RedMagic 11S Pro+ Review: Where Exactly Does a Gaming Phone's Differentiation Lie?

Recently, gaming phones have been having a tough time.

Nowadays, more and more phones on the market have started to come with built-in fans, offering stronger performance output and gaming experiences, making it seem like almost any phone can be a "gaming phone" — which puts gaming phone manufacturers like Red Magic in a somewhat awkward position. Right at this moment, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ has arrived. Can it bring an experience that is different from other phones?

| Carefully Selecting Chips with Good "Constitution"

Physical and process variations that cannot be fully eliminated during chip manufacturing cause natural differences in voltage stability, power consumption control, and performance ceiling among chips cut from the same batch of wafers — this is what people online refer to as the issue of a chip's "constitution" being good or bad.

According to official information, every single Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading Edition chip inside the Red Magic 11S Pro+ has been carefully hand-picked.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading Edition chip in the Red Magic 11S Pro+ is first strictly selected from the central area of the wafer, where temperature is most stable and etching precision is highest, providing the best electrical performance and chip constitution. Next, through automated test equipment, the chip's operating frequency is gradually increased, and only chips that can stably reach the maximum clock speed of 4.74GHz (far exceeding the standard version's 4.6GHz) are allowed to proceed to the subsequent screening stages.

The chips then undergo adaptive voltage regulation testing to filter out those that are unstable or have excessively high power consumption. In the end, only chips that can remain stable without throttling under various demanding conditions are certified as Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading Edition chips, and used in the Red Magic 11S Pro+.

In GeekBench 6 performance tests, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ achieves a single-core score of 3724 and a multi-core score of 11802, higher than the Dimensity 9500; the single-core performance still falls slightly short compared to the A19 Pro, which is renowned for this, while multi-core performance leads by a significant margin.

Such strong performance would be a waste if only used for benchmarking — so can the Red Magic 11S Pro+ be used to run some AAA single-player games locally?

| AAA Titles, Launch!

I installed Assassin's Creed Mirage on the Red Magic 11S Pro+ and successfully ran it. In actual testing at 720P with medium graphics settings, it can stably run at around 16 frames per second, with very low input latency — seizing the right moment to successfully parry enemies is entirely achievable. Switching to low graphics settings, the frame rate still hovers around 16fps, just with fewer instances of stuttering.

On a side note, Red Magic has already established a partnership with Ubisoft and will be optimizing several of Ubisoft's AAA titles to continuously improve the gaming experience of Ubisoft games on Red Magic phones. Speaking of which, Ubisoft will be launching Assassin's Creed Black Flag: Memory Reset on July 9th — will that game also be playable on the Red Magic 11S Pro+ when it arrives?

The Red Magic 11S Pro+'s PC emulator is opened directly via the trigger button on the side, and supports Steam direct connection — simply log into your Steam account, and the game list from your library will sync to the phone, where you can then download and play them.

Game compatibility has been quite good in testing so far; titles like Assassin's Creed Mirage and Resident Evil 7 can both run normally, with Resident Evil 7 even reaching around 60 frames per second. The in-game side settings panel has also received dedicated adjustments, adding settings related to controller and keyboard-mouse operation, while retaining the original power saving, balanced, and Awakening performance modes.

However, possibly out of consideration for hardware protection and thermal management, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ still has some room left in terms of performance output. Taking Assassin's Creed Mirage as an example, at 720P resolution, CPU and GPU utilization basically stays around 70%, and the maximum body temperature is only 40.4°C.

If there were a feature that allowed players to directly adjust the game rendering resolution and max out CPU and GPU utilization, the gaming experience would likely better satisfy players' needs.

For many players, as long as the game can run, they'll just add a cooling back clip themselves! Coincidentally, Red Magic also has a matching cooling back clip available as an option.

Red Magic has indeed reflected its own differentiation in software features and gaming experience. An AAA single-player gaming experience like this is something that is currently very difficult to replicate on other phones with built-in fans.

| Mainstream Mobile Game Performance Remains Stable

Besides AAA single-player games, I also tested the Red Magic 11S Pro+'s performance in mainstream mobile games, with games set to maximum graphics quality and frame rate cap, and the phone launched into Awakening mode. Results are as follows:

The Red Magic 11S Pro+'s gaming performance is among the top tier of current smartphones, and the performance of several games was genuinely surprising.

First is Genshin Impact — without the assistance of any frame stabilization feature, it relies almost entirely on its own performance output to maintain stable frame rates. Checking the performance scheduling, the processor's clock speed can be seen reaching the maximum 4.74GHz on several occasions; performance is called upon aggressively, and the frame rate curve is almost a straight line, making the gaming experience extremely smooth.

Next is Ananta, a new game that places a very heavy performance load on phones. Yet the Red Magic 11S Pro+ managed to keep the frame rate as a straight line throughout the entire session, running at full frames the whole time — a level of performance that is rare among current smartphones.

Its performance strategy at this point is similar to when running Genshin Impact — core performance is called upon aggressively; while it didn't push to the maximum clock speed of 4.74GHz, it reached 3.6GHz on multiple occasions, which is still a very high level of performance output.

However, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ also maintains aggressive performance scheduling in low-load games like Honor of Kings, resulting in a whole-device power consumption of 4.1W in 144fps mode, which is relatively high — typical flagship phones usually consume around 3.5W in this scenario. This brute-force performance strategy is, in a certain sense, very quintessentially "Red Magic."

| Peripheral Configurations Are Also Solid

Back liquid cooling

Shoulder buttons + fan vent

The Red Magic 11S Pro+ is broadly consistent with the Red Magic 11 Pro+ in other respects, likewise featuring a wind cooling + liquid cooling combination that maintains even heat dissipation whether running AAA single-player games or mainstream mobile games, improving thermal efficiency by expanding the heat dissipation area, and keeping the device temperature — which would otherwise run very hot under high load — within a warm but comfortable range.

The front of the phone remains a true full-screen display, using BOE's X10 under-display luminescent substrate. In actual testing against dark, light, and white backgrounds, the front camera is hidden to the point of being nearly invisible.

The screen itself is 6.85 inches with 1.5K resolution and a 144Hz high refresh rate, equipped with a Synaptics touch chip that delivers significantly improved touch response — no instances of dropped or erroneous touches have occurred in use so far. Testing shows the screen uses DC dimming at medium-to-high brightness levels and 2592Hz high-frequency PWM dimming at low brightness.

In terms of other specifications, it houses a 7500mAh battery, 120W wired charging, and 80W wireless charging, while also coming standard with Wi-Fi 7, NFC, infrared remote control, a metal mid-frame with glass back panel, full-body lighting effects, and a 3.5mm headphone jack — something that feels like alien technology by today's standards.

So, although the Red Magic 11S Pro+ is a half-generation upgrade with many specs even identical to the Red Magic 11 Pro+, it has demonstrated its differentiation through the ability to run AAA titles on the phone.

Even if you argue that other phones can do the same, they either lack sufficient performance, or have poor compatibility, or both — and some individual models have taken on the appearance of a gaming phone while having absolutely no idea what players actually want. Furthermore, Red Magic remains a top-tier presence in mainstream gaming experiences.

Performance phones with built-in fans have indeed posed some competition to Red Magic, but judging by the actual performance of the Red Magic 11S Pro+, gaming phones as a standalone category will continue to exist for quite some time to come.