Imagine Santa dropping you into a gear heaven where you are free to pick up any component and build your dream performance phone. You can go as brash as the hardware fitted inside your laptop, and even borrow some tricks — such as a physical fan and liquid cooling – from gaming laptops. Sounds dreamy and outlandish, right?
Well, that’s essentially what the Red Magic 11 Pro is all about. Red Magic has made some over-the-top phones over the years, but its latest one takes things to the next level. See those blue tunnels at the back of the phone? Well, those are lanes for a cooling liquid, and you can actually see it moving when the phone shifts performance gears.
Is that all? Well, far from it. This phone is packed to the gills if raw performance is what you seek above anything else. But there’s enough “normal phone” on the table here that makes the Red Magic 11 Pro a terrific value at $749. There are some papercuts, but if you’re chasing a phone that will turn heads anywhere, this is one brash looker.
A performance monster
Let’s be real here. You’re buying the Red Magic 11 Pro for unbridled performance, and it delivers on that front. The version I have for review packs 16GB of RAM and 512GB storage, but you can climb all the way up to 24GB RAM and 1TB storage. At the helm is Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 silicon. This combination doesn’t disappoint.
On AnTuTu, this is the first phone that I’ve seen crossing the four million points figure. For comparison, that’s nearly 40% higher than what I got on Apple’s latest iPhones. It was only slightly slower than its Apple rival on the single-core metric, but still quite literally breathing down its neck. On Geekbench, it raced ahead of the iPhone 17 Pro by roughly a 10% gap on multi-core tests.
Shifting over to the more intensive side of things, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 silicon powering the Red Magic allowed it to pip the mighty A19 Pro inside the Apple flagship at frame generation output on 3DMark tests by nearly a 33-35% margin.
But what really surprised me the most was the stability figures, especially after running the demanding stress tests. After running the 3DMark stress tests, the stability figures were usually in the 70-80% ballpark. Those are some of the highest figures I have seen in a flagship phone.
What does that mean? Well, if you’re engaged in gaming, the frame rates will remain consistent, and you won’t notice any aggressive performance throttling even if you are playing them at the best graphics settings. I also noticed that there are no abrupt spikes in temperature or power draw when the phone is put through the paces.
These benchmark findings translate well to real-life gaming experience, as well. In general, any game that supports 120fps output will reach that level and maintain peak performance. The phone also offers a frame interpolation tech that can boost 60fps to a 120fps experience, so there’s that. Demanding titles such as Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail played well with the graphics settings maxed out.
In Zenless Zone Zero, the frame interpolation tech worked pretty well, boosting the output from 60 to 120fps. The dips were also pretty minimal, as the numbers only dropped to 118fps during intense combat scenes, despite maxing out all the graphics settings.
Even without jumping to Diablo mode, Wuthering Waves played consistently at 60fps at Rise with peak graphics settings. Other titles such as Call of Duty: Mobile and Diablo Immortal also played fairly well. Overall, this is a phone built for gaming, and if you’re eyeing something that is future-proof for retro emulation, cloud, and native mobile titles, this is the one to get.
But you don’t always have to go full berserk and overclock the performance in Diablo Mode to get the best out of the onboard silicon. The Rise mode can handle games just fine. The onboard shoulder buttons make a real difference in games, and they are bigger this time around.
Then there are the exclusive game plug-ins, which almost feel like cheating when enabled in games. The AI trigger plugin, in particular, helped me double the hit rate in shooter games while making it look like a cakewalk. There are plenty of other useful gaming-centric features that take the Red Magic 11 Pro experience to the next level.
Yes, the overall UI is terrible, but when you land in the GameSpace, it’s a whole other world of in-depth performance and game customizations. No smartphone brand is doing it quite like Red Magic, and it’s worthy of genuine praise.
That cooling tech ain’t a gimmick
Red Magic has equipped its latest flagship with what it calls the AquaCore cooling tech, touted to be the industry’s first mass-produced flowing liquid cooling system. It sits alongside other thermal management systems, such as a vapor chamber, liquid metal, and a physical fan with vents on the side.
The fan speed has also climbed up to 24,000 RPM fan, while the vapor chamber is the biggest you will find on a phone out there. The liquid cooling system relies on a fluorinated fluid, and you can actually see it moving through the channel visible across the rear glass shell.
Now, it’s not possible to quantify exactly how much cooling can be attributed to this system, but in my tests, the Red Magic 11 Pro proved to be the most capable phone at thermal management. After running a ray-traced stress test, the phone’s temperature only climbed to 41 degrees Celsius (or 105 degrees Fahrenheit).
Testing it against the 20-loop Wildlife Extreme Stress benchmark, the phone’s temperature only climbed by seven degrees on the Celsius scale. In flagship phones, these benchmarks often make the phone run toasty, and in some cases, they become too hot to hold.
The Red Magic 11 Pro, on the other hand, never gave me such trouble. I would like to highlight that the ambient temperature around me is usually in the 13-15 Centigrade (roughly 55 degrees Fahrenheit) range, so it’s plausible that the heat exchange through the metallic chassis is more effective compared to the summer. While playing games, the phone again maintains its cool noticeably better than its predecessor.
After a 30-minute session in Genshin Impact, the peak temperature I recorded was 37 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit), mostly concentrated around the fan area. That’s primarily because the fans circulate hot air flowing through the chassis. The remaining portion of the rear glass shell was usually a tad cooler, but not discernible enough to feel with your fingers.
In the wake of a 30-minute session of Free Fire at the best graphics settings, the phone’s temperature only went up from 34 to 37 degrees Celsius. After a 30-minute demon hacking and slashing session in Diablo Immortal at the best graphics settings, the peak temperature I recorded was 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
The metal shell, naturally, runs warmer, but overall, the Red Magic 11 Pro’s liquid cooling tech definitely appears to lend a hand at keeping the phone groovy without any worrisome heat buildup.
What else shines here?
The Red Magic 11 Pro comes equipped with a 6.85-inch OLED panel with extremely slim bezels, 2K resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, and 1,800 nits of peak brightness. Those are all the hallmarks of a nice screen, tailor-made for viewing content and gaming, of course. I only wish it were a tad less reflective, though the visual output and viewing angles are acceptable.
From a distance, it looks like the most immersive phone panel out there. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the selfie camera is hidden beneath the pixel layer. Yeah, I dig the clean looks, but the under-display camera doesn’t quite shine and takes average selfies, at best. In low-light scenarios, the situation gets worse with extremely soft self-portraits.
I love the battery endurance on this one. This one comes equipped with a massive 7,500 mAh pack. Even if you play demanding titles for 3-4 hours each day, the phone will still make it to the end of the day. Plus, support for 80W wired and 80W wireless charging is another massive perk.
There are two 50-megapixel cameras at the back, sitting alongside a 2-megapixel zoom camera. No, that’s not a typo, and expectedly, it takes bad pictures. The other two snappers are okay, but don’t go digging too deep into aspects like color realism, true-to-life shadows, and detailed surfaces.
Overall, the Red Magic 11 Pro doesn’t fit your typical mould of a value-first phone, like the iPhone 17 or OnePlus 15. And yet, it far surpasses those two in a few crucial areas, such as raw performance, memory, storage, battery size, charging chops, and display excellence.
For the rest, it’s average at best, especially when you consider the limited number of Android updates it will get in three years. But at a starting price of just $749, this phone is an outrageously good value if you are truly chasing the mobile gaming nirvana.
