Redmagic 9 Pro Review – Faster Than A Laser Bullet

If you clicked on this after looking at the Judas Priest reference, we are going to be good friends. If you are here for the review, then I have to thank you. A little disclaimer before I start the review: I am not a mobile gamer, so when I did fill in the form to review the Redmagic 9 Pro, I was hoping I would get away with just reviewing the looks, performance, display, battery, but after unboxing the phone, I immediately realized that I would not do it justice if I do not test out the gaming experience on this phone.

I have been using this phone for the better part of the week, and although I am sad that it took such a long time to reach my hands, I am happy to report that this is, by far, the best smartphone I have used in recent times. However, a few things concern me, but other than that, it is a flawless victory through and through.

Looking at the specs, the Redmagic 9 Pro has everything that you would expect from a gaming phone in 2024. If you are looking for a non-gaming phone with the same stellar specs, you can check out the ZTE Z60 Ultra, which is another favorite phone of mine. Although I could not get my hands on that for review, I am sure that phone is just as good, if not better, than what we have here.

Technology	GSM / CDMA / HSPA / EVDO / LTE / 5G
2G bands	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 - SIM 1 & SIM 2 CDMA 800 / 1900
3G bands	HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700(AWS) / 1900 / 2100 CDMA2000 1xEV-DO
4G bands	LTE
5G bands	SA/NSA
Speed	HSPA, LTE-A, 5G
LAUNCH
Announced	2023, November 23
Status	Available
BODY
Dimensions	164 x 76.4 x 8.9 mm (6.46 x 3.01 x 0.35 in)
Weight	229 g (8.08 oz)
SIM	Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)
	Pressure sensitive zones (520Hz touch-sensing) Built-in cooling fan Aviation aluminum middle frame
DISPLAY
Type	AMOLED, 1B colors, 120Hz, 1600 nits (peak)
Size	6.8 inches, 111.6 cm2 (~89.1% screen-to-body ratio)
Resolution	1116 x 2480 pixels, 20:9 ratio (~400 ppi density)
PLATFORM
OS	Android 14, Redmagic OS 9
Chipset	Qualcomm SM8650-AB Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (4 nm)
CPU	Octa-core (1x3.3 GHz Cortex-X4 & 5x3.2 GHz Cortex-A720 & 2x2.3 GHz Cortex-A520)
GPU	Adreno 750
MEMORY
Card slot	No
Internal	256GB 8GB RAM, 256GB 12GB RAM, 512GB 12GB RAM
	UFS 4.0
MAIN CAMERA
Triple	50 MP, (wide), 1/1.57", 1.0µm, PDAF, OIS 50 MP, (ultrawide), 1/2.76", 0.64µm 2 MP, f/2.4, (macro)
Features	LED flash, HDR, panorama
Video	8K@30fps, 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60/120/240fps
SELFIE CAMERA
Single	16 MP, f/2.0, (wide), 1.12µm, under display
Features	HDR
Video	1080p@30/60fps
SOUND
Loudspeaker	Yes, with stereo speakers
3.5mm jack	Yes
	32-bit/384kHz audio
COMMUNICATIONS
WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6e/7, tri-band, Wi-Fi Direct
Bluetooth	5.3, A2DP, LE
GPS	GPS (L1+L5), GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO
Infrared port	Yes
NFC	Yes (market/region dependent)
Radio	No
USB	USB Type-C 3.2, OTG, accessory connector, DisplayPort
FEATURES
Sensors	Fingerprint (under display, optical), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
BATTERY
Type	Li-Po 6500 mAh, non-removable
Charging	80W wired, PD3.0
MISCELLANEOUS
Colors	Black, Black/Transparent, Silver

 

The Redmagic 9 Pro comes in a standard Redmagic silver/grey box. As someone who is used to modern smartphone boxes having absolutely nothing in the packaging, I was happy to unbox this phone because not only is it a sizeable package, it also comes with everything that you need to get started. The unboxing experience is simple and no-nonsense. You get a clear case, a USB Type-C to Type_C cable, an 80W charger, a SIM ejector pin, and the phone itself. Documentation is included, of course, but do we really need to read that?

The moment you take the Redmagic 9 Pro out of its packaging and turn it on, you realize that you have gotten yourself into something that you were not expecting. At least, that was my reaction, considering how this is the first actual gaming smartphone that I managed to get my hands on. This thing is massive, and I have seen massive phones like the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Galaxy S23 Ultra, but there is something about this phone that makes it seem larger than those two phones, and after spending a full week with it, I am beginning to understand what it really is. Now, the Redmagic 9 Pro leaves a lasting impression right away. The phone is a thick slab of glass and metal. The front of the screen is flat, and so is the back. You can even make the phone stand on its own without any support if you want to. The phone measures 164 x 76.4 x 8.9 mm and weighs 229 grams. The phone is constructed out of aluminum, with an aviation-grade aluminum middle frame, making sure that the device does not bend under any pressure.

The front of the phone is adorned by a massive 6.8-inch display with a resolution of 1116x2480 pixels. It offers 1B colors, has a 120Hz refresh rate, and has 1,600 nits peak brightness. These numbers might sound a bit disappointing, but I can confidently say that the Redmagic 9 Pro has one of the best, if not the best, displays I have seen. Out of the box, it is punchy, vibrant, and gets plenty bright, even if the brightness numbers state a different story.

For protection, it uses the Corning Gorilla Glass 5. No Victus 2 here, but you know, glass is glass, and it scratches. The screen also houses an optical fingerprint reader, which, surprisingly, is much faster. It is still not on the same level as an ultra-sonic fingerprint sensor, but I have not had any instances where it would fail to recognize my fingerprint or would take a long time. So, I cannot really complain here.

Redmagic sent me the sleet colorway of the Redmagic 9 Pro, and honestly, I fell in love with it. There was something about the way the back glass reflected light. The carbon fiber highlights and a slight texture to the glass made it an absolute treat. Although aggressive, this design is definitely my favorite in a market where smartphones have started to look boring. The back also has all the cameras, LED flash, and a cooling fan, which are all flush with the glass panel, so there will not be any wobble. The back also has an LED light for notifications, which is handy, but I wish it were on the front.

The top of the device houses an IR blaster, a headphone jack, one of two stereo speakers, and a microphone. The left side is mostly empty and only has a vent, and the right side is the busiest side of the phone with the two capacitive touch triggers on the top and bottom, an air vent, a volume rocker, a power button, a shiny red switch for Game Space, and a microphone. If you have big hands, best of luck pressing the right button. The bottom is pretty standard with the second stereo speaker, USB Type-C port 3.2 Gen 2 with 80W wired charging, and it can also double as an accessory connector and a DisplayPort. You also get a SIM tray and another microphone.

In all honesty, I fell in love with the design of the Redmagic 9 Pro, and frankly, it enforces my views about how having a flat screen on a smartphone is very important. It just looks so much better than a curved screen, no matter how bright or responsive the screen actually is. The phone feels solid in hand and can be used as a weapon should you feel the need, but I would highly advise against it.

The biggest issue I had with the OnePlus 10 Pro was its battery life. This is saying something considering how I am a homebody, but despite that, the phone would require me to charge it quite frequently. The Redmagic 9 Pro, on the other hand, makes me wish that it would run out of battery sooner so I can put it on charge before going back to sleep.

The Redmagic 9 Pro comes with the biggest battery I have seen in any smartphone at 6,500 mAh. At first, I was concerned that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 powering this beast would chew through the battery, but to my surprise, it was completely the opposite. I have had several instances of the phone lasting me well over two days with around 8 hours of screen time. Now, ever since I received this phone, I have been going out to run errands with it, and it never made me feel that I should have carried a power bank with me.

I have put the phone through its paces, including taking photos and editing them, listening to music while working, playing Call of Duty Mobile on max brightness, and just watching Reels or whatever content I could get my hands on. To my surprise, the phone never really made me feel like I should be putting in charge. Sure, I would still charge it to a respectable percentage before going to bed, but only out of habit, not because I thought it was going to run out.

The Redmagic 9 Pro is also equipped with 80W fast charging, which uses the PD 3.0 standard. Now, when I heard about the charging speed, I was a bit worried that it might not play nice with other chargers (I'm looking at you, OnePlus), but I have been charging this phone using my UGreen Nexode 140W GaN charger, and I have never run into an issue. The phone charges with its own fast charging tech and works wonders. This bloody thing can go from 0 to 100 in 35 minutes. You are telling me that by the time I am done making and having my breakfast, my phone will be ready to go? I want more phones to have such fast charging.

Now, I am not going to lie. I was a bit concerned with the heat that would be generated with the phone being on charge. However, the Redmagic 9 Pro does have a fan on the back that helps with the thermals, and in addition to that, as long as you are not actively using the phone while it is charging, you should not run into any thermal issues.

I think I am more than confident to say that in terms of battery, the Redmagic 9 Pro is perhaps the best phone I have used, and I wish more phone manufacturers would increase the battery capacity. The phone is thick at 8.9mm, but if that is what it takes to increase the battery capacity, you will not see me complaining.

Now, speakers are not really something I look for whenever I buy a phone, but I guess years of using flagships have spoiled me. When I had the OnePlus 10 Pro in my hands, I was often disappointed by how its speakers performed. However, with the Redmagic9 Pro, the story changed almost entirely.

The Redmagic 9 Pro's stereo speakers are perhaps the best I have heard in a long, long time. The spears are loud, they are crisp, and they have enough detail that would make you want to use them more. That is why whenever I am playing Call of Duty on the phone, I never really plug in my headphones because the speakers do the job just fine and without any issues.

The same goes for notifications, in general. I was missing out on many of them when I had the OnePlus 10 Pro, but here, the phone ensures I never miss a notification, thanks to how loud the speakers can get. Thankfully, they are loud without being annoying or overbearing. I do miss the Alert Slider, and I wish we could map the Game Space switch to perform different tasks, but this is a very small nitpicking on an otherwise excellent smartphone.

I am often criticized by many people who are not a part of the tech world as deeply as I am for being loyal to a single brand or always using flagship phones. I understand the concerns people show, and although my answers to get out of such statements often revolve around one or another version of "it's for work," I truly believe that a good flagship phone separates itself from the others based on its performance.

The Redmagic 9 Pro does not shy away when it comes to packing all the best hardware you can get. The phone is packed with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, it's an octa-core chipset with the following configuration (1x3.3 GHz Cortex-X4 & 5x3.2 GHz Cortex-A720 & 2x2.3 GHz Cortex-A520) and up to 16 gigs of RAM - the review unit I have is equipped with 12, which I find is still more than enough. But if you want, you can get more storage/RAM variants. All storage options are equipped with UFS 4.0 to ensure faster transfer speeds.

Now, considering how the Redmagic 9 Pro is the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-based phone that I am reviewing, I was not sure what to expect in terms of performance, but by the time it was up and running, every other smartphone that I used paled in comparison. I compared it with my OnePlus 10 Pro, an iPhone 14 Pro Max, a OnePlus 7T Pro, and a number of other devices, and it was evident that there is something about this phone that just delivers faster performance.

The app switching is fast and snappy, the animations are fluid and beautiful, and almost every task that you throw at the phone is handled with ease. I did run into a small issue at the beginning where the refresh rate was mentioned at 120Hz, but there was evident lag when scrolling, but that was fixed after a software update.

Now, I had mentioned before that I am not a smartphone gamer, but to ensure that my review does justice to the Redmagic 9 Pro, I went ahead and downloaded all the resource-heavy games I could find. I started with Asphalt 9 and spent around 7 hours, on and off, playing through the game, and the phone handled it like a breeze. The same can be said for PUBG - which has changed so much since I first played it on the PC, but if you are someone who prefers handheld gaming, it will work just fine. Genshin Impact, perhaps the most famous mobile game, ran without a hitch, and even in scenarios where I did feel that the phone was going to struggle, it did not, and even after hours of gameplay, I did not experience the phone getting hot.

My last day of testing was all about playing Call of Duty: Mobile in ranked. This was the first time I was playing a first-person shooter on a phone and man, I loved every second of it. As a matter of fact, I deleted all the other games and decided to stick strictly to Call of Duty, and it made me realize why companies like Apple are investing so much into mobile gaming. Mobile gaming is no longer something that we can take lightly, and it easily has the potential to match other platforms. Phones like Redmagic 9 Pro are bastions of the future of mobile gaming.

Now, I am not a big believer in synthetic benchmarks because they put an unrealistic load on a component, but for the sake of this review, I went ahead and installed AnTuTu, Geekbench 6, 3DMark, and well, the results speak for themselves. Do note that I did not let the device cool down during the tests, so what you are seeing is continuous performance from one benchmark to another.

In terms of performance, I believe that the Redmagic 9 Pro has the potential to blow every other phone out of the water. The sustained performance remains just as well, and I did not, for a second, notice that the phone was stuttering or lagging. If you are looking for a powerhouse that is good at your day-to-day tasks and every other game you throw at it, the Redmagic 9 Pro will take good care of you. For me, software is one thing that can make or break my overall smartphone experience. I have been spoiled by One UI to the point where I found myself missing it when I was using OxygenOS 14.0 on my OnePlus 10 Pro. I did not have high hopes for the Redmagic 9 Pro in terms of the software, but I am happy to tell you guys that my experience was much better than I had expected.

The Redmagic 9 Pro runs Redmagic OS 9,0, which is a lightly skinned Android 14, and when I say lightly skinned, I mean it. Aside from a few built-in customization options, the OS is largely stock, and I love it. It is snappy, works like a charm, and has all the features that you would want in a modern-day smartphone OS that is built around utility without too much of an added flair. Despite the phone being a gaming device, the OS does not reflect it at all. Everything is clean, simple, and how it should be.

However, Redmagic would not let us forget that the phone is a gaming device, after all. The Redmagic 9 Pro has, what I would think, a separate OS that is built just for gaming in the name of Game Space. Now, I am calling it an OS, but it is more like a sandbox where you can play games without any interruption, and I love it. Especially when you activate it with the switch on the right side of the phone, game Space is entirely about games and allows you to customize every aspect of your gaming experience, and I could not be more pleased with it.

Honestly, while I will not say that Redmagic 9 Pro has won my heart with its operating system and how it handles everything, I can say that I like it a lot more than some of the other skins I have used. I like it certainly more than OxygenOS, and I would say it is the next best thing I have used after One UI. There are a lot of features from One UI that are not present here, but I do not blame Redmagic for that because Samsung took a long, long time to get where it is today with the software updates. The near-stock experience provided by the phone is great, and everything feels like it fits right in. The Game Space does end up running into some bugs every now and then, but nothing that cannot be polished out with software updates.

Perhaps the most important aspect for me about a smartphone, other than its software, is the camera on the back. I am not just a writer or a gamer but an amateur photographer, as well, and I take a lot of pictures provided I have enough subjects or time to go out and about. Now, the Redmagic 9 Pro is a gaming phone, and by that definition, I would not expect it to bring a stellar camera onto the table.

The Redmagic 9 Pro has two 50-megapixel sensors on the back. The primary sensor is a Samsung GN5. It's a  1/1.57", 1.0µm, PDAF, OIS sensor with a 50-megapixel resolution. The second is a Samsung JN1 sensor, which is another 50-megapixel sensor with a 1/2.76", 0.64µm. The third sensor is a 2-megapixel macro camera, and I can assure you that you will not use it.

The primary camera is, honestly, a lot better than I expected. I am not sure about the exact color science Redmagic 9 Pro uses, but the images come out looking great in terms of dynamic range and contrast. This is one of the few times when I can take a picture from the primary camera and not edit it in Lightroom to make it look better. You can actually just look at the pictures and realize that they have all the details you need.

As far as the ultra-wide sensor is concerned, it is not as good as the primary sensor, but if you are in good enough light, the phone is going to do a great job at ensuring that you are not running into any issues with how the images come out. The sensor is adequate enough to handle itself in well-lit conditions, and I guess that is exactly what most people would want from an ultra-wide sensor, especially when you consider the fact that there is very little fun in taking ultra-wide shots indoors. Unless you are in a wide-open space, still, I'll let the pictures do the justice.

On the front, you will find a 16-megapixel camera tucked neatly under the display. It is not entirely invisible, and you can still see it even with the screen turned on, but the technology has greatly improved. However, I would still prefer an actual hole-punch camera instead of a UDC because, honestly, the quality does not really give you something that you would want from a front camera. However, if you are in well-lit environments, you can take selfies that are passable at best and have a lot of softness in them. You can use the magic of Lightroom to bring some life into the photos.

Simply put, I would say that the camera system on the Redmagic 9 Pro is decent at best. It does have flagship specs all around, but not when it comes to cameras. However, considering how this is a gaming phone, I can let it go, knowing that ZTE is more than capable of making a phone with excellent cameras (just look at the ZTE Z60 Ultra), and you will know what I am talking about. Still, this is a huge upgrade for me in terms of quality over the OnePlus 10 Pro, so I cannot really complain.

Considering how this was my first time experiencing a gaming smartphone, I am more than happy that my experience with the Redmagic 9 Pro was more than satisfactory. I have not only fallen in love with the device, but this is going to be one of my benchmarks going forward. I was really looking forward to switching to other Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-based devices, but now that I have spent all this time with the Redmagic, I am in doubt because there are some features that I really, really love about this phone, especially Game Space.

The Redmagic 9 Pro is an almost flawless victory, and it is honestly only marred by the fact that the cameras are not up to the mark. If the cameras were just as good as the rest of the phone - this would have easily become the best phone for me because of how good the overall user experience is. Still, it is good that Redmagic has a habit of listening to reviews and consumers, and we can expect better cameras next time around.

For now, the Redmagic 9 Pro is a definitive homerun for anyone looking for a powerful, no-nonsense gaming phone, and it excels at ensuring that its performance and presence are both known.

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