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If you ever wanted to carry a tiny gaming computer in your pocket, look no further than the RedMagic 11S Pro ($849). This gaming phone is the physical manifestation of what you'd expect from a device that's geared toward gamers: It has light-up accents, heat-dissipation vents, trigger buttons, liquid cooling, and a dedicated switch that flips the device into gaming mode. The rest of the device isn't a bad package, since you get a factory-overclocked version of Qualcomm's most powerful chip, a 24,000-RPM fan, and a massive 7,500 mAh battery. Unfortunately, the cameras are well below average, it's not a great fit for US 5G networks, and RedMagic doesn't plan to support it for very long. Unless you specifically want a gaming phone, we recommend the Google Pixel 10 Pro ($999), even though it costs a bit more, because it's still great for gaming, has superior cameras, smart AI tools, and a far better support window, all of which make it our Editors' Choice.
Design: Bright Lights, Sharp Corners
The RedMagic 11S Pro is a big device to carry day in and day out, but it isn't hefty. At 6.45 by 3.01 by 0.35 inches (HWD), it's actually shorter and narrower than the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra ($1,299.99), which measures 6.61 by 3.37 by 0.35 inches, but the same thickness. The phones feel roughly similar in the hand, though I preferred the smaller, slightly narrower build of the 11S Pro to the Galaxy S26 Ultra for double-thumb typing.
The real design consideration is in the exquisite gamer aesthetic. It's present in everything, from the outer aluminum trim to the software skin that blankets Android. The 11S Pro comes in colorways called Nightfreeze and Subzero; the latter is featured here. There is stuff all over the backside: a Snapdragon logo etched into the metal, RedMagic's logo emblazoned in the top-right corner, plus five camera lenses and sensors stacked together.
The illuminated sides of this device are unlike any Android phone on the market right now. On the right side, two light-up touch-trigger panels boast a 520Hz touch sampling rate. The exhaust vents on the right and left side light up, as does the Game Mode status indicator and the back-facing RedMagic logo. The lights can be adjusted in the settings menu, where you can turn them off or change the hue and movement pattern. I like the novelty of having a gaming phone like this amid smartphone monoculture.
The slits on the outer chassis of the 11S Pro serve as a built-in wind tunnel, enhancing heat dissipation. The downside is that it limits the phone to an IPX8 rating for dust resistance. It's water-resistant, so it can withstand an accidental drop in the kiddie pool, but this definitely isn't a device to take near finely milled sand. The side-facing wind tunnel vents are an apt entry point for dust, though RedMagic notes a small amount won't affect core performance under normal circumstances. I'm not interested in testing this out.
The 11S Pro's metal frame is fully covered in Corning Gorilla Glass. I can confidently say it is one of the most slippery phones I've ever handled. I had a difficult time keeping this one from sliding off anything. There were too many times I walked back into a room only to find the 11S Pro on the floor, having slid off a stack of paper or the bed's duvet cover. One time, it slipped off a slightly slanted particle board table and landed on the floor. Fortunately, it survived these drops with nary a scratch, but I wasn't anticipating that a flat surface would be cause for concern. At the very least, the 11S Pro comes with a smoky black silicone case in the box by default, so you don't have to suffer the slippery phone chronicles perpetually.
Now, for the coup de grâce: the dedicated gaming button. There's a red-orange switch underneath the volume and power buttons that toggles Game Mode on. The second you do, the screen rotates to landscape. If you have the sound on, you'll hear a car revving its engine, which scared me a couple of times. I'll explain more of what Game Mode does in the Performance section of this review, but as the sound denotes, it starts those engines.
The gaming button sits below the power and volume buttons; the only difference between the two is their relative sizes. I press the wrong one nearly all the time. There is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port on the bottom that supports 4K screen projection to an external monitor or display with the right adapter. It also supports OTG for accessories such as gaming controllers and external storage devices.
The RedMagic 11S Pro has two primary biometric authentication methods: a 3D ultrasonic fingerprint sensor under the display and facial recognition using the front-facing camera. The fingerprint scanner is super speedy, and I had no issues logging in after my face failed to authenticate, even with clammy hands. If you wear masks or glasses, the fingerprint sensor is a good fallback for getting in.
The 11S Pro has a headphone jack on top, so the cable sticks out when it's in your pocket. The 3.5mm line-in is a rarity these days, but it works especially if you plan to rig the phone with gaming peripherals and attachments.
If you're exclusively living life with an eSIM like I am, the RedMagic 11S Pro will force you to revert to a physical one. The phone does not support eSIMs; it supports only up to two physical nano-SIMs. I felt foolish not recognizing that until after I tried to move over my Mint number.
Display: Out to the Edges
If you're the kind of person who is impressed by specs, the 11S Pro has quite the display pedigree. It's a 6.85-inch FHD+ AMOLED panel with a resolution of 2,688 by 1,216 pixels and a 144Hz variable refresh rate. The screen reaches 1,800 nits of brightness, which is modest compared with the 2,600+ nit peaks of Samsung and Google's latest devices. In practice, I had no trouble plane-spotting in the sunlight. The biggest selling point of the 11S Pro for gamers is its touch sampling rate, which it advertises as up to 3,000Hz or 360Hz for multi-finger touch.
It bears repeating that a display with a 144Hz refresh rate is merely an absolute nice-to-have, especially if the rest of the system is struggling to show off any polish. It is not game-changing and mostly hovers around 120Hz during normal use.
The 11S Pro display's color profile gives images and colors more gravitas by default. I did a quick comparison between the RedMagic's display and the Pixel 10 Pro's Super Actua OLED display. The same red hue appeared brighter and more saturated on the 11S Pro's AMOLED display than on the Pixel's. Whites aren't as bright as on the Pixel, but they still have some depth. Regardless, the 11S Pro punches up whatever is on screen.
You'll notice the 11S Pro doesn't have as much of a notch as other Android devices on the market. Indeed, RedMagic placed the front-facing camera beneath the display. The software will occasionally outline it to remind you it's there, but generally, the large screen appears notchless when it matters, particularly when you're gaming.
Performance: Talk About Exhaust
The RedMagic 11S Pro is basically a factory-overclocked gaming phone. It comes with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, or 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for $100 more. We tested the latter configuration. Note that RedMagic offers something called extended RAM, but it just puts a strain on the storage system to emulate additional memory. The 11SPro has 3GB enabled by default, which you can turn off in the settings. I left it as is for our benchmarks.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor powering the 11S Pro pushes its six prime cores to 4.74GHz, a major jump over the standard 4.32GHz found in flagships like the Galaxy S26 Ultra, which also uses Qualcomm chips. Samsung actually tweaks its version of the Snapdragon processor, too, a clear indicator that this industry remains a numbers game. At least for the 11S Pro, the benchmark numbers are steady and incredibly flattering.
Thermal management plays a major part in the 11S Pro's performance. RedMagic includes what's called the AquaCore system. It's a 3D Vapor Chamber with composite liquid metal, which is then churned by a 24,000rpm internal turbofan to expel heat through the side air vents. I mentioned earlier that you can see the liquid metal bubble spin around; you can hear the fans at work, which are sometimes as loud as those on an overworked MacBook Pro.
All together, this is a powerful set of features that help push the Android device to its performance brink. In Geekbench 6, the 11S Pro achieved a single-core score of 3,763 and a multi-core score of 11,606. That quickly outpaces the Pixel 10 Pro's 2,355 and 6,466 scores, though it runs on Google's Tensor processing architecture, which prioritizes AI performance over making those numbers. The 11S Pro is otherwise on par with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, which scored 3,724 in the single-core test and 11,360 in the multi-core test.
The RedMagic 11S Pro performed just as impressively in 3DMark tests, scoring 7,846 frames at 46.98fps, nearly on par with the Galaxy S26 Ultra's initial numbers of 7,847 frames at 46.99fps. It's worth noting that the Galaxy S26 Ultra has 12GB of RAM, compared with the 11S Pro's 16GB, though it clearly doesn't make much difference in graphics processing. It's much more helpful for mundane tasks, like scrolling webpages and exporting images, as shown by the phone's relatively high PCMark score of 27,191. The Galaxy S26 Ultra scored 20,755, and the Pixel 10 Pro scored 16,027. Even if you're only planning to push paper with the 11S Pro, it's up to the task with a little more headroom than comparatively priced phones.
The benchmark numbers are impressive, but does RedMagic keep its promise with its thermal cooling gimmicks? Mostly, or at least as much as you can within an Android device. Mainstream phones like the S26 Ultra and Pixel 10 Pro are essentially designed to throttle chips, or slow them down, to help preserve battery life and reduce overall heat buildup. RedMagic avoids that by allowing the 11S Pro to maintain its performance longer thanks to its dedicated cooling mechanism. I ran a few rote benchmarks with the fans and liquid cooling on and off, to show how much sustained performance is possible. The results show that cooling helps keep the Snapdragon chip from hitting a thermal wall. In my stress test with the cooling system disabled, the 11S Pro showed strong initial results, then gradually declined, dropping from 11,675 to 11,559 in Geekbench 6's multi-core scores. With active cooling on, the 11S Pro achieved a higher peak multi-core score of 11,807 and maintained it, reaching 11,495 in the final loop. The numbers show the system is good at dumping heat.
One final observation: the phone actually gets hotter, by a degree or two, even when the fans and cooling system are on. That's because it effectively acts as an exhaust system. It's better than having the heat trapped in one area of the inner chassis, and you won't feel it with the default case on.
Battery: Sheer Density
With a massive 7,500mAh battery, the RedMagic 11S Pro offers one of the beefiest batteries in this price range, outranking devices like the S26 Ultra's 5,000mAh battery. In my testing, the device lived up to the size of its battery pack.
After pulling it off the charger at 9:38 p.m., it was still at 17% by 6:14 p.m. the following day. It refused to die at around 3%, so I had to redo the entire battery test to get a set number. Eventually, it took 19 hours and 57 minutes for the 11S Pro to fully peter out. The 11S Pro is a tank compared with the Galaxy S26 Ultra or Pixel 10 Pro, which lasted 15 hours and 50 minutes, and 12 hours and 40 minutes, respectively. Even with the 144Hz refresh rate set to always on, the 11S Pro lasted 18 hours and 57 minutes in a follow-up battery test. It still didn't outlast the OnePlus 15's 7,300mAh battery, which is our pick for the best, with 26 hours and 11 minutes—and that's on a slightly smaller battery. The 11S Pro is a power-hungry setup, but at least it has the battery to power it all.
When the battery finally does run dry, the charging experience is just as hearty. The 11S Pro comes with a cable and charging brick that support a maximum charging speed of 80W. With a third-party charging cable, the 11S Pro resurrected from a dead state to 96% in just half an hour. It's about on par with the OnePlus 15's proprietary 80W charging speeds, and it's half an hour faster than Samsung's 60W charging. It supports wireless charging and reverse charging, which I used with a USB light to find my path to the bathroom at night. It also supports pass-through charging when gaming, which powers the phone without replenishing the battery.
Connectivity: Use Wi-Fi Inside the House
Getting the RedMagic 11S Pro online outside my house was a major hassle. I've been steadily testing smartphones for the past two years exclusively through eSIM. But since the 11S Pro doesn't offer that, I had to procure a physical nano SIM card.
After registering the device with Mint Mobile, an MVNO that piggybacks on T-Mobile's network, I ran into another issue: the 11S Pro is missing Band 71. This 600MHz frequency band is critical for indoor mobile performance and coverage in rural areas. The upload speeds were egregiously capped inside my house, dropping from 243Mbps downloads and 19.7Mbps uploads outside in the open to as low as 101Mbps downloads and 7.68Mbps uploads at my desk inside. It's a good thing the 11S Pro has Wi-Fi 7, because I saw double the speeds near my Wi-Fi 6-enabled router, about 482Mbps for downloads and 21.8Mbps for uploads.
This kind of connectivity headache is a recurring theme for many Android enthusiasts who are trying to veer off the mainstream. I ran into similar network limitations with the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, which lacks certain U.S.-based carrier certifications required for reliable connectivity. It's a stark reminder that the trade-off for a device that's not the norm is often network latency.
The 11S Pro supports Bluetooth 5.4. It also has an infrared sensor, but you'd need a third-party app (like this one) to turn on the television with it.
Audio: Behold the Headphone Jack
The 11S Pro offers one rarity in this day and age: a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. I love using it with a pair of cabled earbuds I unearthed recently, though it's also clutch if you're carrying your music library and want to plug in at the party—a wired connection is always more solid than a wireless one.
Call quality is fine despite its shaky indoor connections. The speakerphone hit about 88dB with the meter up against it, and about 76dB if you're listening with the earpiece turned all the way up. Music can get louder than that: up to 97dB. I listened to Wind Walkers' "Heredity" at full volume, and while I appreciated that I could hear it clearly across the room, up close it sounded less full than I'd hoped, almost like it's struggling to push the sound out.
Cameras: Just This Side of Poor
Gaming phones like the RedMagic 11S Pro often get a bad rap for having middling camera setups, since all the effort goes into beefing up the cooling and silicon. RedMagic is guilty of this to the point that I'd tell you to get this phone specifically if you want to avoid taking selfies. The front-facing camera is a muddy under-display 16MP sensor. I scream any time I open it up.
The rear-facing camera is a three-sensor soiree featuring a 50MP primary camera and a 50MP ultrawide. There's also a 2MP macro lens for fixed focus shots. You would be forgiven for assuming that the phone has five cameras doing its dirty work. There's a definite cluster-aesthetic trend happening lately on the back of devices that suggest more camera prowess than phones actually have. The extra circles you see are the LED flash and the dedicated autofocus sensor.
As for the results? Every photo I took was off in some way. The software was far too aggressive with its AI during post-processing, often resulting in images that look overblurred or AI-rendered, which is exactly what we are trying to avoid right now with the proliferation of generated imagery. The sky is frequently blown out or poorly exposed, regardless of the time of day. Zoom performance is also a major weak point; the actual hardware lacks a dedicated optical zoom lens, and the software's attempts to fill in the gaps result in splotchy images.
The cameras generally exhibit inconsistent behavior. I'll spend minutes trying to get a decent shot of the view outside during my hike, only to come back in the car and successfully snap my kid's stuffies in the shadowy light. This isn't the kind of hardware you want if photos are important to share and keep. You have to really want a gaming device to put up with a phone that struggles to keep up with the rest of the market.
Software: For the Gamers
The 11S Pro runs on RedMagic OS 11.5, which is based on Android 16. This isn't a standard Android skin with trimmings on top. It's a complete takeover, with only minor hints that there's Google underneath. The aesthetic isn't too bad, though it's expressly geared toward the gaming crowd, so if you flip on some of Google's default aesthetics, it's like you're forcing minimalist design on top of maximalist hardware.
You can switch into Game Space with the physical red-orange toggle on the side of the device. Flip it up, and you'll hear the roar of the gaming engine revving up for performance by increasing the input speeds and frame rates. It's too much for me, the farm simulator enjoyer, though it's a dynamic way to block out the distractions of the rest of the operating system so that you can get your game on. The Game Space also lets you map custom touch zones on the screen to the physical shoulder triggers, plus control fan speeds and fine-tune RGB lighting without having to drag down the notification shade.
There are some annoyances with RedMagic's software. The Game Center, which is different from the Game Space, is an app store of sorts designed to give you access to—what else?—games. Funny enough, the store doesn't currently comply with Google Play policies, and when I tried to log in with my account, it was blocked. Oh well! There's also Mora, the built-in AI "waifu" with its own paper doll that you can dress up and customize. I'm annoyed at the blatant inclusion of a busty avatar aimed toward the male gaze. You can turn it off completely if you dig into the settings a bit.
RedMagic promises two major Android OS upgrades and three years of security updates for the 11S Pro. It's scant compared with what Samsung and Google offer for more money, both of which commit to at least seven years. But this is gaming-first hardware, and if esports is what truly drives you, you'll be looking for an upgrade around two years in.
