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00:00Hey, what's up guys, MKBHD here, haven't worn this shirt in a while, but it's back
00:08in the store, shop.mkbhd.com.
00:11And this is the Nubia Red Magic 5G.
00:15It's a gaming phone, as you could probably instantly tell just by looking at it.
00:20And the main kicker feature for this phone is it's the fastest phone in the world.
00:25And well, it is the fastest phone screen in the world, for sure.
00:30That's a fact.
00:31But just in general, my overall use and my experience with it, this phone feels faster
00:36than Galaxy S20 Ultra, feels faster than iPhone 11 Pro, feels faster than OnePlus 8 Pro.
00:43So let's talk about it.
00:45So this is a $600 gaming phone.
00:47I guess anytime the text is sideways right away, you know things are getting serious.
00:51And the headlining feature is definitely this screen.
00:54It's a huge 6.65 inch 1080p flat AMOLED display, gets plenty bright, has P3 color, some reasonable
01:02resolution and not amazing bezels, but you've seen screens like this before.
01:07But what matters most is it has a refresh rate of 144 Hertz.
01:12So right off the bat, that's higher than the standard 60 Hertz a lot of people are used
01:15to and it's even higher than the 90 and 120 Hertz of a lot of the high refresh rate flagships
01:21that have come out in the last one to two years.
01:23And it's super, super, super fast and smooth throughout the UI, throughout scrolling, pulling
01:29out notifications, every single little animation, gaming, everything benefits from this extremely
01:35high refresh rate screen.
01:36Well, of course, except battery life.
01:38So that is of course an awesome spec.
01:40Now the question is, Marques, can you see the difference between 144 Hertz phone screen
01:47and 120 Hertz phone screen?
01:49My answer is yes, but it doesn't...
01:55Not to pat myself too hard on the back here, but that's like asking a professional driver
02:00if they can feel the difference between a Porsche 911 and a 911 GT3 RS.
02:07Like someone who's super calibrated can feel the difference between those two things, but
02:12to the regular person, they're both just extremely fast.
02:16So I guess here's what I will say.
02:18This is the smoothest feeling phone I've ever used, but you notice it way more in the
02:22tweaked animations and Nubia software than the actual 144 versus 120 Hertz difference.
02:29Either way, I absolutely love it because I have a need for speed, but then that translates
02:33through to the rest of the user experience with the rest of the maxed out high-end spec
02:37sheet as well.
02:38Snapdragon 865, eight gigs of fast LPDDR5 RAM, fast UFS 3.0 storage.
02:46And as a bonus, since this is a gaming phone, you got to do something extreme.
02:50There is an active air cooling system through this phone with an actual moving fan and air
02:57vents to keep the temperature down.
02:59So that's those huge holes you see on the left and right sides of this phone.
03:04And if I put this right up to my ear or right on the mic, you can actually hear...
03:10You can hear the fans inside it turn on and start spinning, which is kind of hilarious.
03:17Now this is cool.
03:18Literally, I guess it's a little extreme if anything, you know, they'll probably be able
03:22to say now that because of the extra thermal headroom, their Snapdragon 865 will go farther
03:28without throttling than another Snapdragon 865.
03:31So that's classic flexing in the gaming space, but there are also some downsides that come
03:36with this extreme.
03:38Number one is this phone has no chance of being water or dust resistant, obviously with
03:42huge holes in it.
03:43So it's not.
03:44And number two, their placement of the volume buttons and power button also kind of moves
03:49it awkwardly down a little lower on the right hand side.
03:51Not a huge deal, but it's true.
03:53It's worth noting.
03:55And man, just what a gamery phone.
03:57The whole design, they lean right into it.
04:00It seems like if you're making a gaming themed phone, whether it's the Razer phone or the
04:04ROG phone or the Black Shark phone, they've got to have some kind of wild design elements.
04:10RGB is a requirement.
04:11This phone has that, of course.
04:13The logo on the back glows as a notification light, check.
04:17Being accidentally really good at media because games are media, check.
04:22The bezels are, you know, they're a little bigger on this phone, but you do get a big
04:25earpiece front facing speaker and a fairly loud bottom speaker that pairs up in stereo
04:30to sound pretty nice and I think quite loud and good.
04:33Plus, there is, yes, that's a headphone jack for that sweet, sweet, zero latency audio.
04:40What you know about that, poor kids.
04:42Specialized gaming buttons, check.
04:44Nubia is giving you these rocker buttons on each shoulder, so if you're horizontal, which
04:48is how you're going to game, you can custom map these.
04:50And so then you can keep your fingers off the screen and map those to press buttons
04:54that are on the screen.
04:55And this also comes with a classic special software mode that's turned on by a special
05:00red button that makes some cheesy sound effects as soon as you enable it.
05:06And this is the gaming mode where you can go crazy customizing those shoulder triggers,
05:11monitoring your CPU and network speed, turning on and off the fan, all that stuff.
05:16It's fun, it's cheesy, it's gamery, but it's genuinely useful if you do game a lot on your
05:21phone.
05:22And to top it all off, there's also these smart pins that you've seen on the side of
05:24the phone, which will hook up to these optional accessories, including one $50 accessory that
05:31gives you an additional headphone jack and a 100 gigabit ethernet port.
05:36So if you didn't think they were serious about gaming, now that that accessory exists, you
05:40know they're serious about gaming.
05:41Now, I've also said in the past, it feels like a mediocre camera is also a requirement
05:46on a gaming phone.
05:47With this one, I was right.
05:51This is a serviceable camera.
05:54It works.
05:55You know, you give it a lot of light and it can take B-plus photos that look fine and
06:00are perfectly shareable, but anything beyond that, it becomes pretty clear people aren't
06:04buying this phone for the photo quality.
06:07This is a perfect example of where megapixels don't mean everything.
06:10You know, it is a 64 megapixel camera, but it's somehow struggled pretty regularly to
06:16capture any sort of meaningful detail or accurate colors in any competitive way at all.
06:21So just, you know what you're getting into.
06:22The only impressive part to me of this camera was the absolute lack of any shutter lag at
06:28all when snapping photos, zero.
06:31That's actually more, I guess, along the theme of this being the fastest phone I've ever
06:34used, but I think this shutter is actually a split second faster than the notoriously
06:39snappy iPhone, thanks to the 300 Hertz touch response on this crazy display.
06:43And also one more thing about this camera, who's asking for these two megapixel macro
06:50cameras?
06:51Like, am I missing something?
06:53You get the primary camera, you know, no OIS.
06:56It's not that great quality, but fine.
06:58You get a camera.
06:59Sweet.
07:00Eight megapixel ultra wide camera is sort of a fun extra.
07:04It's not going to be amazing quality, but ultra wide is a fun thing to have.
07:08But then this two megapixel dedicated macro camera on top of that, why?
07:13This isn't the first time I've seen this either.
07:15I genuinely don't know why I keep seeing it.
07:17Maybe they think it's a cool, fun addition.
07:21Macro's fun, and maybe there's a crowd out there that is asking for it, but I'm not really
07:25sure I've seen it.
07:26I would have cut this.
07:28To me, it seems unnecessary.
07:29Okay.
07:30A couple other scattered thoughts on this phone.
07:31You know, it is a gaming phone, so I had to get some gaming in.
07:34I've used Asphalt as my game of choice, because I don't game much on my phone.
07:39But when I did, it was awesome.
07:41It was super high frame rate, extremely responsive.
07:44I got to use those air triggers.
07:45Actually, I don't think they're called air triggers, but the shoulder buttons, and it
07:48all worked fine.
07:49This in-display fingerprint reader is also one of the worst I've ever used in a phone.
07:55Of course, it'll probably work now that it's on camera, but I called that Motorola one
07:59in the Edge Plus.
08:01In that review, the worst I'd ever used in a phone.
08:03This is a tie for that.
08:04I've never seen so many failures in one underscreen fingerprint reader, plus it's really low on
08:09the phone.
08:10So I definitely like when they're higher up and still easy to reach.
08:13But generally, I was disappointed with that fingerprint reader.
08:16And then, I'm not the biggest fan of the aesthetics in their software, but it's not
08:20bad.
08:21There's some colors here and there, but it actually behaves close to stock in some places,
08:26like the Google Discover page and the launcher, but it also definitely has some quirks and
08:31is behind some of the big dogs like Samsung's UI and Oxygen OS.
08:35The multitasking, for example, doesn't let me switch between two recent apps in one motion,
08:40like pretty much every other phone that uses the gestures.
08:43There's a weird bug where Google Photos keeps crashing and I can't use it.
08:47And you also, for some reason, can't dismiss a notification by swiping to the left, kind
08:51of like Huawei's UI.
08:52You always have to swipe to the right to get rid of it.
08:55There is no wireless charging and no IP rating, like I mentioned.
08:59And the vibration motor feels pretty cheap.
09:02It's pretty bad.
09:03But all of these things, you sort of know that you're getting into when you buy a cheaper
09:09mid-tier $600 Nubia gaming phone.
09:12All that being said, this is still the fastest feeling phone I've ever used.
09:17So at the end of the day, my real question with this phone is, okay, now that we have
09:21this, is it worth it to go past 120 Hertz on these phone screens?
09:27Because, you know, this one, we've gotten all these flagships up to 120.
09:30This one goes marginally past 120, but like you can imagine, it keeps going 144 Hertz,
09:36240 Hertz.
09:39And my answer is the law of diminishing returns.
09:41Basically the payoff from 60 Hertz to 120 Hertz was huge.
09:48But then every step past 120 Hertz that we go, we'll feel a smaller and smaller amount
09:54of difference, but they will continue to take a bigger and bigger chunk out of your battery.
09:59So without yet seeing this mythical 240 Hertz phone, that's no doubt on the horizon sometime
10:04in the future, I'm going to guess, I'm going to predict that just like that 4k Sony phone
10:11I reviewed a couple of years ago, this 240 Hertz phone, this imaginary phone will probably
10:17only enable 240 Hertz some of the time.
10:21And when you do, it will probably absolutely crush battery life and just not really be
10:26worth it and probably won't catch on.
10:28So just like we moved up from 360 P to 480 to 720, all the way up to a lot of 1080 P
10:34and 1440 P phones, and then realized we don't need to go to 4k and found our sweet spot.
10:40I think with refresh rate, we're going to find a lot of the same thing.
10:42We come up from 60 and there's a lot of 90 and 120 and we don't really need to go too
10:48far extra law of diminishing returns definitely applies.
10:52So all that being said, still, thank you to Nubia for making this for us to discover this
10:56together.
10:57And thank you for watching.
10:58Catch you guys in the next one.
11:00Peace.