Smartphone with the breeze: ZTE Red Magic 3 review

In May, the guys from ZTE Nubia introduced the new Red Magic 3 gaming smartphone : for only 500 Euros, this year's flagship features and unique gaming chips are offered. Inside, the best Snapdragon 855 processor for today, 8 + 128 gigabytes of memory, or 12 + 256 and three colors to choose from: absolutely dull black, bright red and camouflage for the 12/256 version.

Sony’s 48 megapixel camera with the currently popular IMX586 sensor (it will require a separate video), speakers are double and very loud, two additional buttons on the side for aiming and shooting, a 5000 mAh battery, and inside the main hit is active cooling using a tiny but a very brave fan, designed to remove heat from copper and graphite elements inside the case. Let's figure out what kind of beast ZTE got in the role of the third gaming smartphone.


The smartphone is huge: the first thing that catches your eye is an elongated 6.65 ”display made according to the AMOLED standard (with support for wide dynamic range or HDR). The biggest gaming smartphone, apparently. Resolution 2340 by 1080 pixels, density 387.5 pixels per inch, angles rounded. It is very similar to modern Samsung - saturated colors, high brightness, so movies, games or viewing photos go off with a bang, but reading books is not always convenient.

The system is bare Android 9 with a small hub for games. Naked Android is dull, nerdy and makes you miss MIUI. I would be an apple tree, I suppose I would hang myself from such beauty.

The game hub is nice - you can configure the control, backlight, performance, notifications and fan operation mode in it. The hub is turned on with a separate key. If the game from the collection is already running, then the side buttons, power and cooler are added to it, and extra notifications are blocked. But aiming, shooting and any other functions (depending on the game) can be assigned to the index fingers. Buttons on the end work best in games that previously seemed uncomfortable. A great example is PUBG, where without additional buttons you can only hang out at the bottom of the rating. And people for all smartphones buy buttons on Ali, but here they have become part of the design, which is why they work many times faster.

Gaming performance is just high, but either the temperature and frequency sensors are not working correctly, or there is a catch in the operating modes. With automatic performance, the case barely heats up even after a couple of hours, but Performance makes the back wall hotter, to say the least. From the point of view of the hub, this is the difference between 40 and 43 degrees, which looks a bit dubious.

Because other programs show 60-65 degrees on the hottest core at maximum load, which is closer to reality. But the frequencies keep cheerfully from medium to maximum, which allows you to rock any game except for ARK (there is trouble with optimization).

Turning on the cooler helps to cool the filling to 37-38 degrees (according to the hub) or 50-55 according to the throttling test, but is the game worth the candle, because the cooler is noticeably noisy. Because of the dimensions, it does not hiss or buzz, but whistles at a speed of up to 10 thousand revolutions per minute. I thought I would get used to it, but the hand itself reaches out to turn off the twist, even in the most important batches.

A much more important cooler would be a built-in program for recording video from games. Google has notably gone wrong and a couple of years ago banned recording sound from the system, so now all applications write sound only from a microphone. Xiaomi last has such a recording of system sounds through a proprietary application. And I had to take AZ Recorder and you know what - the very cooler is perfectly audible on the microphone. Yes, and the microphone is blocked by the hand with a normal grip. It's a fiasco bro!

And then what works out of gaming capabilities? Battery, display, speakers and buttons on the edge of the smartphone. Yes, it’s worth starting with a battery, which is 5000 mAh, which allows you to cut into the most difficult games for 5-8 hours in a row. It is very convenient to play on a huge HDR-display, its refresh rate is increased from 60 to 90 Hz, and the response of the touch screen to 240 Hz. So the picture is very smooth and responsive. I don’t know if there is any chip for pumping sound, but the audio system works well both in wired headphones (yes, there is 3.5 jack) and via Bluetooth and, what is rare, in the built-in speakers.

Finally, I’ll say a few words about the main camera. Of course, there will be a separate video with an analysis of all the pros and cons, so write any questions and try to answer. There will be something to talk about. The smartphone has only one module, but what! This is a Sony IMX 586 with a true 48 megapixel sensor. A huge 1/2 "matrix paired with successful optics make the picture artistic.

In the afternoon or at dusk, the frames are slightly sharp, but still very worthy. It does not reach the SLR, but it is a flagship smartphone. But in the evening and at night there are restrictions - for a single module everything is very good, but you can only shoot bright streets. The second or third cameras could help, but ZTE decided to save. Though. the same Sony 586 sensor in paired and triple circuits shows much better results, especially at night (it is in many new Xiaomi, OnePlus and even completely nameless Chinese).

Controversial feelings caused a video recording. The quality of 4K during the day and at dusk is so good that it is sometimes difficult to believe what is happening. Stabilization is far from the Galaxy S10 (or completely absent), but how many details the IMX 586 can record! There are H.264, H.265 codecs and even HDR 10 support for video. Bitrate is about 80 thousand, which is very good. It can be seen every hair on ** ne at the ant, do not dig in. The photo is much inferior to DSLRs, but the video is quite at the level, if not higher.

Another thing is that we were promised full-motion slowmotion (and it is not there at all, although the chipset and camera support it, and its presence is indicated on the site), but at the same time they promised 8K video at 30 frames per second, but in reality 5-10 frames are shot per second. 5 frames, CARL! The company replied that so far these functions are only in Chinese firmware, and a full-fledged port to Europe will require several more months of painstaking work.

It turns out that for games this is one of the best Android smartphones, and maybe the best. The processor, display, battery, speakers, cooling and even side buttons make the game as comfortable as possible if your notches last for hours. But the price tag of 475 Euros forced the company to save on the camera, you can’t record your bends in the spirit of Xiaomi here (the application is not included), and some useful features remained in the Chinese firmware (Slow-Motion, HDMI, etc.). And, what’s really a shame, the two most inflated advertising opportunities simply do not work: the fan only barely lowers the temperature (but whistles very loudly), and the 8K video turned out to be a complete failure. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to take such a smartphone for games, and the 4K video recording is simply amazing. Xiaomi’s Black Shark 2 can be considered the main alternative, but there’s a very toy design, scared to go out to people. Whereas red Red Magic looks more than stylish for its class.