RedMagic 8 Pro Review: What to Know About This Lower-Priced Gaming Phone
Tech
Speaker 1: The Red Magic A Pro is one of the cheaper gaming phones out there, including some of the latest specs at a lower price than we see in flagship phones. Like the Samsung Galaxy S 23, you get a lot of storage memory, a great display and super fast charging. But before going for this deal, you need to understand the trade offs that make this a lower cost gaming phone. For a starting price of $649, you get a phone that includes a Snapdragon eight Gen two chip, which also powers phones [00:00:30] like the Galaxy eSSH twenty three two hundred fifty six gigs of storage and 12 gigs of memory. The Step Up 7 99 model ups to Tip 512 gigs of space and 16 gigs of memory for a high-end phone, including the latest chip, along with a number of other power focus features that sounds like a steal. And regardless of the model you have, you get a great looking 6.8 inch screen that uses an under display front facing camera so that there are no notches or display cutouts blocking [00:01:00] any games or videos.
Speaker 1: The screen has a very responsive 960 megahertz touch sampling rate, meaning a response quickly to taps and swipes, 120 hertz refresh rate, and a 1300 knit max brightness. The screen is always a key feature for any phone and it really makes games and videos look great. The Red Magic a Pro comes in three different model styles too. You can get a matte black model that goes more traditional or you can get a transparent titanium or void model that shows off the insides of your [00:01:30] phone. The Red Magic also brings back its internal cooling fan programmable shoulder buttons, and a sliding switch that lets you boot the phone into a gaming focused launcher. It's Fast 65 wat charging, which I found could recharge the phones. 5,000 milligram per hour battery from 3% to 97% in 38 minutes is super handy. When I launch games on the Red Magic a Pro, the phone will turn on its cooling fan and launch a number of custom settings that can't be set up from game to game. For instance, for [00:02:00] Fortnite, I have set up the shoulder buttons to help me aim and fire. In shadow Gun legends, I use the shoulder buttons for weapon switching. Like with other gaming phones, you can bring up an extra menu with fast access to screen recording sound controls, phone performance stats, and options for limiting your notifications. Cameras are normally a weak spot for gaming phones and the Red Magic a Pro definitely continues to keep photography as more of a side feature.
Speaker 1: [00:02:30] The phone has a rear 50 megapixel main camera paired up with an eight megapixel wide angle lens and a two megapixel macro lens. Photos are actually pretty good and the cameras can shoot eight K resolution video or 4K at 60 frames per second. The 16 megapixel under display front facing camera, however, is great for staying out of the way. You can barely see the camera when you are viewing other content, but when I'm using it for photos or video calls, I really don't look good at [00:03:00] all. Let me show you. The front facing camera makes me look pretty blurry. This makes sense under display Camera technology is pretty new still. That said, it's a great idea and it really helps make the screen itself feel uninterrupted, unimpeded. But when I took this phone on a tour of Grand Central Station, the difference in photo quality between my rear camera photos and the front facing camera photos was stark.
Speaker 1: Colors have not as much range as we're used to, uh, with this front facing camera as we see on [00:03:30] cheaper phones. However, given time, it is a great idea and one that we could expect to see on future phones. The biggest problem with the Red Magic a Pro is its software outside of gaming. While it runs Android 13, I find the settings menu to often be unintuitive and some of the default apps are strange picks, all things you could swap. For instance, I immediately swapped out the next word browser for Firefox and you could install a different Android launcher if you want better control over the way apps and widgets display [00:04:00] on your phone. The Red Magic a Pro is also only slated for one guaranteed major software update to Android 14 and its security update timeline is also guaranteed for only one and a half to two years.
Speaker 1: This is quite small compared to gaming Phone Rival asus, who is now committing to two years of software updates and four years of security updates for its Rog phone seven line. This also falls well short of the support commitments provided by Samsung and Google, both of whom provide at least three years of software updates [00:04:30] and five years of security update support. The Red Magic A Pro is one of the cheaper ways to get the latest Snapchat and Chip lots of storage and memory and a responsive phone that could handle power intensive games along with other tasks. However, that comes with a caveat that this isn't a phone that's going to be getting years of support and ships with a software experience that will require tweaking that might not be a big deal. For someone that was already planning on taking the Red Magic a pro and using the customizability of Android to make the phone perform exactly as they [00:05:00] want it, swap some settings, change your Android launcher and you might be good to go. But because of the short update timeline promised by Red Magic, the phone is best for a gamer that already knows that they will wanna upgrade their phone in two years to whatever the latest greatest chip will be. Then for more information on the Red Magic, a Pro and other gaming phones that we're checking out, check out the links below as well as on cnet.com.
