RedMagic 11S Pro+ Review: Steam Direct Connect, Snapdragon 8 Elite

From the first generation Red Magic gaming phone in 2018 to today, the name Red Magic has almost become synonymous with "the ceiling of smartphone performance." Every generation's latest and most powerful Snapdragon flagship mobile platform is first pushed to its limits under Red Magic's thermal stacking and software tuning, serving players one powerful performance feast after another.

And this time, the Red Magic 11S Pro series has once again redefined our understanding of a performance powerhouse. It is equipped with the most powerful Snapdragon flagship to date, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading Version 5th Generation, and for the first time brings PC-level Steam direct connection mode into a phone. In other words, the device in your hand, weighing less than 200 grams, can simultaneously be a phone, a handheld console, a PC host, and even a desktop phone capable of playing Black Myth: Wukong and Cyberpunk 2077.

Recently, we also got our hands on the Red Magic 11S Pro+ in the Deuterium Transparent Silver Wing colorway, 16GB+1TB version, and next let's take a look at its actual performance.

Flat Design, Lies Flat No Matter How You Put It

Actually, the first impression upon receiving it was not the powerful performance of the Red Magic 11S Pro+, but its design. Today's phones generally sacrifice appearance for powerful imaging performance, especially the protruding camera modules, which not only make the phone top-heavy but also make it difficult to rest stably on a desk.

The Red Magic 11S Pro+ is different, adopting a completely flat design, which can be said to be quite a stubborn and quite stylish choice made in this era of protruding camera bumps everywhere. The back of the phone has no protrusions at all, not only looks good, but the feel is also exceptional.

Of course, in achieving the flat design, the stacking difficulty that Red Magic needed to overcome was still very high, needing to fit in a water-cooling module, wireless charging module, a larger battery, a larger VC, and also a fan while maintaining flatness… This stacking difficulty may be more complex than designing a gaming console.

Additionally, on the front, this time the Red Magic 11S Pro+ is equipped with a full-screen display: Wukong Screen 2.0, yes, it is actually a hole-free screen. The specs are also very impressive: 6.85-inch, 1.5K resolution, 144Hz high refresh rate, screen-to-body ratio as high as 95.3%, and bezels as narrow as 1.25mm. No punch-hole, no notch, no opening, pure flatness at a glance.

In terms of under-display technology, the Red Magic 11S Pro series uses BOE's X10 under-display light-emitting material, where pixels can be driven independently, resulting in a more refined display effect; a new UDC Ultra independent display chip has been added, making the screen display more consistent. The front camera section uses high-transparency spatial invisible circuitry, paired with AI Portrait Algorithm 4.0, and the front-facing selfie performance has seen a noticeable improvement compared to the previous generation.

For eye protection, 2592Hz PWM dimming + DC dimming dual scheme, supporting SGS and Rhine TÜV low blue light flicker-free certification. Eye fatigue after long gaming sessions is noticeably reduced compared to traditional screens.

Combined with the straight edges, it can be said that the Red Magic 11S Pro+ presents a very unique aesthetic.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading Version 5th Generation, a One-in-a-Hundred Chip

Of course, performance is what Red Magic deserves attention for, and this time the Red Magic 11S Pro+ is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading Version 5th Generation. So what is special about this Leading Version? Simply put, after strict screening according to certain standards, it is the Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading Version 5th Generation with excellent physical constitution.

First is physical screening, the Leading Version only selects from the central wafer area of the Snapdragon 8 Elite 5th Generation. This is significant: due to the physical characteristics of semiconductor manufacturing, the central area of the wafer has the most stable temperature and highest etching precision, so the chips manufactured there naturally have superior electrical performance compared to edge areas.

Second is speed grading: when ordinary chips verify the maximum clock speed through automated test equipment, they can often only reach around 4.6GHz. For a chip to enter the Leading Version selection list, it must be able to stably run at a maximum clock speed of 4.74GHz; this frequency is not only the ceiling of the Android camp currently, but also directly exceeds the design limit of same-generation competitors.

Finally is high-temperature/high-voltage screening: through Adaptive Voltage Scaling (AVS) testing, the chip is placed in a high-temperature environment with voltage and frequency pushed to the extreme, observing its stability and power consumption performance. Only chips that can still maintain frequency without failing in this hell mode are qualified to be labeled as Leading Version.

After these three rounds of screening, what remains is an exceptional constitution selected from a hundred. So how does it actually perform?

We used Perfdog to conduct a 30-minute actual test of Red Magic 11S Pro+ running around Sumeru City in Genshin Impact, with an average frame rate of 61FPS, and the entire frame rate performance is almost a straight line, performing very excellently.

In addition, the AnTuTu benchmark score also reached 4.41 million, and the 3D Mark stress test stability reached 82.7%, which is also very outstanding.

In addition to the main chip, Red Magic's self-developed Red Core R4 esports chip has also been upgraded. This chip handles touch optimization, lighting control, rendering acceleration and other tasks; this time Red Magic and Qualcomm jointly created an independent high-speed video memory, and in high-load scenarios, the Red Core R4 will call upon the discrete graphics for graphics load rendering optimization, reducing the number of accesses to system memory, shortening data paths and reducing bandwidth pressure.

Simply put, the main chip is responsible for computing, and the Red Core R4 is responsible for rendering; the two work in coordination, the CPU's load is reduced, and the picture rendering is actually smoother. Combined with the brand new CUBE Qitian Game Engine 3.0, which can finely allocate performance for different scenarios, achieving the triple goal of stable frame rate, low power consumption, and long battery life. Its existence allows the hardware specs mentioned above to truly reach the players' hands, rather than only living in benchmark software.

Wind and Water Dual Cooling: When Heat Dissipation Is Treated as a Systems Engineering

Whether performance can be sustained depends on heat dissipation. The depth of Red Magic's research and development in heat dissipation has already reached the industry ceiling level, and the 11S Pro series has raised that ceiling another notch. The entire cooling solution is named the ICE Magic Cold Cooling System, comprising four parts: Pulsating Water Cooling Engine, Active Cooling Fan Yufeng 4.0, industry-first liquid metal, and industry-first 4D Ice Tier VC.

The most noteworthy among them is naturally the water cooling. You know, for a long time, water cooling has been standard technology for servers and PC hosts, but now Red Magic has stuffed it into a phone. To achieve this goal, Red Magic has done a lot of work, such as an exclusive piezoelectric ceramic micro-pump, achieving component miniaturization, and it has also undergone rigorous drop resistance testing. In terms of cooling fluid selection, Red Magic also uses the same fluorinated liquid as NVIDIA AI servers, with a liquid range of -60°C to 108°C, which neither vaporizes nor solidifies, and both insulation and thermal efficiency have reached top-level standards.

The most wonderful thing is that because the Deuterium Transparent colorway makes the entire back shell transparent, the flow of the cooling liquid is visible to the naked eye. Gently activate water cooling mode, watching the coolant circulate and surge through the pipes, not only achieving excellent cooling performance, but also visually very unique.

As for the fan section, Red Magic has been making built-in fans for phones since 2019, and this year it is the 8th generation product. The maximum speed of Yufeng 4.0 this time reaches 24,000 RPM, paired with 43 ultra-thin hurricane fan blades, and adopting a new forward-tilted curved blade design, wind pressure and sweep area are greatly improved, yet noise is controlled below 30dB, almost imperceptible.

We also used a candle to do a small test: after turning on the fan, we pointed the air outlet at a lit candle, and it could be seen that the airflow is still very powerful.

Front temperature

Back temperature

Combined with the industry-first liquid metal and 4D Ice Tier VC, the entire phone's heat dissipation capability is very outstanding. After 30 minutes of Genshin Impact gameplay, we used an infrared thermometer to measure the temperature, and the result showed that the maximum temperature on both front and back of the phone was just around 40°C, which is still very outstanding.

Steam Direct Connection: Making the Phone Truly a "PC" for the First Time

With excellent performance and superior heat dissipation, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ has also made a revolutionary innovation this time to allow the phone's performance to be fully unleashed, which is the industry-first Steam Direct Connection mode. Many friends probably know that in the past, if phones wanted to play PC games, they had to rely on cloud gaming, streaming, or emulators — all three paths had a threshold that was not low for ordinary players, and the experience was not necessarily good either.

The Steam Direct Connection mode equipped in the Red Magic 11S Pro series is truly running PC games in a phone, backed by Red Magic Lab's self-developed translation engine, which has overcome the translation barrier from X86 to ARM architecture. And, it genuinely logs into a Steam account, syncs the games in your library, and plays smoothly.

We also experienced it using The Witcher 3, and it could be seen that from logging into Steam, downloading the game, to playing the game smoothly, everything was very fluid. The key point is that it has achieved account interoperability — the save file of Black Myth: Wukong you were playing halfway through on your home PC, you can pull out your phone when traveling by high-speed rail and continue playing, something that was previously unimaginable.

In addition, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ also supports external expansion. Plug in a controller and it becomes a complete handheld console; connect a keyboard and mouse and it becomes a gaming laptop; cast to a TV or monitor and it becomes a gaming console, providing players with multiple forms of gaming experience.

Battery Life, Imaging, AI: Everyday Experience Also Reaches the First Tier

Finally, let's take a look at some other aspects of the Red Magic 11S Pro's performance. In terms of battery life, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ is equipped with a 7500mAh battery, supporting 120W gallium nitride Magic Flash fast charging, as well as 80W wireless fast charging — long battery life and fast charging, allowing you to play games at ease without worrying about battery life.

As for the imaging part, for a gaming phone, it is not the most adept section, but the Red Magic 11S Pro series still features a quite pragmatic imaging combination: 50-megapixel ultra-sensitive OIS main camera + 50-megapixel ultra-wide angle + 2-megapixel macro, while the front is a 16-megapixel under-display camera.

After actual experience, the entire imaging combination also has quite good performance: the main camera imaging sharpness is sufficient during the day, color reproduction leans toward a realistic style, and in HDR environments highlights suppression and shadow detail can both be preserved; the ultra-wide angle distortion control is done well, and the output rate for shooting buildings and scenery is quite high; in night mode, the 50-megapixel main camera combined with ultra-sensitive OIS capability means handheld night shooting basically won't blur, effectively meeting daily recording needs.

In addition, at the system level, the new phone this time is equipped with RED MAGIC OS 11.5, and key to note is the partnership with Doubao, adding some AI capabilities, such as AI Circle Search, AI Object Recognition, AI Eraser, AI Super Clear Document and more, also making it a phone that meets current needs.

A Final Note

Returning to the question at the beginning, what kind of phone is the Red Magic 11S Pro series exactly? It is a high-performance phone, with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading Version 5th Generation, powerful heat dissipation, and solid imaging capability — gaming and daily use both covered; it is also a handheld console, with a built-in PC emulator, Steam Direct Connection, dual shoulder buttons, and X-axis ultra-linear motor — every form a handheld should have is all there. In 2026, this era where AI phones, imaging phones, and foldable phones compete for users' attention, Red Magic still stubbornly writes the two words "performance" in the biggest, most prominent position, and has achieved genuine industry generation-leaping leadership. If you are someone who truly cares about the gaming experience, the Red Magic 11S Pro series deserves your serious consideration.