Redmagic 11S Pro

I had absolutely no prior knowledge of the Redmagic brand and all I'd managed to find out before it arrived was that it was a "dedicated" gaming phone. I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but now I've been testing the phone for a couple of weeks and have managed to use more features than I ever thought I would on a mobile phone.

You see, I'm a fairly basic user of such devices. Making calls, sending texts, using social media, and so on are the main things I do. Of course, I've played a few simple games over the years, and I don't just mean the classic Snake.

There are two features in particular here that feel a bit "unique", but before we dive into those, let's cover the usual technical details. The Red Magic 11S Pro has a 6.85" AMOLED screen capable of 144Hz. It has a brightness of 1,800 nits and a resolution of 1,216x2,688, and it's a brilliant screen that works well in bright light, which has certainly been a major advantage during this sunny summer. Under the bonnet is a Qualcomm SM8850-1-AD Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor with 16GB of RAM. These are impressive specifications, primarily designed to handle games with high FPS and this is also the main focus of its marketing: gaming. But as I said, more on that later.

In terms of design, it's quite a... different phone, to put it mildly. This is because the back features a window revealing its liquid cooling system. It weighs 230 grams and sits very comfortably in the hand and the included silicone case with a textured back makes it very comfortable to hold. However, the case does conceal the view of the liquid cooling system and the design on the back quite significantly. But then again, it's not as if you look at the back that often anyway...

Returning to the brilliant display, there are pre-set refresh rates of 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz, and 144Hz. There's also an auto-function that switches the refresh rate between 60Hz and 120Hz depending on which app is being used.

A high refresh rate, combined with everything else going on under the bonnet, naturally takes a heavy toll on the battery, so it's a relief there's a substantial 7,500mAh battery under the casing. But I also find that it still drains very quickly. Admittedly, there's a simple explanation for this, though it's a rather two-sided one. As the phone is packed full of advanced, top-of-the-range features, it's only natural that battery life suffers, but if you want to extend it, you simply need (in principle) to lower the refresh rate, reduce the screen brightness, and tweak a few other settings to get longer battery life. But these are features the phone offers and that you want to use. Otherwise, you might as well have gone for something simpler.

In short, there's a lot here that's top-class in terms of features. But you'll have to expect to charge the phone during the day if you want to make use of them all.

Thankfully, the battery charges quickly, really quickly, in fact. With support for 80W charging via both cable and wirelessly, it doesn't take long for the battery level to rise, and interestingly, it's also whilst charging that you notice one of the phone's cooling features, as the sound of a fan kicks in. It's not particularly loud, but you can hear it that's for sure. Thankfully, there's a setting to switch it off completely or to pause it when a call comes in. I don't know, technically speaking, how much the fan actually helps, but I certainly never felt the phone got as warm as other models tend to when using fast charging. So, it obviously serves some purpose.

Speaking of cooling, let's take a look at the liquid cooling system. A slider on the side takes you to the phone's "Game Space", where you can organise all your games, adjust settings, monitor FPS, configure profiles for the processor and graphics, and everything else. As mentioned, you can see the liquid cooling chamber on the back and the whole system is called AquaCore, with it helping to keep temperatures down to deliver incredible performance whilst gaming.

There's support for games at 144Hz (including PUBG Mobile and Minecraft), as well as support for certain games at 144Hz with 2K resolution. Titles such as Genshin Impact, Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, and Honkai: Star Rail run smoothly without any issues, and I spent a couple of intense hours playing the mobile version of Rainbow Six: Siege, where even though I'll never be a player who gets used to (or intends to get used to) touch controls, I was constantly impressed by how smoothly it ran and just how good a game can actually look on a mobile phone. Popular gacha games like those mentioned above look brilliant, with stylish graphics and a smooth, fluid frame rate.

As you've hopefully noticed, the phone has a lot going for it in terms of performance, but there's one area where I wish they'd gone the extra mile, and that's its cameras. The specifications are as follows: a 16 MP front-facing camera and two rear cameras, including a main (wide-angle) camera and an ultra-wide-angle camera, where both are 50 megapixels. The video specifications are the most impressive aspect of these, as they offer the ability to record at 8K/30fps, 4K/30/60fps, and 1080p@30/60/120/240fps.

Let's start with the front camera, or the selfie camera, if you like. In the on-screen preview, it looks very overexposed and also a bit "soap opera"-like, with it also struggling to get the autofocus right. Exposure also takes a bit too long, and it involves a fair bit of trial and error to get sharp, clear photos.

The photos taken with the phone's rear cameras are all the better for it, although I do miss the "portrait" mode that my previous phone had. It does, however, have an impressive macro mode where you can get really close to the subject and achieve great sharpness. So overall, I'm certainly not dissatisfied with the cameras (the fact that the selfie camera isn't great doesn't really bother me much), but in contrast to the phone's other fantastic specifications, they still don't feel quite as top-notch as I'd have liked.

After a couple of weeks with the Redmagic 11S Pro, it's clear, as I've pointed out a few times in the text, this is a phone for those who want enough performance to play games. In other words, I find it a bit difficult to recommend it as an indispensable phone if these features aren't of interest to you. In that case, you might as well spend your money on a model with better cameras or some other feature you consider important. But if you like using your phone for gaming, it's definitely top-class, and ultimately, it's aimed primarily at users for that very purpose.