The REDMAGIC 9 Pro is finally launching acrossmultiple overseas markets after its launch last month in China. It is marketed as “The Chill That Never Quits” and earns its keep and then some by housing multiple gaming-centric enhancements in an affordable package compared to modern flagships. It builds on the success of the gaming-centric REDMAGIC 8 Pro with significant upgrades on offer across the board.
Nubia Redmagic 9 Pro
The REDMAGIC 9 Pro offers the internals of a flagship with significant aesthetic upgrades, a massive battery, and a price tag that makes it worth considering over the competition for gamers and enthusiasts looking for a new device this year.With Gorilla Glass 5 protecting the front screen in addition to extensive gaming-centric cooling options including a dedicated vapor chamber and a turbo fan on offer, the REDMAGIC can win both, performance and durability tests with ease, making it a force to be reckoned with going into 2024.
The biggest upgrade the REDMAGIC 9 Pro offers versus its predecessor and its competition is a massive design overhaul that eliminates the camera bump from all 3 of its sensors. It retains its key features including 520Hz shoulder triggers that can be customized and remapped to in-game buttons as well as an upgraded fan that can now push an extra 2000 RPM for a total of 22,000 on its turbo versus the REDMAGIC 8 Pro.
With custom lights available in both, the turbo fan and the shoulder triggers as well as a sleek, yet flat design at the rear with a glass finish, the REDMAGIC 9 Pro does it all while keeping it classy.
The REDMAGIC9 Pro comes in 3 distinct color options that set it apart from its competition.
This, coupled with three beautiful color options Solid Black (Sleet), Transparent Black (Cyclone), and Silver (Snowfall) make for a refined product that appeals to both gamers and professionals thanks to its unique design that wouldn’t look out of place at both, a gaming cafe and a business meeting alike. This, coupled with a screen to body ratio of 93.7% while housing a 6.8 inch 400 PPI display that pushes a peak brightness of 1500 Nits makes the REDMAGIC 9 Pro not only step into, but co-exist comfortably in flagship territory for other brands sans the cost.
Gaming Upgrades Under The Hood
The REDMAGIC 9 Pro also offers significant performance gains under the hood thanks to it switching things up to the latest Snapdragon Gen 3 chipset (also known as the Qualcomm SM8650-AB) pairing high-speed CPU cores to the Adreno 750 GPU. It leverages a singular Cortex-X4 core clocked at 3.3 GHz paired with 5 Cortex-A720 cores at 3.2 GHz in addition to 2 Cortex-A520 cores for more efficiency-centric tasks in an octa-core configuration.
This, coupled with multiple configurations that start from 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, cap out at 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. The global version that ships to the US and other territories comes in either a 12GB or 16GB RAM configuration while storage options for these are 256G and 512G respectively.
A Pioneer In Thermals And Battery Life
What sets the REDMAGIC 9 Pro apart is its ability to not only game well, but do so for far longer and more consistently than the competition. This is due to it leveraging the REDMAGIC lineup’s well-established lead in the cooling department with what ZTE calls the ‘ICE13.0 magic cooling system’ which exhibits one of the largest vapor chambers ever seen on a modern mobile device. This allows it to keep temperatures lower by double digits compared to the competition.
Users can, as a result immediately benefit from next to no throttling versus most alternatives that sport high-end chips with GPUs to match even as the phone remains a cool customer during multi-hour playthroughs of titles such asPlayerUnknown’s BattlegroundsandGenshin Impactwith visuals dialed to the maximum.
TheREDMAGIC9 Pro packs one of the most heavy-duty batteries that the smartphone has on offer to date, something that allows it to dominate nearly all endurance tests with ease.
The REDMAGIC 9 Pro has one more major trick up its sleeve that makes it an impressive offering versus the competition: It houses a significantly large capacity 6500 mAh battery under the hood that allows it to push as much as 56 hours of standby time even as it decimates most of its competition handily in 3rd party endurance tests.
This, coupled with support for as much as 80W of PD charging via its USB-C port which allows it to max out its battery within 35 minutes means that the REDMAGIC 9 Pro should rarely run out of juice for even the most avid gamers.
Optimized For Gaming
The REDMAGIC 9 Pro ships with Android 14 out of the box with the REDMAGIC OS 9 built on top of the latest version of Google’s linux-based operating system. This comes with a multitude of gaming-centric software optimizations that allows users to configure and customize the device for their specific uses.
With a preinstalled copy of Game Space, which includes the Game Lobby and SuperBase modules for storage and 3rd party device support respectively, the REDMAGIC 9 Pro comes ready for gamers looking to rebuild their experience out of the box with ease. With support for casting and recording titles thanks to the REDMAGIC Time application as well as support for both, the Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 consoles out of the box, the REDMAGIC 9 Pro can enable experiences far beyond what it can offer itself while leveraging its sharp display as a great output for users looking to play console-grade titles on the go.
Pricing Information and Conclusion
The biggest edge that the REDMAGIC 9 Pro has currently is its ability to pack in flagship-tier hardware and the latest Android OS in an affordable package that makes no major compromises while doing so. While it isn’t a perfect device, much like the flagships it competes with, it has a well-defined niche, one it over-delivers in considerably at a price that is significantly more competitive than both, its current and future anticipated competition from other gaming phone market players like ASUS down the line.
The REDMAGIC 9 Pro starts at $650 for the base Sleet colored model that comes in a 12GB/256GB trim with users able to pay an extra $150 ($800 all in) to double their storage to 512GB along with 16GB of RAM for the Snowfall and Cyclone themed models. Preorders will begin on the 27th of December with an Early Bird offer in play for gamers looking to secure the REDMAGIC 9 Pro with early access for users in play as early as the 2nd of Jan with a global launch in play a day later on the 3rd of the same month.
