RedMagic 11S Pro+ Review: Wind & Water Cooling, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2, Gaming Flagship

Red Magic is one of the few manufacturers that has consistently stuck to half-generation upgrades, and they always boldly adopt new technologies, bringing everyone some new upgrade points. This kind of bold, try-anything thinking 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 improved. Add in Red Magic's performance tuning, and I have even higher expectations for its gaming experience.

So, can Red Magic's gaming experience this time live up to everyone's expectations?

Also, even though it's a gaming phone, daily use is a scenario you can't escape. So besides gaming, what is the Red Magic 11S Pro+'s experience like in everyday use scenarios? Here is a hands-on sharing.

Wide and thick, but the feel isn't bad

It's not even early summer yet, but the outdoor temperature in Guangzhou is already approaching 32°C. Standing outside without moving, you can already break into a sweat, let alone someone like me who went out in the afternoon carrying two phones.

As for why I went out with two phones... what if the Red Magic ran out of battery while I was playing? I always need a backup plan.

I have to say, holding it in your hand, the Red Magic's appearance is, as always, extremely sharp.

The transparent flat back panel has a silver metallic brushed finish underneath. The most eye-catching element is the large liquid-cooling ring device in the center, paired with the shoulder buttons on the side of the body and the red "competition key," which can take you directly to the game space with one press. All of this highlights this phone's gaming positioning.

Especially when you put it next to a daily-use primary phone, you'll immediately notice that this device really does stand out at a glance. Setting aside whether it looks good or not, the recognizability is maxed out, and it's probably in line with the aesthetic of the vast majority of male consumers.

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

The front and rear quad cameras are unchanged from the previous generation; I'd expect the same for the next generation as well.

As for the most distinctive feature — the under-display camera — the Red Magic 11S Pro+ naturally hasn't skipped it. In indoor and outdoor environments during the day, no matter what angle I try, I can't tell where the front camera is. Only in a pitch-black environment with no light can you barely make out the presence of the front camera.

I have to say, that feels really great. The fully integrated display delivers a very strong sense of immersion when gaming or watching videos.

The key point is that the display in this year's Red Magic 11 series has a noticeably improved feel in both clarity and brightness. Even under direct midday sunlight, I still had no trouble reading text content.

But gaming is a different story, especially in games like Delta Force: Hawk Ops with many dark areas — it's a bit uncomfortable.

This time it still uses 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 League of Legends: Wild Rift) — at least it won't affect my gameplay experience.

The only issue is that the maximum screen refresh rate of 144Hz is actually slightly behind the curve in 2026.

In order to explore this device's everyday usability, I also tried continuously using the Red Magic 11S Pro+ for close to a week. Personally, I didn't find the Red Magic 11S Pro+'s in-hand feel to be anything outrageous — at least the weight and thickness are roughly on par with the phones I use daily.

How can I put it — maybe this is just the privilege of those who regularly use large/extra-large flagship phones.

However, there are two things I genuinely want to complain about. First, the corners are too square; pressing against the palm does feel a bit uncomfortable, and it's more suited to cradling than gripping. Second, due to the presence of the shoulder buttons, the overall button placement is shifted lower, and I've tried many times to press the power button only to hit the volume-down button instead — you really do need some time to adapt to that.

Other aspects are fine: 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 Gen 2 port are all solid — there's even 80W wireless charging.

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

Wind and water cooling — can it handle 32°C heat?

Of course, we didn't take the Red Magic out for a walk just to make phone calls or scroll short videos.

Those who have previously experienced the Red Magic Pro series may already know that their main focus is gaming and active cooling. That fan really does its job — not only does it keep temperatures low during gaming, but frame rates stay stable too.

This time, not only does it use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2, it also adopts a brand-new liquid channel design with a visualization treatment, so you can clearly see the coolant flowing.

The principle behind this water-cooling system is the same as PC water cooling, though the method of operation is different. Its main function is heat spreading — it does not directly contact the chip, but instead transfers heat from the chip area on the left side to the right side, spreading the heat evenly to enable faster dissipation over a larger surface area.

How does it actually perform? Let's go straight to the real-world tests.

At a room temperature of 25°C, the Red Magic 11S Pro+'s AnTuTu benchmark score reached as high as 4.28 million — the highest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 score we've recorded in a room-temperature environment to date.

Compared to the Samsung Galaxy S26, which was the first to launch with the same processor, it's a direct 15% higher.

I found a random spot in the office park, set the phone to intelligent wind cooling, activated liquid cooling simultaneously, 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 actually 144fps.

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

The built-in fan noise at full speed is around 48 decibels — quite noticeable indoors, but outdoors there's no real difference, easily drowned out by ambient noise.

Analyzing the frame rate graph, we found that apart from unavoidable frame drops during teamfights, the game ran at a full 144fps the entire time, with frequent spikes to 150fps.

The highest body temperature appeared on the screen side: 37.6°C. The maximum temperature on the back was only 33.9°C.

It's clear that, thanks to the wind-and-water dual cooling design, heat on the back of the phone is well distributed and doesn't cluster at the very top of the body the way it does on traditional phones.

This only goes to show that even with Tencent's settings maxed out, this level of moderate gaming demand still can't fully saturate the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2.

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

This time we enabled HD + 144fps mode and played two consecutive rounds of Delta Force: Hawk Ops "Operation Blaze." The average frame rate was 142fps with 4.05W power consumption, and the 1% Low frames stayed stable at 120fps — indicating that the device's frame rate performance was very consistent throughout.

Body temperature was also no problem: 38.2°C, with the entire back of the phone just slightly warm.

Worth mentioning: while playing Delta Force: Hawk Ops, I found the Red Magic 11S Pro+'s gaming shoulder buttons to be quite practical, especially for aiming and shooting — the control logic felt much more comfortable, and I even felt like my aim improved a little.

Okay, that was an illusion — but I genuinely dislike the feeling of four fingers sliding across glass.

Next, as usual, we let it cool down for ten minutes, then switched to Turbo Cooling and fired up Wuthering Waves!

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

What a surprise it turned out to be. First, there's apparently a conflict between Wuthering Waves' 90fps setting and the Red Magic's built-in refresh rate. I spent a long time trying to figure out why the game wouldn't run at 90fps, and after checking Bilibili I found out you need to change the refresh rate to 120Hz first.

Second, the performance demand of Wuthering Waves at native 90fps is alarmingly high. Real-world testing showed an average power consumption approaching 8–9W. I could barely hold on outdoors for about 15 minutes, ending up with an average frame rate of 72fps, very obvious frame rate curve fluctuations, and the Red Magic 11S Pro+ was scorching hot all over — around 47.5°C.

Fortunately, Red Magic still has the frame interpolation option.

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

Looking at the curve, there is indeed some frame rate fluctuation, with a measured temperature of 42.3°C — overall the experience is actually acceptable.

Finally, I also tested half an hour of Aether Gazer at full high settings + medium rendering. This game was strangely sluggish throughout — there was a persistent sticky feeling — yet the frame rate was oddly stable, averaging 58.8fps, with even lower power consumption than Delta Force.

And the overall device temperature wasn't hot at all. I'm genuinely impressed by Kuro Games' mysterious optimization.

After these four rounds of gaming, most of the afternoon had passed. The Red Magic 11S Pro+'s gaming frame rate performance across all of them was quite solid — it seems the wind cooling + liquid cooling really does get the job done.

Keep in mind, my previous daily driver couldn't even hold 50fps in Wuthering Waves without enabling performance mode.

Camera unremarkable, software showing progress

Beyond the hardware ambitions, this phone's built-in system features also bring meaningful improvements to the gaming experience.

For example, there's a "rage teammate" voice feature that can even help you flame your teammates during a game.

There's also a quick stopwatch function for tracking hero ultimate cooldowns; card game auto-draw assistance; crosshair assistance for aiming in FPS games; and an AI trigger for smart magazine reloading. The emphasis is on comprehensive assistance across the board.

However, I personally mainly tried out the assistant feature that integrates with Doubao.

For each individual game, Red Magic has configured a dedicated assistant, where you can ask questions like how to control recoil on the AK, or how to build Lucian.

Taking a look at it, since League of Legends: Wild Rift was recently updated, some of the guides are no longer fully applicable — but it does save you the trouble of opening a browser to search.

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

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

Hmm? Did you think that was all this phone was capable of?

No, no, no — as a hardcore gaming phone, Red Magic has loaded it with plenty more, like its PC emulator.

Installing games is simple: just log in to Steam and download directly, and it even supports cloud save sync.

I tried playing Vampire Survivors and Devil May Cry: DMC on the Red Magic 11S Pro+'s PC emulator. Indie games ran without any issues, generally in the 45–60fps range; aside from certain complex scenes, 3D games also ran smoothly.

Worth noting: some games can't be launched due to API compatibility issues, so compatibility needs to be tested on a case-by-case basis. Also, with power consumption often around 10W, the phone's own cooling alone can't keep up with the heat — fortunately, I had a controller connected.

Of course, for a better gaming experience, there's no need to force games that won't run well through the emulator. If you have a reasonably well-spec'd gaming PC at home, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ also supports game streaming — which eliminates any concerns about heat or stuttering.

On the camera side, the Red Magic 11S Pro+ is identical to its predecessor: a 50-megapixel OIS main camera, paired with a 50-megapixel ultra-wide and a 2-megapixel macro.

In real-world testing, daytime photos have overall somewhat muted colors — not the kind of tuning that's flattering to the eye. For nighttime shooting, shadow detail is basically absent; it's adequate enough for documenting daily life, but only just.

Battery life comes last.

After all the testing above — roughly four-plus hours of gaming in total, plus various photography, video watching, and standby through to the evening — the remaining battery level was 39%. Getting through a day and a half to two days of normal use should be no problem.

Real-world testing showed that 120W wired fast charging can fully top up the battery within one hour — which, by today's market standards, is actually somewhat rare.

Conclusion: An aggressive heavy-gaming flagship

Following our usual format, here's a summary of the Red Magic 11S Pro+'s pros and cons:

Pros:

1. Outstanding performance output, exceptional active cooling;
2. A uniquely distinct product design.

Cons:

1. Camera capability hasn't moved forward at all; front camera usability is low;
2. The 7500mAh battery is no longer a standout feature.

On pricing, the first-sale promotional starting price is 6,199 yuan. If your region offers government subsidies, you can save an additional 500 yuan — I wonder if that's satisfying enough for everyone?

If you ask me: wind cooling + water cooling, a flat-edge all-screen design — the Red Magic 11S Pro+ is basically the most characterful phone you can buy this year.

Beyond flagship-grade hardware, the combination of exclusive tuning and system features also makes it perform even better in gaming, which has always been its traditional strong suit.

Even now that active wind 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 only casually play casual puzzle games, enjoy going out to shoot landscapes and portraits, and are extremely sensitive to a phone's weight, then this thick and heavy device would be a disaster for you.

But if you're a hardcore player who spends several hours every day fighting in games; if you care intensely about frame rate stability and hate the terrible experience of throttling whenever it heats up; or if you simply cannot tolerate any punch-hole on your screen —

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

In a time when everyone is copying each other's designs, having a product this stubborn in its vision and this sharp in its identity is actually quite an exciting thing.