RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Review: An Android Gaming Powerhouse

What’s old is new again. About five years into my tech reviewing journey, gaming tablets became a thing for about a year. Then they fizzled out faster than a cheap July 4th sparkler. But they’re back again, and if the RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet is any indication, they’re better than ever. The 10.9-inch slate ($500 starting, $650reviewed) has a lot of power under the hood thanks to an overclocked Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, which makes gaming an absolute joy. The display is bright and vivid, and the quad speakers pack a wallop without going overboard. The slate also has a bang-up pair of cameras if you want to snap a quick pic, stream, or video conference.

However, a slightly clunky user interface with a bunch of bloatware is a minor hurdle for some consumers to overcome. And it’d be nice if RedMagic bundled the keyboard and stylus with the tablet instead of being an additional purchase. But for gamers looking for a powerful tablet to take their mobile gaming to the next level, the RedMagic Nova is an excellent choice.

The RedMagic Nova comes in two flavors. The $499 (€478.50) has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. The company sent me the $699 (€670.28), which has 16GB of RAM and doubles the storage.

RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Review: Design

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

At the top of the panel (or the side, depending on the slate’s orientation), your eye is immediately drawn to the glowing RGB RedMagic logo. While the company is speaking my multicolored love language, the more compelling aspect is the clear panel showing off some of the tablet’s internals, including a couple of heat pipes and the Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. According to RedMagic, the peekaboo window makes the Nova the world’s first transparent gaming tablet. It’s a cool design feature, but now I want a full glass rear panel despite the impracticality.

©Photo: Adriano Contreras/Gizmodo

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

The front of the tablet is made of glass, with the 10.9-inch display surrounded by some rather thick bezels. The 20MP camera sits in the middle of the top (or right) bezel. Like the rear panel, the tablet’s sides are made of anodized aluminum, with the power button that doubles as a fingerprint reader sitting on the top left with the volume rocker just around the corner. The USB-C charging port resides in the center of the Nova’s right side, and you get a pair of speakers on both sides of the slate. Finally, along the bottom, you will 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, that’s larger than the current iPad mini model, which 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). Remember that the iPad is a smaller tablet than the RedMagic overall.

RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Review: Display and Audio

It’s not OLED, but I’ll still take it. Taking my eyes off the Nova’s 10.9-inch, 2880 x 1800 LCD display was hard. The colors almost pop off the screen with crisp, clear details. In fact, the details were so sharp during the “Exhibiting Forgiveness” trailer that I saw the fiber pattern on a blank canvas and the paintbrush striations left in the paint as they touched said canvas. The display did a great job of actors André Holland, Andra Day, and John Earl Jelks’s skin. The colors, however, were the best part, whether the vibrant blues and violets in the paintings or the yellow and reds worn by some of the characters.

©Photo: Gizmodo

Although you can watch movies, read comics, and check out your social media accounts, this is a gaming tablet. As such, Nova’s games look gorgeous on its display, especially with its 144Hz refresh rate. The screen also boasts an 840Hz touch sampling rate if you use the touchscreen to play a fast-paced FPS instead of a Bluetooth controller. I had a blast questing around and defeating fantastical creatures in Wuthering Waves.

©Photo: Gizmodo

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

RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Review: UI and Software

Although the Nova runs Android 14, RedMagic has RedMagic OS 9.5. The design isn’t going to set the world on fire. The default skin is a series of grays and light blues meant to give a futuristic aesthetic. However, the lock and home screens are customizable, and RedMagic provides several themes. This is fine, except for Hot Apps and Hot Games, a collection of 20 suggested bloatware apps rather than anything useful.

Since the Nova is a gaming tablet, it stands to reason that there’s 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 the Game Lobby, you can adjust the touch sampling rate, smoothness, edge accidental touch protection, CPU and GPU performance profiles, and display settings.

Jump over to Game Base, and you can check out the tablet’s preinstalled plugins and which games can use them, including a key remapping feature or free display, which lets you customize the game screen ratio and create landscape and portrait modes. This is also where you can customize Mora, RedMagic’s AI assistant. In addition to changing her clothes, you can peruse her different actions. When enabled, Mora acts as a guide in Game Space but can also be utilized throughout the phone to interact with notifications and system alerts such as low battery. While 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 notifications shade.

RedMagic has committed to at least one Android OS update, so the Nova should upgrade to Android 15. The company will also support up to two years of security updates. This is not as long 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 the 3.4-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 8th Gen 3 Leading Version processor, which is just an overclocked version of the original SoC. That extra oomph and the 16GB of LPDDR5x RAM allowed the Nova to easily deal with my 50 open Google Chrome tabs, light photo edits in Adobe Photoshop Express, and several open Google Docs. 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, Zenless Zone Zero, and Alien Isolation.

I ran a couple of benchmarks to see how well the Nova would fare. I have to say, I’m pretty impressed. On 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 Light benchmark, which tests the GPU, the tablet returned a respectable score of 1,743.

©Photo: Gizmodo

When the Nova is hard at work, 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 start of my playthrough, the middle of the back panel measured a cool 78 degrees Fahrenheit (26.5 degrees Celius) with the fan engaged. Two hours in, the temperature rose to 91 degrees (32.7 degrees). It was warm but not uncomfortably so.

RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Review: Cameras

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 that you’d like to do. They even have modes similar to what you’d find on a smartphone (Time-lapse, Panorama, and Slow Motion). No matter which camera I used, I was really impressed with both the color reproduction and detail.

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

Speaking of detail, look at these pics of my puppies on my sofa. Not only can you see the sheen of their beautiful fur, along with individual hairs. You can even see the intricate details in my sectional’s fabric panel.

RedMagic Nova Gaming Tablet Battery Life

I squeezed 12 hours and 18 minutes out of the Nova’s 10,100mAH battery as the tablet played a 24-hour video at 50% brightness. That time was significantly shorter when I started gaming. I only got 3 hours and 29 minutes playing Wuthering Waves before it was time to reach for the charger.

Speaking of the charger, it’s rare to see one shipped with a smartphone these days, 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’m not a fan of tablets. More specifically, I don’t believe in them, not when smartphones unfurl or rocking nearly 8-inch displays. But past my usual purposeful avoidance, I must admit that the RedMagic Nova has made a positive impression. Tramp stamp of a logo aside, I like the design, especially the transparent window and the RGB. Even after a couple of hours of play, I encountered minimal slowdown. And while the screen isn’t OLED, the color is nice and vibrant; paired with the impressive quad speakers, you’re in for an audiovisual treat. And depending on what you’re doing, you expect solid battery life.

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