI functionality thrown in, and Xiaomi has promised everything from generative fill when expanding the canvas of images to AI portraits, AI-generative subtitles, semantic search in the Gallery app, and more. Notice I said Xiaomi has 'promised' this suite of AI features, as at launch they remain in beta, meaning you have to sign up to be given access to unfinished iteration of what is one of the Xiaomi 14's headline upgrades.
There's good news, though – I did sign up for the beta once I'd mostly done testing the phone, and the AI features I tried worked as advertised and seemed stable (although wait times on processing for the AI Portrait feature surpassed an hour). So far Xiaomi has, unlike Samsung, made no mention of charging for the use of any AI functionality, although that's a policy that likely won't last forever.
To round things out, HyperOS on the Xiaomi 14 runs atop Android 14, with the company promising four years of update support and five years of security update support. That's behind market leaders like Apple, Google and Samsung, but should prove more than ample for the average smartphone user in 2024, ensuring that the Xiaomi 14 will continue to gain new features and remain secure for the duration of your time with it.
Software score: 3.5 / 5
Xiaomi 14 review: Cameras
(Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)
50MP f/1.6 Xiaomi Light Fusion 900 main sensor with OIS
50MP f/2.2 ISOCELL JN1 ultra-wide with 112-degree FoV
50MP (32MP effective) f/2.0 ISOCELL JN1 3.2x telephoto with OIS
32MP f/2.0 front camera with 89.6-degree FoV
While the camera system on the Xiaomi 14 isn't without its flaws, it looks to have the edge over compact rivals like the latest iPhone and Galaxy, with an across-the-board sensor upgrade compared to the Xiaomi 13, and ongoing input from optical specialists Leica.
You'll find an impressive-looking trio of 50MP sensors on the back, fronted by the new custom Xiaomi 'Light Fusion 900' (a tuned OmniVision OVX9000 sensor, with input from both Xiaomi and Leica), along with ISOCELL JN1 sensors for the ultra-wide and telephoto, collectively offering a focal range from 14mm to 75mm (although the telephoto's effective resolution is actually cited at 32MP and appears to kick in at 2.5x, which would suggest a shorter max optical range than Xiaomi claims).
AI Portrait... one of the most ambitious and unsettling AI features I've encountered on a phone to date
Leica's involvement, meanwhile, extends to branded 'Summilux' lenses, the 'Leica Vibrant' and 'Leica Authentic' color profiles the phone can shoot in, and the 'master lens system' of digital focal presets built into portrait mode.
Beyond that, the camera UI seems simple enough at first blush, but like the rest of HyperOS is absolutely jam-packed with features. The breadth of features on offer will be welcomed by those happy to spend the time required to learn of the nuances of the user experience, but will likely prove overwhelming for those who just want to tweak basic settings.
Stills shooting is primarily managed via Photo mode, or Pro mode if you want more control, while for video recording, Video and Movie mode are both on hand. More experimental modes include Short Film, which serves as a template complete with filters in which to capture footage; Director Mode, which lets you connect multiple cameras and even monitors wirelessly to orchestrate a multi-cam recording; plus Long Exposure, Supermoon, and more.
Xiaomi 14 camera samples
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0.6x zoom (ultra-wide sensor)
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1x zoom (main sensor)
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2x zoom (main sensor)
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3.2x zoom (telephoto sensor)
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60x zoom (i.e. maximum lossy zoom range)
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0.6x zoom (ultra-wide sensor)
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1x zoom (main sensor)
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2x zoom (main sensor)
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3.2x zoom (telephoto sensor)
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60x zoom (i.e. maximum lossy zoom range)
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Zoom range comparison: Apple iPhone 15 (top), Xiaomi 14 (center), Samsung Galaxy S24 (bottom)
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Front camera
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Front camera comparison: Apple iPhone 15 (left), Xiaomi 14 (center), Samsung Galaxy S24 (right)
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AI Expanded by 150%
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Artificial lighting
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Artificial lighting
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Front camera
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Low light
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Night mode
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Low light comparison: Xiaomi 14 (left), Google Pixel 8 Pro (right)
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Night Mode comparison: Xiaomi 14 (left), Google Pixel 8 Pro (right)
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In side-by-side tests with the usual suspects (the iPhone 15 and the Samsung Galaxy S24), Xiaomi's distinct photographic look shone through. Leica Vivid (which all the Xiaomi 14 camera samples featured in this review were captured in) served up consistently brighter and and more vibrant results than rivals, with good detail captured across its entire (optical) focal range.
There's a pleasing consistency in terms of color, contrast and detail between shots captured with the ultra-wide and that new primary sensor, while telephoto shots adopt a bolder look, with stronger contrast that still equates to pleasing images, although with an unpredictability that the 14's competitors don't suffer from.
In more challenging scenarios, while the 14's macro capture offers good center-frame detail, chromatic aberrations, or color fringing, around the edge of subjects isn't always welcome, while low-light environments did result in exposure hunting from time to time. On the flip side, taking Night Mode shots results in great final images, with this phone only really falling short of category leaders like the Google Pixel 8 Pro.
The phone's stabilization is shown off to great effect in video footage (beyond the impressive capture controls mentioned earlier), while selfies also shine against similar photos from competitors, provided that you're comfortable with Xiaomi's heavier-handed beauty settings as standard – skin tones are accurately represented, but smoothing and blemish-removal algorithms are also clearly enabled by default. Interestingly, you'd assume that the 32MP front-facing sensor would pixel-bin down to 8MP final images, but the Xiaomi 14 unapologetically captures front-facing shots at the sensor's native resolution, and does so with aplomb.
AI camera features
Using AI Expansion on the Xiaomi 14(Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)
There are also all of the aforementioned (beta) AI imaging abilities that debut on the Xiaomi 14 (practically all of which are accessed from the native Gallery app after capture). AI Expansion lets you punch out of a shot by up to 200% and have the phone's on-device AI processing try to generate new background content that's consistent with the original image. Each generative fill takes around 15 seconds to complete (with tests at 150%) and the results are hit-and-miss – but the fact that they hit as often as they do is what's surprising.
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Original image...
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...enlarged by 150% using AI Expand on the Xiaomi 14
Then there's AI Portrait, which is undoubtedly one of the most ambitious – and unsettling – AI features I've encountered on a phone. Once you snap around 30 selfies (or at least shots of the same subject with their face visible) and submit them to the AI Portrait creation wizard, it'll use off-device processing to construct an AI-generated simulacrum that – with the help of a written prompt – can be placed into all manner of scenes.
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The processing time to create my (beta) AI Portrait avatar took over an hour...
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...but, once done, individual results with the completed avatar took only minutes to generate.
The developmental nature of the AI features coming (as at the time of review, they're still in beta, remember) to the Xiaomi 14 was made clear when the creation time for my AI avatar was cited at over an hour, but once I had it, prompts took around a minute to generate results, once again with varying degrees of success. The feature automatically served up prompts like 'beach resort' and 'northern islands' of its own accord but did a respectable job coming up with convincing images based on my prompt of 'in a kayak' too, as you can see above.
As for how useful this feature is, it's easy to imagine novel scenarios in which your AI Portrait could feature – hilariously implausible holiday snaps on Instagram, for example – but as with any AI-generated imagery, there remain unanswered and ungoverned ethical quandaries surrounding a technology that is evidently already in peoples' hands and will continue to improve in time.
With regards to Xiaomi's specific AI policies, the phone details which devices use solely on-device processing and which rely on the cloud, while the company's AI white paper goes into greater detail around training data-sets and the like. That said, unlike Samsung's Galaxy AI image tools, there's no obvious watermarking to help people discern which images have and haven't been created or altered by Xiaomi's AI, which is something the company should address in a future update, and on future products with AI-enhanced features.
Camera score: 4.5 / 5
Xiaomi 14 review: Performance
Genshin Impact on the Xiaomi 14 (Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC
12GB of LPDDR5X RAM on all models
Impressive thermal performance for a compact phone
Although the Xiaomi 14 has the distinction of being first to market with Qualcomm's latest and greatest flagship mobile silicon in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, its staggered release meant that by the time it made it to international audiences, rivals with that same cutting-edge chipset were already on store shelves. Even so, this remains one of the most capable phones currently on the market.
HyperOS – like MIUI before it – is pretty hands-on with performance management, with overarching power profiles that limit just how much apps and services can ask of the CPU/GPU/NPU; but even without switching 'performance mode' on, in artificial benchmarks the Xiaomi 14 holds its own against many of the other best Android phones right now – including the Samsung Galaxy S24 and Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra – while other flagships like the Pixel 8 Pro score far weaker across compute and graphical tests.
Real-world use shows that, between the processor and the optimizations HyperOS brings over MIUI, the Xiaomi 14 has more than enough clout to handle demanding everyday use, with the AI features being among the few instances where you'll still find yourself staring at a loading bar for a moment or two.
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Gaming is a dream on the Xiaomi 14 too, as not only does the phone offer a great visual experience by being on the larger side (within the compact flagship space), but the engineering team has done solid work with the thermal management in spite of the phone's relatively small proportions. Even with Genshin Impact's graphical settings at 'overclocked' (namely by forcing 60fps gameplay) the Xiaomi 14 never got more than a little warm, even after 30 minutes of continuous playtime.
There are also the added benefits of Game Turbo, which can prioritize networking latency, touch response input and, of course, boost performance at the expense of power consumption.
Performance score: 5 / 5
Xiaomi 14 review: Battery
(Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)
Larger 4,610mAh battery than predecessor
Up to 90W wired and 50W wireless charging
8.5 hours of screen-on time per charge (using Balanced power profile)
Charging speeds and battery capacity have both received a generous generational upgrade, with the standard Xiaomi 14 now matching the Xiaomi 14 Ultra's impressive 90W fast wired charging and up to 50W wireless charging. This means a pleasingly-rapid full recharge is possible in just 40 minutes, while my tests found the phone consistently passed the 50%-charge mark after just 15 minutes. That's in stark contrast to the likes of the iPhone 15, whose 20W wired charging means a full recharge takes over two hours (based on our tests).
The phone doesn't give you its quickest speeds right out the box (although it's still quick to charge); as well as the (included) 90W 'HyperCharge' power adapter, you also have to enable the 'boost charging speed' toggle in the phone's settings menu. This ensures that maximum 90W speeds are made available, with the phone charging on a logarithmic curve – i.e., the lower your Xiaomi's 14's battery percentage is to start with, the faster it'll charge, slowing as it approaches 100%. This ensures that fast charging is most effective when you realize your battery is low and you only have limited time to charge it, while still protecting battery health over the lifetime of the phone.
As for longevity, the Xiaomi 14 puts in a superb effort – especially for a compact smartphone, doling out 8.5 hours of screen-on time in testing. That equates to up to two day's use; particularly if you're willing to toy with the aforementioned power profiles: Performance, Balanced, Battery Saver and Ultra Battery Saver – which limits apps access and background processes to maximize battery life. This is among the best longevity for its size right now, only falling short of the ever-enduring iPhone 15 (which in our tests mustered over 11 hours of screen-on time), however, the Xiaomi is probably the best compact flagship, when you collectively consider battery life and charging performance.
Battery score: 5 / 5
Should you buy the Xiaomi 14?
Buy it if...
You want a compact powerhouse The Xiaomi 14 outpaces the big-name compact phones currently on the market in terms of both value and hardware prowess, so long as you're okay with the slightly shorter update support roadmap, compared to Apple and Samsung's rivals.
You like trying new things The Xiaomi 14's hardware and software offer near-endless degrees of customization and functionality. HyperOS takes a very different approach to most Android-based smartphone user experiences, but if you put in the time it demands it's an incredibly rich offering.
Battery life and fast charging are high priorities The Xiaomi 14 probably strikes the best balance of battery longevity and fast charging on the market right now, especially for a phone of its size.
Don't buy it if...
You want the stylish smartphone Sure, aesthetics are subjective, and while the Xiaomi 14 isn't bad looking, it's squared design feels dated and unexciting. That's not to say it isn't well built and durable, however.
You like a clean easy-to-use OS experience HyperOS might be far better optimized than MIUI ever was, but many of its predecessor's worst traits persist. The Xiaomi 14 has features upon features, and layers upon layers of menus, and while the breadth of functionality makes it a powerful and versatile phone, not everyone will want to spend time learning its seemingly convoluted way of doing things.
You want AI functionality, right now! At launch Xiaomi promised a wealth of AI features destined for the Xiaomi 14 series, and while you can get your hands on some of them with a little tinkering, they're still in beta at the time of writing, and not easily accessible if you don't know how to unlock them.
Xiaomi 14 review: Also consider
The Xiaomi 14 has some clear strengths, but also some clearly-defined shortcomings. If you've got this far and think something else might be more your thing, why not consider one of these alternatives.
Apple iPhone 15 The iPhone 15 doesn't exactly need an introduction, but if you like elements of Xiaomi's HyperOS or just want a slimmer, smaller but equally-capable compact flagship, this might be your next phone.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Samsung and Google are arguably the biggest phone makers shouting about AI features right now, and the standard S24 condenses the company's suite of Galaxy AI functions into its most compact flagship form. A slim design, decent cameras and a killer display don't go amiss either.
How I tested the Xiaomi 14
(Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)
Review test period: six weeks
Testing included: everyday use including web browsing, social media, photography, video calling, gaming, streaming video, music playback
Xiaomi was able to provide me with a sample of the Xiaomi 14 just ahead of its international launch, giving me plenty of time to get to grips with the hardware, software, generational upgrades and so on. With the abundance of time available, I've throughly tested the phone while using it as my daily driver over a course of weeks, taking it to social events for camera testing, using it for navigation in my car, gaming around the house and other general smartphone use, from smart home control to social media and web browsing.
It took longer to gain access to some features – namely its promised AI functionality – which I was only able to do once I signed in with my Xiaomi account to the brand's forums and registered for beta access, which then had to be approved, but after that I felt like I was fully able to experience what the Xiaomi 14 promised.
Benchmarking apps is never the be-all-and-end-all, but the results do at least provide an empirical indication of performance that some find useful as a comparison tool. As the user has control over the power state the phone operates in, these benchmarks were carried out in both Balanced and Performance modes, although numerous scores out-paced rivals with the need for Performance mode.
Having reviewed smartphones for well over a decade, including numerous Xiaomi phones, as well as devices from the company's key competition, I felt more than comfortable reviewing this latest Xiaomi flagship, in order to balance its strengths and weaknesses against the market in which it competes.
Asus might have made the best out and out gaming phone of 2023 in the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate, but the Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro was the people’s champ. It offered comparably zippy performance and gamer-friendly controls in a reasonably neat package, all for less than half the price.
Now the Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro is here, with updated internals and a slightly streamlined design at the same asking price. Yes, it’s another iterative update from Nubia, but that’s kind of what it takes if you’re intent on staying at the cutting edge of mobile gaming performance on a strict budget.
The design is much like the previous models, with flat surfaces and gaming-friendly capacitive shoulder buttons, but with a more elegant flattened camera module. Meanwhile, the huge notch-free display is brighter and more vibrant than before.
If we’re talking top-tier features, the Red Magic 9 Pro really hits the bullseye with its performance. Not only does the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 beat most of the competition, but it can do so over a sustained period thanks to an extensive multi-layered cooling system.
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The other key component here is the Red Magic 9 Pro’s battery. It’s bigger than ever at 6,500mAh, and it can last a full two days of regular usage on a single charge. Heavy gaming won’t leave you sweating come the end of a day either, while a bundled 80W charger gets you back up to speed quickly.
Few of the best gaming phones take brilliant pictures, and the Red Magic 9 Pro is no exception. Its 50MP main Samsung-made sensor does a passable job, especially now that it has OIS, but the new 50MP ultra-wide is fairly mediocre, and the under-display selfie cam is abysmal.
Nubia’s software provision has come on leaps and bounds since its calamitous early days, to the point where it’s now actually quite usable. It’s far from perfect, but its Game Space mode is well tuned to a gamer’s needs.
It isn’t the best pure gaming phone on the market, even with its imperious performance, but the Red Magic 9 Pro is undoubtedly the best-value. You simply won’t find this level of sustained performance anywhere else for $649 / £579.
Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro review: Price and availability
From $649 / £579 / Australian buyers use Red Magic's global store in USD
Pre-order from December 27, 2023
On sale from January 3, 2024
The international version of the Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro was made available for pre-order from December 27, 2023 on the Red Magic website, with open sales commencing on January 3, 2024.
The entry-level Sleet model – which ships with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage – costs $649 / £579. The Cyclone and Snowfall models – both of which ship with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage – cost $799 / £709.
While Red Magic tries to sell its devices local currency in most of the markets it operates in, interested buyers in Australia will have buy through the company's global store, which is all priced in USD, meaning the base 256GB model sells for approximately AU$965 at $649 and the 512GB variant costs equivalent to about AU$1,190.
That essentially sees Nubia freezing the pricing of its latest gaming phone compared to the 8S Pro. The mid-level price has been taken out this year too, which effectively means that you get a choice of color if you’re shopping for the top storage RAM version.
Value score: 5 / 5
Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro review: Specs
Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro review: Design
(Image credit: Future | Jon Mundy)
Gorilla Glass 5 front and back, aluminum frame
Even flatter design than before
520Hz capacitive shoulder buttons
Dedicated gaming mode switch
As gaming phones go, the Red Magic 9 Pro looks pretty decent, but isn’t the most comfortable to hold for extended periods. Make no mistake, this is still a big, bulky phone, at 8.9mm thick – half a millimetre thinner than the 8S Pro – and with a similar weight of 229 grams.
Both measurements are at the very top end of acceptable for regular phone users, but within a gaming phone context they’re quite reasonable. With none of the ROG Phone 7 series' curves, however, it might weigh a little heavier after a lengthy gaming session.
The Red Magic 9 Pro’s blocky, flat-surfaced look has been accentuated this year with an almost completely flat back. The camera module has been shunted to the side and placed underneath the transparent rear cover, which could be the first practical use case for such an aesthetic choice. It’s a pleasingly clean effect, though it’s ever so slightly spoiled by the flash poking through.
My model comes in the Snowfall colorway, which is basically off-white with a semi-transparent back hinting at some of the components within. Cyclone pulls the same trick but with black as the underlying color, while Sleet is the terribly named plain black entry model.
There’s some RGB lighting, of course, around the fan, under the '09' decal, and now also underneath the capacitive shoulder button controls that sit along the right edge. Said sensors appear to be unchanged since the 8S Pro, lighting aside.
Once again, they have a speedy 520Hz response rate, and work with Nubia’s gaming UI, allowing you to map gaming controls to them. They’re particularly handy in shooters like CoD Mobile or PUBG Mobile, where they can be assigned to aim and shoot.
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On a rather over-stacked right-hand edge, you also get the volume and power buttons – the latter pleasingly circular – as well as a custom Game Boost Switch. Flip this to jump into Game Space mode, where you can launch games and tinker with performance and interface elements, so as to optimize your gaming experience.
That flat side frame itself is made from aluminum, while the display is once again covered by Gorilla Glass 5. This isn’t the newest or toughest material of its kind, but cuts clearly had to be made somewhere to hit that price point. Another such compromise is the lack of a water and dust resistance IP rating.
You only get the one USB-C port on the bottom of the phone, unlike the Asus ROG Phone range, but you still get a 3.5mm headphones jack on the top edge.
The front of the phone impresses from a visual perspective, with minimal bezels and an under-display selfie cam making for a nigh-on all-screen experience. It’s not an especially gamer-friendly touch, though, with less space to hold the phone and ample opportunity for false presses.
It also means that the speaker grilles have been consigned to the top and bottom edges, which isn’t ideal for landscape gaming.
Design score: 3.5 / 5
Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro review: Display
(Image credit: Future | Jon Mundy)
Large 6.8-inch screen
FHD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate
New material provides brighter, bolder picture
Under-display selfie camera
Like its predecessor, the Red Magic 9 Pro packs a large 6.8-inch OLED display with a 2480 x 1116 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. The latter spec isn’t the fastest on the gaming phone market, but given that precious few games will support frame rates in excess of 120Hz it’s not a huge problem.
This isn’t exactly the same as the Red Magic 8S Pro display, however. Nubia has switched to using BOE’s Q9+ luminescent material, which makes for a punchier output. A little too punchy, in fact – I had to crank the color mode all the way down to ‘Soft’, away from the ‘Colorful’ default and past the medium ‘Standard’ setting, to secure a slightly more natural look.
This new material seems to grant the Red Magic 9 Pro a little more brightness too. Nubia claims a peak brightness of 1,600nits, which is up 300nits from the 8S Pro. With auto-brightness switched off, I recorded the 9 Pro hitting 445 nits, which is about 100 nits more than its predecessor.
While this might not be the sharpest or most nuanced display on the market, the Red Magic 9 Pro's screen makes for an excellent gaming canvas. It’s big, flat, sufficiently bright, and it doesn’t have a bothersome notch getting in the way of the action.
Display score: 4 / 5
Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro review: Camera
(Image credit: Future | Jon Mundy)
50MP main with OIS this time
Improved 50MP ultra-wide, 2MP macro
16MP in-display selfie camera still terrible
Up to 8K video
If a manufacturer needs to free up space and money to do something a little different with a phone, it’s invariably the camera that suffers. Just as with foldables, so it is with gaming phones.
Last year’s Red Magic 8S Pro didn’t take particularly great pictures, and the Red Magic 9 Pro isn’t all that much better. It does mark a slight improvement, however.
While it packs the exact same 50MP Samsung GN5 main image sensor as before, this time it’s accompanied by optical image stabilization (OIS). You’d take this component for granted in a $700/£600 smartphone, but it’s a welcome addition to this $700/£600 gaming phone.
The combination of an aging flagship sensor (it was in the Samsung Galaxy S22) with proper stabilization, a 7P lens (that stands for seven [plastic] elements), and the improved image processing of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, produces decent shots in good lighting. The results in low lighting are a tad crisper than with the 8S Pro, though Nubia’s Night mode still brightens things up to a slightly false-looking degree.
Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro camera samples
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Nubia has also improved the ultra-wide camera, swapping out the 8MP sensor in the 8S Pro for a 50MP Samsung JN1 alternative. While it’s an adequate component in good lighting, there’s a marked difference to the main sensor in terms of tone and dynamic range.
The fresh OIS provision also enhances the 9 Pro’s video capabilities. It’s still shooting at 8K/30fps, 4K/60fps, or 1080p/240fps, but the footage I captured seemed to benefit from the new steadying technology.
One thing that most certainly hasn’t changed is the Red Magic 9 Pro’s 16MP under-display selfie camera. It might free up space on the display, but once again selfie shots look truly terrible – a blurry, smudgey, borderline impressionistic mess.
Camera score: 3 / 5
Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro review: Performance
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One of the first phones on the market with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip
12GB or 16GB RAM of LPDDR5X RAM
256GB or 512GB UFS 4.0 storage
Any compromises made with the Red Magic 9 Pro’s design and camera were reached in service of this: providing as much gaming power as possible for a mid-market price.
On that front, the Red Magic 9 Pro is an unmitigated triumph. Nubia has switched to the latest and greatest chip at its disposal, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 from Qualcomm, together with either 12 or 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM.
This is the same chip the vast majority of 2024 flagship phones will be using, and it’s as fast as you’d expect. The usual CPU and GPU benchmark tests reveal a clear, if hardly seismic performance boost over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 from 2023.
Interestingly, it’s nip and tuck with the iPhone 15 Pro and its A17 Pro. Apple’s latest chip seems to have a clear single-core CPU performance advantage, but the $649 / £579 Red Magic 9 Pro and its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 wins its fair share of GPU rounds.
Raw processing power is all well and good, but that’s only half the story with a gaming phone such as this. Where the Red Magic 9 Pro really impresses is with its level of sustained performance.
Shoulder buttons and a red switch made for gaming on the go. (Image credit: Future | Jon Mundy)
Running a couple of the 3DMark Extreme tests, which run 20 successive minute-long intensive graphical tests, the Red Magic 9 Pro achieved close to perfect stability. That is, its average loop score remained remarkably consistent. Non-gaming phones only tend to score 70 to 80% in the stability stakes, due to their habit of throttling the processor significantly after the first loop.
The difference all comes down to cooling. Nubia has equipped the Red Magic 9 Pro with an upgraded ten-layer ICE 13.0 Cooling System, which includes a physical fan that kicks in when you start up a game. It’s a bit noisy, but it enables you to run the likes of Genshin Impact or Diablo Immortal on the highest settings at a solid 60fps, and they won’t start dropping frames deep into your session.
Performance score: 5 / 5
Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro review: Software
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(Image credit: Future | Jon Mundy)
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(Image credit: Future | Jon Mundy)
Red Magic OS 9.0 on Android 14
Ugly but functional UI
Powerful Game Space dedicated gaming UI
Nubia has improved its Red Magic OS user experience immeasurably over the past couple of years. What was once a painful mish-mash of screen-hogging widgets, occasionally untranslated Mandarin text, and a number of glitches has turned into a fairly typical custom Android 14 environment.
It’s still a pretty mediocre custom skin, with charmless wallpapers, a superfluous browser-cum-news-feed app, and the Booking.com app preinstalled (why is it always Booking.com?). But Red Magic OS 9.0 is now in a broadly functional state, and I was able to run the phone as my day-to-day device for around a week (and intermittently thereafter) with no major snags.
While I’m doling out faint praise, is that Google Keep I see preinstalled? It’s a very small point, but precious few manufacturers go with Google’s clean note-taking app out of the box, so I appreciate it when one does.
I did observe a couple of hiccups early on, with the home screen seeming to exhibit some bizarre lag despite all that power on tap, and despite me forcing the screen to refresh at 120Hz. After a couple of firmware updates, however, everything seems to be running smoothly.
I also had to go in and set Gmail to sync manually, for whatever reason. Presumably the aforementioned updates fixed that, but it’s difficult to be certain without a factory reset.
Game Space is loaded with useful tools for gamers. (Image credit: Future | Jon Mundy)
The important software here – given the intended audience – is Nubia’s Game Space UI. Flick that red switch and you’ll be booted into an interface that grants access to your games, as well as control over fan, CPU, and GPU settings.
When in a game you can drag in from the top left edge of the screen to bring up a streamlined UI. It’s from here you can also assign those capacitive controls to the game’s on-screen virtual buttons.
Nubia’s Game Space UI also lets you manage any accessories that you choose to buy, as well as run a large screen projection, manage your in-game screenshots and captured videos, tweak the RGB lighting output, and much more besides.
It’s way more than your average phone user will want or need, but then the Red Magic 9 Pro isn’t for average phone users.
Software score: 3 / 5
Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro review: Battery
(Image credit: Future | Jon Mundy)
Expanded 6,500mAh battery
Clears a full day of intensive use with ease
Fast 80W wired charging
Given that the Red Magic 9 Pro weighs about the same as the 8S Pro, and is also a little thinner, it’s impressive to note that Nubia has managed to increase the size of its battery.
It’s now up to a frankly huge 6,500mAh dual-cell configuration. Nubia claims that it can last up to 56 hours, which is tricky to equate to real world usage. I found that I could go through a full day of moderate usage with about four hours of screen-on time, and still be left with around 65% in the tank.
That’s an excellent result, not only improving upon the Red Magic 8S Pro, but also opening up the genuine possibility of practical two-day usage.
Of course, that’s not what all that extra juice is intended for. Gamers will find that they can indulge in a couple of intensive gaming sessions throughout the day, and won’t have to worry about plugging in until bed time.
The charging provision has ostensibly been improved too, with an 80W charger bundled in, which is up from 65W on the 8S Pro. Given the extra capacity of that battery, though, charging speeds are roughly the same, with a full charge from empty taking around 40 minutes.
Again, there’s no wireless charging here, but that’s a feature that’s routinely omitted from gaming phones – even the $1,399 / £1,199.99 / AU$2,099 ROG Phone 7 Ultimate – where advanced cooling solutions occupy that space instead.
Battery score: 5 / 5
Should you buy the Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro?
Buy it if...
You want peak gaming performance at half the price Good luck getting this much sustained gaming performance this cheap anywhere else. Nubia's choice of top-speed chip, memory and storage, along with active cooling make for a powerful team.
You’re after an all-screen phone The Red Magic 9 Pro’s minimal bezels and under-display camera make it a uniquely screen-heavy device. While it's built for active media, you can also passively sink your teeth into shows and even books on its expansive display too.
You want two-day battery life When you lay off the games, the Red Magic 9 Pro will sail through two full days of use on a single charge, and if you don't, you'll still make it through a day without having to curb your gaming habit.
Don't buy it if...
Photography is a priority The main sensor doesn’t take terrible photos, but you can get a way better camera system for the same money – or even less. Under-display camera tech is cool in theory, but the reality means selfie-lovers should avoid too.
You want the best gaming phone, money no object Nubia cuts a few corners to hit an aggressive price point. If money is no object and you want the very best, keep any eye on the Asus ROG Phone range.
You hate custom Android UIs Anyone with a bee in their bonnet about manufacturers messing with Google’s stock Android UI should look away now. Red Magic OS 9.0 is the best iteration of the company's user experience to date, but that's not saying a whole lot, considering where things started.
Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro review: Also consider
The Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro is a unique proposition alright, but it isn’t the only option if you’re after a game-friendly phone.
Asus ROG Phone 7 Ultimate It’s about to be replaced at the time of writing, but if you can use that fact to get the Asus ROG Phone 7 Ultimate at a discount, it remains a fabulous gaming specialist.
Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro Last year’s model remains a fabulous gaming phone, with a very similar feature-set to the 9 Pro. You should be able to get it even cheaper now, too.
Apple iPhone 13 Apple still sells the iPhone 13 as new for around the same price as the Red Magic 9 Pro. It’s not as gaming focused, but it remains capable, and has access to a superior roster of games.
How I tested the Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro
Review test period = 2 weeks
Testing included = Everyday usage, including web browsing, social media, photography, video calling, gaming, streaming video, music playback
Tools used = Geekbench 6, GFXBench, 3DMark, native Android stats, bundled Nubia 80W power adapter
I was sent the top Snowfall model of the Red Magic 9 Pro by a PR representative, at which point I commenced using the phone on a daily basis over a two-week period.
For at least a week of that time, the 9 Pro was my everyday phone. For the rest of the time, I swapped in another active SIM and continued to use the phone for benchmark tests, photos, and general browsing.
I’m a freelance journalist who got his start writing about mobile games in the pre-smartphone era. I was around to cover the arrival of the iPhone and the App Store, as well as Android, and their seismic effect on the games industry. I now write about consumer tech, games, and culture for a number of top websites.
Google Pixels have really picked up in popularity in Japan in recent quarters and while they are mostly eating into Apple’s share of the market, local brands may be worried too. With this in mind, check out the new Sharp Sense8, which just launched at JPY 62,150 (while a Pixel 7a is JPY 62,700).
According to Sharp, the phone was designed primarily for two things – a good, simple to use camera and long battery life. For the latter, the battery capacity has been upgraded to 5,000mAh (up from 4,570mAh on the Sense7), not bad for a phone that weighs only 159g.
This is a relatively compact...
• Original review date: September, 2023
• Apple keeps improving iOS 17
• Spacial video is now possible with Apple Vision Pro
Update: April 2024. Apple continues to show the rest of the smartphone world how to update phones, and iOS 17 has added new features to the iPhone 15 Pro Max as well as every iPhone released in the last five years. With new discovery features, Apple's new Journal app, and plenty more, iOS 17 is the gift that keeps on giving. The iPhone 15 Pro Max also now has the capability to record videos with an added depth component. These videos take advantage of Apple's spatial computing platform, Apple Vision Pro, and give you a more realistic, 3D look at whatever you record, as long as you watch the videos while wearing Apple's new headset.
iPhone 15 Pro Max: Two-minute review
Leave it to Apple to make titanium sound sexy, while also putting me in mind of my somewhat aging joints.
I know, Apple enthusiastically told us how the iPhone 15 Pro Max (and Pro) uses the same titanium as was used by NASA on the Mars rover. I buy that, and it sounds impressive; but when I think of titanium, I usually think of hip or knee replacements. The low-corrosion, lightweight, and high-strength material is favored by surgeons for those properties, and it's for those same reasons that it makes perfect sense as the new frame material for the iPhone.
Patients sporting new titanium knees and hips will likely never get to touch the metal, but if you buy an iPhone 15 Pro Max or – as I did – test it, you'll find that it's smooth yet solid, with a brushed surface that feels cool but not cold. Holding the 6.7-inch iPhone 15 Pro Max is a distinctly different experience compared to handling the iPhone 14 Pro Max; it's lighter, and the titanium feels a little warmer than the polished steel of its predecessor.
It's not just the titanium, though; Apple has made a small yet subtle change to the frame, removing just enough metal to add contoured edges all around. It's one of the smallest yet most impactful changes I've seen a smartphone manufacturer make to a design, and it truly changes how the phone feels in the hand.
Staying with the frame, Apple's retirement of the silence / ring button is one of the most welcome and useful changes. It takes a dull, one-trick-pony analog feature and transforms it into a sleek, customizable button that can be almost anything you want it to be.
Apple contoured the edges on the iPhone 15 Pro Max (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
The biggest change for some iPhone fans, though, will be the introduction of the USB-C port in place of Lightning. I know there's a fair amount of frustration over the change (all those now-useless cords in your home, office, and car) but it doesn't change the operation of the phone, and at least Apple supplies you with a woven USB-C-to-USB-C cable. I will miss the old port, but believe we'll all soon forget it.
Naturally, if those external changes were the only differences between this phone and its predecessor, the iPhone 15 Pro Max might be a disappointment. However, this is a significantly more powerful phone than the iPhone 14 Pro Max, with Apple's all-new A17 Pro silicon that, for the first time ever, brings console-quality gaming to the iPhone line. Granted, console games like Resident Evil: Village were not designed for a 6.7-inch display, even Apple's high-definition Super Retina XDR OLED panel, although at least that display now benefits from the smallest iPhone bezels I've seen.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max's triple-camera array looks unchanged from the iPhone 14 Pro Max's, but looks can be deceiving – there are upgrades both inside and out that help to deliver one of the best photography experiences you'll find on any phone.
While Apple appears to have used the same 48MP primary camera sensor as in last year's Pro Max, it's basically rebuilt its image processing pipeline.
The three-camera array looks the same, but there's now a more powerful 5x optical zoom lens (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
There's a new 24MP default image size that cannily combines 12MP of pixel-binned image data with full-sensor 48MP information for images that are, in almost all instances, true-to-life (Apple may be over-blueing the sky a little).
The new setup is more versatile too. I never had to decide if I wanted to shoot portrait mode now or later – in most instances, if the iPhone 15 Pro Max could read depth information, it stored all the detail I'd need to change a photo to portrait mode and choose the focus subject post-shoot.
If you were hoping for 10x optical zoom on an iPhone, though, the iPhone 15 Pro Max will disappoint you (though not as much as the 3x optical iPhone 15 Pro). I was frustrated when Apple announced that it had only raised the maximum optical zoom on its largest smartphone to 5x; after all, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra has an excellent 10x optical zoom, plus the wild, AI-assisted 100x Space Zoom (which may add too much 'artificial' information for my taste, but it's an option if you need it). Apple does do a remarkably good job of competing with just half that zoom range, largely because the image quality at that extended focal length is simply excellent, rivaling and sometimes beating Samsung's best camera.
The combination of its new 3nm chipset, a display that can stop down to a power-sipping 1Hz, and smart power management may account for excellent full-day-plus battery life; though your experience will depend on how you use the iPhone.
In short (this is my two-minute review, after all), this is my favorite iPhone ever. I usually don't like Apple's largest iPhone, but the iPhone 15 Pro Max is lighter (and a tiny bit smaller) than the iPhone 14 Pro Max which – along with the new contoured edges – makes it feel comfortable in my hand. Add to all that excellent photography, fast performance, and seemingly unlimited potential and you've got a lock for a place at or near the top of our best phone list.
There's your new USB-C port (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
The iPhone 15 Pro Max starts at $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,199 , which is a price hike over its predecessor – the iPhone 14 Pro Max – but you do get twice the storage in the base model: 256GB. This also puts the iPhone 15 Pro Max in line with the starting price of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (both now start at 256GB).
The iPhone 15 Pro Max became available to buy in-store and online on September 22, and if you're interesting in picking one up, head over to our iPhone 15 Pro Max deals page for a roundup of all the best offers available now.
It's not entirely accurate to say Apple raised the price of the iPhone 15 Pro Max (from the iPhone 14 Pro Max base price) because what it actually did was remove a tier and settle on the 256GB storage and $1,119 as the new base model. This makes the iPhone 15 Pro Max a little less affordable (no less so than the similarly configured Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra) but, as I see it, 256GB should really be the base storage on all smartphones nowadays, especially as we continue to shoot higher resolution photos and videos (and manage our lives on them).
If storage is your jam, you can pack the iPhone 15 Pro Max (or iPhone 15 Pro) with up to 1TB of storage and pay $1,599 / £1,599 / AU$2,899 for the privilege. What you won't get for that price, though, is more memory. While the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra raises the RAM level to 12GB – starting with its 512GB model, the iPhone 15 Pro Max seemingly sticks with 8GB through all tiers.
There's no getting around that this is Apple's most expensive iPhone, but at least there are numerous payment options, including those from Apple which can start as low as $33 a month in the US. As for whether or not the iPhone 15 Pro Max is worth the money, its design, build, quality, and exceptional capabilities convince me it is. Even at this price, I suspect it will be Apple's best-seller.
Value score: 4.5 / 5
iPhone 15 Pro Max review: Design
The iPhone 15 Pro Max is lighter and a little easier to hold (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Titanium!
Contoured edges make it a pleasure to hold
It's lighter and slightly smaller
Exquisite build
In case you haven't heard, Apple's 2023 Pro-level iPhone has traded in its shiny stainless steel frame for a brushed titanium one. It's tough (though not necessarily harder than steel), corrosion-resistant, and – perhaps most importantly for your hands, pockets, and bags – a lighter material.
Apple made a handful of other changes that give the phone a new look and feel beyond changing up the outer metalwork, however. First are the new contoured edges. It's true that this iPhone can, at a glance, look almost exactly the same as the iPhone 14 Pro Max, but close inspection reveals rounding along the sides that give the phone a softer look and make it – especially at this size – much more comfortable to hold. Additionally, the Super Retina XDR display looks larger (and the Dynamic Island looks smaller), thanks to a noticeably thinner bezel.
The phone feels different because the dimensions and weight are different. Where the iPhone 14 Pro Max was 77.6 x 160.7 x 7.85mm, the iPhone 15 Pro Max is 76.7 x 159.9 x 8.25mm. That means it's just a hair smaller than the last model, a fact I confirmed when I tried slipping the iPhone 15 Pro Max into an iPhone 14 Pro Max leather case (Apple is no longer selling leather accessories) and it was loose inside it. It is worth noting that the new phone is almost a millimeter thicker than the last model.
This side of the iPhone 15 Pro Max looks just like the iPhone 14 Pro Max (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
However, thanks to the titanium body and new recycled aluminum frame, the iPhone 15 Pro Max is 19 grams lighter than the iPhone 14 Pro Max (221g vs. 240g). That's a noticeable difference.
Another major design change is actually a functional one: the new USB-C port. It's a little bit larger than the departed Lighting port but will – if you have the right cable – bring some 10Gbps high-speed data transfer capabilities (the cable Apple ships with the iPhone is not a high-speed one).
The body is covered on the front and back with what Apple calls "tough glass-based materials", and on the front is also their Ceramic Shield, designed to protect the glass from damage. I'm not in the business of dropping my phones, so I could not tell you much about the strength of these glass materials. I did, though subject the phone to a dunk in a water fountain. The IP68-rated phone handled it just fine. That was just for a moment, but the phone is rated to handle swimming in up to six feet of fresh water for 30 minutes. If you dunk your phone, just remember that you can't plug it into a charger again until it's completely dry.
Apple didn't mess with the power/sleep/Siri button or the pair of volume buttons but right above that is Apple's other big design/functionality change: the new Action button, which is only available on the iPhone 15 Pro Max and iPhone 15 Pro.
This tiny little button replaces the long-surviving silence/ring switch (still available on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus). Instead of a single-function switch, the Action button is programmable via one of Apple's most high-designed utility interfaces ever.
The Action button defaults to ring/silence control but instead of a switch, it takes a press to check the status of your phone (ring or silent) and a long press to change it. Many people may leave well enough alone here, but then they'd be missing out on all the hidden utility. Action button can enable a preferred Focus Mode (with detailed controls inside the Action button settings page), turn the flashlight on and off, launch voice memos, turn your phone into a digital magnifying glass, run your favorite Shortcut, offer instant access to accessibility features, launch the camera, or even turn off all Action button features (a waste, really). If you miss the ring/silent control you can still find it under the updated Control Center too.
Apple's Action Control settings are look unlike any other iPhone feature settings (Image credit: Future)
After trying out the Action button in default mode, I quickly switched it to control the camera. From there, I could use a long-press to instantly open the camera and then use a quick press to take a picture.
The only downside to this new button is that if you are in the habit of taking a lot of screenshots by simultaneously pressing the power and volume up buttons, you may accidentally press the new Action button instead because, well, it's now the top button on the left side of the phone. I expect this to become an iPhone 15 Pro Max meme ("When you press Action instead of Volume Up").
In total, I think the iPhone 15 Pro Max design retains what was good about the last model while making ergonomic and functionality tweaks that move the familiar into the future, with a lighter chassis, smoother lines, a bigger screen, and more functional buttons and ports.
Doesn't that button look at home next to the two volume buttons? (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Design score: 4.5 / 5
iPhone 15 Pro Max review: Sustainability
The iPhone 15 Pro Max's new FineWoven case. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Over the years, Apple has been rethinking its packaging and, increasingly its products, with an eye toward sustainability. I can still remember when Apple started using biodegradable packaging on its EarPods. The corn-based material would dissolve in water. Now, Apple's efforts extend to its Apple Watch Series 9 (Apple claims the product is now carbon neutral) and iPhones.
This iPhone 15 Pro Max has a 100% recycled aluminum interior and uses recycled cobalt in its battery. Beyond the phone, Apple is whittling away at its carbon footprint by using more earth-friendly materials. In past years, I would usually get leather cases to protect my iPhone test unit but leather is not exactly carbon-friendly. This year, Apple is using a new material, FineWoven, on cases and MagSafe Apple Wallets.
Those cases, by the way, still feel luxurious. My wife thought they were faux suede, but I pointed out the ultra-fine weave.
iPhone 15 Pro Max review: Display
The iPhone 15 Pro Max's Super Retina XDR screen's 2,000 nit max brightness can beat back the sun (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
6.7-inch Super Retina XDR OLED
Surrounded by ultra-thin bezels
Unchanged resolution. Still supports ProMotion adaptive refresh rate
Always-on display
If you liked the 6.7-inch display on the iPhone 14 Pro Max, you'll probably like the iPhone 15 Pro Max's screen just that little bit more.
Apple shaved millimeters off the black bezel surrounding the Super Retina XDR OLED screen to make it seem larger (this also makes the Dynamic Island look smaller). Between that and the newly-curved edges, it really looks as if the screen extends all the way to the outer edge of the phone.
To be clear, the screen is slightly larger but the resolution, 2796 x 1290 and 460ppi is unchanged from the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Essentially, this iPhone is just giving those pixels a little more breathing room.
It remains a beautiful and bright screen, with a maximum brightness of 2000 nits, which means I had no trouble using it outdoors in bright sunlight. Its wide color gamut means visuals are rich and the 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio endows it with support for the inkiest of blacks. Looking at everything from photos to games, apps, websites, and videos on this display is a pleasure.
ProMotion support means the iPhone 15 Pro Max is as adept at handling web page scrolling as it is at videos and gaming. All motion looks smooth. Plus, the phone's ability to stop down to 1Hz means that, when it needs to, it sips power while still providing you information; ideal for always-on functionality.
Everything, including streaming videos looks great on the big 6.7-inch display. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
I put the iPhone 15 Pro Max on a Belkin Boost Charge Pro 2-in-1 Wireless charge stand with MagSafe, which automatically puts the phone in iOS 17's new Standby mode, and then set it up on my nightstand. Overnight, the Always-On display was just bright enough that I could glance at it in the middle of the night and see the time.
This is still an excellent smartphone display, though I wonder why, now that Samsung's flagship has an integrated pen and supports not only touch but stylus input, Apple can't finally add Apple Pencil support to its biggest and best smartphone. Even so, I understand that not everyone needs or wants pen input and that may be something Apple intuits as well.
Basically, what you have is Apple's top-notch screen technology, slightly embiggened and now supported by some excellent new iOS 17 functionality.
Display score: 4.5 / 5
iPhone 15 Pro Max review: Cameras
The iPhone 15 Pro Max camera array (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Dedicated 5x optical zoom camera
New 48MP primary sensor
Impressive new portrait photography capabilities
If you read the iPhone 15 Pro Max's specs, see 48MP, and think little has changed since the iPhone 14 Pro Max, you would be mistaken.
Leaving aside the obviously-different 5x optical zoom camera (even the iPhone 15 Pro doesn't get that new snapper), let's look at the leading 48MP sensor. It's not the same one as was introduced on the iPhone 14 Pro Max (or the new iPhone 15). It's larger and, reportedly a Sony-made IMX903. And Apple is using this sensor in ways it has never done before.
Every default image I shot with the iPhone 15 Pro Max comes rendered at 24MP resolution. Yes, that's a new resolution for iPhones and Apple manages it by first pixel binning 48 megapixels-worth of data into the best possible 12 megapixel still and then combining that with the full detail of the 48MP sensor. The only downside is that 24MP images will be larger than 12MP stills (by about a megabyte). Apple mitigates the storage cost a bit by automatically storing photos in HEIF (High Efficiency Image Format) format. You can also shoot in 48MP RAW format for uncompressed imagery, ready for editing.
The result is some truly eye-popping images. The colors are brighter and, with the exception of maybe a just too-blue sky (possibly a result of more aggressive use of smart HDR), the most accurate I have ever seen from a smartphone. Even in direct comparison with the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, the iPhone 15 Pro Max won. The colors in flowers are perfect and the sharpness is startling. My macros are levels above what I gathered with the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. The skin tones are exact. It didn't matter the skin tone, the iPhone 15 Pro Max understood it and reproduced it. I, for instance, look just as pale and freckled as I do in real life.
Apple has stuffed this iPhone full of more pro-level photography tools than ever before. In particular, you can now choose physical camera-like digital lenses, from 13mm to 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 48mm, and 120mm for the 5x zoom. You can see these measurements in the camera app by holding down on one of the main magnification levels. You can also go into settings and set one of the lenses as a default.
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You can change digital lenses on the fly. Here's the 13mm view, (Image credit: Future)
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Here's your 24mm lens. (Image credit: Future)
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This is the 28mm lens. (Image credit: Future)
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Here's the 35MM lens. (Image credit: Future)
For most consumers, though, this might be more control than they want or need. It might help to understand what millimeters (mm) in lenses actually mean. The mm defines the degree of magnification and field of view. Lower mm means a wider field of view and lower magnification. Obviously, you can ignore this or act like a pro photographer and start switching up digital lenses during a shoot.
Apple's decision to use just a 5x optical zoom is a source of frustration but I can't really argue with the result. The lens, which uses an unusual tetraprism (four turns of the light between the lens and the image sensor), captures some lovely images. So while this is a long way from 10x optical zoom, I think Apple fans will still be pleased with this result. You can zoom quite a bit further with digital zoom but these images never hold up upon close examination.
Working in conjunction with that zoom is the new 3D sensor shift optical image stabilization which does a much better job of keeping shots stable, especially on digitally zoomed videos. I was impressed with the stabilization when I was capturing a video of a robin who was perched up in swaying branches at least five yards away from me.
The entire iPhone 15 line essentially refines portrait photography. There's still a specific mode, but you no longer need to use it to get the same result. As long as the iPhone 15 Pro Max's cameras can capture depth information, you can turn almost any photo into a portrait shot after the fact, even if it was shot with only the main camera.
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This photo started off as a standard image. I changed it to portrait. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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You can see the controls here. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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With portrait turned off. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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I tapped the car to switch focus. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
You can tell if the camera is seeing any depth while you shoot because a little "Portrait f" will appear in the upper righthand corner. You can tap on it and then select Portrait (On or Off) to see what the photo would look like in portrait mode. it doesn't always work because, if the camera does not 'see', say, a person, or pet or fails to capture any useful depth information, then you can't change a photo to portrait mode; in my experience, most photos were convertible, however. As with traditional Portrait Mode shots, you can set the depth of field but additionally, you can now also tap on different subjects to change the focus point. This works just as advertised and makes you feel like a god of portrait photography.
Portrait photography – including that taken with the front-facing TrueDepth camera – got a huge upgrade with access to Apple's Photonic Engine (I know, Apple, loves it's tech labels) that just makes portrait photography look more authentic and less computational than ever.
Apple has made some leaps in low-light and night photography. The iPhone 15 Pro Max's ISPs (image signal processors) collect more light and make better use of it in even the most challenging situations. It's not vastly better than what you get with the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, but I think Apple achieves parity.
Night photography is better, too. I noticed less green in the star photography and more stars. The one thing I still can't do as easily as I can with the Galaxy S23 Ultra is take star trail photography (without a third-party app).
The iPhone remains a great video capture tool, with a wide variety of lens options, Action mode for shooting your child's soccer game without nausea-inducing judder, and Cinematic mode for when you want to shoot auteur-quality video. The last, by the way, works just like portrait mode photography in that you can, while capturing video, shift focus from one subject to another with just a tap (in filmmaking, this is the job of the focus puller). What the iPhone 15 Pro Max can do that you can't with the traditional film is change the focus point of the video after shooting. It's more than a neat trick and could be useful if you happen to forget to focus on the right subject during the initial shoot.
iPhone 15 Pro Max: Camera samples
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This photo started out as a regular shot with the main camera. I tapped to convert it to portrait. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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The iPhone 15 Pro Max can capture action shots (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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A front-facing camera selfie. The blue sky might be a little over-baked. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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This was an impressive lowlight shot that captured me and the night sky (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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New Yorker "P.pataci on Instagram" was kind enough to pose for me and let me try out the new potrait features. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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A city shot with the ultrawide camera (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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Stepped up to the Main camera (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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Using the 2x zoom that uses the center 12MP of the 48 MP main camera (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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Using the 3x optical zoom camera. The sky was blue. Was it THAT blue? (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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An untrawide city shot (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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A shot with the Main camera (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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Using the 2x zoom mode (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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Using the 3x optical zoom (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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A macro shot (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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Flower that looks just like this in real life. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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A city bird (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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Ultrawide city shot (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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Main camera (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
The phone now maxes out at shooting 4K 60fps ProRes, while I'd say leaving out 8K video shooting capabilities (which some rivals support) could only be a problem if I thought anyone actually had an 8K TV in their home.
Even as Apple dips its toes further into the pro-level smartphone photography waters, its camera app does not yet feel as deep and versatile as Samsung's, which may go a bit too far and accidentally bury some really useful features.
Again, I think Apple knows its consumers better than most and is being careful about what it presents to iPhone users; not wanting to confuse them while also not holding them back, either. It's a delicate balance. In the end, Apple mostly pulls it off and the real proof is in the fantastic image quality, which should make any smartphone owner envious.
Camera score: 5 / 5
iPhone 15 Pro Max review: Performance
Hello new A17 Pro
8GB of RAM
More base storage (for a price)
Ever since Apple launched Apple silicon, it's been pushing the boundaries of what's possible, with system-on-chips (SoCs) in laptops, desktops, and mobile that rival and often beat the competition, and sometimes they even take generational leaps.
I think it's fair to call the A17 Pro a leap forward from the A16 Bionic in the iPhone 14 Pro Max (the chip now also powering the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus). As compared to the A16 Bionic, the A17 Pro is built on an even-smaller 3nm process, which should improve efficiency (think battery life), with a CPU that is 10% faster and a six-core GPU that's not only 20% faster but supports on-hardware Ray Tracing.
Geekbench 6 comparison (Image credit: Future)
The iPhone 15 Pro Max Geekbench 6 results support Apple's performance claims. It shows that the A17 Pro is running at a 3.78GHz clockspeed, as compared to 3.46GHz for the A16 Bionic and 3.36GHz for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 inside the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.
Numbers, naturally, only tell part of the performance story. For me, it's what I can do with the iPhone 15 Pro Max. One of the promised experiences is playing console-quality games natively. Not gonna lie, I was skeptical. Console gaming is not mobile gaming and never the twain shall meet – until they do on the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Playing Resident Evil: Village on iPhone 15 Pro Max (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Capcom gave me test flight access to the ported version of Resident Evil: Village. It was a large file that I needed to download at home on WiFi. Once it loaded up I immediately saw a problem. The game is designed for consoles and their controllers. Without one, Resident Evil put the controls on-screen – all the buttons you would usually find on a console controller were crowding the 6.7-inch display. I realized I needed a physical controller, so I borrowed one of my son's extra Xbox controllers and connected it to the phone via Bluetooth.
I'm not much of a gamer, but the visuals, especially on the cut scenes, look quite good on the 6.7-inch display. Still, on such a small console gaming screen, losing even a little bit of space to the Dynamic Island is frustrating.
The graphics never stuttered or tore. I only noticed one spot of pixelation early in the game, where a shadow didn't quite hold together on the snow. This was a repeatable experience which makes me wonder if it's less about the A17 Pro and more about the game port from console to mobile.
The game was otherwise responsive and the sound was excellent. When I put in my AirPods Pro, I was presented with a really captivating and immersive experience; an experience good enough for me to proclaim that console-quality gaming has finally arrived on the mobile phone.
Outside of gaming, every action on the iPhone 15 Pro Max was as responsive as I expected and wanted it to be. I tried editing multiple 4K 60fps clips in iMovie and found no issues with it or the output. The speed of the latter was no faster on the A17 Pro than it was on the A16 Bionic on the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
The SIM tray started to disappear with last year's iPhone 14 series in the US. It's still available on 15 models elsewhere in the world, however. (Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)
As with last year's iPhone 14 Pro Max (pictured above) in the US, my test unit was eSIM-only. It's incredibly easy to transfer your phone number from an existing phone to these new eSIM variants, but it also means you can no longer easily swap in and out SIM cards without carrier assistance and support.
This is also a 5G phone, though your 5G experience will depend largely on the proximity of cell towers and how many people are sharing them. Lately, 5G speeds are making me pine for still-under-development 6G.
Call quality is good. My wife remarked I sounded good, clear, and "younger". I don't know if that's a product of the connection or if the iPhone 15 Pro Max includes a time machine for free; if it's the latter, Apple should adjust its marketing to place a little more emphasis on that particular upgrade.
This is also Apple's first Wi-Fi 6E iPhone, which is good news if you have a Wi-Fi 6E router in your home or office. In my anecdotal tests, the iPhone 15 Pro Max had consistently faster download and upload speeds (as measured by Google's online Speet Test) than the WiFi 6-supporting iPhone 15 and my iPhone 14 Pro (also WiFi 6).
There's also a new Ultra Wide-band chip (across all iPhone 15 models) that should help with precision finding of not only your Apple stuff but other friends carrying iPhones too.
Apple is also expanding its integrated Satellite services support beyond Emergency SOS to free (for two years) roadside assistance. The idea is that in areas where cell service is poor or non-existent, the system can guide you to connect with an orbiting satellite and then message nearby road services.
Performance score: 4.5 / 5
iPhone 15 Pro Max review: Software
Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max on a Belkin MagSafe charger showing off iOS 17's StandBy feature. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
iOS 17 out the box
Nice quality-of-life improvements
No major changes otherwise
iOS 17, which will come pre-installed on your new iPhone 15 Pro Max is, in total, a relatively lightweight update to what is already a very rich and deep platform, of which I suspect most iPhone owners barely scratch the surface.
The StandBy feature turns the iPhone 15 Pro Max into one of the best bedside clocks and at-a-glance-info hubs around. New Contact Posters are a nice extension of some of the features first found in the impressive Lock Screen update. I also like the new Name Drop feature, which utilizes AirDrop to instantly share contact information with another iPhone placed next to it. Just know that this feature is on by default and if you have two phones near each other with this enabled it might automatically connect. If and when you get your iPhone 15 (of any model), I'd suggest you go into settings and turn this off until you learn how and when to use it.
When I made a FaceTime call – which looked fantastic, by the way – I used iOS 17's new gestures to send thumbs ups and balloons, some of which appeared behind me; it was a neat effect.
Software score: 4.5 / 5
iPhone 15 Pro Max review: Battery life
Same quoted battery life as iPhone 14 Pro Max
Marginally larger capacity YoY
USB-C charging (and data speeds up to 10Gbps)
Power adapter not included
MagSafe for iPhone
The new USB-C-to-USB-C cable that ships with the iPhone 15 Pro Max (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Apple never shares the battery capacity and one can only assume that the iPhone 15 Pro Max battery is at least as big as the one in the iPhone 14 Pro Max (independent sources suggest it's fractionally larger). Battery size, though, is only part of the story. Managing battery life is a product of mAhs (milliampere-hours), processor efficiency, and onboard intelligence (often AI-based), to manage battery consumption.
All of this, I would say, is done well on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which managed 28 hours of mixed-use. This is an anecdotal measure and your results will vary depending on what you do with the phone. Remember that part of my time with the phone was not using it while I slept for five hours (I did not charge it).
The new USB-C port (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Apple says the iPhone 15 Pro Max can recharge to 50% in 30 minutes with an optional 20W USB-C adapter. Mine charged 47% in that time. It took another hour and a half for it to fully charge. I'm not sure why Apple can't get fully on board with faster wired charging.
As for how you charge the iPhone 15 Pro Max, now you'll use the new USB-C port and the included USB-C cable. I was surprised to see that the cable is now woven – as opposed to the classic plastic/rubber protective jacket. This is similar to MacBook and HomePod cables and may prove more durable than the old cables.
The phone also supports Qi and, obviously MagSafe charging (and accessories).
Battery score: 4 / 5
iPhone 15 Pro Max review: Verdict
The iPhone 15 Pro Max raises the bar, not only for the iPhone family but for smartphones in general. From the new materials to some of the best smartphone cameras we have ever used; Apple's big flagship satisfies your smartphone needs in virtually every aspect. It falls just short of perfection thanks to a slightly higher price tag than the last model, the lack of true fast charging, and Apple's frustrating insistence in presenting 5x optical zoom as the apex of smartphone telephoto technology. Still, these end up being minor quibbles for a broadly exceptional iPhone experience.
Should I buy the iPhone 15 Pro Max?
Buy it if...
Don't buy it if...
iPhone 15 Pro Max review: also consider
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra If the myriad of mentions didn't give it away, the most like-minded rival to the 15 Pro Max right now remains Samsung's Galaxy S23 Ultra. It can zoom further, boasts a larger battery and stylus support too.
Google Pixel 7 Pro* Google's current flagship boasts and excellent similar-sized display, a clean take on Android, designed by Google itself and a camera experience that stands ahead of its competitive price tag. *The caveat is that the Pixel 8 Pro is set to arrive on October 4.
iPhone 14 Pro Max Some phones don't hold up the further from launch you get, but Apple's previous flagship will not only cost you less but still deliver a great all-round experience.
How I tested the iPhone 15 Pro Max
I tested the iPhone 15 Pro Max for four days, using it to take pictures, play games, watch videos, listen to music, and do a variety of other mobile tasks. I ran anecdotal battery tests and various benchmarks, but I have also included benchmark and battery results from Future Labs.
I bring almost 20 years of phone testing experience and 32 years of technology media experience to my review work and have tried or reviewed almost every iPhone since Apple first released them in 2007.
This week Sony unveiled its Xperia 5 V, a camera-focused phone that while not the smallest smartphone around is still one of the most compact to feature a flaghsip chipset and a premium camera setup. And while thinking back on some of Sony’s most interesting camera phones, we were reminded of the Xperia XA Ultra, a phone with an incredible camera that sat on the opposite end of the size spectrum.
Sony Xperia XA
This model arrived in mid-2016 and was an absolute giant – it had a 6.0” 1080p display with the then-standard 16:9 aspect ratio. For comparison, a Galaxy Note7 from...
Nubia’s Red Magic sub-brand has been churning out potent gaming phones with surprisingly low price tags for a few years now, and on a pretty frequent schedule. The last Red Magic phone we covered in detail was the Red Magic 7S Pro, but there’s been a Red Magic 8 Pro since then.
In truth, you don’t need to worry about catching up on what the Red Magic 8 Pro had to offer, because the Red Magic 8S Pro is very similar indeed. If there’s one overriding criticism of this new phone, it’s that it resembles a special edition re-launch rather than an all-new product.
It’s got the exact same blocky design, complete with the same totally unobstructed and almost bezel-free 6.8-inch AMOLED display. From a head-on perspective, these are pretty much ideal smartphone proportions, though the price you pay is a truly terrible under-display selfie camera.
The 8S Pro’s 9.5mm-thick, completely curve-free design admittedly doesn’t make for the most comfortable extended gaming sessions, especially with a weight of 228g. The ergonomic approach of the Asus ROG phone 6D Ultimate and its siblings is much more gamer-friendly in this regard. However, you do get the benefit of capacitive mappable shoulder buttons, which makes competitive shooters in particular much easier to play.
The Red Magic 8S Pro also has exactly the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor as the 8 Pro, albeit clocked a little higher than before. Together with up to 16GB of RAM, it ensures some of the best raw performance that we’ve seen, which is a key consideration when shopping for one of the best gaming phones.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Many an Android flagship could boast something similar – the entire Galaxy S23 range sports the same elevated clock speed – but the Red Magic 8S Pro supplements this power with an enhanced ICE 12.0 cooling system, which includes a gently whirring (and at least in this top model, RGB-lit) fan.
You also get a nigh-on identical triple camera system to that of the 8 Pro, which marks a pretty sizeable step forward from the Red Magic 7S Pro. It still only turns out acceptable, rather than truly flagship-level shots, but you have to consider the differently weighted priorities with such gaming phones.
There’s another 6,000mAh battery on board, which is the same as the 8 Pro and as such a big improvement on the 7S Pro. It enables the phone to last a full day of intensive gaming, and as long as two days when your usage is more moderate. The global model gives you a 65W charging brick in the box, which will get you from empty to full in just over half an hour. There’s no wireless charging, but that seems to be the norm with gaming phones.
As ever with Red Magic phones, perhaps the key weakness here relates to software rather than hardware. The Red Magic OS 6 UI provided here may be less cluttered and glitchy than ever, but it’s still clumsy and a little buggy.
You could argue that there’s really no reason for the Red Magic 8S Pro to exist in a market that already contains the almost identical Red Magic 8 Pro. Taken on its own merits as a seamless revision, however, the Red Magic 8S Pro offers a flat out staggering combination of form and function for the committed but budget-restricted mobile gamer.
Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro review: price and availability
(Image credit: TechRadar)
From $649 / £579
On sale April 6
The Red Magic 8S Pro launched on July 18, 2023, with availability across key global markets (including the UK and the US) from July 27.
Prices start from $649 / £579 for the Matte/Midnight model, which gives you 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. That moves up to $779 / £689 for the Platinum model, with a lighter finish, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage.
The top model – and the one I’ve been testing – is the Aurora, which packs the exact same spec as the Platinum unit, but with a fancy semi-transparent design and RGB lighting. That costs $799 / £709.
For the spec you’re getting, this is a brilliantly priced phone. In particular, that entry-level model (which is really all most people will need) for less than $700 / £600 represents outstanding value. Especially when you consider that the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate, which is arguably the top gaming phone on the market, costs $1,399 / £1,199.99.
Value score: 5/5
Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro review: specs
Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro review: design
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Gorilla glass 5 front and back, aluminum frame
Flat, industrial design looks better than it handles
520Hz capacitive trigger buttons
The Red Magic 8S Pro looks almost identical to the Red Magic 8 Pro before it. As that phone represented a considerable overhaul from the Red Magic 7 Pro and 7S Pro, however, we’re willing to let it slide.
Within the context of a gaming phone scene that revels in tacky excess, the Red Magic 8S Pro design is almost elegant. Gone is the bloated Transformers toy-like design language of previous Red Magic phones in favour of a strikingly industrial flat-edged look. Gorilla Glass 5 covers the front and back surfaces, sandwiching an aluminum frame.
There’s barely a hint of a curve to be found here, which is a positive when it comes to pure looks. The 8S Pro and the 8 Pro are flat out the best-looking gaming phones on the market, no contest.
However, this right-angled design shift doesn’t necessarily serve the phone’s primary purpose particularly well. When you’re gaming for extended periods, those corners and angles can be a little fatiguing. You might just find yourself wishing for a curved rear panel to fit more comfortably into your sweaty palms.
Flattened-out look aside, this remains a large phone, with a considerable thickness of 9.5mm. Interestingly, that makes it more than half-a-millimetre thicker than the Red Magic 8 Pro, presumably due to the newer phone’s bolstered cooling system.
It weighs exactly the same at 228g, however, which is a little lighter than the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and a whole 11g less than the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
The top-of-the-range Void model comes with the added ‘bonus’ (your view may vary) of a partially transparent finish to the rear of the phone. In practice, only the phone’s internal cooling fan is actually exposed, with the Snapdragon logo and circuit board-like finish merely suggestive of what lies beneath.
It’s undoubtedly cool (no pun intended) being able to see the fan whirring away, and Nubia goes further still by adding RGB lighting to the perimeter, as well as behind the logos and slogans scrawled across the back. The latter can be adjusted for color and flashing pattern, as well as placed on notification duty.
You can see that fan lighting shining through the sizeable vent on the left-hand edge of the phone, the presence of which likely explains why there’s no form of water- or dust-resistance rating here.
There’s plenty of interest on the right-hand edge of the phone, too. Alongside another cooling vent and the power button, there’s a pair of capacitive buttons with a snappy 520Hz response rate. These can be attributed to key controls in games that support remapping, and will give you a genuine advantage in the likes of CoD Mobile and PUBG Mobile.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
This right-hand edge is also home to a bright red physical Game Boost Switch that kicks the phone directly into Game Space mode, letting you launch games and tweak related settings.
You only get the one USB-C port, situated on the bottom edge of the 8S Pro. This isn’t as gamer-friendly as the Asus ROG Phone 7 Ultimate set-up, which adds a second USB-C port along one of its longer edges, making it more comfortable to game and charge at the same time.
Far more helpful is the inclusion of a 3.5mm headphone port on the top edge. Audio latency is a killer in fast-paced competitive games, so it’s good to be able to hook up a set of wired headphones.
It’s the front of the phone that’s truly impressive, however. Nubia has reduced the bezel size to a bare minimum, supplying an impressive 93.7% screen-to-body ratio. With no display notch (which we’ll discuss more later), this is the closest thing yet to the ideal of an all-screen smartphone. Bet you didn’t expect such a thing to come from an affordable gaming phone?
Again, while it’s a cool touch, it doesn’t seem as if this design decision prioritises gamers. With such minimal bezels, it’s easier to accidentally touch the screen edge with parts of your hands, while the right-hand speaker has been consigned to the bottom edge of the phone where it can be easily blocked.
Design score: 4/5
Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro review: display
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Large 6.8-inch screen
FHD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate
Under-display selfie camera
Not very bright
The Redmagic 8S Pro’s 6.8-inch AMOLED display is pretty similar to that of the Redmagic 7S Pro, but it’s not identical. At 2480 x 1116, there are a few more pixels packed in, and the corners of the display are more pointed.
Once again, you get a full 120Hz refresh rate. That’s competitive with the flagship phone brigade, but doesn’t match the rapid 165Hz output of the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate – nor indeed the Red Magic 6 back in 2021. Of course, the vast majority of games won’t take advantage of such an above-and-beyond refresh rate, so 120Hz is ample at this point.
With a stated maximum brightness of 1300 nits, this panel offers a fairly mid-range output. With auto-brightness off, however, I found the Redmagic 8S Pro display to be somewhat dim, and recorded a maximum brightness of around 344 nits.
Quibbles aside, this is a reasonably sharp, clear, and most importantly large canvas on which to game. With the rare lack of a display notch, it’s also good for watching full-screen video content, though that lack of brightness is certainly noticeable if there’s a lot of ambient light.
Display score: 4/5
Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro review: cameras
(Image credit: TechRadar)
50MP main, no OIS
8MP ultrawide, 2MP macro, no telephoto
Awful 16MP in-display selfie camera
Up to 8K video
Gaming phones do not come with great cameras. It’s just not a priority when the space and budgetary requirements are laid out.
That’s true with pricey mobiles such as the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate, and it’s especially true with more keenly priced models such as the Red Magic 8S Pro.
Despite that, I came away from my time with this camera system quietly content, if not exactly dazzled.
This is the exact same triple camera set-up as the Red Magic 8 Pro, which in turn represented a decent step up from the previous generation. The key improvement with the 8-series comes from a main 50MP Samsung GN5 image sensor, which is the same component that found its way into the iQoo 11 earlier this year, and before that the Samsung Galaxy S22.
This not-quite-flagship-class sensor turns out bright, balanced, detailed shots in decent lighting, with strong dynamic range. Nubia’s color science isn’t overly punchy, either, with is always welcome.
While low-light shots aren’t quite as assured, Nubia’s Night mode successfully brightens things up. Often that’s to an unnatural degree, and the lack of OIS means that you won’t get the fine level of detail that true flagships provide, but it’s not a write-off by any means.
Video capture comes in at 8K/30fps or 4K/60fps, which is a solid provision in what is effectively a mid-range phone. The lack of OIS definitely counts against it, though.
That’s about it for the good stuff. The Redmagic 8S Pro’s 8MP ultra-wide camera is mediocre, with markedly less detail and a more washed-out palette than the main sensor.
The third sensor in the set-up is a feeble 2MP macro camera rather than a dedicated telephoto, so any zoomed-in shots will be crops from that capable main sensor. These look fine at 2x, but you get rapidly diminishing returns as you move up to 10x.
The 16MP selfie camera is one of the worst on the market. This is the price you pay for implementing a notchless display and minimal bezels, as Nubia has had to go with an in-display selfie cam work-around.
The result of having to shoot through a layer of material, with the associated reduction in light getting through to an already tiny image sensor, is photos that appear to be smeared with Vaseline. There’s a woeful lack of detail, poor exposure, and I also picked up on some weird visual artefacts when shooting on a bright day. The subject (that’s me) took on a weirdly angelic halo and a bleached-out skin tone, while refractions in the background had an oddly crystalline look.
Camera score: 3/5
Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro review: camera samples
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Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro review: performance
Overclocked Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
12 or 16GB RAM
256 or 512GB storage
Stereo speakers
The reason a gaming phone manufacturer like Nubia constantly refreshes its line-up is to keep up to date with the latest and greatest processors. Performance is everything in this particular niche of the market, so gaming phone releases will often closely track the six monthly chip cycle.
In the case of the Red Magic 8S Pro, however, there’s a bit of an awkward problem. To date, there has been no new Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 2 announced by Qualcomm.
What we have instead is a slightly boosted version of the very same Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip that powered the Red Magic 8 Pro. It’s the exact same SoC, but with the CPU clock speed increased from 3.2 GHz to 3.36 GHz and the GPU going from 680 MHz to 719 MHz.
If those figures sound at all familiar, it’s because Samsung offered something very similar earlier in the year with the Galaxy S23 family. Again, awkward.
Nubia claims to have achieved a performance increase of 5% for the CPU and 5.7% for the GPU compared to the Red Magic 8 Pro. That sounds marginal, and indeed it is. Comparative CPU and GPU benchmark tests show the Red Magic 8S Pro to be slightly faster than its predecessor in certain tests, and identical in others.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Of course, faster means hotter, so Nubia has responded with a revised cooling system. There are now 12 rather than 11 layers of heat dissipation to the 8S Pro, which incorporates a vapor chamber and a layer of graphene under the screen. As a result, the hottest the Red Magic 8S Pro ran in my time with the phone was when charging, and it remained comfortably cool during gaming sessions.
Indeed, aided by either 12 or 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, there really is no modern gaming scenario that places the Red Magic 8S Pro under any serious stress. I was able to max out the graphical settings for the likes of console racer Wreckfest and multiplayer shooter CoD Mobile, and neither appeared to drop a frame.
This was all largely true of last year’s Red Magic 7S Pro too, of course, but what you’re buying here is extra headroom. The Redmagic 8S Pro will remain an excellent gaming phone for years to come.
We’ve addressed how the Red Magic 8S Pro’s all-screen frontage leaves no room for dual front-firing speakers, which is an undoubted negative point for a gaming phone. Even so, the sound output is reasonably clear, if not massively loud or deep.
Performance score: 5/5
Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro review: software
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Redmagic OS 8 on Android 13
Much less cluttered than before
Slightly ugly UI
Some glitches
Powerful Game Space gaming UI
Nubia has come an awful long way in a relatively short time with its software efforts. It’s all but done away with the awful screen-filling cooling fan widgets and fixed the random occurrences of Chinese text. Instead, what you’re presented with at set-up is a recognisably competent Android UI.
That’s progress, but there are still issues. Glitches remain part of the equation, such as the default time and weather widget that lopped the top part of the clock face off for me. This ultimately fixed itself over the review period, but only once I’d switched away to the much cleaner (and bug-free) stock Google alternative and back again at a later date.
Bloatware is much less of an issue than before, but it’s still present. Besides a Booking.com app, there’s the perpetual silliness of having a third-rate web browser-cum-news-feed app installed and prominently featured when there’s already Chrome in the Google folder and Google Feed to the left of the home screen. Baffling.
The notification menu, too, lacks the grace and efficiency of stock (and close-to-stock) Android UIs, seeming to take up more space but convey less information.
More generally, I noted that the Red Magic 8S Pro’s Wi-Fi connectivity seemed a little week, dropping off in parts of the house where other phones tended not to. While we’re talking about nebulous issues that sit in that gray zone between software and hardware, the in-display fingerprint unlock system didn’t prove very reliable during my time with the phone.
One notable software plus, at least for the target audience, is Nubia’s Game Space UI, which is accessed with a physical flick of a switch. This lets you launch games and other high-performance apps, which can then run using optimized hardware settings.
You can also manage peripherals, run a projection onto a large screen, access cloud gaming services, and even run individual game plugins from this UI-within-a-UI. You could argue it’s all a bit much, but then this phone is intended for dedicated gamers for whom there’s really no such thing.
Software score: 3/5
Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro review: battery life
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Large 6,000mAh battery
Makes it through a full day of intensive use
Fast 65W charging
Prior to the Red Magic 8 Pro, Nubia had always packed in slightly meager batteries given that its phones were intended to be run hard and long. I have no such criticism here.
Like its immediate predecessor, the Red Magic 8S Pro runs off a huge 6,000mAh battery, which is significantly larger than the 5,000mAh flagship standard.
In general use, the Red Magic 8S Pro will stand up to a day of moderate usage, with a little over 3 hours of screen-on time, and will still be left with 60% come bed time. This phone has genuine two-day potential when used ‘normally’.
Of course, it’s designed to be run more intensively, and that extra capacity will see you comfortably through a full day even with a couple of decent gaming sessions thrown in. That’s precisely what you want from your gaming phone.
Charging is taken care of by a bundled-in 65W charger, as before. This can see you from empty to 100% in around 40 minutes, which is pretty good going, and a match for the pricy ROG Phone 7 Ultimate.
No, you don’t get wireless charging, but that’s commonly seen as an unnecessary luxury in the world of gaming phones.
Battery score: 4.5/5
Should I buy the Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro?
Buy it if...
Don't buy it if...
Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro review: also consider
The Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro is a strong gaming phone, but it also faces some stiff competition, such as from the following three handsets.
Asus ROG Phone 7 If you’re shopping for a gaming phone and money is no object, then the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate offers comparable specs in a more gamer-focused design, and with a superior audiovisual set-up.
Nubia Red Magic 7S Pro You can now buy the Red Magic 8S Pro’s annual predecessor at a knock-down price, offering a broadly similar gaming experience for a little less money – though its battery life, performance, and camera are a step down.
Apple iPhone 12 If you’re not wedded to a hardcore/competitive set-up, the iPhone 12 is still being sold as new for $599/£649, it has access to more and better games than the 8S Pro, and it plays them all pretty darned well.
How I tested the Nubia Red Magic 8S Pro
Review test period = 2 weeks
Testing included = Everyday usage, including web browsing, social media, photography, video calling, gaming, streaming video, music playback
Tools used = Geekbench 5, Geekbench 6, GFXBench, native Android stats, bundled Nubia 65W power adapter
I was sent the top Void model of the Red Magic 8S Pro by a PR representative, at which point I commenced using the phone on a daily basis over a two-week period.
For at least a week of that time, the 8S Pro was my everyday phone. For the rest of the time, I swapped in another active SIM and continued to use the phone for benchmark tests, photos, and general browsing.
I’m a freelance journalist who got his start writing about mobile games in the pre-smartphone era. I was around to cover the arrival of the iPhone and the App Store, as well as Android, and their seismic effect on the games industry. I now write about consumer tech, games, and culture for a number of top websites.
The Galaxy A34 (and A54) started shipping in India back in March with the 8/128GB A34 costing ₹31,000. But now that the Samsung Galaxy M34 has arrived on the scene fans have an alternative in front of them – the M34 pricing starts at just ₹17,000 for a 6/128GB unit and is ₹19,000 for 8GB of RAM.
Despite being significantly cheaper than the A34, the M34 gets Samsung’s best Android support – 4 OS updates and 5 years of security patches. For comparison, a ₹44,000 Pixel 7a will only get 3 OS updates, while the ₹20,000 Nord CE 3 Lite from yesterday will get 2 OS updates and only 3 years of...
Motorola’s Moto G series of wallet-friendly smartphones have always had the aim to offer the essential features you need from a phone without a sky-high price tag, and that is certainly the case with the Moto G53. While there are always going to be some trade-offs when comparing it against some of the best phones available right now, as an overall budget phone experience, Motorola remains unrivalled.
The main aim of the Moto G53 is to put 5G data speeds in the hands of many, while offering a perfectly usable smartphone experience. It’s a solidly built device, even if its overall design is a little uninspired, but the star of the show is its battery life, which should keep you going for well over a day.
Motorola has also done well to include a 120Hz refresh rate screen, especially in a phone that costs as little as this, which helps to give general navigation a less-budget feel, but the display quality in general does live up to its low-cost nature.
Elsewhere, however, you are going to have to make some compromises. The camera, for example, isn’t as amazing as its specs would have you believe. A 50MP sensor sounds appealing but, in practice, it leaves a lot to be desired, especially if you’re trying to take photos in low light. It’s also not a phone to get if you plan on playing any graphically-intensive games, as the processor just isn’t up to the task.
And while it may feel nice to hold and comes with a pretty responsive fingerprint reader for unlocking the device, its plastic build and lack of any worthwhile waterproofing means you’ll want to be extra careful with how you treat it. But you have to remember how little the G53 costs and, if you’re looking at spending as little as possible on a phone, we suspect you’re not going to be looking for flagship features in the first place.
Motorola Moto G53 5G review: Price and availability
List price of £190 / AU$329
Available in some markets now
No US availability, equivalent phone costs $249.99
Availability of Motorola smartphones differs between the US, UK and Australia. The Moto G family of phones often has multiple members, but what you’ll find in the US, for example, may not be available in Australia and vice versa.
In the case of the Moto G53 5G, it launched in the UK and Australia on March 30, 2023 for £190 / AU$329. The Moto G53 5G doesn’t exist in the US under the same name, but the Moto G 5G is the most closely matched model at $250, although this has a slightly different camera system and can accept a slightly higher charging throughput.
• Value score: 4/5
Motorola Moto G53 5G review: Specs
Motorola Moto G53 5G review: Design
Good-looking handset, if a little uninspired
Lightweight and comfortable to hold in one hand, despite its large size
MicroSD expansion will please most users
(Image credit: Future)
The Moto G53 isn’t a bad-looking phone by any means, but it doesn’t quite have the wow factor of some other devices on the market. Having said that, I did let out a discernible gasp when I first took it out the box when I realized just how light it was.
At 183g, the Moto G53 5G is practically a feather and its lack of weight certainly helps with being able to hold it with one hand. Sporting a 6.5-inch screen, it is quite a large device – and certainly one of the largest phones I’ve personally held in a while. I do have fairly big hands, and was only just about able to use it one-handed, but it wasn’t the most comfortable experience ever, especially with no gestures available to bring the screen down, as you’ll find in iOS. I would expect most people will want to use it two-handed.
Its featherweight figure is afforded by its plastic frame and back panel, and while this can inherently make it feel cheap – which of course, in terms of price, it is – the G53 does feel like a solid device in the hand. The rear panel feels particularly lovely to the touch and, in the blue color of my review sample at least, does well to hide fingerprints.
There’s no mention of Gorilla Glass being used on the front panel in Motorola’s official specs list, so you’ll definitely want to invest in a tempered glass screen protector, and while an official IP rating is not offered, the company says it has a “water-repellant” design that can survive the odd splash or spill, but you’ll want to refrain from submerging it in water at all costs.
The rear dual camera system sits within its own little bump, and Motorola has managed to keep the extrusion to a minimum – it certainly sticks out less than the camera bump on the newer iPhones at least. Motorola also ships the G53 with a clear case already attached, and not only does this save you having to buy your own, it also helps the slight camera bump to sit fully flush with the rear of the phone. Overall it’s a slim device at just 8.2mm thick, meaning you should have no issue sliding into a pocket.
On the right side of the phone you’ll find the power button, complete with built-in fingerprint scanner, which I found to be quick and responsive, and I liked the fact you don’t need to actually press the button for it to work. Instead, just touch your finger on it and the G53 will unlock.
On the left of the G53 is where you’ll find the SIM card tray, which also houses a slot for a microSD card, allowing for up to 1TB of additional storage to go with the 128GB that’s already built in. Finally, on the bottom, there’s a USB-C charging port and a 3.5mm headphone jack, for anyone who still wishes to use wired headphones over the best wireless headphones.
• Design score: 3.5/5
Motorola Moto G53 5G review: Display
6.5-inch LCD with 120Hz refresh for smoother motion
Lack of full HD resolution may put some off
(Image credit: Future)
A 6.5-inch LCD display dominates the front of the Moto G53, with a small punch-hole cutout at the top to house the front camera. Bezels around the sides and at the top are kept relatively slim, but there is a slightly larger one at the bottom. I don’t think this detracts from the overall viewing experience because, since the screen is so large, my eyes were never really drawn to the chin at the bottom.
The screen has full HD+ 1600 x 720 resolution with 269ppi. It’s a bit upsetting that Motorola hasn’t fitted the G53 with a 1080p display, especially since you do get one with the Moto G62 (along with an extra camera sensor) without having to spend too much more money.
Despite the lack of resolution, the G53’s screen does go nice and bright, with a peak brightness of around 450 nits. It’s not the most color-accurate display ever though, with the whole viewing experience feeling a little flat – especially when compared against an OLED screen or an LCD on a more expensive device – and blacks in particular fail to reach inky depths. Motorola gives you the option of choosing between Natural and Saturated modes in the display settings menu, with the latter being the default.
I experimented using both modes and found Natural to be the better of the two. Saturated was just a little too ‘in your face’ and fake-looking for my liking.
To really test the G53’s ability to handle color, I loaded up a stream of The Incredibles on Disney Plus. Remembering once again just how little this phone costs, the Motorola does a fine job, serving up a perfectly passable image that demonstrates good contrast. The red suits of The Incredibles family stand out particularly well in a predominantly green forest-based scene towards the end of the movie, although as mentioned before, they’re not as vibrant as you’d get from a more capable display, or one that uses OLED technology.
Perhaps the headline figure where the display is concerned is its 120Hz refresh rate. This is a rarity for devices in this price bracket – not even the iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Plus can lay claim to having it – and it’s certainly a welcome one. Motion when scrolling is definitely smooth, although the odd stutter can be seen when moving particularly quickly, likely spurred on by the underpowered processor. You have the option of setting the refresh rate to automatic, or you can choose to keep it locked at 120Hz or 60Hz, but doing so can affect battery life.
• Display score: 3.5/5
Motorola Moto G53 5G review: Cameras
50MP main, 2MP macro and 8MP front cameras
Takes OK-looking photos in good lighting
Struggling autofocus and lack of OIS means low-light photos suffer
(Image credit: Future)
Motorola has equipped the Moto G53 with a dual camera system, comprising a 50MP f/1.8 main sensor and a 2MP f/2.4 macro sensor. While 50 megapixels may sound like an enticing number, it doesn’t tell the whole story and it doesn’t necessarily equate to high-quality images.
The sensor used by Motorola is a Samsung JN1, which is a relatively small sensor with small pixels and, as such, has a harder time drawing in light. This not only affects how vibrant and detailed images appear, but also means the G53 has a hard time autofocusing well on whatever or whoever your subject is.
If you find yourself in good, bright sunlight, then you are able to take OK-looking photos, although the best camera phones aren’t going to be quaking in their boots. Images do still lack any real vibrancy and clarity, and results suffer with worsening light conditions. This was proven when I took the Moto G53 to Sydney's annual Vivid event. Even with several bright light installations, the Motorola struggled to focus and a lack of optical image stabilization certainly didn't help matters. Results turned out blurred and lacking any notion of color or detail.
As for the macro lens, an on-screen prompt pops up telling you to get up close with the subject, but I struggled to get it to focus on anything. I actually had more success using the main lens up close instead.
In the gallery below, I've included images taken on the Moto G53 in good lighting, in low-lighting and some comparison shots of a leaf taken using the standard camera and macro camera.
Results taken on the front camera aren't overly terrible, although I did find I could look pale and overexposed in some instances. I also found that when I came to view the selfie I'd taken, some processing appears to take place on the image, which makes it look more blurred. I toggled the automatic HDR setting on and off, assuming this was the culprit, but the same effect was applied each time.
The Moto G53 runs the latest version of Android 13 and is kept largely free of any added bloatware. Motorola has its own app onboard, which you can use to customize various aspects of the phone, such as the color theme, the layout of the home screen (how many rows and columns of apps you can have displayed) and which gestures you want to use – if any – to open apps or enable features.
On Geekbench 6, the Moto G53 5G returned a single-core score of 719, a multi-core score of 1743 and 979 in 3DMark Wild Life. These are all pretty low figures, and you shouldn’t expect to do any intensive gaming on it, but in comparison with some of its similarly priced peers, the G53 actually fares pretty well.
The Samsung Galaxy A23, which costs around $299 / £289 / AU$400 returned a single-core score of 522 and a multi-core score of 1669, along with a 3DMark score of 440, for example, making the G53 a better performer on paper.
The TCL 20S launched in 2021 with a price of $249 (around £180 / AU$345) returned an average Geekbench score of 1343, compared to the G53’s 1231 (there isn’t a published 3DMark score for it).
But benchmark scores only tell some of the story and, in general day-to-day use, I found the G53 to perform well. Navigating through menus only incurred the occasional stutter and apps loaded relatively quickly. The takeaway is to not expect flagship-level performance, as this is a budget device that’s on par with its peers. It may come down to whichever costs the least for you, or if you have a particular affinity for a certain brand that will persuade you to part with your cash.
• Software and performance score: 3/5
Motorola Moto G53 5G review: Battery
(Image credit: Future)
5,000mAh battery lasts well over a day
Slow to charge with just 10W wired charging, no wireless
Motorola has fitted a 5,000mAh battery into the Moto G53 5G, which is something we’ve now pretty much come to expect in the G series. It’s a solid offering and one that should comfortably last you a day with moderate use, and with some battery life to spare.
To put it to the test, I loaded up an 11-hour long YouTube video of various nature scenes, with resolution set to automatic – 720p in this case – and screen brightness set to 50%. I left the video playing on a loop in TechRadar's Sydney office, where lighting conditions were constant, so that the display wouldn’t keep adjusting its brightness level.
I came back to the video still playing the next morning and the battery usage statistics said it had been running for 21 hours 35 minutes, and still had 8% battery left. This is mighty impressive and, despite the screen offering 120Hz refresh rate, the Full HD+ resolution, coupled with a large 5,000mAh battery unit no doubt helps the G53 to last for close to two days with average use.
Which is good news, because it takes a fairly long time to fully recharge the G53’s battery. The phone only supports up to 10 watts of maximum throughput from a wired charge, which meant it took just over two hours to top up to 100% from seven.
• Battery score: 4.5 / 5
Motorola Moto G53 5G: Score card
Should I buy the Motorola Moto G53 5G?
Buy it if...
Don't buy it if...
Also consider
If you're looking at the Motorola Moto G53, then it's most likely because you're looking to spend as little as possible on a phone. But you're also going to want to get the absolute most bang for your buck. Here are some good alternatives that do cost a little bit more, but which don't scrimp on features.
How I tested the Motorola Moto G53 5G
I used my review unit of the Motorola Moto G53 5G mainly for leisure during my testing period of a few weeks. I predominantly used it to browse web pages, scroll through social media and to take some pictures. I also attempted to play a few games on it to best mimic the most likely real-world use case scenarios.
I didn't use it to replace my usual phone, an iPhone, but I was still able to send messages to friends via social media apps when connected to Wi-Fi. I also used my iPhone as a means to compare picture-taking abilities, being well aware that the iPhone was going to take more impressive shots due to its more capable camera system.
The Motorola Edge 30 Neo is the baby of the Edge 30 family. It's a fairly petite and light phone that does not cost a fortune and has some great everyday ease of use features like super-fast charging.
However, compare it to its siblings, the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion and Motorola Edge 30 Ultra, and you have to conclude a lot of the most interesting stuff has been snipped out. The Motorola Edge 30 Neo loses the higher-end build elements, the true high-end camera hardware, and a processor powerful enough to coast through high-end games.
Display quality is the Motorola Edge 30 Neo’s main strength. The P-OLED panel has exceptional outdoor visibility and, as usual, an OLED panel leads to a punchy and colorful appearance.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
That is worth some kudos points, but the Motorola Edge 30 Neo can’t compete elsewhere with some of the ultra-aggressive phones available for similar money, like the OnePlus Nord 2T, Nothing Phone 1, and Google Pixel 6a.
Those phones take much better low-light photos, play 3D games at higher frame rates, have classier body designs, and capture far higher-quality video.
When you take the high-quality screen away, the Motorola Edge 30 Neo doesn’t actually have all that much going for it in this crowd. However, it still holds real appeal for the less techy phone user.
Motorola Edge 30 Neo review: price and availability
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Launched in September 2022
Cost £349 / AU$599 (around $375) at launch
Now reduced to £299.99 in the UK
The Motorola Edge 30 Neo was announced as part of the second wave of Edge 30 phones of 2022, in September 2022, alongside the Edge 30 Ultra and Edge 30 Fusion.
It launched for £349 / AU$599, which is roughly equivalent to $375 in the US, although at the time of review the phone was not officially on sale in the US. Since launch, the phone has dropped in price in the UK, with the Motorola Edge 30 Neo being widely available for £299.99.
Motorola Edge 30 Neo review: specs
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Motorola Edge 30 Neo review: design
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Funky Pantone color panel
Fairly petite plastic body
Very basic IP52 water resistance
Successful phone designs have to seem deliberate, each part chosen carefully. You can do this with a very distinctive 'look', as in the Google Pixel 7 or Samsung Galaxy S23. Or you can use high-end materials like curved glass.
Motorola has instead evoked the mighty color company Pantone, putting a virtual swatch of one of the company's colors on the back of the purple model. The message: this isn’t just a color, it’s a Pantone-certified color. There are a few different options available, namely Very Peri, Ice Palace, Black Onyx, and Aqua Foam, and it's the first of those that we used for this review.
“Very Peri helps us to embrace this altered landscape of possibilities, opening us up to a new vision as we rewrite our lives,” says Pantone, which calls Very Peri Color of the Year 2022.
Sure thing. A lovely purple it is too, but the reason for the figurative medal on the back of the Very Peri model is partly to distract from the Motorola Edge 30 Neo’s prosaic build.
Its back and sides are plastic, lacking the high-end feel of the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion and Edge 30 Ultra. The screen covering is glass, of course, but Motorola does not specify it as Gorilla Glass, which usually means it uses a cheaper form of toughened glass from another brand.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
The purple is nice, the lightly sparkly finish on the plastic rear looks good. And, from what we can tell from online images, the other green, white and black shades look good too. But this is actually one of the less impressively-built phones in this class. Vivo, OnePlus, Google and Nothing all offer at least some use of glass or aluminum outside of the display panel at this level.
However, the Motorola Edge 30 Neo is at least light and pocketable. It weighs just 155g, and is around 7.8mm thick. Thin and light. Motorola also includes a slim snap-on case in the box, rather than the much floppier silicone kind it usually bundles with its phones.
The Motorola Edge 30 Neo has no memory card slot or headphone jack, because it’s self-consciously not a true budget model. And it also has an in-screen fingerprint sensor, not the side-mounted kind used in most cheaper Motorolas.
This is one of the slowest in-screen fingerprint sensors we’ve used recently though. While that means it takes maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of a second to work, it’s still noticeable. And it is also more picky about the position of your finger than others, sometimes requiring a concerted press – presumably to ensure the thumb/finger is fully covering the pad area.
Motorola says the Neo is water resistant to IP52, a form of protection so weak you should treat it like it has no water resistance rating at all. Finally, the Motorola Edge 30 Neo has stereo speakers, and they are fairly loud and tonally solid, although the highest frequencies can get a little sharp when maxed. Still, a decent array.
Motorola Edge 30 Neo review: display
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Brilliantly bright screen
Good color
120Hz OLED delivers smoothness and excellent contrast
The Motorola Edge 30 Neo's design may seem better from afar than in your hand, but the screen is an unexpected smash. It’s a petite 6.28-inch P-OLED panel with class-leading outdoor visibility.
Indoors the screen is capped to around 475 nits of brightness, enough to make the Motorola Edge 30 Neo slightly painful to look at in a dimly lit room. Outdoors on a sunny day it will hit up to 923 nits, which is extremely high for a lower mid-range phone – for almost any Android phone, actually, despite so many manufacturers claiming their screens are capable off 1,300-nit brightness.
The result is the Motorola Edge 30 Neo's screen looks very clear even in harsh direct sunlight.
Spec-wise the display is otherwise pretty normal. It’s a 1080 x 2400 pixel 120Hz panel with two color modes, Natural and Saturated. They perform just as their names suggest.
The Motorola Edge 30 Neo has a potent screen. But it does not support HDR video, for no obvious reason. The screen has the contrast, the brightness, and the color depth for the job. This could also be a limitation of the Snapdragon 695 processor, but then the Sony Xperia 10 IV uses the same chipset and does support HDR video playback.
We’re going to have to shrug this one off.
Motorola Edge 30 Neo review: software and performance
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Snapdragon 695 is not a great gaming chipset
Good, non-bloated software
128GB storage for your apps and photos
If you’re upgrading to the Motorola Edge 30 Neo from an older Motorola phone, you may notice this one looks a little different. That’s because, drum roll, it defaults to using a custom 'Moto' system font rather than a plainer Android one.
It goes some way to making the Motorola Edge 30 Neo feel less like a 'vanilla' Android phone than other Motos, but if you don’t like it you can change it with a few screen taps and presses. And Motorola has otherwise not changed the classic Moto interface much here.
This is a relatively clean and unencumbered version of Android with a handful of neat additions that can be toggled on and off in the Moto app. These include physical gestures to, for example, open the camera app or toggle the torch.
The Motorola Edge 30 Neo also has Moto’s custom lock screen, Peek Display, which looks good and shows icons for recent notifications. However, unlike some other Moto phones there’s no “always on” display mode here.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
While general performance is good, we couldn’t help but notice app loads tend to be slightly slower than in the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion, the phone we switched from.
This is no great surprise given the Fusion has a flagship-tier chipset, while the Neo has a much less impressive mid-tier one.
It’s the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G, paired with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB of storage. This scores 1,901 in Geekbench 5. That's a little over half the score achieved by the OnePlus Nord 2T and its Dimensity 1300 chipset, or the Pixel 6a and its Google Tensor chip.
The gap widens if we switch to a more GPU-dependent test like 3DMark’s Wild Life. Where the Moto scores 1,214 points, the OnePlus Nord 2T can hit around 4,600, and the Pixel 6a 6,300.
Sometimes wide gaps in GPU performance are not all that noticeable in today’s games, but they are here. Fortnite will only run at the basic 'Medium' setting, and frame rate stability is not that great even at this level, which makes the game look significantly worse than in some other phones near the Motorola Edge 30 Neo’s price. This mobile is clearly not made primarily for gamers.
Motorola Edge 30 Neo review: cameras
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Camera tends to slightly overexpose images
Disappointing low-light performance in spite of OIS
Poor video quality
The hardware situation improves in the camera, at least superficially. Motorola only put two cameras on the Edge 30 Neo, but that simply means we miss out on the poor depth or macro sensors commonly seen in this price category.
There’s a 64MP primary camera with OIS (optical image stabilization), and a 13MP ultra-wide. Both are technically above average, thanks to the use of OIS, and a higher-res, larger sensor ultra-wide than plenty of affordable mid-tier Androids.
The main camera uses the 1/1.97-inch Samsung GW3 sensor, as seen in the Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite, and the ultra-wide a Hynix Hi1336, as used in the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE. Not bad bedfellows, right?
Results aren’t bad either. The Motorola Edge 30 Neo avoids the obviously oversaturated color you’ll often see in aggressively priced rivals from companies like Realme.
Grass looks roughly as it does to your eyes, and in most shots the sky will look natural too. The phone does at times leave stills with a slight magenta cast, but it’s not immediately obvious.
The Motorola Edge 30 Neo’s Auto HDR is powerful and mostly reliable, meaning you can shoot pretty carelessly even directly into the sun. Having said that, there is a problem somewhat related to this area.
Slight overexposure seems to be the most common issue. The phone’s camera brain knows how to avoid blowing out bright clouds, but will happily overdo darker (i.e. normal) scenes and inadvertently overexpose elements that aren’t actually that bright in an attempt to make the picture pop.
You can avoid this by manually dialing down the exposure – a control pops up if you pick a focal point. But we shouldn’t have to.
And despite the power of the HDR software, too many of our shots were left with skies that look like a blue-to-turquoise gradient, likely an effect of the limited native dynamic range of the sensor. Looking back over the images we took, there are also a surprising number of out-of-focus images shot using the primary camera. Not dozens, but enough to mean it wasn’t pure user error.
Focusing is not slow but, it would appear, sometimes just does not kick in.
Motorola Edge 30 Neo camera samples
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(Image credit: TechRadar)
The Moto has overcooked this shot, blowing out parts of the church, most likely misled by the shadowed areas in the bottom half of the frame.
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This phone’s images are bright, and avoid comically oversaturated color. But once again the keen exposure leads to some small overexposed areas.
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When the HDR engine kicks in, the Motorola Edge 30 Neo can pretty much cope with whatever you like, including shooting directly into the sun without leaving any parts of the shots looking too shadowy.
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(Image credit: TechRadar)
Here’s another example of the maximum power of the phone’s Auto HDR processing.
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Despite some quibbles, this phone can take generally pleasing photos during the day.
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(Image credit: TechRadar)
Low-light images just aren’t that good – note how the entire bottom left of this scene is basically black.
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(Image credit: TechRadar)
A nice and bright photo with believable color, but again the exposure is a little hot, leading to a blown out portion in the left-most cloud.
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(Image credit: TechRadar)
Here’s the same scene through the ultra-wide camera. The 13MP sensor lets you comfortably crop into the image more than an 8MP rival.
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(Image credit: TechRadar)
In shots like this you wonder why the HDR mode didn’t kick in more than it has to retain some of the background rather than letting it become a white mass.
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One of the more egregious examples of this phone’s over-bright exposure style, leading to much of the horizon becoming overexposed.
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A shot from the primary camera.
On a more positive note, the Motorola Edge 30 Neo’s 13MP ultra-wide is miles better than some of the 8MP cameras seen in some comparable mid-tier Androids. There’s less distortion at the corners of the frame and its images don’t immediately look compromised as soon as you zoom in a bit.
Low-light performance is below average, though, and not what you might expect given the Motorola Edge 30 Neo has optical image stabilization. The phone has a Night Vision mode for low-light photography, but the results aren’t even in the same league as the Edge 30 Fusion’s.
Dynamic range is limited, detail is very poor outside the brightest parts of the picture, and the effect of Night Vision versus Auto shooting is not that great. Highlights and mid-tones get a boost, but shadow detail retrieval is still not good.
This wouldn’t matter so much if we were just making a comparison between the Neo and the Fusion, but you can get Fusion-like results from phones such as the OnePlus Nord 2T and the Pixel 6a.
Video is probably the weakest area of the Motorola Edge 30 Neo's camera. You can only shoot at 1080p, at 30fps or 60fps, and clips look pretty awful in either mode. Stabilization is poor, overexposure is common, and the image appears soft, low on detail and, at times, pixelated due to poor handling of objects with hard edges.
1080p video from the Edge 30 Fusion looks dramatically better. And most phones at this price can at least capture 4K video at 30fps. The Snapdragon 695 institutes a hard limit here, as it tops out at 1080p/60 capture. However, that is no excuse for the poor image quality.
The front camera has a 32MP sensor that is, unfortunately, not nearly as good as the Samsung s5kgd2 camera used in the step-up Edge 30 Fusion. Fine detail is more likely to end up smushed in less than ideal lighting, and pictures look less confident up close. It’s a perfectly okay selfie camera, just nothing special.
Motorola Edge 30 Neo review: battery
(Image credit: TechRadar)
4,020mAh battery
Lasts all day but not much more
68W wired charging and 5W wireless
The Motorola Edge 30 Neo has a 4,020mAh battery, which a worryingly small capacity. That’s lower than the Pixel 6a’s 4,410mAh, and dramatically lower than the Sony Xperia 10 IV’s 5,000mAh.
It’s a setup for a disaster that never happens, though, because the Motorola Edge 30 Neo’s battery life is entirely okay. It won’t last close to two days for most people, like the Sony Xperia 10 IV. But we didn’t find it frustratingly poor, which is what we half expected after seeing the capacity figure. It gets through a full day of use just fine, if not with much to spare by the end of the day.
This seems further proof that the Snapdragon 695, for all its flaws, is a seriously efficient chipset – having contributed to the Sony Xperia 10 IV’s class-leading stamina. It’s good news for Snapdragon-maker Qualcomm, and non-news for us as battery life is basically not a reason to buy, or not to buy, the Motorola Edge 30 Neo.
Fast charging might be. The Motorola Edge 30 Neo includes a 68W charger and, unlike some of the 80W phones we’ve used recently, it does actually hit that rated charge power.
It takes 45 minutes for the phone to reach 100% charge, from a fully flat state. And it continues drawing charge until the 48 minute mark.
Motorola has also implemented wireless charging, which is pretty unusual at this level. It tops out at 5W, so will work very slowly, but might appeal if you use a wireless charging pad on your desk at work.
Should you buy the Motorola Edge 30 Neo?
Buy it if...
You want a bright screen Its specs look pretty standard on paper but the Motorola Edge 30 Neo has an exceptionally bright screen, one that looks very clear outside on sunny days. This is probably the phone’s strongest area, and does wonders for its all-round usability.
A smaller phone appeals The Motorola Edge 30 Neo is light and fairly small, making it easy to handle compared to other mid-tier Androids, some of which feel absolutely huge by comparison. And the screen is still large enough to make watching YouTube feel comfortable.
You want a decent ultra-wide camera This phone has a zero-fat approach to the camera, with a mostly decent primary camera and an above average 13MP ultra-wide. It’s better than the 8MP one used in a lot of more affordable mid-range Androids.
Don't buy it if...
You’re big into mobile gaming
The Motorola Edge 30 Neo is not the most powerful gaming phone you can get for the money. Not even close. Top-tier titles like Fortnite do not run particularly well on the phone, so think twice if you play demanding 3D games a lot.
You care about low-light photo quality Despite having optical image stabilization, the Motorola Edge 30 Neo cannot take particularly good low-light images. They don’t have anything like the shadow detail or dynamic range of top performers in this class.
You want a phone with high-end build This is an all-plastic phone. Look elsewhere if you want the touch of luxury a glass back or aluminum sides provide. Such niceties are available at the price if you’re willing to shop around. The OnePlus Nord 2T is one example.
Motorola Edge 30 Neo: Also consider
There are lots of other phones at around this sort of price, including the following three options.
