RedMagic 11 Pro review: That's one cool phone! Literally

The RedMagic 11 Pro is one of the coolest phones we've tested. Both metaphorically and literally. It's the first smartphone to feature a functional liquid cooling system, but there are other cool things about this device.

The signature active cooling fan is also present alongside the biggest vapor chamber in the industry, and all this cooling prowess is there to extract every bit of performance out of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

The design of the RedMagic 11 Pro is unique with its completely flat back and the under-display front camera. The transparent back and the blue cooling liquid make this phone one of the most unique-looking devices out there.

Of course, being a gaming smartphone, the RedMagic 11 Pro features a very fast 144 Hz display with an insane touch sampling rate, capacitive shoulder buttons, and RGB lights. RedMagic somehow found space for the biggest battery we've seen in a smartphone so far, a 7,500 mAh cell, to get you through a day of non-stop gaming.

All the above sounds like a game-changing package of features, and today we're going to test all of them in detail.

Let's start with an overview of the RedMagic 11 Pro specs:

We've said this many times, but we're living in a uniform and a bit boring smartphone era, design-wise. The fact of who copied whom really doesn't matter that much, but the end result is that popular flagship phones from the big companies look very similar.

Enter the RedMagic 11 Pro. We know it's a gaming phone, and they tend to look radical and a bit over-the-top with all the RGB lights, ridges, fans, and strange graphics on the back, but this one has the perfect balance of futuristic look and style.

We got the Subzero version, which is a silver-metal design. The back of the phone is completely flat, with no camera bump whatsoever. The blue-liquid cooling system is visible in the center and forms a circle. Underneath the glass you can see polished and textured metal, the Snapdragon logo, the active cooling fan, the camera system, and the RedMagic RGB logo.

Speaking of RGB, the lights on this phone are pretty subtle and stylish. They can be seen on the fan, the logo, and the capacitive shoulder triggers. Around the flat aluminum frame you can find the volume rocker, the power button, the textured red slider that activates game mode (but can be programmed to do other things). There's a 3.5 mm headphone jack on the top as well.

There are three color options—Cryo, Nightfreeze, and Subzero. The first one features a non-transparent back and is the most subtle of them all. Nightfreeze and Subzero are basically identical design-wise, but one's black and the other is metallic silver.



The retail box is lavish by modern standards. RedMagic has included an 80W charging brick, a USB-C cable, and a soft, semi-transparent case. There's also a pre-applied screen protector, so you're set from the get-go. No additional purchases needed.

There's a big 6.85-inch display with a 1216 x 2688 pixel resolution (431 PPI) front and center on the RedMagic 11 Pro. It's an OLED panel with a 1-120 Hz dynamic refresh rate and the option to go up to 144 Hz during gaming. 

The screen is made by BOE featuring a new X10 material, which should boost brightness and efficiency, and just like the past couple of generations, it's a full-screen display with an under-display front camera. Let's see how bright this thing can get.

Display Measurements:

RedMagic lists 1,800 nits of typical brightness in the RedMagic specs sheet, and the phone nails it at 100% APL with a result of 1,822 nits, well within the margin of error. At 20% APL the phone was able to output 2,211 nits, which is also impressive. The minimum brightness is not on the level of iPhone and Galaxy displays at over 3 nits, but the color temperature and accuracy are good.

In terms of biometrics, the RedMagic 11 Pro upgrades the fingerprint scanner to an ultrasonic one, and it's blazing fast and also quite accurate. Facial recognition uses just the front, under-display camera, so it's not very secure.

Gaming phones are not famous for their camera prowess, and the RedMagic 11 Pro is not an exception. The phone features basically two cameras on its back: a main wide-angle 50MP camera with a 1/1.55" sensor under a lens with an F/1.9 aperture and another 50MP ultrawide camera with a rather small 1/2.88" sensor and a focal length equivalent of 13mm.

Looking at our lab tests and camera benchmark, the overall score of 143 (out of 165) is not that bad for a gaming phone, but nothing to write home about. The lack of a dedicated telephoto drags the score down, and the video score is also pretty low. Lab tests are one thing, but real-life photos can help paint a better picture, so let's take a look at some samples.

In good lighting conditions, on a bright autumn day, the RedMagic 11 Pro produces pleasant images. The main camera resolves enough detail, and the images look realistic in terms of colors. The end result can't rival big camera phones, but that's not why you would buy this device anyway.

The ultrawide camera pretty much mimics the main in terms of color tone and details, but we reckon it will struggle in low-light conditions due to the smaller sensor. Again, nothing spectacular but decent results nonetheless.

There's no dedicated telephoto on this phone, so all 3X samples are digital, and they don't look very good. There's a substantial lack of detail with software algorithms smearing everything to give it a passable look. Digital zoom on this phone is just a no-go.

Video quality is passable; the colors look realistic, but there's a bit of noise. The image also looks a bit flat, and the level of detail is not on par with dedicated camera phones or flagships from the big three (Apple, Samsung, and Google). 

The RedMagic can shoot in 8K, but we recommend 4K at 60 frames per second for best results. The image stabilization is quite good, actually, and you can zoom in while recording, as the zoom is digital and zooming doesn't require physically switching the cameras.

The RedMagic 11 Pro proudly bears the flag of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The stamp is etched under the back glass to show this phone is part of the Elite. What's even more interesting is the active cooling system, consisting of a mini-fan spinning at 24,000 rpm, a 13,116 mm² vapor chamber, and also a liquid cooling system with a ceramic nano-pump.

Modern silicon is quite fast, but thermal throttling is a serious issue, so it will be very interesting to see how the RedMagic 11 Pro performs under load and also how it sustains the performance. The new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has the potential to beat Apple's A19 Pro silicon, so let's see how the phone fared in our performance benchmarks.

Geekbench scores are in line with what other Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phones have been showing lately. In the single-core test, the A19 Pro silicon still has the edge, but the multi-core performance of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is second to none.

The graphics performance is interesting as well, mainly due to the testing procedure. We use 3DMark's Wildlife Extreme Stress Test, which basically runs 20 instances of this graphically demanding test. It's a great opportunity to test sustained performance and, in this case, the sophisticated cooling system of the RedMagic 11 Pro.

The results speak volumes. Not only does the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 excel in this task, but the active cooling system was able to maintain the performance relatively high with a stability score of 85%! Impressive. So, it looks like this liquid cooling is not just a gimmick but actually brings real-life advantages to the table.

It's worth noting that the active fan is pretty loud, and even though the phone features IPX8 resistance, we advise caution when in dusty environments or near water. 

The RedMagic 11 Pro has a wide variety of storage configurations starting at 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, passing through 16/512GB, and going to extremes with the 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage variant.

The phone runs RedMagicOS 11, which is a UI skin on top of Android 16. The interface is pretty clean with the necessary additions of the fan controls, liquid cooling controls, and of course, Game Space.

The red slider on the side of the RedMagic 11 Pro activates this mode by default. It takes you to the dedicated gaming space and gives you access to the games installed on the phone, detailed statistics, gaming tools, plugins, and your anime-like virtual assistant, Mora.

Speaking of assistants and AI, there's Gemini on board the RedMagic 11 Pro, and you can assign the power button to launch Google's AI with a long press. 

Other than that, there's something called RedMagic AI+, and it includes features such as extracting summaries from voice recordings, creating AI wallpapers, and adding privacy stickers to faces in the gallery. For everything else, you should reach out to Gemini.

You get two major Android updates and two years of security patches on the RedMagic 11 Pro, which is on the low side, considering the big companies committing to seven years.

The silicon-carbon gamble that most of the Chinese phone manufacturers made is paying off. You can learn more about the tech here, but this new battery technology uses silicon embedded in the graphite anode to increase the capacity per volume. The RedMagic 11 Pro comes with an industry-leading 7,500 mAh battery in its 8mm thick chassis, which is mind blowing.

Unsurprisingly, the phone topped our battery benchmark quite easily, and it is now the reigning battery champion with a 10h 43m overall score. In real-life use, you'd be hard-pressed to drain the battery in one day. You'll need to play games for more than 12 hours straight to do that, and if you use the phone more modestly, you're going to get two full days on a single charge easily.

The battery test results are impressive in all three segments. You get almost 26 hours of nonstop browsing, 15 hours of video playback, and 14 hours of gaming. No other phone comes close to these numbers, and there are more good news below.

The RedMagic 11 Pro supports wireless charging, the company has found a space to put wireless charging coils despite the huge battery. Wired charging is pretty fast, again considering how big the battery is, and you get to 70% in just 30 minutes. A charge from 0 to 100% takes less than one hour, or 57 minutes to be precise. RedMagic says it takes 68 minutes to charge the phone wirelessly, but we still need to find a proper wireless charger to check this one out. Stay tuned.

The stereo speakers inside the RedMagic 11 Pro are quite powerful. The phone gets really loud, and you won't have trouble with missed calls even in loud environments. The audio quality is also good; the phone remains clear almost to max volume levels, with just a tad of harmonic distortion in the high frequency. 

The bass is decent, and you can feel it through the chassis of the phone. An added bonus is the 3.5 mm headphone jack, a relic of the past rarely seen in modern flagship phones.

The haptics are very good, as one should expect from a gaming phone. The vibration is strong and precise. Nothing to complain about here.

You're probably looking at the final score of the RedMagic 11 Pro and thinking, "This one beats the iPhone 17 and the Samsung S25; I should probably get it!" Things are more nuanced than a simple rating. The RedMagic 11 Pro is an absolute beast when it comes to raw power and battery life, no doubt about it. These two areas give the phone quite a push in the final score.

However, the camera system is a bit lacking, and the software support situation is underwhelming as well. If you're prepared to compromise in these areas, the RedMagic 11 Pro will give a lot back. It looks like nothing else on the market, it has a great screen, it's super-fast and stays fast under load, and the battery life is second to none. 

Starting at $699, the RedMagic 11 Pro could be a unique alternative to your iPhone, Galaxy and Pixel phone, even if you're not into gaming.