Introduction
If you’ve ever wondered what a real gaming tablet should be, here it is: the Red Magic Nova! It’s the best gaming slate of the moment, with powerful and well-cooled hardware, a comfortable size and a launch price of €500!
Many people consider iPads as gaming tablets due to their relatively powerful hardware and great ecosystem with a ton of apps. However, Apple’s devices have weird limitations or too many complications because they were primarily intended to be great all-around devices.
Console games have already been ported to Android, and Red Magic Nova seems like the best place to play them. It has a 10.9-inch high-resolution LCD display with a 144Hz refresh rate and runs on the most upgraded version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip SM8650-AC, and it has Snapdragon Elite Gaming support. You can get it with up to 24 GB of LPDDR5X RAM and up to 1 TB of UFS 4.0 storage.
Red Magic built a 9-layer cooling system with a 3D heat pipe, a circulation auxiliary channel, a dissipation alloy, graphene, copper foil, thermally conductive gel and a 20,000 rpm internal fan. This system should provide excellent stability during long gaming sessions. And this system is partially visible on the back, surrounded by some cool but unobtrusive badges.
The tablet has an aerospace-grade aluminum chassis with four stereo speakers surrounding the frame. It includes a large 10,100mAh battery with fast charging up to 80W, a battery bypass while gaming, and the integrated fan can cool the battery so that it can speed up the charging process.
The Red Magic Nova tablet starts at $499, which is lower than any other high-performance flagship tablet on the market today.
ZTE nubia Red Magic Nova specifications at a glance:
- Body: 253.3×164.6×7.3mm, 530g; Glass front, aluminum frame, aluminum back; RGB back light, built-in cooling fan (illuminated), aviation-grade aluminum frame.
- Display: 10.90″ IPS LCD, 144 Hz, 550 nits, resolution 1800x2880px, aspect ratio 14.4:9, 312ppi.
- Chip set: Qualcomm SM8650-AC Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (4 nm): 8-core (1×3.4GHz Cortex-X4 and 3×3.1GHz Cortex-A720 and 2×2.9GHz Cortex-A720 and 2×2.2GHz Cortex-A520); Adreno 750 (1 GHz).
- Memory: 256GB 12GB RAM, 512GB 16GB RAM; UFS 4.0.
- Operating system/software: Android 14, Redmagic OS 9.5.
- Reversing camera: 50 MP.
- Front camera: 20 MP.
- Video recording: Rear camera: 4K at 30fps, 1080p at 30fps; Front camera: 1080p at 30 fps.
- Battery: 10100mAh; 80W wired, 100% in 55 min (advertised).
- Connectivity: WiFi; BT; NFC.
- Miscellaneous: Fingerprint reader (side mounted); stereo speakers (4 speakers).
The Red Magic Nova relies on an IPS LCD screen instead of an OLED and this could be considered a potential dealbreaker. But since this tablet is aimed at hardcore gamers, most, if not all, will appreciate the LCD screen.
Unpacking the Red Magic Nova
The Red Magic Nova comes in a cool gray box, which contains the tablet itself, a 9A capacity USB-C cable and an 80W power adapter.
Nubia also sells an optional keyboard and stylus if you need them to expand your tablet experience.
The optional keyboard and pen accessory