Nubia REDMAGIC 7 Review

It’s been a while since I had a new phone, over three years in fact! So I was eager to check out what was new with handsets a bit more in my price range these days. Then Nubia offered to lend me a REDMAGIC 7 for a review, which is a £500-£600 Android phone.

In the box you get the REDMAGIC 7 handset, a clear phone case, a US power adapter, a USB Type-C data cable, a SIM tray ejector, and a warranty card. While it was unfortunate that I had to cobble together a charging solution since I didn’t have a spare adaptor plug, it’s not unheard of for manufacturers to limit the number of plugs in boxes. And who knows, maybe the ones sold in the UK and Europe have the right plugs in the box.

While the technical stuff goes a bit over my head, I figured I’d list it here. The handset itself is metal and glass, weighing in at 215g with dimensions of H170.57xW78.33xD9.5mm. The display is 6.8 inches FHD+ AMOLED with a resolution of 2400x1080 pixels, and a refresh rate that you can change between 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz, and 165Hz. It can hold two SIM cards, but no micro-SD card, and is capable of connecting to a 5G mobile network as well as the usual NFC, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi bits. I was lent the slightly higher specced Supernova variant which came with 18GB LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB UFS3.1 ROM. As well as being a bit more powerful, it comes with a clear backplate letting you see inside the handset a little, including the RGB cooling fan.

Yeah, I said an RGB cooling fan. While the colours are not customisable (despite what is claimed I found no way to do so), you can at least change the speed between “Rapid cooling” and “Intelligent adjustment” depending on what you’re doing. If you’re just playing a game for a level or two you won’t want the fan draining the battery unnecessarily, after all.

While the fan can be started at any time, it will automatically launch when you use the REDMAGIC Gaming Button on the left side of the handset to load the REDMAGIC 7 into Game Space mode. Any apps that you select to appear in this mode will also start the fan when you open them, but the Game Space has some additional benefits. There are a variety of plugins available for games like Crossfire and Call of Duty to improve your game — while not cheats they do give you a bit of an advantage. But the handset has two soft shoulder buttons which are customisable in Game Space mode so you’ll already have an advantage over someone who doesn’t have them. They’re also useful in games that don’t have a competitive mode, since as I said they are customisable.

The other thing available in Game Space is the ability to stream the REDMAGIC 7 to a PC with RedMagic Studio. While it seems mainly to allow you to more easily livestream, of course you can be a bit more precise with a mouse than you can with a finger, and you’re not looking at a smaller display. Oh, and Game Space allows you to mute certain notifications while active, just in case you want to let some of them through but not others.

I played a variety of games on the REDMAGIC 7 and it performed superbly in them all. Both streaming to and from the handset, as well as running natively, Hitman Sniper: The Shadows and Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds held up as well as anything I put through the Xbox Game Pass app. The graphics were great thanks to the Adreno GPU, everything ran smoothly, and the volume on those speakers was surprisingly loud.

With a big 4500mAh battery that lasts absolutely ages even when playing a game — or rather, especially then I should say — I was surprised at how quickly the handset charges. The fingerprint scanner in the screen that you can use to unlock the handset is better than my existing phone, so that also helps save a bit of battery power. The REDMAGIC 7 is a bit of a beast in all respects!

Actually, the only thing that I can’t give a glowing recommendation for are phone calls. The quality wasn’t very good and the signal kept getting quite weak. As far as the mobile data and Wi-Fi went, things were stable and great, it just seemed to struggle a bit with voice calls.

I should briefly mention the cameras, the three rear ones rated at 64MP+8MP+2MP. I don’t take a lot of photos, but the ones that I took with the REDMAGIC 7 seemed fine. It watermarks them in the lower left, though you may be able to deactivate that.

If you’re looking for a new Android phone and want it for gaming, then you can’t go wrong with the REDMAGIC 7. It handles games perfectly and has a lot of options to help you out even in single-player games, and the cooling solutions are ideal. It has all of the usual things you’d want from a phone, too, so you can make all of the calls and texts you like.