RedMagic’s practice of releasing new flagship smartphones every six months or so continues, and the latest entry in the company’s delightfully innovative Pro line is the RedMagic 11S Pro. As the name suggests, this is to be considered a minor refresh of the RedMagic 11 Pro, which was released in November 2025.
Before we dive into the supreme gaming goodness of the 11S Pro, keep this in mind: owners of the 11 Pro should not feel bad about RedMagic releasing a new model so soon. That’s because the upgrades over the 11 Pro are minor at best – the substantial gains are over the last-gen 10 Pro and 10S Pro models. Owners of the RedMagic 11 Pro are not supposed to upgrade now.
With all that said, the biggest upgrade the RedMagic 11S Pro brings over the 11 Pro is the enhanced Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Leading Version chipset, which comes with overclocked Prime cores that can go up to 4.74 GHz, up from the standard Elite Gen 5 chip’s 4.61 GHz.
The cutting-edge, liquid-cooled AquaCore cooling system is back, and it’s further improved with a larger heat transfer area and a more durable Turbo Fan. Best of all, it’s now fully visible on the 256 GB model as well!
I’ve been intensely testing the RedMagic 11S Pro over the last several weeks, and I think that as far as gaming smartphones go, this is the new industry standard. What’s more, I believe it’s a perfectly competent all-around flagship, as long as you don’t crave a high-end set of cameras.
One of the great advantages of RedMagic phones is they tend to be aggressively priced. While that’s still somewhat true of the 11S Pro, prices have been increased by roughly $100 / €100 (another reason for 11 Pro owners to feel happy with their purchase).
Here’s a detailed breakdown of regional pricing for the RedMagic 11S Pro:
| RedMagic 11S Pro | USD $ North America | CAD $ | EUR € | GBP £ | SGD S$ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 256 / 12 Black | $849 | CAD$1,149 | €799 | £709 | S$1,169 |
| 512 / 16 Black | $949 | CAD$1,299 | €899 | £799 | S$1,299 |
| 512 / 16 Silver | $949 | CAD$1,299 | €899 | £799 | S$1,299 |
Table of Contents:
RedMagic 11S Pro Design and Display
Super-cool, transparent design and gorgeous OLED screen
RedMagic 11S Pro isn’t afraid to look different. | Image by PhoneArena
The exterior design of the RedMagic 11S Pro continues to be just as striking as before. It’s now a bit cleaner, with fewer patterns on the back, but it’s still every bit as futuristic and insane as before.
The centerpiece of the transparent back cover is the AquaCore liquid cooling system, which continues to employ a miniature piezoelectric pump to circulate a special liquid designed to draw heat away from the processor and the battery. Yes, this is the real cooling liquid that we see behind the rear glass panel, and yes, it’s really circulated around the device for improved heat transfer. There’s nothing out there on the market like this. As to how efficient it is, I’ll tell you in the Performance section.
Aside from the transparent design with visible liquid cooling system (as if that’s not crazy enough), there are also a bunch of RGB-lit areas, like the RedMagic logo on the back, the fan, the trigger buttons on the right-hand side and the small lines surrounding the small “Game mode” label on the opposite side.
These RGB zones are very customizable and you can decide which ones you want “on” and in what colors. If you’re like me and prefer a slightly less screaming look, you can turn them off.
The RedMagic 11S Pro’s design is not for everyone, but it deserves an award for being so unique and bad-ass. | Images by PhoneArena
The other signature feature of RedMagic’s flagship phones is the completely flat design – no camera bumps allowed! This is honestly a breath of fresh air that I really, really enjoy. Finally, a phone that can sit flat on a table! Beware not to scratch the back glass, though – this isn’t hard to achieve, considering the increased contact area between the rear glass and the surface it’s sitting on.
Besides looking great, the no-camera-bump design also facilitates the more effective use of external coolers, because it lets you position the cooler’s contact plate higher towards the cameras, which is also where the chipset is positioned, and where you can catch the most heat before it’s reached other components of the phone. These RedMagic guys seem to have thought of everything!
As mentioned earlier, even the 256 GB model gets the cool, transparent design this time, in its black (Nightfreeze) variant. Of course, there’s also the silver/white Subzero colorway, which looks just as futuristic and amazing, only in a different way.
The other super-notable bit in the design are the trigger buttons for gaming, situated along the right-hand side. These are capacitive zones that simply react to touch – you don’t need to apply force or anything. They are a bit bigger here, compared to those on the 11 Air.
The RedMagic 11S Pro’s box includes a 80W charger, cable and case – a full package! | Image by PhoneArena
Unlike mainstream smartphone flagships, the RedMagic 11S Pro’s box comes packed with a powerful, 80-watt wall charger, charging cable and a case to get you started. That’s just adding more value to the already impressive package.
A fine, 4.85″ OLED display by BOE is sizable enough for gaming. | Images by PhoneArena
The RedMagic 11S Pro keeps the same 4.85″ OLED display by BOE, and that, I think, is a fine choice.
There might be a bit of variation between units – I’m using both the 11S Pro and an 11 Air, which has the same panel, and the 11S Pro unit comes off a bit colder. But thankfully, there’s a handy color temperature adjustment in display settings that lets you tweak the color tones to your liking.
The screen also gets bright enough, with a maximum rated global brightness of 1800 nits. In our display measurements, we managed to surpass that number when measuring 20% APL (average picture level), but with 100% white, we got to about 1500 nits. The screen does well to boost its brightness when in very bright lighting conditions. I haven’t had issues reading it under the sun, but it definitely can’t get as bright as a more cutting-edge screen like that on the Galaxy S26 Ultra.
There’s a 3D ultrasonic fingerprint sensor under the display of the RedMagic 11S Pro, and it works very well. It’s fast and I haven’t had many failed unlocking attempts.
This is unlike my 11 Air experience, which is considerably slower to take a reading of my fingerprint and often needs a couple of attempts to get it right. This is understandable, because the 11 Air features an optical fingerprint sensor, which is inferior compared to the 11S Pro’s ultrasonic tech.
As usual, there is simple facial recognition, which is great for unlocking your phone quickly and conveniently, but cannot be used for high-security activities like authorizing payments.
RedMagic 11S Pro Performance & Benchmarks
An absolute beast, surpassing the Galaxy S26 Ultra and iPhone 17 Pro Max in peak and sustained performance.
Gaming on the RedMagic 11S Pro | Image by PhoneArena
And now we get to the fun part! As mentioned, the RedMagic 11S Pro brings the cutting-edge Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Leading Version chipset, which has Prime cores clocked at 4.74 GHz, up from 4.61 GHz in the standard edition of this chipset.
The interesting part is that attaining such cutting-edge performance is not simply a matter of throwing the latest Qualcomm chip in there. There are other Elite Gen 5 phones that score considerably worse than the Galaxy S26 Ultra and the RedMagic 11S Pro.
It’s all down to the cooling solution, as well as the drivers and thermal profiles the company has designed. One of the signature features of the RedMagic 11S Pro is the AquaCore cooling system, which is a combination of a super-advanced passive cooling design, a unique, 24,000 RPM fan, and the liquid cooling that’s visible behind the transparent rear glass panel.
All of these hardware features help take heat away from heat-generating components like the chipset and the battery, and distribute it more evenly across the whole device. In the case of the fan, it also works to blow heat away from the phone.
This allows the RedMagic 11S Pro to push the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Leading Version chip to its limits and stay there longer than any other phone. Don’t get me wrong, RedMagic runs its phones hot, and the 11S Pro can get very hot if you push it to the extreme, but chances are you won’t be doing that most of the time.
That said, I cannot really tell you how effective or ineffective RedMagic’s active cooling features are (the fan and the liquid cooling). I ran numerous stress tests with and without the active cooling features, and I couldn’t come to a definite conclusion about their effect. If you ask me to bet money on this, I’d say they have a minor benefit to the overall cooling of the phone, with the major effect coming from the passive cooling features.
Still, who knows, maybe it’s just something I wasn’t able to measure using benchmarks and the overall effect is more to be felt in real-life scenarios.
Performance modes
In RedMagic’s gaming overlay (Energy Cube), you can choose between 4 performance profiles. The default is Balanced mode, and there are also Eco, Rise and Diablo. Switching to Rise mode allows the RedMagic 11S Pro to draw even more power, unlocking higher performance and getting hotter in the process. It is recommended for very demanding games and PC emulator apps.
The fourth performance mode, Diablo, is not chosen from the standard profile selection menu, but from the list of options on the left. It’s the bottom option on that list. Diablo mode sends all chipset clock speeds to their maximum, unleashing incredible performance, but also generating a ton of heat and drawing a lot of power.
Diablo performance mode should only be used situationally and for short periods of time. You can use it in longer sessions safely, but for the purpose, it’s strongly advised that you attach an external phone cooler to avoid throttling, as well as enable Charging Separation (bypass charging) to draw power directly from a charger and protect the battery from overheating.
CPU Performance Benchmarks:
Geekbench 6: A high single-core score is what makes your phone feel snappy during everyday tasks like opening apps, typing and browsing. The multi-core score matters most when doing heavier work like video editing or gaming.
GPU Performance
Wild Life Extreme is a heavy graphics workload used to measure a device’s sustained GPU performance and thermal throttling. It uses older mobile rendering techniques and is friendly to older or lower-end mobile devices.
The RedMagic 11S Pro comes in 256 GB / 12 GB RAM and 512 GB / 16 GB RAM flavors. There is no microSD card slot, but there is a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Both storage models use UFS 4.1 and LPDDR5X Ultra, which are the bleeding edge in storage technology.
RedMagic 11S Pro Software
RedMagic’s Android UI is simple and intuitive. Nothing crazy on this front. | Screenshots by PhoneArena
On top of Android 16 is RedMagic’s OS 11.5 right now. People seem to be hating on RedMagic’s software, but I really don’t understand the problem with it. Sure, there’s the rare typo, but on the whole, it’s a really clean software that doesn’t deviate much from stock Android. Everything looks, runs and feels as expected, so I can’t find much to complain about.
Bloat is also kept at a minimum here. Options concerning RedMagic’s unique features, like the liquid cooling, the fan, and the RGB lights, are neatly integrated with the Settings menu. This is one of the better organized UIs, if you ask me.
Game Space Center and Energy Cube – gamers will love these
And then there’s RedMagic’s Game Space Center and Energy Cube, which are RedMagic’s gaming features menu and gaming overlay, respectively.
Energy Cube enables you to engage all sorts of wild features, including the above-mentioned performance profiles. Sure, that software is quite busy, because it incorporates a lot of toggles and options into a single screen, and many of these options aren’t labeled very clearly.
There’s a ton of special options and features that gamers will surely appreciate. | Images by PhoneArena
One of the examples here is the “Touch accuracy” toggle, which is used to enable/disable all features related not so much to accuracy, but to the various “anti-mistouch” features RedMagic has added. These anti-mistouch features, by the way, are found in the Game Space Center menu, and there’s quite a lot going on there as well.
So, yeah, the purposes of these menus and their interconnectivity can be a little confusing at first, but once you get how it all works, it starts to make sense and becomes relatively easy to adjust things precisely to your liking.
Aside from the quirky UI of RedMagic’s gaming features, though, I think the company has done a great job incorporating a lot of useful functionality. From options concerning various controller devices, through the performance profiles, to the quick toggles for the fan, refresh rate, charging separation or touch accuracy, it really feels like this product was made by people who deeply understand the needs of the target audience.
So, I can only say good things about the software here. To non-gamers, it may look confusing and needlessly busy. To gamers, it’ll be very useful, customizable and convenient.
The trigger buttons
The large trigger keys also light up for a proper, gaming mood. | Image by PhoneArena
The trigger (or shoulder) buttons on the RedMagic 11S Pro are a bit of a missed opportunity, in my opinion. They work well and offer a bunch of customizations to make them more useful, such as choosing between single tap, long or repeated press, enabling certain macros or gestures and so on.
This is all great, but it would have been even cooler if each trigger touch zone could be separated in two, for example, allowing it to act like two separate buttons. Or utilize a slide gesture, for example, to distinguish between pressing R2 or R1 (to use game controller parlance).
Such customizations are available in Asus’ ROG phones, so it should be possible for RedMagic to implement this as well. I’m not asking for pressure sensitivity, but at least slide gestures or the ability to separate each zone into two.
Aside from that, I found everything about the trigger keys to work as intended. Besides, they are straightforward to enable and set up per game using the gaming overlay, so kudos to RedMagic for the intuitive UI work.
RedMagic 11S Battery
A humongous 7500 mAh battery delivers outstanding battery life
So, this is a gaming phone, and a gaming phone needs a huge battery. And we have it here, in the form of a massive 7500 mAh silicon-carbon battery cell. That’s some cutting-edge tech right there.
On top of that, the RedMagic 11S Pro supports 80W wired AND wireless charging (no magnets, sadly), plus it can also reverse-charge other devices either wired or wirelessly. How cool is that?
Yes, battery life is incredible. If you stick to doing the basic smartphone things, like web browsing, watching YouTube, listening to music via Bluetooth or browsing social media, this phone will very easily last you at least two full days.
Rivals like the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, with its somewhat more conservative battery of 5000 mAh, are fine, in my opinion. With well-optimized software, life is very much good with a battery like that nowadays.
But pushing the envelope so much further with a massive Si-Ca battery, like the 7500 mAh one in the RedMagic 11S Pro, just makes things more convenient and effortless. Battery life anxiety becomes a thing of the past.
As long as you’re not gaming hard, you don’t really need to manage your battery life with the 11S Pro – you can just go through your day with complete peace of mind, knowing you have juice to spare. I really appreciate this quality-of-life upgrade.
And when it comes time for charging, I keep being pleasantly surprised at just how quick it happens when you connect an 80W charger, considering how long it takes to drain the battery. And isn’t it delightful that RedMagic is bundling precisely such a charger in the box? They don’t make them like they used to. Except they do, if it’s RedMagic.
PhoneArena Battery Test Results:
In addition to USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, the RedMagic 11S Pro also have a good-old 3.5mm audio jack. | Image by PhoneArena
RedMagic 11S Pro Camera
This is supposed to be the big tradeoff, but is it?
The camera isn’t the strongest aspect of the 11S Pro, but it’s not that bad. | Image by PhoneArena
Everyone knows, gaming phones don’t have very good cameras. This isn’t shocking: manufacturers invest their energy and resources into implementing advanced gaming features like extreme performance, bigger batteries, cooling and trigger buttons, instead of into the camera system. You can’t have it all.
I also expected the ultrawide camera to be much worse, and while it’s not industry leading by any means, I think it’s very much serviceable. The lack of a zoom camera is the real drawback in this phone, but 2X photos tend to be clean and detailed enough, so there’s at least a little bit of zooming potential here.
RedMagic 11S Pro camera smaples | Images by PhoneArena
RedMagic 11S Pro Audio Quality and Haptics
The stereo speakers on the RedMagic 11S Pro are pretty decent. They are relatively loud and well balanced. There’s definitely some depth to the audio quality.
Phones like the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the Galaxy S26 Ultra have a definite advantage, being louder and even bassier, so you’re definitely not getting loudest and boomiest speakers out there, but they are above average for sure.
The haptics are great with the 11S Pro – tight and nicely defined – just the way we like them.
And, surprise, surprise – there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack on the RedMagic 11S Pro! The reason for including it here is because most Bluetooth earbuds have too much latency. This typically isn’t a problem when watching video or making a call, but it’s very prominent when playing a game. Because of that, most competitive gamers still prefer using wired earbuds.
RedMagic 11S Pro Specs
And here is an overview of the RedMagic 11S Pro specs:
|
|
| RedMagic 11S Pro | Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra |
| Dimensions | |
|---|---|
| 163.82 x 76.54 x 8.9 mm | 163.6 x 78.1 x 7.9 mm (~12.33 mm with camera bump) |
| Weight | |
| 230.0 g | 214.0 g |
| Size | |
|---|---|
| 6.8-inch | 6.9-inch |
| Type | |
| AMOLED, 144Hz | Dynamic AMOLED, 120Hz |
| System chip | |
|---|---|
| Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SM8850-AD (3 nm) | Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy SM8850-1-AD (3 nm) |
| Memory | |
| 12GB (LPDDR5X)/256GB (UFS 4.1) 16GB/512GB |
12GB (LPDDR5X)/256GB (UFS 4.0) 12GB/512GB 16GB/1024GB |
| Type | |
|---|---|
| 7500 mAh | 5000 mAh |
| Charge speed | |
| Wired: 80.0W Wireless: 80.0W |
Wired: 60.0W Wireless: 15.0W |
| Main camera | |
|---|---|
| 50 MP (OIS, PDAF) Aperture size: F1.9 Sensor size: 1/1.55″ |
200 MP (OIS, PDAF) Sensor name: Samsung ISOCELL HP2 Aperture size: F1.4 Focal length: 23 mm Sensor size: 1/1.3″ Pixel size: 0.6 μm |
| Second camera | |
| 50 MP (Ultra-wide) Aperture size: F2.0 Sensor size: 1/2.88″ |
50 MP (Ultra-wide, PDAF) Sensor name: Samsung JN3 Aperture size: F1.9 Sensor size: 1/2.5″ Pixel size: 0.7 μm |
| Third camera | |
| 2 MP (Macro) | 10 MP (Telephoto, OIS, PDAF) Sensor name: Sony IMX754 Optical zoom: 3.0x Aperture size: F2.4 Sensor size: 1/3.94″ Pixel size: 1.12 μm |
| Fourth camera | |
| 50 MP (Telephoto, Periscope, OIS, PDAF) Sensor name: Sony IMX854 Optical zoom: 5.0x Aperture size: F2.9 Focal Length: 115 mm Sensor size: 1/2.52″ Pixel size: 0.7 μm |
|
| Front | |
| 16 MP | 12 MP (PDAF, HDR) |
RedMagic 11S Pro vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra specs comparison
or compare them to other phones using our
Phone Comparison tool
Should you buy the RedMagic 11S Pro?
The RedMagic logo on the back lights up in any color you want. | Image by PhoneArena
The RedMagic 11S Pro is an outstanding high-end smartphone, if you’re into gaming. I love its unique, tech-inspired aesthetic, the spacious display and the extreme performance it delivers. When you factor in the trigger buttons and all the other exclusive gaming features, it’s very hard to beat, considering there’s almost no competition left in this segment.
And then we have to consider the RedMagic 11S Pro as a mainstream flagship, which is a very different game, so to speak. My personal take is that if you happen to like its aesthetics (and don’t care for a zoom camera), it’s actually a great all-rounder, with surprisingly few weak sides.
Sure, not everyone needs the gaming features, but everyone will appreciate the 7500 mAh battery. Everyone will enjoy the 80W wired+wireless charging, with an 80W charger in the box at that! Even the camera isn’t really bad. It’s not quite Galaxy S-level, but it’s pretty decent.
