The RedMagic 11 Air is the latest gamer-focused smartphone from RedMagic, bringing with it a sleek futurist design aesthetic, while offering performance that outpaces the RedMagic 10 Air in almost all categories.
Now, despite it featuring only a thickness of 7.85mm, the RedMagic 11 Air is feature-packed with high-end specs that make it geared towards gamers wanting performance, minus the annoyance of having to lug around a larger format phone, or even an additional cooler, as is popular with some gamer-centric devices.
The model of the RedMagic 11 Air sent to me features 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB of internal storage, and a meaty 7000mAh battery, which powers the Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile CPU inside. We saw this released initially in late 2024, and it is still among the best of high-end Android-based processors for mobile gamers. With a resolution of 1216×2688, the RedMagic 11 Air features a vibrant AMOLED display that can display up to 144hz, making it suitable for competitive play that goes beyond simple mobile games.
Outside of the sleek glass backing, and large format screen, the RedMagic 11 Air features the latest in Wi-Fi 7 standards, meaning, it only took me around an hour and half to download a whole suite of games, including Call of Duty Mobile, Fortnite, Genshin Impact, and several others which I will touch on during the benchmarking section of the review.
In terms of other notable physical characteristics, the RedMagic 11 Air features active cooling, which provides external-level performance, built-in, on top of the return of physical membrane-style triggers that can be mapped in various games via the suite of Nubia-provided software. Coming in at 207g, the RedMagic 11 Air is an impressively sleek device for the amount of power it packs under the hood.
As for the camera, the RedMagic 11 Air rocks a 50MP (f/1.9, 23mm) main camera, in addition to its 8 MP, f/2.2 front-facing solution (8 MP, f/2.2, ultra-wide), giving potential buyers a phone full of potential beyond just a gaming workhorse, affored by its ability to shoot in your bog standard 1080p, 2160p, and a full 8k, but at a reduded 30fps for video.
“…the RedMagic 11 Air features a vibrant AMOLED display that can display up to 144hz, making it suitable for competitive play that goes beyond simple mobile games.”
In terms of software, the RedMagic 11 Air ships with the latest version of Android, which at the time of this review, is Android 16, Baklava. Nubia has done an exceptional job in keeping the prebaked software in check, limiting it to only essential apps, including having the gamer-focused Game Space suite built into the dropdown menu, rather than the app drawer, making it feel more like a core system function, rather than just another app living in your device.
On the topic of the Game Space launcher and suite, like previous RedMagic devices, the RedMagic 11 Air features a dedicated red button on the left of the phone. This launches directly into the Game Space application, which acts as the front-end that automatically populates the space with supported games. Furthermore, it is easy to add your own applications to the Game Space launcher, which further simplifies your options in terms of tweaking performance and playing with overlays.
If you’re new to the Redmagic and Nubia Game Space ecosystem, the app offers users a staggering amount of options to tweak their performance in games. These include a slew of overlays, such as metrics for controller input, screenshot enhancements, recording shortcuts, AI fidelity options, and even the option to set custom resolutions for games, something that I can see myself using for game streaming purposes.
One feature that I was unable to find in the Game Space app is the ability to turn on an FPS counter. This was limited to only displaying the current refresh rate of the screen and not the actual in-game FPS counter, which might be a little sneaky for those who may not know the difference. Speaking of performance and metrics, let’s finally talk about just how the RedMagic 11 Air did in terms of my gaming experience.
To start, I can’t think of anything better than the aforementioned Genshin Impact, which, despite its age, still looks quite striking and runs flawlessly at 60fps on the 11 Air, on high settings, under the high-performance mode toggle via the Game Space app. Similarly, Zenless Zone Zero, another Gatcha-centric action-adventure game, on high settings, equally ran at 60fps, with only very minor dips in action-heavy sequences, but nothing that most people will notice, unless you are sensitive to that kind of thing.
Most impressive of all was my time with Call of Duty Mobile, which ran close to the max refresh rate of 144hz, sitting around well over 90fps, during my experience with the popular multiplayer shooter. As a bonus, I was able to get similar performance in Fortnite using a mix of low and medium settings, which did sacrifice some image quality but resulted in a smooth 120Hz experience, making it feel particularly snappy, even with touch controls.
To round off Android game testing and to try a newer release, I tested Arknights: Endfield, which, on the highest settings, ran at 60fps, but there were some small dips, especially regarding background elements and characters, that seemingly refreshed at a lower FPS. In truth, tweaking the settings can easily net you a more consistent and locked experience, but even cranking things up left me feeling like the game was in a more than playable state with mostly stable and smooth high fps.
Another area I wanted to test is emulation, which the RedMagic 11 Air handled exceptionally. In both PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube tests, which had an upscale of 5x, they netted me a smooth and locked 60fps experience in games such as Soul Calibur and God of War, and Metroid Prime and F-Zero GX, respectively. In fact, I’d say GameCube in particular, far outpaces what the Nintendo Switch 2 currently has on offer on the official NSO service platform for online subscribers.
“Most impressive of all was my time with Call of Duty Mobile, which ran close to the max refresh rate of 144hz, sitting around well over 90fps.”
Of course, when it comes down to it, I prefer using my phone to stream games from my PC and PlayStation 5. Thanks to the RedMagic 11 Air’s Wi-Fi 7 compliant chipset, I was able to fully utilize my router, which, in my bedroom, is limited to the Wi-Fi 6 band, something that still offered a rock-solid showing in terms of game streaming performance.
Finally, to take things a step further, and really see how well the Wi-Fi on the RedMagic 11 Air could perform in a less-than-ideal location, such as my local coffee shop. I was able to utilize the application Tailscale to reverse proxy into my home gaming desktop, and successfully stream PC games to the phone, with no noticeable dips in performance, allowing me to play games like the Yakuza Kiwami 3 demo and even Super Smash Bros. Ultimate via the Nintendo Switch emulator shortcut in my Steam library.
There’s a lot to like with the RedMagic 11 Air, offering enthusiast-level performance with the form factor of a smaller device, but one factor that needs to be put to the test is the battery. I’m happy to say that its large capacity 7000mAh battery lasted me three days when idle (with the occasional text message), and a single full day of liberal use with some light gaming and media thrown in to boot. Finally, pushing the hardware to its maximum power draw setting and gaming on it for longer periods of time gave me around 5-6 hours of use, which, for a phone, left me feeling impressed.
Ultimately, the RedMagic 11 Air is a powerful gaming-centric phone minus the bulk associated with higher-end Android devices, making it a solid choice for those in the market looking for an upgrade early in the new year.
