Review – REDMAGIC Nova gaming tablet

After smartphones, it’s the turn of a tablet from REDMAGIC. Received a few days ago, let’s see what else the Chinese firm has to offer, something refreshingly different.

The formula? Take the specs of the REDMAGIC 9S Pro, an XL screen, a big battery, and just remove the SIM card.

Introduction

It’s now undeniable that REDMAGIC has produced one of the best gaming phones on the market, providing everything you need to play the most demanding Android games without sacrificing performance or battery life. Will the magic happen again?

Because we’re overclocking.com, we have to benchmark, and that’s what we’re going to do with this new baby.

Technical specifications:

• SoC: Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 “Leading Version
• RAM: 12GB, 16GB
• Storage: 256GB, 512GB
• Battery: 10’100mAh
• Ports: USB-C 3.1 Gen2
• Operating system: Android 14
• Front camera: 20MP
• Rear camera: 50MP
• Colors: gray (Gun Metal)
• Screen type: 2.8K, 144Hz, 550nits
• Weight: 530g
• Charging speed: 80W
• Screen dimensions: 10.9″
• Screen resolution: 1800x2880px 16:10
• Wi-Fi connectivity: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax
• Bluetooth: 5.4
• Audio: Four DTS-X Ultra Sound speakers
• Vibration: 2 haptic motors

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Screen

The Nova tablet has a large 2.8k screen with a 144 Hz refresh rate. It’s 10.9 inches, the same size as an iPad.

In terms of brightness, the REDMAGIC Nova can deliver up to 550 nits. Much lower than the 9 Pro and 9S Pro, but we had no reason to turn up the brightness during our tests. It’s also clear that we use our tablets and phones in different environments.

Battery and charging

The 10,100mAh battery is probably one of the main selling points for gamers. We tried various tests to get good data:

• In-game testing, the REDMAGIC Nova lasted 10 hours and 13 minutes.
• VLC played videos for 16 hours and 51 minutes at 60% brightness.

With the 80W charger, you won’t need to plug in your 9 Pro for long. X% charge is reached in 30 minutes, and 100% takes just 55 minutes. Note that there’s no wireless charging.

Audio

The phone is equipped with 4 speakers, perfect for playing games, watching videos or movies. The speakers can be very powerful, and the quality is decent. What’s more, the REDMAGIC Nova is Dolby DTS X Ultra certified.

Cooling

One of the main features is the cooling solution, ICE 2.0, which can lower temperatures by 25℃ (29’400mm²). With a tiny fan (17x17mm) that goes up to 20,000 rpm. A first for a gaming tablet .

• Thermal conductivity: 6,000 W/mk
• Heat dissipation under screen: 29,400 mm²
• 9,268 mm² large-area superconducting copper foil Graphene
• Large 8,9114 mm² integrated aeronautical aluminum body
• Nine heat dissipation layers reduce core temperature by 25°C

Camera

Other

Games require a fast response, which is why the screen has a multi-touch sampling rate of 840 Hz, while REDMAGIC smartphones have a sampling rate of 960 Hz. This figure corresponds to the number of times the screen’s sensors update to register touch data per second. 

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In play

On PUBG, Real Racing3, Riptide GP2, Odyssey and Alto, we’re always at maximum FPS. The tablet doesn’t heat up, even after more than an hour of play. The grip is good, and the tablet isn’t very heavy, so you don’t get tired during long sessions. It’s hard to fault the REDMAGIC Nova.

Some non-gaming features

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Benchmarks

For our benchmarks, we compared the REDMAGIC Nova to Android smartphones previously tested on overclocking.com and at a similar price. With the same chip as the 9S Pro but a larger screen, let’s see if this will have an impact on performance.

Antutu v10 :

On Antutu v10, scores are close with a small 0.46% on the CPU test, -6.45% on the GPU, -3.4% for memory, 9.85% for UX.

3DMark:

On 3DMark, everything is in the red, with around -2% on all scores.

Geekbench 6:

Under Geekbench 6, we have -3.65% in single-core CPU, but -0.85% in Multi-core. Under Vulkan, the GPU shows -9% perf.

GFXBench:

Now it’s GFXBench’s turn, and it’s not so good either, with -28% on Manhattan 3.0

BaseMark GPU :

Finally, BaseMarkGPU 1.2 shows us some strange results: 3.5% on simple Vulkan 1, 0.76% on medium Vulkan 1, 7.86% on simple OpenGL 3.1 and -0.42% on medium OpenGL 3.1. Disturbing results when you consider that all the other benchmarks noted performance losses on the GPU side.

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Conclusion

The REDMAGIC Nova was announced on September 27 on their website.

The 16GB RAM and 512GB memory model, which we tried out, will cost you €649. The 12GB RAM and 256GB memory version will be available for €499, all on the REDMAGIC website.

There’s a lot to like here, and even if benchmark performance isn’t up to the level of REDMAGIC’s smartphones, in-game, the XL screen increases our immersion. The only thing missing is the triggers, which would have been difficult to place neatly on the tablet. We look forward to the accessories that will enable us to exploit this gadget even further..

REDMAGIC Nova Gaming Tablet

We liked :

• 10.9″ 144Hz screen
• Snapdragon power
• Gaming design
• Huge battery

What we didn’t like :

• Easy to get dirty
• No 3.5mm jack

All in all, if you’re looking for a tablet to play mobile games on a larger screen, there’s no doubt that the REDMAGIC Nova offers an incredible mobile gaming experience. For this price it will potentially be a serious competitor to the iPad, with more power, battery and storage. The REDMAGIC Nova is currently the best value for money tablet on the market.