Two days ago, Nothing Phone (2) was released, equipped with the first generation of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ mobile platform; At the moment when the second generation of the platform has been released, there are still new machine options, which is enough to show that the comprehensive performance and energy consumption performance of the platform can still be beaten. This reminds me of another phone on hand with the platform: the Red Magic 7S Pro Hornet Limited Collector's Edition.
At present, Red Devil Mobile is one of the only two brands that still focus on "e-sports/gaming phones", and we have not reviewed this brand product before; In addition, it was not grabbed when it was launched, so I later scooped up one from a seafood market.
As a co-branded version with the classic IP "Hornet", the configuration of the Red Magic 7S Pro in the collector's edition and the ordinary version is basically the same.
However, in terms of appearance design, the Collector's Edition integrates the classic yellow elements of Bumblebee with the iconic Deuterium Feng transparent aesthetic of Red Devil, using Bumblebee luminous glasses, purple light cold sculpture Bopai logo, BUMBLEBEE title, Bumblebee classic competition keys, and also adds Transformers Battle Damage Edition heat dissipation back clip, Red Devil sports thermal protection case, charger/data cable/card pick pin and badge of Bumblebee elements, and also deeply customized the system UI, which can be described as full of details.
In terms of charging and battery life, the Red Devil 7S Pro Hornet Collector's Edition has a built-in 5000mAh battery. After our 2-hour B-station FHD video playback, 1 hour of 4K video recording, and 30 minutes of "Peace Elite" endurance test model, the phone still has 51% of the battery left.
The Red Magic 7S Pro Hornet Collector's Edition supports up to 135W Magic Flash fast charging, and with the blessing of the random 165W fast charging head, it only takes 19 minutes to fill the entire phone.
In terms of performance testing, the Red Devil 7S Pro Transformer Edition in our hands is a 16GB+512GB configuration, the room temperature at the time of testing is constant 27°C, the cooling fan is set to intelligent adjustment, and the 5 projects of AntuTutu, Geekbench 5, 3DMark, Bilibili and Genshin are tested according to the convention.
In the latest AnTuTu V10 test, the Red Magic 7S Pro can run 1.32 million points, in line with the normal play of the Snapdragon 8+, and it can be noticed that the fan brings a significant temperature drop in the second half.
In the Geekbench5 test CPU performance, the Red Magic 7S Pro's single-core and multi-core scores were 1349 and 4246 points, respectively, ranking first among the Snapdragon 8+ models.
In terms of Geekbench5 power consumption, the single-core power consumption of Red Magic 7S Pro is 3.531W, and the multi-core power consumption is 6.654W, and the overall power consumption is not low, basically at the upper level of the Snapdragon 8+ model, of course, this may also be related to its own fan.
In the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme test, which mainly tests GPU and overall performance, the Red Magic 7S Pro delivered an average frame rate of 2806 points and 16.8 frames, the best score of the Snapdragon 8+ models we tested.
At this time, the power consumption of the Red Magic 7S Pro will reach 8.87W, which is second only to OnePlus ACE in the Snapdragon 8+ models we have tested
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Although the performance release and power consumption are equally explosive, with the built-in 20,000-rpm fan, the Red Magic 7S Pro achieved 98.6% ultra-high stability in the 20-minute 3DMark Wild Life Extreme cycle test (compared to the 70% stability of the OnePlus ACE 2), and the score frame rate basically did not fluctuate, and the advantages of the built-in fan were vividly displayed here.
But it cannot be ignored that at this time, the peak temperature of the Red Magic 7S Pro has come to an exaggerated 50 ° C, and the battery power has dropped from 96% to 66%, which is the model with the most power loss and the highest temperature among all the mobile phones we have tested, and the specific situation will be talked about later in the test of "Genshin".
Then there is the daily use scenario with lower power consumption, in the case of using Bilibili to play 4K online video, the power consumption of the Red Magic 7S Pro is 2.518W, it should be noted that this achievement does not turn on the fan, I personally think that this power consumption is on the high side, and there will be a small impact on the endurance of daily use.
Finally, there is the 5-minute "Genshin" Sumeru running chart, you can see that with the blessing of the built-in fan, the game measurement performance of the Red Magic 7S Pro is indeed very good, the entire frame rate curve is almost straight, except for the occasional fluctuation, the game test process is very smooth.
At this time, the power consumption of the whole machine has also come to 7.558W, which is the highest among the Snapdragon 8+ models we have tested, it should be noted that although this power consumption includes fan power consumption, this power consumption is still the top three of all our tested Snapdragon 8+ and Snapdragon 8Gen2 models.
Then we used the temperature gun to measure the temperature of the back of the Red Devil 7S Pro, and we can see that the high temperature is mainly concentrated around the camera, the middle of the mobile phone and near the two air vents, the highest temperature can reach 44.1 °C, and the central part is also 42 °C, and the overall temperature distribution is not very uniform.
After reading the performance test, I think it's time to talk about the built-in small fan of the Red Devil 7S Pro. The scheme chosen by Red Devil is to enter the air from the diagonal opening on the right side of the camera, and then from the left border of the mobile phone, quickly bringing the high heat source temperature of the SoC out of the phone.
Of course, the ancestral fan RGB will certainly not fall, and the user can turn it on or off in the menu of Settings - Cooling Fan.
It is worth mentioning that here Red Devil gives two options to automatically turn on the fan, one is to automatically turn on the fan when starting the game, and the other is to automatically turn on the fan when connecting a fast charging source. It has been measured that even after turning off the fan in the settings, the fan will be automatically turned on when starting the game and charging.
However, this fan and the serious mobile phone external semiconductor heat dissipation clip is still a big gap, although it provides a maximum speed of 20,000 rpm, but in the case of a diameter of about 1cm, the air volume that this fan can bring can only slow down the SoC heating, do not expect it to replace the heat dissipation clip.
In the previous test, we also mentioned that the reason why the power consumption of the built-in fan of Red Devil 7S Pro in the test of 3DMark and "Genshin" did not have a qualitative impact on the power consumption of the whole machine, because the power consumption of this fan at the highest speed was only 0.367W. We chose to test the power consumption of the mobile phone in three states in the desktop state, so as to obtain that the fan power consumption in smart mode is about 0.255W, and the power consumption in extreme mode is about 0.367W.
This can also explain why the temperature of the Red Devil 7S Pro's 3DMark Wild Life Extreme test reached a terrifying 50°C, and the maximum temperature of the back in the 5-minute test of Genshin can also reach 44°C: because the power of the fan is still too low, the heat dissipation effect is insufficient. Compared with the 20W upward heat dissipation back clip, it can only play the role of auxiliary heat dissipation, delay SoC frequency reduction, and cannot play a real cooling effect.
Therefore, if you are a user who just needs to play for a long time or use it with high intensity, my suggestion is to use it with a high-power heat dissipation clip, and do not believe in this small fan in the machine.
To briefly summarize, although the role of this fan of Red Magic 7S Pro is a bit better than nothing, it is still stronger than other Snapdragon 8+ models in terms of performance release and game stability in the bare metal state. On the other hand, such a performance release also brings certain problems, that is, in daily use, the battery life of the Red Magic 7S Pro may be slightly crotch-pulling, which can be seen from the power consumption of video playback.
As a gaming phone, I think that in addition to performance, the user experience when gaming is the most important, and the user experience can be divided into two aspects in my opinion: operation experience and immersion.
In terms of operation, compared with mobile phones such as Black Shark, Rescuer and iQOO, Red Magic 7S Pro only provides two virtual shoulder buttons, and there are no physical keys and screen pressure, which is commendable for providing good vibration feedback with the X-axis linear motor.
Red Magic 7S Pro will recommend different key mappings in different games, but I don't think there is a need for so much advanced gameplay...
In terms of software, the Red Magic 7S Pro also offers a fully immersive gaming space, which can be launched through a sliding switch on the side.
The rest of the gaming phones, such as the sliding menu and control panel during the game, are basically the same, and there is nothing that can be called amazing.
Overall, in the case that Black Shark and Rescuer have no hope of follow-up, Red Devil is already one of the only two gaming mobile phone brands on the market, but if it were not for the custom IP of Bumblebee, this mobile phone did not bring me enough surprises and attractions: in the "control" of the most important distinguishing item between gaming mobile phones and ordinary mobile phones, Red Devil is obviously lagging behind. Even if the performance release of this phone is good enough, the main performance phones such as Redmi, OnePlus and iQOO are not bad, not to mention that the built-in fans of Red Devil can only provide the icing on the cake.
And on the Red Magic 8 series, we see that Nubia is still emphasizing performance, full screen and other things that current mobile game users do not care so much about (because other manufacturers can also do well enough), and the optimization of control, vibration and other aspects that this special classification of game mobile phones should bring has not changed anything, the game mobile phone in 2023 actually does not have screen pressure and physical shoulder buttons, it can only be said that it is because there is no tiger (black shark) in the mountains...