RedMagic 11 Pro Review: Liquid-Cooled Android Phone For Serious Gamers

	RedMagic 11 Pro – Starting At $749 The RedMagic 11 Pro is a powerful, stylish, and affordable Android gaming phone that boasts a liquid-cooled Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip and a big 7,500mAh battery.
	Solid value Ultra-cool design Beautiful 144Hz display Blazing performance Outstanding battery life Wireless charging ×Alert slider is back	Middling cameras Lackluster software

The RedMagic 11 Pro is the first liquid-cooled gaming phone on the market, but it also retains the signature high-speed fan found on most of the company’s phones since the RedMagic 3. It’s also the first RedMagic handset with wireless charging, and once again, it arrives in the US with proper 5G support. Clearly this hardware is hot, but RedMagic’s software is another story. More on that later, though.

So, is this gaming handset the one to beat? I’ve been using the RedMagic 11 Pro for a few weeks, and here is my review.

RedMagic 11 Pro Hardware And Design

Like gaming laptops often do, gaming phones typically have an obvious, distinctly loud “made-for-gamers” aesthetic. But over the last few years, manufacturers have toned things down quite a bit, opting for more subdued black, silver, or white designs with RGB LED accents instead of over-the-top designs. Like its predecessor, the RedMagic 11 Pro is a perfectly rectangular glass slab, with flat aluminum sides.

Even the shooters are mounted flush under the rear panel, accentuating this handset’s angular appearance – think of the monolith in 2001, A Space Odyssey, and you have the right idea. Our review unit features a metallic silver finish called Subzero, but there’s also a version with a black finish with gold accents called Nightfreeze. Both feature a transparent glass back, offer more RAM and storage (16/512GB or 24GB/1TB), and cost $849 or $999.

The transparent glass back on these two models reveals the 25,000 rpm cooling fan, blue liquid cooling loop, a few screws, various stencils (including a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 logo), and of course the cameras. A third version, called Cryo, loses the transparent rear panel for a matte black glass back. It retains the fan and liquid cooling, but the loop is not visible, and while it comes with less RAM and storage (12/256GB), it only costs $749.

The fan is backlit with four RGB LEDs arranged in a circle, and you can select various colors and animation patterns for these. In addition, the RedMagic logo, shoulder buttons on the right side, and game mode lights on the left side are also backlit with RGB LEDs, and double as notification lights. Here again, you can select various colors and effects for these. And thankfully, all those blinkenlights can be disabled.

Regardless of which model you select, this handset’s almost bezel-less, all-screen design is quite striking. The 6.85-inch display stretches across the entire front, un-interrupted. It looks very futuristic. And like before, the RedMagic 11 Pro uses a 16MP under-display selfie camera, which is almost invisible. But what absolutely steals the show is the RedMagic 11 Pro’s ultra-thin bezels and unapologetically square corners.

Despite its aggressively rectangular design, the RedMagic 11 Pro feels great in hand. It’s a big handset – almost the exact same size (163.8 x 75.4 x 8.9mm) and weight (230g) as Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro Max – but it’s manageable. The RedMagic 11 Pro is rated IPX8, making it water resistant, a first for a phone equipped with a fan. And, despite lacking an official rating, the company claims this handset is also impervious to dust.

As for the button and port layout, the right side is home to the two 520Hz backlit capacitive shoulder buttons, fan exhaust, volume rocker, power / lock key, red game mode switch, and a microphone. On the left side, you’ll find two game mode lights and the fan intake. The main speaker, USB Type-C port (USB 3.2 Gen 2), two more mics, and dual nano-SIM tray are located along the bottom, and the headphone jack and a fourth mic live on top.

RedMagic 11 Pro Specs And Features

RedMagic 11 Pro Display Quality

Gaming requires a quality display, and the RedMagic 11 Pro delivers. It packs a beautiful, 6.85-inch LTPS AMOLED panel (2688 x 1216 pixels, 431ppi) with a speedy 144Hz refresh rate (plus settings for 120, 90, and 60 Hz). This screen is perfectly flat, almost bezel-less, with almost square corners, and is unfettered by notches or punch holes. It also boasts 2,592Hz PWM dimming and a 3,000Hz touch sampling rate.

Like other modern AMOLED panels, this display offers vibrant colors, deep blacks, and wide viewing angles. At 1,800nits (peak), it’s also easy to read in direct sunlight – even though it’s not nearly as bright as today’s best screens. But overall, I have no complaints here.

RedMagic 11 Pro Camera Performance And Image Quality

Gaming phones aren’t known to have great camera, and things are no different with the RedMagic 11 Pro. Not much has changed with this camera system since the RedMagic 9 Pro. This setup consists of a 50MP f/1.9 23mm 1.0-micron main shooter (1/1.55-inch Omnivision OV50E40) with omni-directional PDAF and OIS, an 50MP f/2.2 13mm 0.61-micron ultrawide (1/2.88-inch Omnivision OV50D40), and a 2MP f/2.4 macro (without AF).

In front, the RedMagic 11 Pro inherits the 16MP f/2.0 1.12-micron under-display camera (1/2.77-inch Omnivision OV16A) from its predecessor. This shooter benefits from an improved de-screening algorithm, but under-display cameras still lag far behind regular selfie shooters when it comes to image quality, so set your expectations accordingly. Also, portrait mode didn’t appear to be working for selfies on my review unit.

While image processing has improved somewhat, thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the RedMagic 11 Pro’s camera app remains mostly unchanged. It’s a little quirky and disorganized, but it’s fine once you get used to it. The usual shooting modes are available – portrait, night, pro, macro, 50MP, panorama, time lapse (4k 30fps), and slow motion, 1080p 120/240/480fps) – plus a bunch more obscure ones.

As you’d expect, the two 50MP sensors bin (combine) 4 pixels into one larger pixel, outputting 12MP for better low-light performance. The RedMagic 11 Pro records stabilized video with stereo audio at up to 8k 30fps and 4k/1080p 60/30fps using the main and ultrawide shooters, and up to 1080p 30fps with the selfie camera. HDR video capture and slow motion are limited to the main shooter, and the anti-shake mode tops out at 4k 60fps.

Pictures taken with the RedMagic 11 Pro are decent overall, but image quality degrades rapidly when zooming beyond 4-5x. Night mode kicks in automatically, but isn’t available for selfies. The macro‘s low resolution and lack of AF makes for less than stellar results. Selfies are fine, but not spectacular – ditto for video recording. Ultimately, the shooters perform more like those in a mid-range, mainstream handset than an affordable flagship.

RedMagic 11 Pro Reception And Sound Quality

I tested the RedMagic 11 Pro mostly on T-Mobile and Telus’ sub-6GHz 5G and 4G LTE networks in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Vancouver (Canada) and didn’t run into any issues with reception, call quality, or data speeds. As you’d expect, the RedMagic 11 Pro also supports AT&T and Verizon’s sub-6GHz 5G and 4G LTE networks in the US. Unsurprisingly, though, this phone lacks support for mmWave 5G and eSIMs.

The RedMagic 11 Pro features stereo speakers (earpiece plus bottom edge speaker) which sound loud and clear at low to mid volumes, but muddier at higher volumes. While no match for today’s best flagship speakers, these will satisfy most users. As a bonus, the RedMagic 11 Pro includes a headphone jack driven by an excellent DAC and amp. There’s also aptX HD and LDAC support for high quality wireless audio over Bluetooth.

RedMagic 11 Pro Performance And Battery Life

The RedMagic 11 Pro is powered by Qualcomm’s flagship 3nm SoC, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The Subzero and Nightfreeze models pair this chip with 16GB of LPDDR5T RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.1 storage for $849 or 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage for $999, while the Cryo version packs 12/256GB of RAM/storage for $749. Since there’s no microSD support, you’ll want to pick your memory options carefully.

Day-to-day, the RedMagic 11 Pro is lightning fast no matter what you’re doing. It ran everything we threw at it without skipping a beat – from productivity, social media, communication, and entertainment apps, to graphically demanding games like Bright Memory: Infinite and GRID Autosport. Ultimately though, the RedMagic 11 Pro doesn’t feel quicker or smoother than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5-equipped OnePlus 15 we reviewed last year.

Then again, subjective performance only tells part of the story. Benchmark results (see below) did not quite match my observations. In most of my tests, the RedMagic 11 Pro performed better than the OnePlus 15, especially with sustained workloads, where it throttled less (see above). Plus, the RedMagic 11 Pro didn’t exhibit the thermal and stability issues I experienced when running 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Light Unlimited stress test on the OnePlus 15.

Obviously, much of this can be attributed to the 25,000rpm cooling fan, liquid cooling loop, and massive (13.1mm²) vapor chamber. That liquid cooling loop, which RedMagic calls AquaCore, is filled with the same kind of fluorinated liquid coolant found in AI servers, and is circulated using a tiny piezoelectric ceramic pump. It’s also quite durable, thanks to an anti-puncture membrane in the loop, and a freeze-resistant liquid coolant.

GFX Bench Graphics Tests

3DMark Graphics Test

Other specs are pretty much what you’d expect from a modern gaming phone. There’s sub-6GHz 5G, CAT 22 LTE, WiFi 7 (802.11be), Bluetooth 5.4 (LE), NFC, and dual-band A-GPS GLONASS / Galileo / BeiDou positioning, plus the usual collection of sensors. The RedMagic 11 Pro features an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint reader that’s fast and accurate, alongside face unlock. Haptics feel sharp and precise, but could be a little stronger.

The RedMagic 11 Pro delivers superb battery life thanks to a 7,500mAh silicon-carbon battery. In our PCMark battery test, the RedMagic 11 Pro lasted 21 hours and 59 minutes at 144Hz. While this doesn’t quite match the OnePlus 15, it’s still an outstanding result. This is the first RedMagic handset to feature Qi-compatible wireless charging, and at 80W no less. It also supports 80W wired charging (USB PPS) and comes with an 80W brick in the box.

RedMagic 11 Pro Software And User Experience

Here is where things get a little messy. From clumsy translations to minor glitches, RedMagic’s software has typically been awkward and unpolished. While the RedMagic 11 Pro – which runs RedMagic OS 11 on top of Android 16 – shows some improvements over its predecessors with a more consistent UI design and more pleasant user experience, the software is still not refined enough versus other devices. And this makes using this gaming phone a bit of a chore.

What really sets RedMagic’s gaming phones apart is Game Space, a landscape-mode launcher that’s optimized for gaming. It’s available by sliding the dedicated red switch on the right side, and turns the RedMagic 11 Pro into a gaming powerhouse. Unlike the rest of the software, Game Space is extremely well thought out. It lets you customize everything from the refresh rate to the capacitive shoulder buttons — among a plethora of other things.

My unlocked review unit came with some bloatware pre-installed (Block Blast!, Booking.com, Goper, MoboReader, MoboReels, and TikTok), but it was easy to remove. And, while RedMagic offers five years of OS upgrades and security updates in the UK and Europe, it only provides three years of support in other regions. This is disappointing, as it lags behind the competition which offers four to seven years of OS upgrades and security updates.

RedMagic 11 Pro Review Summary

At just $749, the RedMagic 11 Pro is an attractive proposition. It isn’t just the lowest priced Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 handset available in the US, it’s an impressive piece of hardware that boasts a beautiful 144Hz display, sub-6GHz 5G support for the US, remarkable battery life, and superb performance – particularly while gaming. The ultra-cool design is the icing on the cake. Just be mindful of the middling cameras and less refined software.