I have wanted to get my hands on the RedMagic 9 Pro since I first saw it up for release at the end of last year. During my time at MWC 24 earlier this year, I was able to get a chance to get some hands-on time with the RedMagic 9 Pro and this confirmed that I wanted to find out more. After some exchanging of emails, I now have said phone in my possession and it is time to review it. So without further delay let’s dive into the review below.

Design

Here is a brief unboxing video showcasing the phone.

This is one of the biggest things when it comes to a gaming phone and the RedMagic 9 Pro (hereafter referred to as the 9 Pro). The phone has some very specific gaming cues. Time to take the tour around the device starting from the top edge.

On the top of the device, we find one of the side-firing speakers along with an IR blaster for controlling IR-equipped devices. In addition to this is something that is a bit of a rarity these days, a 3.5mm headset jack is sitting up there on the top. We also find one of the pinhole mics and some of the many antenna line breaks.

Moving around the right-hand side we have a lot going on so let’s go from the edges in. On the edges, we have the RGB shoulder trigger buttons which can be configured within games. The RGB lighting can be set in different modes from the software which we will cover more later on. The trigger buttons support up to 520hz touch detection making them very responsive for use in games. Next, we have one end of the fan channel, I believe this is the exhaust vent but I could be wrong. Next, we have the volume rocker switch which has good feedback and is distinctive when compared to the sleep/wake/power switch. The next thing here is again a hint at the gaming focus of this phone as we have a dedicated home mode slider switch. by moving this switch towards to power key then the phone will enter into its gaming mode where you have all the toggles from various software-led functions. I will cover these more later in the gaming section of this review. The last thing of note here is the presence of another pinhole mic.

On the bottom edge of the phone is another one of the side-firing speakers another pinhole microphone and the USB 3.2, Type-C with DisplayPort functionality, for plugging into an external display. This port will also support fascharing if you use the correct charger and the phone will charge at up to 80W giving a pretty good 0 to full charge time of under 35 minutes. We also have a dual SIM card slot.

Moving around to the left-hand side of the phone apart from the usual antenna break we have got the other end for the fan channel which I think is the intake end.

On the rear, we have got a fair amount of things going on alongside some graphical exuberance In the top right-hand corner we have a reference to this being the 9th Generation of RedMagic phones with a 09 that will illuminate when the phone is in gaming mode. Coming down from his but sticking to the right-hand side we have the “Win More Games” text written on the rear panel with the Redmagic Logo at the very bottom right. On the left-hand side at the bottom edge, there is again some text outing the phone brand name REDMAGIC and then as you move up the phone there are more text references this time under the camera array we have Ice Cooling System written around the middle section. above this is where things get a bit more interesting. we have what looks to be three camera modules in a vertical stack, however, this is not the case. The bottom of the stack is a very small but powerful fan. This fan will spin at a speed of up to 22,000 RPM and is fully customisable with RGB as well fitting into the gaming phone vibe very nicely. The fan can be quite loud when it is operating at max capacity but in normal use, it is barely audible over the background noise.. I have got is set to be one most of the time. I will hear it ramp up to full speed if I have it fast charging but otherwise it will just spin away pulling cold air through the cooling chamber for me.

Above the fan, we have two camera sensors which are both 50mp sensors one being an ultra-wide and the other being the normal aspect ratio. I believe that the lower of the two cameras has also got an OIS which is a first for a camera on a RedMagic gaming phone. Both cameras feature a 7-element lens and the sensors are from Samsung manufacturer. But that is not all as we also have an additional 2MP sensor off to the side sitting below the dual LED flash. This camera is there to pick up the macro shots duties as you would expect in this sort of set-up. Above the 2MP Macro camera is a Dul LED flash light which will also pull double duty as a torch if required.

A few things to note about the back cover is that this is incredibly slippy despite there being a texture to the glass panel which means that unless this is on a flat surface it will slip off things and make its way to the ground a lot. There is a clip-on shard plastic case included in the box but this does little to negate these inevitable tumbles. You can also buy an additional case from the RedMagic store but I cannot see this helping this situation much further. I have combated this by purchasing a skin for the rear panel which provide just enough grip to stop is sliding away from me all the time.

Moving around the the front of the phone is where we have the display along with the camera but we will come back to that in a moment. The display itself is really large and the panel under the Corning Gorilla Glass 5 surface is maxed out as much as possible. The screen is a 6.8 inches FHD+ panel and it is of the AMOLED variety. It has a brightness of up to 1600nits with a colour accuracy of △E＜1. The Screen-to-body ratio is 93.7% which is one of the highest I have used recently, and it has a resolution of 2480 x 1116 with a PPI of 400. The panel has a refresh rate of up to 120 hz (this can be adjusted in software). There are a couple more gaming-specific stats as well that I need to share and these are that the Instant touch sampling rate is 2,000Hz, with an overall sampling rate of up to 960Hz multitouch. I presume that these are meant to indicate that it will pick up on detections of input a lot quicker in fast-paced games.

Well, that concludes our tour of the device’s exterior. But as with all phones, we also need to investigate what is under the skin of the phone, in the hardware section.

Hardware

Firstly here is a specs table as there is lot of stuff going on here.

I am going to focus on the aspects that will take this from a regular phone to begin a gaming hone as all the other hardware is very commonly seen on most high-end phones these days, there are however some exceptions to this which I will cover later on in my review.

• Cooling system

As this is a gaming phone let’s start with the cooling system as this is the real headline grabber for this phone. As you can see from the specs sheet above the 9 Pro has got quite an elaborate system in place for cooling which is a combination of both heat dissipation foils and thermal pastes and active cooling via the cooling fan itself. The fan is a very small component as it is smaller than the diameter of a 5-pence coin. That being said it is very intricately built as it has 59 0.1mm fan blades that are capable of up to 22,000rpm to pull air into the cooling duct. As you will be able to imagine this cooling duct is where the main heat dissipation happens with the components that are generating the heat being located close to the cooling duct. The image below shows the various elements in more detail.

You can see from the above image that the Snapdarogn 8 Gen 3 Chip is located on the underside of the cooling channel to give the optimum exposure to the airflow being managed by the fan. In addition to this, there is an extensive area of thermally conductive material on the midframe to help stop any heat coming through the display from the motherboard. All of this means that the *gen 3 Chip can run at higher temp fro longer meaning that it can push more calculations through. This in turn will mean faster processing of files, quicker video rendering and most importantly for buyers of this phone a better gaming experience with higher frame rates being provided in the game with more fluid motion characteristics etc. There is however one very minor downside to this and that is that when you have got the fan cranked up to max it is audible.

I have recorded this small clip to give you an idea of the difference between the fan on and off. I was using the phone plugged in whilst playing Asphalt 9 in the mode called Diablo Mode which is when everything it maxed out and the processor and GPU are both running at full power.

OnePlus has now made its second entry into the tablet market after the relative success of the OnePlus Pad released last year. This time they have decided to release a slightly cheaper variant which lacks some of the features that you would consider as “Pro” add-ons. The new tablet is called the OnePlus Pad Go, the reason for this will become more clear below.

Let’s take a look at the design of this device below.

Design

As always with a device tour we will start on the top edge of the device and to avoid confusion I am going to be  orienting the tablet in landscape mode as that is what is suggested as its normal use mode by the camera positioning.

This is where we can find the volume up and down buttons on the far left edge the next noticeable thing is the pinhole microphone that will be brought into function when the front camera is being used. on either end of the top edge, there are two antenna bands for the inbuilt connections.

Moving around to the right-hand side we will then find that there are two of the 4  speakers, nestling inside these you will find another pinhole microphone next to the USB type C port. This port does not support Display Out, unfortunately, but given the price point and target demographic, this is hardly surprising.

Moving around to the bottom of the tablet there is nothing to see here which makes holding the device in the landscape orientation comfortable.

Continuing to the right-hand side we can see that we have got the other two speakers but this time they are flanking a Nano SIM/microSD card slot. This allows the tablet to support LTE bands for full;l phone and data duties if you wish to use it as a phone! You can also expand the storage by up to 1TB via the Micro SD card slot. You can also find the sleep-wake/power button on this side. This is simply just a button there is no fingerprint reading going on here.

Around the back we have the Camera module that is mounted on the upper third of the device in a shinier section of the back cover, presumable this is where the twin Mint naming comes from. Incidentally, this colour is the only variant you can get in the UK and it matches up with a lot of the other OnePlus devices of late. The camera itself is an 8MP sensor which has EIS and will support 1080P/720P video recording at 30FPS.

Going around the front finally we got the 11.35″2.4K screen which has a pixel density of 260PPI, and a refresh rate of 90Hz. The screen is reasonably bright at 400 nits with a contrast ratio of 1500:1 and a colour gamut of 96% NTSC. As is the case on most devices these days the screen is set up for Eyecare as well meaning that it will automatically adjust in lower light settings to limit Blue light and adjust colour temperatures to suit the available lighting in your viewing environment. It is a TÜV Rheinland Certified Full Care Display. Very good to know especially if this is a purchase being considered for younger users.

Also at the very top of the display is where we find the 8MP front-facing camera.

Thickness comparison with RedMagic 9 Pro gaming phone

Overall I really do like the aesthetics of the design and the way the tablet feels in the hand. it is comfortable to hold due to the 7.5mm bezels surrounding the devices and the 7.:5 aspect ratio of the display means it is not too wide for a 11.35″ screen size. I can find that I can interact with the tablet easily enough but typing is a bit easier using the thumbs when in portrait mod. it is light enough to hold in one hand while poking at the screen with the other hand which is great if you’re doing a quick search for something to watch or listen to. It is also pretty useful for games as well as I found with a quick session of Asphalt 9. As I mentioned earlier the device has a quad-speaker setup which creates a very good sound stage. I was more than happy to have this playing music in the background as I was working on writing this review.

Hardware

The outside may be good to look at but none of that makes any difference unless the internal hardware is any good. thankfully we have got some pretty good-looking kit inside. bear in mind that this is by no means a flagship-grade tablet so the expectations need to be aligned to that. To start with we have got a MediaTek Helio G99 CPU powering the tablet. This is an octa-core CPU built on the 6 NM process it has 2x Arm Cortex-A76 up to 2.2GHz and  6x Arm Cortex-A55 up to 2.0GHz and is paired with an Arm Mali-G57 MC2. We also have 8GB of LPDDR4X and 128b GB of UFS 2.2 storage which will give a reasonably fast read and write speed but is not anything groundbreaking, more than adequate for streaming media and some light gaming. As I mentioned above the device has a SIM card slot and this is down to the CPIU being able to support 4G for both calls and data. Alongside that, you have the usual WIFI 5 and 2.4Ghz available frequencies and Bluetooth 5.2. Lastly, we have got support for GPS (L1), BEIDOU (B1I), GLONASS (G1), GALILEO (E1), and WLAN positioning. All in all, this is some pretty good spec for the price and is comparable with tablets from other players like Honor in the form of the Honor Pad 9u

We also have a standard suite of sensors that you would expect to see in an entry-level tablet; a Geomagnetic sensor, Light sensor, Acceleration sensor, Gyroscope, and Hall sensor.

I am pretty pleased with the hardware and especially happy to see that this device carries a battery with 8000mAh in it that is also capable of charging at 33W SUPERVOOC with the appropriate power supply unit (not included). This will allow for use for at least two days but it also supports a standby time of 514gours according to OnePlus, which works out as just under 21.5 days. This is an important metric for a tablet as you tend not to use it constantly all day long. You will use it for a quick look at something or maybe to catch a TV Show watch a film etc. Having the ability to shut the screen off and then come back to it and still have some charge a few days later is a very useful feature.

The screen is plenty bright enough for use inside but it does struggle when in direct sunlight outside due to that max brightness of 400 nits. however, at this price point, you will struggle to find a much brighter screen. As you would also expect there is a lot of reflection in very bright conditions, however, I have yet to use a tablet that doesn’t suffer from this issue so I can let it slide.

In terms of the hardware that is all I have at the moment for initial first impressions as I need to spend d a bit more time with it but I am impressed with things so far.

As I have only been using the device for a short period I have been unable to draw any conclusions about the software yet but I am happy to say that it all looks pretty good so far. There has been a lot of development on the adaptation of Oxygen Os to accommodate the larger display and the tablet is better for it. I would have appreciated it if the device was running Android 14 but it is currently still on Android, With that being said though the tablet did receive a security update a few days ago bringing it up to March 2024 for security patches which is okay. it will be interesting to see if they can get this more aligned with Android in terms of the OS platform as we are not that far away from Android 15 being launched by Google. I have an older Oneplus Nord CE 3 Lite that is running more up-to-date software than the PadGo so it should be possible for them to push through the update to keep at least near relevance regarding the the core OS.

So for the moment that is all I have got for the OnePlus Pad Go and my brief time with the device.

if you are interested in picking one of them up for yourself or a family member it is definitely worth considering it, especially as at the moment OnePlus is giving a £30 discount on its RRP which is normally £299. You can pick one up from the OnePlus website for £269.00 from this link.

I will continue to run this device and will follow this up with a full review after a bit more time with the device during which I will be trying to use it for some gaming and also more consumption of media. Check back in with me in a few weeks for some more.

The post OnePlus Pad Go – Unboxing is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.