RedMagic 11S Pro+ Review: Gaming Flagship with Wind & Water Cooling

Red Magic is one of the few manufacturers that has consistently insisted on half-generation upgrades, and they always dare to adopt new technologies, bringing everyone some new upgrade points.

This kind of bold, try-anything approach is something I really appreciate.

This time, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ not only brings core overclocking, but overall performance, battery life, and thermal management have all been improved, and combined with Red Magic's performance tuning, it gives me higher expectations for its gaming experience.

So, can Red Magic's gaming experience this time meet everyone's expectations?

Also, even though it's a gaming phone, everyday use is an unavoidable scenario. So apart from gaming, what is the Red Magic 11S Pro+'s experience actually like in daily-use scenarios? The following is an experience sharing from Lei Technology (ID: leitech).

Wide and thick, but the feel is not bad

I have to say, holding it in your hand, Red Magic's appearance is still as sharp as ever.

A transparent flat back panel, underneath is a silver metal brushed finish, and the most eye-catching element is without a doubt the large liquid-cooling ring device in the middle, paired with the shoulder buttons on the side of the body and a red "competition button" that can take you directly to the gaming space with one press — all of which highlight this phone's gaming positioning.

Especially when you place it next to your daily main phone, you'll find that this device is something that truly catches your eye at a glance. Setting aside whether it looks good or not, the recognizability is maxed out, and it's likely to match the aesthetic preferences of the vast majority of male consumers.

In the past year or two, there have been few devices that have brought me surprises and a sense of novelty, and the Red Magic 11S Pro+ absolutely counts as one.

The front and rear four cameras, however, are unchanged compared to the previous generation — the next generation will probably stay the same.

As for the most distinctive under-display camera, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ naturally didn't skip it. In daytime indoor and outdoor environments, no matter what angle you switch to, you can't tell where the front camera is; only in a completely dark environment can you barely make out the presence of the front camera.

I'll say this — it feels great. The immersive experience of playing games and watching videos on an uninterrupted screen is really strong.

The key point is that this screen on the Red Magic 11 series this year feels noticeably improved in terms of clarity and brightness; even under direct noon sunlight, reading text content is still no problem at all.

But gaming is a different story, especially in games like Delta Force with a lot of dark scenes — it's a bit uncomfortable.

This time it still uses a Synaptics touch IC, with a daily touch sampling rate of 180Hz and a gaming touch sampling rate of 360Hz. Real-world testing matched expectations, and it's responsive enough in competitive games (such as Delta Force and LoL Mobile) — at least it won't affect my operational experience.

It's just that the maximum screen refresh rate of 144Hz is, in 2026, actually a slight drag.

In order to explore its daily-use experience, I tried using the Red Magic 11S Pro+ continuously for close to a week. Personally, I didn't find the in-hand feel of the Red Magic 11S Pro+ to be particularly outrageous — at least the weight and thickness are not that far off from the phones I use daily.

How to put it — perhaps this is just the privilege of someone accustomed to large-sized and extra-large flagship phones.

There are two things I do want to gripe about, though. First, the corners are too square, and pressing against your palm is genuinely a bit uncomfortable — you're better off cradling it rather than gripping it. Second, due to the presence of the shoulder buttons, the overall button placement is shifted downward, and I've tried many times to press the power button only to hit the volume-down button instead. You really do have to get used to that.

In other respects there's nothing much to complain about: it supports IPX8 water resistance, has 3D fingerprint recognition, and the traditional advantages like a 3.5mm headphone jack, vibration motor, speakers, and USB 3.2 Gen2 interface are all solid — there's even 80W wireless charging.

If you don't care about imaging, the daily-use experience of this generation's Red Magic 11S Pro+ is actually quite solid.

Wind and water dual cooling — can it hold up against 32°C heat?

Of course, since we took the Red Magic outside, it definitely wasn't for making phone calls or scrolling short videos.

Those who have previously experienced the Red Magic Pro series probably know that it focuses on gaming and active cooling — that fan really does the job; not only is the temperature low while gaming, but the frame rate is also stable.

This time, not only does it use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 (fifth-generation), but it also adopts a new liquid flow channel design with a visualization treatment, so the flow of coolant is clearly visible.

The principle of this water-cooling system is the same as PC water cooling, though the way it works is still different. Its main function is heat equalization — it doesn't directly contact the chip but instead transfers heat from the chip area on the left side to the right side, and after equalizing the heat, dissipates it more quickly via a larger heat dissipation surface area.

Let me just show you the actual test results directly.

At a room temperature of 25°C, the Red Magic 11S Pro+'s AnTuTu score reached as high as 4.28 million, the highest score we have achieved on a fifth-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite device in a room-temperature environment so far.

Compared with the Samsung Galaxy S26, which launched with the same-frequency processor, it directly surpassed it by 15%.

I found a random spot in the campus, set the phone to intelligent fan cooling, enabled liquid cooling at the same time, and went straight into our gaming session.

In League of Legends: Wild Rift, I played three consecutive ARAM matches, and the average frame rate was surprisingly 144fps.

Starting from the mid-game of the second ARAM match, the Red Magic 11S Pro+'s fan cooling intensity was ramped up very high.

The noise of the built-in fan at full speed is about 48 decibels — it's quite noticeable indoors, though outdoors it makes no difference and is easily drowned out by ambient sound.

We analyzed the frame rate graph and found that, aside from unavoidable frame drops during teamfights, the game was running at a full 144fps the entire rest of the time, and frequently even spiked to 150fps.

The highest body temperature appeared on the screen side, at 37.6°C, while the highest temperature on the back was only 33.9°C.

You can see that, thanks to the dual wind-and-water cooling design, the temperature on the back of the phone is well distributed and does not concentrate at the very top of the body the way traditional phones do.

This only goes to show that even with Tencent's settings all maxed out, this level of moderate gaming demand still can't fill up the fifth-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite.

After a ten-minute break, we put it under more pressure.

This time we enabled high-definition + 144fps mode and played two consecutive rounds of Delta Force's "Operation Blaze." The average frame rate was 142fps, power consumption was 4.05W, and the 1% Low frame rate was stable at 120fps, indicating that the device's frame rate performance was very stable throughout.

Body temperature was also fine, at 38.2°C, with the entire back of the device being only mildly warm.

Worth mentioning is that while playing Delta Force, I found that the gaming shoulder buttons on the Red Magic 11S Pro+ are quite practical, especially for aiming and shooting — the logic feels much more comfortable, and it even made me feel like my aim had gotten a little more accurate.

Okay, that was probably an illusion, but I genuinely do not like the feeling of four-fingering on glass.

Next, as usual, we let it sit and cool down for ten minutes, then switched to ultra-speed cooling — it was time to launch Wuthering Waves!

As one of the few phones on the market that supports high frame rates, we naturally had to first try the native 90fps performance.

Tried it without expecting much, and got quite a shock. First of all, there's actually a conflict between Wuthering Waves' 90fps setting and Red Magic's built-in refresh rate setting. I spent a long time figuring out why the game wouldn't run at 90fps, searched on Bilibili, and only then learned that you need to change the refresh rate to 120Hz first.

Second, Wuthering Waves' native 90fps performance requirement is frighteningly high. Real-world testing showed average power consumption approaching 8–9W. I managed to hold on for about 15 minutes outdoors before giving up, ending with an average frame rate of 72fps, very noticeable fluctuations in the frame rate curve, and the Red Magic 11S Pro+ was scorching hot all over — around 47.5°C or so.

Fortunately, Red Magic also has a frame interpolation option.

Setting the graphics to native 60fps and then enabling 120Hz frame interpolation brings average power consumption down to around 6W. Personally I didn't notice any obvious ghosting or input lag, and the average frame count was 119.87fps.

Looking at the curve, there is a certain degree of frame rate fluctuation, with a measured temperature of 42.3°C — the experience is actually quite acceptable.

Finally, I also tested half an hour of The End Zone at full high quality + medium rendering. This game was strange — there was a persistent sticky feeling throughout, yet the game frame rate was unusually stable, with an average frame count of 58.8fps and power consumption even lower than Delta Force.

And the device temperature wasn't hot at all. I'm genuinely impressed by HoYoverse's — wait, this is Kuro Games' — mysterious optimization.

After these four rounds of gaming, most of the afternoon had already passed. The Red Magic 11S Pro+'s gaming frame rate performance was pretty solid throughout, and it seems the wind cooling + liquid cooling combination does the job quite well.

Keep in mind that my previous main phone couldn't even hold 50fps in Wuthering Waves without enabling performance mode.

Imaging underwhelms, system shows progress

Besides having some interesting hardware ideas, the built-in system features on this phone have also brought considerable improvements to the gaming experience.

For example, there's a feature called "Moji Mouthpiece" that can even help you trash-talk teammates in the game.

There's also a quick stopwatch function for recording hero ultimate cooldowns; for card games, there's gacha pull assistance; for FPS games, there's a crosshair assist for aiming and an AI trigger for smart magazine reloading — the focus is on comprehensive assistance across the board.

Personally, though, I mainly tried out the assistant feature linked to Doubao.

For each different game, Red Magic has also set up a dedicated assistant, so you can ask things like how to control AK recoil, or how to build Lucian.

Taking a look at it in practice, since LoL Mobile has been updated recently, this strategy guide is actually not very applicable anymore, but it does save you the effort of opening a browser to search.

Of course, since this is after all a ZTE product, some people might wonder whether the Red Magic 11S Pro+ also has Doubao Agent capabilities — like helping you grind daily tasks in mobile games.

The answer is no, and of course, if such a feature existed, game companies would ban it anyway.

Hmm? Did you think that was the full extent of this phone's capabilities?

No, no, no — as a hardcore gaming phone, Red Magic has also packed in a lot of extras, like a PC emulator.

Installing games is very simple — you can now log directly into Steam to download them, and it can even sync cloud saves.

I tried playing games like Vampire Survivors and Devil May Cry DMC on the Red Magic 11S Pro+'s PC emulator. Indie games are completely fine and can generally run in the 45–60fps range; even 3D games can run smoothly, except in certain complex scenes.

It's worth noting that some games can't be opened due to API compatibility issues, so you'll have to test compatibility yourself. Also, power consumption can easily reach around 10W, and at that point the phone's own cooling can no longer keep up with the heat — thankfully, a controller was connected.

Of course, for a better gaming experience, there's no need to force the emulator on games that can't run well. If you have a decently powerful gaming rig at home, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ also supports game streaming, which eliminates any concerns about heat and stuttering.

As for imaging, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ is identical to its predecessor: a 50-megapixel main camera with optical image stabilization, along with a 50-megapixel ultrawide and a 2-megapixel macro lens.

Real-world daytime shooting showed overall color that is somewhat muted and not particularly flattering to the eye; nighttime shooting basically can't capture dark-area detail, which you could only say is just about sufficient for documenting daily life.

Finally, battery life.

After all that testing, adding up everything — about four-plus hours of gaming in total, plus various photo-taking, video-watching, and standby until the evening — this phone had 39% battery remaining at the end. One and a half to two full days of daily use should be no problem.

Real-world testing showed that the 120W wired fast charging can fill the battery in under one hour, which in today's market actually seems somewhat rare.

Summary: A bold, hardcore gaming flagship

Following Lei Technology's usual format, let's summarize the pros and cons of the Red Magic 11S Pro+:

Pros:

1. Outstanding performance headroom, exceptional active cooling;
2. A distinctively unconventional product design.

Cons:

1. Imaging capability stagnant, front camera utility is low;
2. The 7,500mAh battery is no longer a standout feature.

On pricing, the first-sale promotional starting price is ¥6,199, and if your region has government subsidies, you can save another ¥500 — not sure if that's satisfying enough for everyone?

In my view, with wind cooling + water cooling, a flat straight-edge plus full-screen design, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ is basically the most distinctive phone you can buy this year.

Beyond flagship-level hardware, the combination of exclusive tuning and system features has also made it perform even better in gaming, its traditional strong suit.

Even at a time when fan cooling is returning to the mainstream spotlight, this product remains the first choice for gamers.

At the same time, the Red Magic 11S Pro is absolutely not a phone for everyone.

If you normally just play casual games like Candy Crush, enjoy going out to take landscape and portrait photos, and are extremely sensitive to a phone's weight, then this thick and heavy device will be a disaster for you.

But if you're a hardcore player who battles it out in games for several hours every day; if you care intensely about frame rate stability and hate the terrible experience of lag every time things heat up; or if you simply cannot tolerate any punch-hole on the screen.

Then this Red Magic — with its built-in water-cooled fan, true full-screen display, and massive battery — is practically the definitive answer in the current market.

In a time when everyone is copying each other's designs, having a product this opinionated and distinctive is actually something quite exciting.