Nubia launched the Red Magic 3S gaming smartphone powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ in September of 2019. It comes with all the bells and whistles one wishes in a gaming-centric handset including shoulder triggers and active-liquid cooling with a turbo-fan. But unfortunately, the phone seems to have poor audio performance according to the latest review by DxOMark. It scores only 50 points and sits at the third position from the last but with an exceptional Artifacts performance.
DxOMark is well-known for its camera reviews but lately, they have also started testing audio on smartphones. The final score of their audio test is an average determined by the points scored by the phone in both playback and recording tests conducted by them under controlled lab conditions. Just last week, the company posted the audio review of Realme X2 Pro, which according to them has an exceptional playback volume. Now, they are back again with a review of Nubia Red Magic 3S, a gaming smartphone launched in the same month as the X2 Pro.
As per the tests performed by the DxOMark Audio team on Nubia Red Magic 3S, the device did not meet the standards of a gaming smartphone with a final score of 50 points. They found the playback from the speakers to be ‘heavily impaired by the narrowness of its frequency response’. This is because the phone highlights more on hollow midrange frequencies without outputting bass and high-end frequencies. As a result, the overall sound yield from the speakers is suppressed with poor performance in attack (percussion instruments like drums), bass precision, and localizability (location of audio in the overall soundscape).
Further, the review states that the wideness performance of the phone is only good while playing games. For those who do not know, wideness refers to ‘ability to render where sounds come from in recording’. Also, another major con of the phone’s speakers is the shifting of voice content to the right side rather than being balanced. However, the Nubia Red Magic 3S shines in one department unlike any other phone DxoMark Audio team has ever tested. And that is Artifacts performance with an impressive highest score of 89 points. This means the phone produces extremely clean sound with no audible noise or distortion even at high volume.
As far as recording capabilities are concerned, the Red Magic 3S performs even poorer than its playback performance. The voices recorded through the phone’s microphone sound come out canny as well as hissy. The recordings also have insufficient loudness, almost no spatial elements as the phone can only record in mono, and inferior background rendering due to aggressive noise canceling algorithm. Simply put, this phone has the worst recording capability than any handset DxOMark Audio team has tested so far.
UP NEXT: Realme X2 Pro scores a respectable 58 points in DxOMark Audio test: Exceptional Playback Volume
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