ZTE has announced its first-ever gaming tablet, the ZTE Nubia Red Magic Nova, on September 5, 2024. Designed for gamers and performance enthusiasts, this tablet brings cutting-edge technology, robust hardware, and gaming-specific features. Here’s a breakdown of what makes the Red Magic Nova a standout in its category.
ZTE Nubia Red Magic Nova specs
The Red Magic Nova features a glass front, an aviation-grade aluminum frame, and an aluminum back, offering both durability and a sleek, modern look. The tablet’s design also features an RGB light on the back, enhancing the gaming aesthetic with customizable lighting effects. To support extended gaming sessions, the Nova comes with a built-in illuminated cooling fan, ensuring that the device remains cool during intensive use.
The Nova is equipped with a 10.9-inch IPS LCD display with a 144Hz refresh rate and peak brightness of up to 550 nits. While being focused on gaming, tablet gamers however preferred tablets with FHD+ displays for bette visuals, and this is the only aspect where the Nova may let down a little.
Powering the Nubia Red Magic Nova is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, built on 4nm process. The octa-core CPU includes a mix of Cortex-X4, Cortex-A720, and Cortex-A520 cores, delivering impressive speeds and multitasking capabilities. The Adreno 750 GPU, clocked at 1 GHz, ensures that even the most graphically demanding games run smoothly, making this tablet a powerhouse for gaming and multimedia.
The device runs on Android 14 with Redmagic OS 9.5, ZTE’s custom skin optimized for gaming. The Red Magic Nova comes with a range of memory configurations to cater to different needs. Storage options include 256GB with 12GB RAM, 512GB with 16GB RAM, and a top-tier 1TB with 24GB RAM model. All variants utilize UFS 4.0 storage, which ensures fast read and write speeds, reducing loading times in games and apps.
While the primary focus of the Red Magic Nova is gaming, it also features capable cameras. The rear camera is a 50 MP single-lens shooter, capable of capturing detailed images and recording 4K video at 30fps. The front-facing 20 MP camera handles selfies and video calls, with 1080p video recording support.
Audio quality is another strong point for the Red Magic Nova, featuring stereo speakers with four drivers, delivering immersive sound during gameplay or media playback. While the device lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack, it compensates with Snapdragon Sound, offering high-quality audio for wireless headphones.
At the heart of the Red Magic Nova lies a 10,100 mAh non-removable battery, ensuring long hours of use even with power-hungry games and applications. The device supports 120W wired charging, advertised to charge the battery to 50% in just 15 minutes and fully charge in 45 minutes.
In terms of connectivity, the tablet supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for wireless connections, and it also comes with NFC—though it does not support contactless payments. The USB Type-C port allows for data transfer, charging, and video output.
Price, colours and availability
Priced at approximately 500 EUR, the Nubia Red Magic Nova is available in two color options—Cyclone and Snowfall.
