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The latest nubia REDMAGIC 8 Pro is the new gaming flagship in the house, and it’s one of the first devices on the market equipped with the powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. Like its predecessor, it packs a ton of power, and there are many gaming-specific features that could level up your gaming experience, and net you better results.
Like the nubia REDMAGIC 7S Pro, it has an RGB fan (20,000 RPM), shoulder triggers, a massive 6.8-inch AMOLED display, and an even bigger, 6,000 mAh battery. Our Void review unit also has built-in RGB lights, which can be customized. Despite the new square looks, the device still packs nearly all of the gaming features from its predecessor and even improves on them. There are a lot of refinements and enhancements to talk about, and we’ll dig right in.
REDMAGIC 8 Pro: Price & Availability
The nubia REDMAGIC 8 Pro is available to order from February 2, 2023. The device will be available in two color versions, Matte and Void. The Matte model will pack 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, while the Void version will have slightly more, 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage.
| Color, RAM & Storage | Price (USD) | Price (GBP) | Price (EUR) |
| Matte, 12GB + 256GB | $649 | £579 | €649 |
| Void, 16GB + 512GB | $799 | £709 | €749 |
RedMagic 8 Pro
The nubia REDMAGIC 8 Pro is one of the best and fastest gaming smartphones on the market in 2023. It's powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of storage. It has responsive shoulder triggers, RGB lights, and even a 20,000 RPM fan to keep things cool. If you're after the best-performing devices that can effortlessly play any games you want, for however long you want, the REDMAGIC 8 Pro will have you covered.
- One of the fastest gaming phones
- Decent primary camera
- Stylish design
- Stellar battery life and fast charging
- Excellent gaming features
- Ultrawide and selfie cameras aren't great
- Software still needs some work
The REDMAGIC 8 Pro will be available in the following regions:
- North America: Canada and the United States
- Europe: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Croatia, Luxembourg, the Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, The United Kingdom, Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Estonia, Portugal, Finland, Romania, France, Slovakia, Germany, Slovenia, Greece, Spain, Sweden, Ireland, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Malta
- Asia Pacific: Hong Kong (China SAR), Indonesia, Macau (China SAR), Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia
- Middle East: Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt
- Latin America: Mexico, Peru, and Chile
What's in the box
The nubia REDMAGIC 8 Pro’s box doesn’t feature the same comic book style characters on the front, sides, and center. Instead, nubia went with a more toned-down design, featuring the contour of the phone, and highlighting the fan, and the buttons.
Inside the box, you’ll find the phone itself, a red USB-C to USB-C cable, a SIM ejector pin, and a small box containing the case. There’s also a bundled 65W GaN power adapter. This packaging and its contents are a standard for nubia gaming phones, and we’re glad to see the company continue its tradition.
If you’re an avid gamer with the urge to play, you can do it immediately after unboxing the REDMAGIC 8 Pro.
Charging a 6,000 mAh battery could’ve taken a lot longer if it included a slower power adapter, or none at all. I also find it important to point out that the device came with a pre-applied screen protector. If you’re an avid gamer with the urge to play, you can do it immediately after unboxing the REDMAGIC 8 Pro.
Design
- Stylish, square design
- 3.5mm audio jack
- Stereo speakers
Nubia has completely revamped the look of this year’s REDMAGIC 8 Pro. It did away with the curves, and replaced them with a new square design. It looks and feels refreshing, and I like the new design, – which is unsurprising, as I have always liked the way the Sony Xperia line looked with its sharp edges. The device features a glass front and back panel, and the chassis is made of aviation alumiunium. The sides are also matte-colored, and it feels premium and well-made. The red accent color also compliments the gamer-y aesthetics.
The REDMAGIC 8 Pro is one of the best-looking gaming phones in 2023
REDMAGIC 7S Pro (left) vs REDMAGIC 8 Pro (right)
The rear panel features a completely flat surface, and the only protruding objects are the three camera sensors. We received the Void model for a review, which certainly looks the best with its transparent glass design, and the colorful RGB lights on the back. The labels for the REDMAGIC logo, and left and right triggers also light up and can be customized in settings.
These lights can also shine in any color of the seven pre-selected colors you pick, and the animation can change based on the type of notification you receive. For example, an incoming call can be set to the red color, and the “Steady light up” animation effect, while a notification can be set to yellow and a flashing effect. It reminds me of the time when phones used to have those small LED blinkers that notified us of incoming notifications, but better and certainly more colorful and unique.
When it comes to the other sides, the left features the volume rocker, alongside the vent for the fan. The top houses a speaker, a microphone, and the 3.5mm headphone jack. The right side has a vent, power button, and the Game Space Center. The bottom sports a speaker, the USB-C port, and a microphone, as well as a SIM card slot.
Specifications
Nubia provided us with the Void model of the REDMAGIC 8 Pro with 16GB of memory 512GB of storage. It’s powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor and the Red Core 2 chip. The latter processes the audio, controls the RGB lighting, and manages the haptic – all of which, play a crucial role in enhancing the gaming experience, and improving the smartphone.
The device uses the ICE 11 cooling system that uses a vaper chamber liquid cooling plate. It covers the Snapdragon and Red Core chips, and nubia says that heat conduction efficiency is 600% higher with the 20,000 RPM turbo fan included. As a result of the new system, I never came across any significant heat, and it ran cooler than its predecessor. The phone never reached worrying or uncomfortable temperatures, even when charging at 45W and above, or when I gamed on it for more than an hour.
The phone also comes with faster memory and UFS 4.0 storage. We’re glad to see the new storage standard on the new nubia gaming flagship, and I’m happy to confirm that, like previously, I never once come across a sluggish behavior, or any slowdowns. Once a game was downloaded, the assets loaded within seconds, providing a comfortable and enjoyable gaming experience.
Display
- 6.8-inch AMOLED with 120Hz
- Excellent colors
- Great sunlight visibility
- Slim bezels and hidden under-display camera
The REDMAGIC 8 Pro has a massive 6.8-inch AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate. There are plenty of color profiles, and the colors, in general, are accurate and deliver great saturation. I used the “Normal mode” color gamut during my testing, which was pleasing and vibrant enough to my liking, although P3 and sRGB color gamuts are also optional in the settings. The slim bezels also make the device even more immersive, and the new under-display camera is inconspicuous.
The brightness has also never been an issue, and the screen is plenty bright to enjoy outside, and dark enough to use in pitch-black rooms. Nubia says that the screen can go up to 1300 nits of peak brightness, which is believable as the display got very bright using the automatic brightness option in direct sunlight. The viewing angles are also excellent.
It’s a stunning display for consuming media, playing games, and using ordinary apps.
The one thing missing from the REDMAGIC 8 Pro is HDR certification. Using the “HDR Checker” app, we find that the panel supports HDR, but lacks the certification. This means that content will not pop as much when watching movies and supported videos, even though the device is capable of displaying HDR10 and HLG content.
Netflix was also unavailable on the Play Store by default, but I’m happy to report that content from Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, and Netflix looked more than enjoyable and great. YouTube videos also looked sharp and colorful. Overall, it’s a stunning display for consuming media, playing games, movies, images, or ordinary apps.
Cameras
- Great primary camera (both day & night)
- Portraits look good
- Ultrawide shots often lack detail, focus, and sharpness
- Selfie camera is usable, but not great
The REDMAGIC 8 Pro has three cameras on the back. A 50MP primary, an 8MP ultrawide, and a 2MP macro camera. There’s also a 16MP under-display front-facing shooter for capturing important moments. The wide-angle, macro, and front-facing sensors are the cameras that nubia used last year, but the performance and quality are different. Let’s first take a closer look at the primary camera.
For starters, it performs well during daylight and captures plenty of detail. The colors are true to life, and while the shadows and dynamic range could have been better, it’s more than adequate. It performs well in both low light and bright conditions, and the results are good enough to not require much tweaking before uploading them onto the socials.
The REDMAGIC 8 Pro's primary camera performs well during the daytime and captures plenty of details.
Portrait shots are usually decent too, and the subject detection and separation worked perfectly, most of the time. The quality of the blur effect and background was also great, and we liked what we saw.
The same cannot be said about the wide-angle sensor. The 8MP sensor looks good on paper but captures unimpressive results, and the performance was often less than ideal. All wide-angle photos are soft, and lack detail and sharpness. The focus was also a hit-and-miss, and our images often looked like blurry paintings.
When it comes to the under-display selfie camera, we can only repeat what we said last year. The images are decent in daylight, although we did experience overexposure a couple of times. The quality of the image isn’t great in low light and at night, and selfies will often come out as soft, and lack detail and sharpness. In normal lighting conditions, you’ll be able to take good-looking selfies, and it’s more than capable of streaming and video calls.
Camera samples
Daytime
Selfie
Low-light
Software
- Excellent gaming features and controls
- Limited customizability
- Still needs some improvements
Nubia updates its devices every two months, in the first six months after the initial release, and every three months after that. Regarding security, nubia says it’s maintaining its smartphones for 1.5-2 years, and will generally provide at least one major OS update. With that in mind, our REDMAGIC 8 Pro came with REDMAGIC OS 6 on top of Android 13 and the November 2022 security patch. Keep in mind that our review unit may have been running a pre-released firmware version.
The phone has powerful features and beefy specifications, and I’m glad to say that the software has gone through many bug fixes since the REDMAGIC 7S Pro. However, there are still a few notable and unresolved issues.
The brightness slider often defaults to 10-30% brightness, on the automatic setting. It can take up to 15 seconds for the sensors to realize that it’s bright outside for it to adjust, and the issue always persists when unlocking the device. Because of this, I resulted to manually changing the brightness most of the time. Second is the fact that some UI elements are still not translated properly.
Nubia has revamped the way users can apply themes and change the icons, but these aren’t fully customizable, and users can’t just download icon packs from the Play Store to personalize their devices. It’s worth noting that Material You is here, and the wallpaper colors will apply to the lockscreen and notification shade. That’s a step in the right direction, but it’s still hard to fully personalize the experience without using third-party launchers – which is now possible as it’s no longer hidden.
On the bright side, the phone comes with a new app called REDMAGIC Studio. This lets users connect their phones to monitors and TVs wirelessly, or via USB-C. This enables games to be played on the big screen, and also allows the use of keyboards and mouse. It’s really cool and could be handy for those wanting a more immersive experience on the big screen or stream content.
Overall, the software has received many important enhancements in REDMAGIC OS 6, and I think nubia is on the right track to improve it further. However, it still needs a lot more work if they want to make the device a great smartphone, and not just an outstanding gaming machine.
Gaming & Game Space features
The gaming phone industry has stepped up its game in recent years, and nubia has been a pioneer in providing a stellar performance. The REDMAGIC 8 Pro continues that legacy, and I can comfortably say that it’s, once again, the best-performing phones I’ve ever used. During my testing, I’ve played Call of Duty, Genshin Impact, League of Legends: Wild Rift, Asphalt 9, Rocket League Sideswipe, and Brawl Stars on a regular basis. None of the games experienced hiccups or long loading times, and the performance was always butter smooth.
The nubia REDMAGIC 8 Pro is one of the best-performing phones I’ve ever used
Most games ran at 120Hz, and even when it dipped below 120Hz, there was no stutter, and the performance was solid. The phone didn’t hang, and surprisingly, it never heated up to an uncomfortable level. The 20,000 RPM fan always kicked on automatically when a game launched, and it was never too loud to make the session require a set of earbuds.
The device also comes pre-loaded with a bunch of gaming-oriented features, including the ability to turn on or off the RGB fans. The RGB light strip on the back of the device is also customizable, and you can choose from several different colors and animation effects for different tasks and occasions.
Like on previous REDMAGIC devices, the gaming-specific features are here to stay, including the various plugins already enabled in settings. Users can manually enable, change, or disable them on a per/game basis, enabling them to add crosshair and other neat features to shooting games, and disable the 520Hz shoulder triggers when playing Candy Crush.
Charge separation will also be a welcome addition to gamers who prefer playing while plugged in, reducing the heat and the chances of the device throttling – this method uses the power straight from the adapter. The battery never draws any power, reducing the heat output, and providing a more comfortable experience.
Haptics
Haptics can make or break a device, and the REDMAGIC 8 Pro has a stellar engine. The feedback was always firm, but not too hard. Games always felt immersive and enjoyable, and the great haptics has greatly elevated that experience with the right amount of feedback.
Speakers
The REDMAGIC 8 Pro has two speakers. One on the bottom, and another at the top of the device. The stereo speaker setup also works with DTS:X, which enhances the audio output. In general, the speakers sound great, and offer excellent performance. It’s more than enjoyable on medium to high levels; however, it distorts on max volume. Once you turn it down slightly, it sounds excellent and enjoyable, full of bass, making it perfect for long gaming sessions and consuming content.
Battery life
- 6,000 mAh battery
- Support for 65W fast wired charging
- Unbeatable battery life
The REDMAGIC 8 Pro received a notable upgrade from its predecessor, and that upgrade lies in the battery department. The new flagship houses a 6,000 mAh battery, supporting 65W fast wired charging. With that much battery, you’d assume it could last for days on a single charge, and you’d be right.
During my use, I gamed on it, multitasked, watched movies and videos, chatted with friends and family, and I could not kill the device. Even after a very long, eventful day, I would end up with 40% left in the tank. Now, don’t think that it’s impossible to drain this device, you certainly can, especially if you play at 80% or higher brightness levels, and play graphics-intensive multiplayer games. Still, the results are remarkable.
The REDMAGIC 8 Pro can go from zero to hero in 43 minutes, and sports a true two-day battery
On most days, I would end up at about 55% to 65% left in the battery, and I always made it to the next day with the same charge. A quick 20-minute top-up always put me back to the high 70s and 80% rate, which was plenty enough for any night outs or long days – even when heavily relying on Google Maps and the GPS to travel around.
Nubia claims the REDMAGIC 8 Pro can go from zero to hero in about 43 minutes, and my tests concluded that those numbers are accurate. A couple of times, I was able to do a full charge in 41 and 42 minutes. Charging such a large battery, that quickly , can go a long way, and the REDMAGIC 8 Pro is one of the longest-lasting devices I’ve ever used.
REDMAGIC 8 Pro: Should I buy it?
Buy it if…
- You want the smoothest and best-performing gaming experience on a smartphone.
- You’re a fan of RGB lights, and cool gaming features that could help you level up your experience.
- A big battery is a must that lets you charge up to full in a reasonable amount of time.
- You don’t take a lot of photos.
Don't buy it if…
- Water and dust resistance plays an important role.
- You’re not a fan of big phones.
- You don’t play many mobile games.
The nubia REDMAGIC 8 Pro received a massive redesign from the REDMAGIC 7S Pro, released in 2022. Its square design is refreshing and feels great for a gaming phone. It feels premium, and despite its gamer-y accents, RGB, and fan, it looks elegant and stylish. I think this is one of the best, if not the best, looking gaming smartphones on the market today.
The nubia REDMAGIC 8 Pro in Matte (12/256GB) will set you back $649, while the Void version (16/512GB) will retail for $799. Those prices are hard to beat, and this is one of the most affordable gaming phones equipped with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC with all the gaming features, shoulder triggers, RGB lights, and other neat features that money can buy.
Looks aside, there is a lot to love about this phone. It’s fast and has a massive battery that can last up to two days on a single charge. Fast charging lets you top up the device in less than an hour, and the enormous display makes spotting enemies easy. The screen is bright, colorful, and responsive, whether you’re in a pitch-black room, or outside in the sun.
Nubia has gone a long way in the past year and made significant improvements to try and streamline the software experience. The REDMAGIC 8 Pro feels like a big upgrade, with all the specs and hardware to prove it. There aren’t many downsides, but it’s worth noting that this is a gaming phone, and as such, there are a few compromises you have to live with if you decide to pick this up.
First and foremost, the ultrawide on the back, and the front-facing camera are anything but impressive. The phone also lacks HDR certification, and although this could be fixed later, it’s still worrying and might raise some eyebrows. While the rear shooters are acceptable – in good lighting conditions –, they’re not perfect. We’re also hoping that as time goes on, the company can fix the software issues we have mentioned, and finally get to the bottom of it.
As it stands, the nubia REDMAGIC 8 Pro is a top dog, and one of the best gaming smartphones on the market in 2023. It looks amazing and has the hardware and gaming features to appeal to a specific audience. If you’re interested in one of the best-performing devices, with RGB lights, and long battery life, the REDMAGIC 8 Pro might be the perfect device for you.
RedMagic 8 Pro
The nubia REDMAGIC 8 Pro is one of the best and fastest gaming smartphones on the market in 2023. It's powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of storage. It has responsive shoulder triggers, RGB lights, and even a 20,000 RPM fan to keep things cool. If you're after the best-performing devices that can effortlessly play any games you want, for however long you want, the REDMAGIC 8 Pro will have you covered.