Nubia Z80 Ultra Review: Imaging Flagship Meets Gaming Performance

When it comes to Nubia, everyone's impression is its iconic red-ring humanistic lens and full-screen design. The Nubia Z80 Ultra makes subtle adjustments while continuing the design language of the previous generation, and it remains highly recognizable. On the hardware side, the Nubia Z80 Ultra is equipped with the fifth-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite and three high-quality lenses, with upgrades in both imaging and performance. As for what improvements these changes bring to the user experience? Let's take a look.

In terms of imaging, while other brands are competing on telephoto, Nubia has chosen to upgrade the ultra-wide angle. However, the imaging capability of a phone is often not determined by a single camera, so let's first look at the camera hardware specifications of the Nubia Z80 Ultra. The Nubia Z80 Ultra's main camera uses a 35mm humanistic narrative main camera, with a sensor size of 1/1.3 inches and an aperture of f/1.7. The ultra-wide angle uses an 18mm high-dynamic ultra-wide main camera, with a sensor size of 1/1.55 inches and an aperture of f/1.8. The telephoto uses an 85mm periscope telephoto, with a sensor size of 1/2 inch and an aperture of f/2.48. Let's also talk about the software — the Nubia Z80 Ultra uses Neovision Taishan AI Imaging 5.0 technology to provide AI assistance for photography. Overall, both the hardware and software are excellent, but the specific performance will be shown through sample photos.

The images captured by the Nubia Z80 Ultra's main camera have rich colors and excellent resolution. The transition of the cloud layers is very natural, neither soft nor sharp, and very harmonious.

If you have no inspiration for street photography, you can try the camera's built-in AI inspiration shooting assistant, which can give you some shooting suggestions to help you take excellent street photos.

If you are not satisfied with the colors produced by the native camera, the Nubia Z80 Ultra's camera also has a built-in Filter Factory. The Filter Factory has nine filters to choose from, and in actual experience, each filter has its own characteristics. Photos taken with the Bresson filter have more texture in light and shadow, making the tonal quality the core element of the image.

(▲ Bresson filter sample)

Photos taken with the negative film filter have clean colors, more layering in the shadows, and an overall texture very close to film, making it very suitable for friends who like street photography.

(▲ Negative film filter sample)

The ultra-wide angle is the most significantly upgraded lens on the Nubia Z80 Ultra. Compared to the previous generation lens, this generation lens has higher dynamic range tolerance, and can restore more shadow details even in high-contrast environments. The highlights and shadows in the sample photos are clearly layered, the visual impression is natural, and the shadows still retain some details without going completely black.

Its periscope telephoto also has good resolution — the image is clear and sharp, and can capture detail-rich telephoto images without needing AI enhancement.

Finally, let's look at the night scene performance of the Nubia Z80 Ultra. When shooting at night, problems such as difficulty focusing, mixed neon lights, and reduced color accuracy often occur. To solve these problems, the Nubia Z80 Ultra has introduced laser autofocus and Flicker multi-spectral color temperature sensor technology. From the sample photos, the colors are very accurate, and there is no blooming phenomenon. The focus is also very precise, hitting exactly where you aim, and the night scene experience is very nice.

To satisfy some professional users, the Nubia Z80 Ultra has also launched a photography kit. After being attached, the phone takes on the appearance of a retro camera. Users can use the knobs on the kit to adjust exposure compensation and filters, helping users capture decisive moments.

Ultra-Level Gaming Performance

Imaging flagships often fall short of gaming flagships in terms of performance, but the Nubia Z80 Ultra can also enjoy gaming flagship-level configurations. The Nubia Z80 Ultra is equipped with the fifth-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite chip + full-blooded LPDDR5X + UFS 4.1 — this is currently the highest performance hardware specification on the market, dubbed the "Supreme Iron Triangle," which can bring users a better gaming experience. Not only that, Nubia also comes with the same gaming engine as Red Magic, which can comprehensively optimize frame rates, temperature control, and power consumption. To better demonstrate its performance, we tested the phone's performance through two games, Genshin Impact and Honor of Kings. The test environment was uniformly set to a room temperature of 25°C and a screen brightness of 200 nits.

(▲ Honor of Kings frame rate curve)

In Honor of Kings, the graphics settings were set to Ultra High Frame Rate + Extreme Quality, and a 30-minute ranked match test was conducted. The average frame rate was 119.9 fps, and the average power consumption was 3.2W.

(▲ Genshin Impact frame rate curve)

In Genshin Impact, the graphics settings were set to Highest, and a 30-minute Sumeru City test was conducted. The average frame rate was 59.5 fps, and the average power consumption was 3.98W.

From the above high-load gaming scenario tests, the Nubia Z80 Ultra's frame rate performance is stable, and power consumption control is also quite excellent. With the fifth-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite chip paired with the Red Magic gaming engine optimization, the Nubia Z80 Ultra achieves Ultra-level gaming performance. There is no need to worry about battery life either — the Nubia Z80 Ultra has a 7200mAh fourth-generation Nanhai battery, which can last a full day of gaming. It is worth mentioning that the Nubia Z80 Ultra will also launch exclusive optimizations for four games: Honor of Kings, Delta Force, League of Legends Mobile, and Escape from Tarkov Mobile. Among them, Escape from Tarkov Mobile will support 90fps full-map ray tracing and 2K+120fps game display settings, with the most outstanding optimization performance.

The Industry's Only Sky Full-Screen Imaging Flagship

In addition to image quality and frame rate, immersion is also part of the gaming experience. To give gamers a better sense of immersion, the Nubia Z80 Ultra adopts a Sky Full-Screen design. Not only that, the Nubia Z80 Ultra has also narrowed the bezels, making the display performance even more outstanding.

It is worth mentioning that the Nubia Z70 Ultra DECO has a straight-edged frame, which is not comfortable to hold. The Nubia Z80 Ultra has changed this frame to a rounded corner design, improving the holding experience.

All-New Intelligent AI, Convenient Life

This time, the Nubia Z80 Ultra also brings a brand-new AI: Nebula AIOS 2. Its main upgrades are divided into two major areas: Super Search and Smart Call.

Xiaoxing's Super Search can search local documents — even if you ask about the content of a file, it can help you find the file you need. Not only that, it can also help you find the notes you need in the notepad, which is very convenient. Xiaoxing's Smart Call is even more intelligent. When you are busy with work and unable to answer a call, you can click the AI Call function and choose AI Answer or Text Call. After selecting AI Call, Xiaoxing can respond based on what the other party says, and after the call ends, it generates a call record saved to the notepad, making it convenient for users to understand the content of the call. After selecting Text Call, the user inputs what they want to say, and Xiaoxing plays the voice to the other party using a built-in voice. After the other party responds, the content is converted from speech to text and presented to the user in the chat window.

Conclusion

I think the Nubia Z80 Ultra is a phone with a human touch. When a crowd of phones is frantically piling resources into telephoto, it chose to upgrade the ultra-wide angle, as if telling us: don't blindly pursue the distant and poetic, but also cherish the people right in front of you. The upgrade of the AI agent Xiaoxing allows people to communicate better with each other. The performance upgrade means fewer stutters, giving people a little less frustration in their entertainment life after a hard day's work. If you also want to experience Nubia's human touch, this will be a phone you can choose with confidence.