RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Review: An Android Gaming Powerhouse

RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Review: Design

Tablets suffer from a design problem. Where smartphones and laptops bend, fold and roll, tablets are just kind of there – straight slabs of glass and maybe plastic or metal. RedMagic tries to shake things up with a few embellishments on the dark gray anodized aluminum rear panel.

At the top of the panel (or side, depending on the slate’s orientation) your eye is instantly drawn to the glowing RGB RedMagic logo. While the company speaks my multi-colored love language, the more interesting aspect is the clear panel showing off some of the tablet’s internals, including a few heat pipes and a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. According to RedMagic, the Peekaboo window makes Nova the world’s first transparent gaming tablet. It’s a great design feature, but now I want a full glass rear panel despite the absurdity.

Next to the window is the housing for the 50-megapixel rear camera. Unlike the window, which is flush with the metal back, the sensor housing extends ever so slightly. That means the slate will never be flat, which is annoying. RedMagic’s logo sits in the center of the panel, looking like a late ’90s Trump stamp, equal parts fun and sad regret.

The front of the tablet is made of glass, with a 10.9-inch display surrounded by some thick bezels. The 20 MP camera sits in the middle of the top (or right) bezel. Like the back panel, the tablet’s sides are made of anodized aluminum, with the power button that doubles as a fingerprint reader sitting on the left side along with the volume rocker around the corner. The USB-C charging port is centered on the Nova’s right side, and you get a pair of speakers on either side of the slate. Finally, along the bottom, you’ll find a set of pogo connectors for the optional magnetic keyboard ($109). Surprisingly, the tablet lacks an audio jack.

The Nova weighs 18.7 ounces (530 grams) and measures 11 x 7.4 x 1.89 inches (279 x 188 x 48 millimeters). For comparison, it is bigger than the current one iPad mini modelIt weighs 10.3 ounces (293g) and measures 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.25 inches (195.4 x 134.8 x 6.3 mm). Note that the iPad is a smaller tablet overall than the RedMagic.

RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Review: Display and Audio

It’s not an OELD, but I’ll still take it. It was hard to take my eyes off the Nova’s 10.9-inch, 2880 x 1800 LCD display. Colors pop off the screen with nearly crisp, clear detail. In fact, details were so sharp during the “Apologetics” trailer that I saw fiber patterns on a blank canvas and paintbrush striations left in the paint as they touched the canvas. The display did great skin work on actors Andre Holland, Andrea Day and John Earl Jelks. The colors, however, were the best part, whether the vibrant blues and violets in the paintings or the yellows and reds worn by some of the characters.

While you can watch movies, read comics and check your social media accounts, this is a gaming tablet. As such, Nova Games looks fantastic on its display, especially with a 144Hz refresh rate. The screen also boasts an 840Hz touch sampling rate if you’re using the touchscreen to play fast-paced FPS instead of a Bluetooth controller. I had a blast all around and defeated fantastic creatures in wathering waves.

The tablet’s quad speakers are surprisingly loud—so loud that they’ll put these ultraportable systems to shame. Even at maximum volume, the Nova delivered warm, balanced audio whether I was streaming music from Spotify or Tide. Dialogues and explosions from my mobile games also sound good. My only issue is the lack of bass, but considering it’s a tablet, that’s not too much of a shock.

RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Review: UI and Software

Nova runs though Android 14RedMagic has RedMagic OS 9.5. The design won’t set the world on fire. The default skin is a series of grays and light blues that give it a futuristic aesthetic. But the lock and home screens are customizable and RedMagic offers several themes. That’s right, except for Hot Apps and Hot Games, the collection of 20 recommended bloatware apps does nothing useful.

Since the Nova is a gaming tablet, it stands to reason that there is software to support that gamer-centric track. Game Space is the main app for this, as it aggregates all the games you have installed and lets you launch them from within the app. In Game Lobby, you can adjust touch sampling rate, smoothness, edge accidental touch protection, CPU and GPU performance profiles, and display settings.

Jump into Game Base, and you can check out the tablet’s Princestal plugins and which games can use them, including a key remapping feature or Free Display, which lets you customize the game’s screen aspect ratio and create landscape and portrait modes. This is where you can customize Mora, RedMagic’s AI assistant. Besides changing her clothes, you can also sense her different actions. When enabled, Mora acts as a guide in the game space but can also be used across the phone to interact with notifications and system alerts, such as low battery. While the game space is easy to navigate, it can be hard to find. I searched high and low for the app but found it in the quick settings menu in the notification shade.

RedMagic has promised at least one Android OS update, so the Nova should be upgraded to Android 15. The company will also support two years of security updates. It’s not as good as what Samsung or Apple offer for their devices, but it’s better than nothing.

RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Review: Performance

The Nova gets its power from a 3.4-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 8th Gen 3 flagship processor, an overclocked version of the original SoC. With that extra oomph and 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, the Nova easily handles my 50 Google Chrome tabs, light photo editing in Adobe Photoshop Express, and several open Google Docs. Allow to deal. But more importantly, combined with its Adreno 750 GPU, the tablet consistently delivered fast, smooth gameplay on every taxing game I threw at it, including Dead Cells, Including genless zone zero and alien isolation.

I ran several benchmarks to see how well the Nova would fare. I have to say, I’m pretty impressed. In Geekbench 6, the slate achieved a single-core score of 2,208 and a multi-core score of 6,422. When I ran the 3DMark Steel Nomad Lite benchmark, which tests the GPU, the tablet returned a respectable score of 1,743.

When the Nova is working hard, it cranks up its internal 20,000-rpm fan to keep things cool. According to RedMagic, the Nova is the world’s first gaming tablet with an integrated turbo fan and 3D heat pipe. I spent two hours fighting my way through dead cells. At the beginning of my playthrough, a cool 78 degrees Fahrenheit (26.5 degrees Celsius) was measured with the fan engaged in the middle of the rear panel. Two hours later, the temperature rose to 91 degrees (32.7 degrees). It was warm but not uncomfortable.

RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Review: Camera

The Nova has two cameras: a 50MP rear camera and a 20MP front shooter. Both cameras snap solid photos and can handle any video conferencing or streaming you want to handle. They even have modes similar to what you’ll find on smartphones (time-lapse, panorama, and slow motion). No matter which camera I used, I was really impressed with both color reproduction and detail.

The myriad colors on my locks looked great in selfie shots and they didn’t wash out my skin tone. The camera captured just the mustard yellow of the can in the background. In my friend’s shot holding an Astro Bot plushie, the green wall as well as his shirt are nice and vibrant. Detail was sharp enough to make out some of the tag’s sound when you zoomed in with minimal blur.

Speaking of details, check out these pictures of my puppies on my couch. You don’t just see the individual hairs as well as their beautiful fur shins. You can even see intricate details in my sectional fabric panels.

RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Battery Life

I got 12 hours and 18 minutes out of the Nova’s 10,100 mAh battery with the tablet playing 24 hours of video at 50% brightness. That time was significantly shorter when I started gaming. I only got 3 hours and 29 minutes of playing Weathering Wave before it was time to reach for the charger.

Speaking of chargers, it’s rare these days to send one to a smartphone, let alone a tablet. RedMagic bundles an 80W charger with the slate and the company estimates that it takes 55 minutes to charge the tablet from 0 to 100%.

RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Review: Verdict

I am not a fan of tablets. More precisely, I don’t trust them, when smartphones don’t spread or waver around 8-inch displays. But before my usual objective evasion, I must admit that RedMagic Nova has made a positive impression. Trump stamp of a logo aside I like the design, especially the transparent window and RGB. Even after a few hours of play I encountered minimal lag. And even though the screen isn’t OLED, the color is nice and vibrant; Paired with impressive quad speakers, you’re in for an audiovisual treat. And you expect solid battery life depending on what you’re doing.

The user interface will take some getting used to and I hope the accessories come bundled with the tablet. Overall, the RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet is a great choice for gamers or people looking for a tablet that isn’t made by Apple or Samsung.