RedMagic 8S Pro review: The new ultimate gaming phone

Beyond adding the letter S to its predecessor's name, the RedMagic 8S Pro also brings an updated chipset, refreshed design and improved cooling to the flagship phone from the Chinese gaming powerhouse. It's not a big upgrade, but that's understandable given that the RedMagic 8S Pro is a mid-year refresh model and now a whole new phone.

Nevertheless, the RedMagic 8S Pro is now the model to get if you want a top-flight RedMagic phone, even if it's not that big a difference from the last model. It's certainly not worth trading in your RedMagic 8 Pro if you already have one. And if you value cameras, you’d be better off going for a more typical flagship phone.

The new RedMagic performs its usual trick: offering a whole bunch of computing power and gaming-focused hardware and software for less than you'd expect. It's one of the best gaming phones you can buy right now, even if there are some severe lows that come with the highs.

RedMagic 8S Pro review: Specs

RedMagic 8S Pro review: Price and availability

The RedMagic 8S Pro is on sale now, with the basic 12GB/256GB edition retailing at $649/£579 and the top-specced 16GB/512GB version starting at $799/£689. That matches the RedMagic 8 Pro launch price.

The same money spent elsewhere will get you phones like the Samsung Galaxy S23 or Google Pixel 7. These are excellent and well-rounded phones, but they're not as well-suited for gaming as the RedMagic for several reasons we'll get into below.

RedMagic 8S Pro review: Design and display

RedMagic has found the balance of being bold with its design without making its phones appeal to only the gaming crowd. The boxy design of the RedMagic 8S Pro looks modern, opting for colors like Platinum or Midnight that keep the gaming aesthetic to a minimum. That said, all models get RGB lighting in RedMagic's trademark cooling fan, which shines through a window in the back.

New for the 8S Pro is an etched back panel, which engraves concentric circles emanating from the spot where the fan is positioned. It results in a brushed metal-like texture that reminds me of the bottom of a cooking pot or the ring of an electric stovetop. But beyond that, this is the same body featured on the RedMagic 8 Pro. 

This approach extends to the RedMagic 8S Pro’s display, too. It's a good screen, measuring 6.8 inches and offering FHD resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. There’s also an under-display camera, which means no cutout to get in the way of your gaming. 

Normally it's near impossible to spot the difference in display quality, but I noticed that when the RedMagic 8S Pro shows certain blocks of color, the portion of display hiding the under-screen camera was visibly different. (Look for the green spot in the image below.) Hopefully, this is only an issue on my particular handset, or a quirk of pre-release software. But it's something worth looking into further if it's likely to irritate you when using the phone.

The actual 8S Pro panel uses Gorilla Glass 5, an older but still effective toughened glass that will help keep the phone scratch-free. There’s no water or dust resistance on the RedMagic 8S Pro, though, since the big cooling openings in the side of the phone makes it tricky to keep dust and water out of the phone's innards.

RedMagic 8S Pro review: Cameras

The RedMagic 8S Pro uses the same cameras as the original 8 Pro, which means a 50MP main sensor, along with an 8MP ultrawide camera and 2MP macro camera on the back, plus a 16MP selfie camera hidden under the display. 

Looking at the image samples, we can see that this latest RedMagic camera phone suffers from the same problems as previous models. The main shots, such as this one of the blue T-Junction outside Battersea Power Station are the phone's best. While the colors are not as rich as you'll find on other leading phones, the brightness gives the images an appealing look.

The ultrawide image of the flower arch leading to the coaling jetty offers a more typical brightness level, but also rather cool colors that don't show off the leaves, flowers and sky at their best.

The selfie camera, which lies hidden beneath the display, adds a weird fuzzy effect to its image, as well as washing out the colors of me and the background alike. Even the portrait effect isn't that strong.

You probably aren’t buying a gaming phone with its photo-taking abilities in mind. And there’s nothing about the RedMagic 8S Pro cameras that are going to change that mindset.

RedMagic 8S Pro review: Performance

RedMagic's biggest upgrade for the 8S Pro is the new "Leading Version” of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. This essentially means a version of the system-on-chip with a faster clock speed, similar to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy silicon that powers the Samsung Galaxy S23 series and the new Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5.

Unfortunately, the maximum memory and storage spec for the RedMagic 8S Pro is still 16GB RAM and 512GB storage. There's no 24GB Pro Plus version like the RedMagic model sold in China. Given how well the phone performs though, maybe the extra memory isn’t needed too much. 

As the benchmark results above show, the RedMagic 8S Pro performs better on both 3DMark Wild Life GPU tests, than the Galaxy S23 Ultra or Asus ROG Phone 7 Ultimate. The Samsung device claws a token win in the single-core test, and the ROG Phone is the multi-core champ, but the RedMagic conquers all otherwise.

I didn't notice a huge difference in video quality when playing games such as PUBG and Asphalt 9 on the RedMagic 8S Pro versus when I played on the Galaxy S23 Ultra. However playing for longer periods does work better on the RedMagic thanks to its effective cooling system, which keeps the phone comfortable to handle. 

The extra-responsive 960Hz touch-sampling rate ensures none of your inputs get missed. Typical phones have a 240Hz touch-sampling rate, but even the Asus ROG Phone 7 falls short with its otherwise excellent 720Hz frequency.

RedMagic 8S Pro review: Battery and charging

Inside the hulking frame of the RedMagic 8S Pro is a 6,000 mAh battery, larger than a typical flagship smartphone of this size. I tested it against the Galaxy S23 Ultra, another top-tier Android gaming phone but one with a smaller 5,000 mAh battery, the standard size for big Android phones of the past couple of years.

After letting both phones play a 1080p YouTube video at medium brightness and speaker volume for three hours, the RedMagic had drained from 100% to 73%, while the Samsung had dropped to 65%. While this method isn't as rigorous a test as the official Tom's Guide battery test, it is still decent proof of how the RedMagic can outlast the competition.

Once you've watched enough video or played enough games to drain the RedMagic 8S Pro, you can fill it up again with the included 65W charger. This filled the drained phone to 87% of capacity after 30 minutes of charging, and filled the phone completely after 40 minutes.

RedMagic 8S Pro review: Software and gaming features

RedMagic OS 8.0, this phone's version of Android 13, is full to bursting with gaming features. The cooling fan is a noticeable one, as are the capacitive triggers on the right edge of the phone that you can freely rebind to on-screen buttons as you see fit. But more capabilities hide beneath the surface.

A big part of it is a reworked cooling structure around the fan. RedMagic promises that the "ICE 12.0" system uses a new design that makes the phone even cooler to use. You can certainly tell the RedMagic 8S Pro is running demanding apps while holding it, but it never became uncomfortable for me to use even after a full gaming session.

More enhancements are located in the Game Space menu. By flicking the big red slider on the side of the phone, you switch on the fan, enabling a custom gaming performance and notifications profile that opens up an easy-to-navigate list of your installed games. You’ll also be able to access a bunch of tool overlays like notes, timers and frame rate counters to use while you play.

This could all prove very useful to dedicated e-sports nuts, but making use of them is tricky in places because of RedMagic's long-standing issue with translating the non-standard parts of the Android interface. To RedMagic's credit, I didn't find any untranslated parts of the interface this time. However, tooltips and explanations of various features, such as going through the settings app or tweaking things in Game Space, feel roughly interpreted into English. It forces you to think for a second about what the phone's trying to tell you about this feature.

Don't have faith that future updates will fix this, either. ZTE/RedMagic doesn't offer a guarantee of a specific number of platform updates for its phones, unlike Samsung which is quite proud of its four-year guarantee for Android OS updates. This could lock you out of future upgrades to core Android, and all but force you to upgrade your phone sooner than you'd ideally want to.

RedMagic 8S Pro review: Verdict

If you want the top gaming experience on a mobile phone right now, you may find nothing fits the bill better than the RedMagic 8S Pro. After paying less than the going rate for a phone of this size and spec quality, it'll be even easier to appreciate how long the RedMagic 8S Pro lasts on a single charge, how quickly you can refill it, and how the handset looks just as powerful as the chipset inside.

But in the long term, because of its uncertain software support window, dubious camera quality and missing water resistance rating, this phone could cause you trouble. It's not an easy recommendation like the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is, even though Samsung’s phone does cost quite a bit more.

Once again, the RedMagic 8S Pro is very much a phone for gamers, even if RedMagic has made strides toward broadening the device’s appeal somewhat. The RedMagic 8S Pro boasts a lot of good qualities, but if your priorities lie beyond running games at their best, it's not a phone to shortlist.