RedMagic 12 Pro review: The new king of gaming phones

And while it's sad that we don't have more variety in this exciting niche, I think RedMagic is doing an impressive job representing it. I've been using the RedMagic 12 Pro for the last several weeks, and while I'm certain the new flagship is a meaningful step forward, it is also obvious that the full potential of the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset is yet to be unleashed.

Unfortunately, the RedMagic 12 Pro brings another price bump, which I suspect is mostly due to the ongoing memory crisis. Thank our AI overlords for that. But the 12 Pro now starts at $950 in the US, up from the 11S Pro's $850. In the EU, the 12 Pro's 256 GB model comes at €900, up from the 11S Pro's €800.

Starting November 12, customers will be able to purchase an early bird voucher for just $1, allowing them to place an order on November 17 - one day before open sales being. This is very useful, because RedMagic devices tend to sell out quite fast. The early bird voucher also enables a $30 discount, so if you're really looking to buy the RedMagic 12 Pro, the early bird voucher sounds like a terrific thing to get!

But now, let's start our in-depth look at the 12 Pro with its updated design!

RedMagic 12 Pro Design and Display

Slimmer and lighter, but still a gaming design through and through.

RedMagic has been steadily evolving its phone design, and while it's still pursuing this classic boxy, no-camera-bump shape, I have a feeling that the company is slowly but surely reducing the number of flashy gaming elements on the exterior.

The first time this made an impression on me was with the 11S Pro, which had a noticeably cleaner back compared to the one on the RedMagic 11 Pro. Now, with the 12 Pro, I would say the company has gone with an even more minimalist approach. Don't get me wrong, you still have the visible liquid cooling on the back, the colorful lighting effects, the red Magic key, and whatnot, but I feel like it's cleaner than ever.

This is generally not bad in terms of making the phone more accessible to a wider audience. On the other hand, I think RedMagic should be careful in pursuing this more minimalist aesthetic because it risks losing some of the beloved gaming character. I think we're still safe, but it's just something I've been thinking about.

What I love about the design of the Red Magic 12 Pro is that it's gotten a bit thinner and lighter. These are not small phones, and even though the 11 Pro is perfectly portable and comfortable to hold and use, a slightly slimmer profile and a slightly lower weight is always a good thing.

The RedMagic 12 Pro's profile is now 8.6mm, while the 11S Pro was 8.9mm. Meanwhile, the weight has gone down from 230 g to 223 g. Not huge reductions, but still meaningful.

I also like the fact that the touch trigger buttons have been reduced in size a little bit, because they used to be a bit oversized in the 11 Pro, in my opinion. That is especially considering the fact that they are still just one button, and the software does not allow splitting each into two separate buttons, like ASUS used to do with the ROG Phone. 

The power button is now a small round key, similar to an Xperia phone. Meanwhile, the red Magic key is now a key and is no longer a slider. That's okay in my opinion, I don't mind the change. You can still set it to do a number of different things, like launching Game Space, toggling the flash, launching the camera, or using it as a mute switch.

If you've used a recent RedMagic phone, you know what to expect from the display. However, the BOE X10 used in the 11 Pro has been replaced with the new BOE X11 panel. It is still a 6.85-inch OLED display, and the resolution remains the same at 2688 x 1216 pixels, but the refresh rate has been increased from 144 Hz to 185 Hz.

I also find the display a bit easier to calibrate. Color-wise, RedMagic's display settings allow you to pick from a number of color vibrancy profiles like colorful, standard, soft, and vivid. These are very useful in finding a color profile that suits your preferences. 

I have absolutely no complaints regarding the display. I only wish it was a little bit wider. Now, don't get me wrong: the display is as big as they get on flagship phones. But if the panel was ever so slightly wider, that would still allow for one-handed typing but would also make overall game visuals bigger. Phone displays are typically very tall, and the same goes for the RedMagic 12 Pro. With a little bit of extra width, this would definitely make for graphics that are considerably larger and easier to see. There are some wide candybars popping up now, like Huawei's Pura X View, so who knows, maybe RedMagic will take up this trend.

Many people would also enjoy the fact that RedMagic has slimmed the bezels on the 12 Pro down even further, and most notably the bottom bezel. Previously, there used to be just a little bit of a chin to the display, but now I think the bezels on the RedMagic 12 Pro are perfectly symmetrical. 

Another great thing RedMagic has done this year is to certify the RedMagic 12 Pro as an IP68 and IP69 water- and dust-resistant phone. The one caveat here is that the turbo fan area is rated at IPX8, meaning that it has a different resistance rating from the rest of the phone, which, in my opinion, is totally fine. Knowing that the 12 Pro is officially rated for water and dust resistance certainly brings more peace of mind.

RedMagic 12 Pro Performance & Benchmarks

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 platform is still very young, so performance will only get better.

The performance of the RedMagic 12 Pro is a bit of a complicated affair right now, and I believe it can't be measured very reliably with synthetic benchmarks at this point. Perhaps this will change with further software updates and with newer Qualcomm drivers for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. At least for the time being, I'm finding it hard to give you one number that could indicate how much faster it is, compared to the RedMagic 11 Pro or 11S Pro. 

If we look at the performance benchmarks, the results we see are not very consistent. For example, if we look at the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme stress test results, we don't see any improvement over the RedMagic 11S Pro, which used the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Leading Version chipset. As a matter of fact, we can see that there is considerably more performance throttling on the RedMagic 12 Pro.

This is not necessarily bad and could be due to more conservative thermal management on the 12 Pro, and if that's the case, that's fine. There is no reason to push the chipset too much out of its comfort zone. Switch over to the Solar Bay Extreme test or the Steel Nomad Light test, and you can see that there is actually a very considerable improvement in terms of speed over the previous models. 

Generally, Steel Nomad Light and Solar Bay are heavier tests designed to measure modern gaming-related workloads, so this is a good indication that the 12 Pro is a meaningful step forward when it comes to graphics processing. Meanwhile, if you look at the CPU-focused Geekbench tests, there doesn't appear to be a similarly meaningful step forward, but this may not be a definitive indication.

In terms of subjective impressions, obviously the phone flies throughout the system, and when it comes to gaming, it's definitely a beast. How much faster it is compared to the previous generation phone, I can't really tell, but by the looks of it, there will be specific scenarios and workloads where it's going to excel.

The active cooling is a very big deal on RedMagic phones, and the company has made sure to advance pretty much every aspect of it in the 12 Pro. The fan is faster, and the signature liquid cooling is now bigger, covering considerably more of the surface area, including the one over the chipset. To me, the biggest deal in RedMagic's phones actually comes from the superb passive cooling, which consists of a huge vapor chamber with high thermal conductivity, as well as liquid metal embedded into copper foil.

All these heat-absorbing and spreading components allow the RedMagic 12 Pro remain operational during intense workloads for considerably longer compared to most other high-end Android smartphones. This is one area where standard flagships can't keep up with a real gaming phone.

Once again, I'll say that there is nothing wrong with RedMagic's Android UI. It's clean, it's fast. It doesn't have a ton of customization settings, but it's got the right ones. On top of that, it has the GameSpace and Energy Cube software, with features to enable a whole host of useful gaming functionality.

Most of the in-game goodies you'll be using are enabled from Energy Cube, which has been slightly refreshed to have a bit more modern UI, but on the whole, most of the features seem to be the same.

Speaking of features, there's a ton of essential stuff in here, such as:

• RedMagic's versatile performance modes
• Bypass charging (charging separation)
• Accidental touch protection
• Motion control
• Key mapping
• and more!

Thanks to this software, you can get almost any type of game to work well. Obviously, native Android titles are just fine without doing anything fancy, but once you step into the world of emulation, you may sometimes need to crank things up to Rise mode or even Diablo mode to get things running smoothly. Just remember that both of these overclocking modes should always be used along with a decent external cooler, in order to maintain safe temperatures. That's especially true for longer gaming sessions.

Sadly, there is still no way to assign more than one mapping to each of the touch-sensitive trigger keys. Each of the two trigger keys is simply one touch-sensitive zone. Yes, there are different functions and modes you can assign to each key, but there doesn't seem to be a way to truly have split functionality. This is something that ASUS nailed with the ROG Phone, as its software allows you to have an L1/L2 or R1/R2 type functionality for the trigger keys.

The trigger buttons are smaller on the Red Magic 12 Pro, but are still sizeable enough for comfortable use. Actually, if they could be a little bit closer towards the center of the right-hand side, that could make them a bit more ergonomic compared to how they're currently positioned towards the edges of the right-hand side, but overall, they are perfectly fine. They can once again light up in different colors, which is a cool touch. In gaming, though, the left trigger lights up red, while the right one lights up blue, and there doesn't seem to be a way of customizing this.

The presence of the trigger keys is essential to making fast, competitive gameplay possible. On a phone, this is the best way to enable simultaneous aiming and shooting, so it's very important for RedMagic to keep and improve the triggers further with future generations. First on my wishlist is still the ability to assign two different touch actions to each trigger. What the best way to achieve this is – I'll let RedMagic decide.

I really enjoy the battery life of the RedMagic 12 Pro. Once again, the company has outdone itself in fitting a humongous battery inside this phone. TheRed Magic 11 Pro came with a 7,500 mAh battery, which was already huge, but the RedMagic 12 Pro comes with an incredible, 8,400 mAh cell. This super high-capacity battery allows for truly worry-free daily use, which feels great. If you're interested in a gaming phone, you probably play some very demanding mobile games, so you must know this tends to gobble up battery life like crazy. But even with a healthy dose of gaming on the 12 Pro, it holds up like a champ. It really takes a lot of work to deplete the battery on the RedMagic 12 Pro. If you don't do anything crazy, it can easily take you through two full days of use, if not more.

Personally, my favorite thing about this huge 8,400 mAh battery is that it conditions me to not care about my battery life throughout the day. This is because, with the RedMagic 12 Pro, I know I always have more than enough left. 

Another very cool thing in the 12 Pro is its extremely fast 80W charging, which lets you top up the huge battery in no time. All of these things add up to create an effortless and very high-quality-of-life experience with this phone. 

RedMagic has upgraded the audio setup on the 12 Pro, whereas before we had a powerful loudspeaker and an okay earpiece speaker. Now both of these components are quite strong, and they deliver full, bassy audio. There's something quite satisfying to the 12 Pro's speakers, I really like them. One weird thing I noticed, though, is that the sound gets notably thinner on the highest volume setting. They tend to sound best if you don't crank them up to maximum.

The haptic motor is also very good, delivering responsive, tight feedback, which is great for gaming.