Redmagic 9 Pro Review — Power without the price tag of the big names

It screams high performance gamer with a built-in RGB fan, the Redmagic 9 Pro is a powerful pocket gaming experience that gives you a great experience even when you’re not gaming. With a big battery, 80W charging and all the gaming hardware you need, this phone is ready for work and play.

It comes in a simple silver box with a minimal protective case, a nice red USB C – C cable and an 80W charger (US plug). Packaging, though efficient, still has a moulded, recyclable plastic insert to hold the phone in place and a decent-sized charger, along with a protective plastic sleeve for the phone itself. Unfortunately, the first review unit sent to us had some damage on the screen, but they were very prompt and apologetic.

Assuming locally sold units will ship with an Australian charger, the phone is ready for action. The protective case does the bare minimum in protection, basically protecting the back, top, and bottom edges. Unfortunately, as it is made of hard plastic, the case marks very easily.

This phone wants to be your friend; it’s doing everything you want to see in hardware. From the no-bump camera, customisable shoulder pads for gaming, in-screen fingerprint sensor, the hidden selfie camera and a see-through glass back, this phone is sleek.

It still has a headphone jack and dual speakers (not stereo in my experience) with DTS enhancement, a dual SIM slot, no expandable storage, though at 512GB internal storage, this is less of a downside. The phone has a gaming mode switch, which launches the gaming UI.

Unfortunately, I have switched it on accidentally more than intentionally. I really do like the power button being a prominent round button making it easier to differentiate from the volume buttons. The phone has LED lights all over, including the fan, power button and logo, which can be toggled off easily. The lights can be customised for notifications, so not just to look pretty. The fan itself does a perfect job of keeping the phone cool, whether it’s gaming, charging or general use, and with plenty of control, it doesn’t have to impede on battery performance. The fan cooling system sucks air in via the vent on the bottom (in landscape) side and blows out the top with a window of the RGB lit fan on the back. I did notice the fan chamber collecting a bit of dust from my pocket, so I really hope it doesn’t accumulate much more.

Battery life is excellent with 6500mAh to keep you going for over 48 hours (non-gaming) and reaching a full charge in about 30 min using their insanely fast 80W charging, so fast you can watch the % count up. If you decide to have the fan constantly active (via quick settings) then you will see a big battery life reduction.

Thankfully, the power management system is very comprehensive, often notifying the user of apps running in the background, though sometimes a bit too aggressive, stopping apps to the point where push notifications won’t come through. The phone does have a great feature for the solid gamer; when enabled, it will power the phone and not charge the battery, conserving the long-term battery life and reducing heat. The 6.8″ AMOLED 120hz display makes for a smooth and crisp (1116 x 2480) experience along with pleasant colour accuracy, good brightness 1600 nits and tough Gorilla glass 5.

As a gaming phone, it lives up to the hype, offering such a smooth experience with the Redmagic game space lobby looking after your gaming experience with tons of features from AI triggers, to scout mode magnified crosshair and built in screen recording. The shoulder triggers give you a massive advantage with a super responsive 520Hz sample rate. Your fast trigger fingers with both thumbs still on the screen will get you that chicken dinner in no time. With the Snapdragon 8, the load times are so fast that you’ll be playing in no time. Consistently achieving 30fps (playing PUBG) with full graphics, you soon forget you’re using a phone. Gaming on battery doesn’t have to be a short experience with 6500mAh giving hours of game play, the cooling system keeping the whole phone cool along the way. A fun machine, not a hand warmer.

The ZTE Redmagic OS (9) is fairly light allowing for a clean Android experience with only a few Redmagic features outside of the game mode. It seems like the system was designed for a location where Z-Casting is a more common method of sharing media with poor integration of the Google “Home” system. Casting notifications show that a device is playing media but not which device or what content is playing, and no native Google screencasting available via the shortcut settings which definitely feels like a step backwards on an Android. Another odd missing feature is searching the play store from the app drawer search bar. Other than these small issues the experience is quite good with my favorite “chop chop” torch gesture and double tap to wake screen.

This isn’t the top-tier camera experience, but it still performs well. The 16MP Selfie Camera suffers from being hidden behind the screen, losing its sharpness with a little bit of haloing artifacts, which is a bit of a disappointment. The camera app itself is feature-rich with a good AI-powered auto mode, making things easy and delivering some lovely portrait photos with the bouquet effect. The main cameras, primary and ultra-wide, both are 50MP with optical stabilisation as well as a 2MP macro lens. The photos capture the colours well, and the camera does well in low light.

The HDR prompting to “hold steady” for quite a few seconds is somewhat annoying though the resulting photo doesn’t appear to suffer if the shot isn’t held for the duration. Surprisingly no auto detection of QR codes forcing you to use another app, such as Google lens (built into search).

A very impressive phone, to have such a fun experience in your pocket ready any time of the day for a quick gaming session while still using your phone until the day is done. It really has been a delight to use; despite a few small quirks in the software, the clean Android experience and supreme hardware will deliver. At the price point of $1300 AU, this is a good investment for the avid gamer, though it wouldn’t let down those who just want a powerful phone with an impressive battery. If I were in the market for a gaming phone, I would not be disappointed with my purchase.