Black Shark and Red Magic are two big gaming smartphone makers in the industry right now. Since the brands have already unveiled their flagship gaming phones for the first half of 2020, we decided to compare the two smartphones, side by side, to see which one comes out on top.
So let’s pit the Black Shark 3 Pro 5G vs Nubia Red Magic 5G to see which is a better gaming smartphone in the 2020 market.
To make things simple, we have divided this comparison into five parts – display, game operation, gaming performance, cooling system, and battery endurance.
Black Shark 3 Pro vs Red Magic 5G: Display
The reason why we have put the display part first is because the display is the most important hardware for a gamer. A high-resolution screen with a high-quality touch panel will ensure smooth and accurate gameplay. Also, gamers have to stare at the screen for hours when playing games – so it needs to be eye-friendly too.
Gaming phones‘ display is generally larger than most regular smartphones. The Red Magic 5G features a 6.65-inch 1080P display with an impressive 144Hz refresh rate, while the Black Shark 3 Pro features a 7.1-inch 2K display with a 90Hz refresh rate. Know that the Nintendo switch only features a 720P 6.2-inch display. But the reason why Switch is dominant in the mobile-console market is because it has ‘excellent games’, which is missing in the mobile phones’ platform.
Both gaming phones have a pretty efficient pixel arrangement, which is really similar to Samsung display’s arrangement, the top AMOLED pixel arrangement. And due to a higher resolution, the Black Shark 3 Pro has more crowded pixels. Meanwhile, they both feature super high sampling rates. For Red Magic 5G, the figure is 240Hz, and for Black Shark, it amazingly reaches 270Hz. But in actual gaming tests, it’s really hard to perceive the difference. However, the touch response did feel a bit faster than regular flagships.
Considering the lower priority of color presentation in E-sport devices, we did not test its color accuracy and coverage. But according to the Black Shark 3 Pro, under the standard mode, the delta E is as low as 1, while so far there is no information about the Red Magic 5G. But both of them support the wider DCI-P3 color gamut. So accordingly, we can say that they both have no big color problem as e-sport gaming phones. If you guys want more tests on the color accuracy their displays, please leave a comment below and we may do a separate test on it.
Black Shark 3 Pro vs Red Magic 5G: Gaming
Now let’s look at their effort on improving gameplay. For the Red Magic 5G, it features two touch buttons on the frame as other 2019 gaming phones did. And for these two buttons, the touch buttons have a 300Hz sampling rate, which provides a faster response than the operation on its display. So, we also suggest that it’s better to assign important operations to the buttons, like shooting and aiming, if you are going to play games on it.
The biggest surprise of the Black Shark 3 Pro is the tactile buttons! It dramatically boosted the gameplay and experience. The true physical feedback created a totally new experience in smartphone gaming, and it also gives it a professional mobile console look. So gamers are definitely in for a treat. In addition to this, the Black shark model doesn’t abandon its pressure touch buttons.
As we combined these two types of buttons into gaming, it’s not easy to get used to it. Anyway, in FPS gaming, these two models are the best choices, and if you want to experience new operation feedback on mobile gaming, my choice is definitely the Black Shark 3 Pro.
Black Shark 3 Pro vs Red Magic 5G: Specs
Both the models are equipped with Snapdragon 865, UFS3.0 storage, and LPDDR5 memory. So performance is going to be more or less the same. We selected the 3D-Mark benchmark to give you a better idea about their theoretical performance. Well, what’s fun is that the Red Magic 5G in my hand defeated 100% of the tested phones, including all the Red Magic 5G models. Although the Black Shark 3 Pro was unable to beat the Red Magic 5G, its score of 7249 still defeated 99% of tested models.
About their gaming performance, we did frame-rate tests on 6 games, which were PUBG mobile, Call of Duty mobile, Honkai Impact 3, Asphalt 9, NBA 2K20 and the final stress test, Nimian Legends.
In PUBG Mobile, we broke the graphics limit of 120fps, and did the test on HDR graphics. For Black Shark 3 Pro, the frame rate stably maintained at 89.56fps, almost the best result for its 90Hz display. As for the Red Magic 5G, thanks to the 144Hz display, the frame rate was up to another level, at around 116fps.
In Call of duty, due to the limited framerate, we got very similar results on these two models. One is 59.97fps, the other one is 59.99fps.
In Honkai Impact 3, both models fared differently. Again, due to the differences of the display, their max framerates just matched their display refresh rates. But the gap between average framerates was quite strange. We thought the reason here is their gaming resolution. On the Black Shark 3 Pro, probably the game was running under a 2K resolution as the display supported, while the Red Magic 5G only had a 1080P-resolution condition.
The result of NBA 2K20 was also strange. It seems that the NBA 2K20 was running under limited 60fps on the Black Shark 3 Pro, but the game was able to run up to a 144Hz framerate. So, the gap between these two models was quite large.
Next one is Asphalt 9, the frame rate advantage of the Red Magic 5G was gone due to the game frame limitation of 30fps. In addition, the 2k display of the Black Shark 3 Pro turned into a pro as it could provide a better image quality with the larger display.
In the final stress test of the Nimian Legends, we try to control all the variables about the display with the build-in graphic settings. Under the highest 1080P graphic settings, the Red Magic 5G took the lead with a significant framerate gap. It ran at an average of 51.66fps, while the framerate of Black Shark 3 Pro was only 36.3fps.
So in conclusion, the 144Hz display no doubt brings a better gaming fluency and performance on the Red Magic 5G. On the other hand, if you want more detailed image quality, the Black Shark 3 Pro with 2K display would be a better choice. In addition, you can also switch the display resolution to 1080P on the Black Shark 3 Pro to have a better gaming fluency and longer battery life.
Another important feature of the gaming phone is its cooling system. PC-game enthusiasts probably have a better picture of the significance of an effective cooling system. Overheating problem could lead to an uncomfortable holding feeling, and affects gaming performance as well. So, great hardware without effective cooling won’t really get your money’s worth.
Red Magic was known as the only brand to integrate active air cooling and liquid cooling together. It’s not strange in the PC, but it’s a huge deal for a smartphone due to its space limitations. On the other hand, the cooling system of the Black Shark 3 Pro is more conservative. A sandwich structure is applied inside to build up a ‘dual-liquid-cooling system’. Anyway, no matter what language they used in their advertisements, we prefer to judge their cooling performance with actual gaming temperature.
The way we tested it is to play PUBG in HDR and 90 fps settings for 40 mins. And the room temperature is 27℃.
The central logo of the Black Shark 3 Pro peaked at 43℃ while both the hand-holding area reached up to 38℃. Well, for the Red Magic 5G, it was a bit disappointing. The heat was mainly concentrated on the left side and peaked at 43.3℃. Because the heated area was close to the cameras, in the final 10 mins, my colleague found it too hot to hold the phone even for shooting. It’s comforting though that they both cooled down in just few minutes.
As a gaming phone, the Red Magic 5G has an excellent cooling system but as gamers, we also hope that the phone can deal with the heated issue in a smarter way, which doesn’t affect your ability to hold the device.
The heat generated inside the Black Shark 3 Pro may even be higher than the Red Magic 5G model, but the phone deals it with a better solution without affecting gameplay. And there was no underclocking of the CPUs of these two models.
So it’s safe to say that the Black Shark 3 Pro has a better cooling system.
Black Shark 3 Pro vs Red Magic 5G: Battery & Charging
As e-sport gaming phones, both of them offer a large battery and super-fast charging. The Black Shark 3 Pro is equipped with a 5000mAh battery with a 65W fast-charger. The smaller Red Magic 5G has a 4500mAh one with a 55W fast-charger.
In the actual charging test, the Black Shark 3 Pro only took 22 mins to charge the power from 0 to 70%, and eventually took 44 mins to complete the test of full-charging. For the Red Magic 5G, 15 mins charging can top up 50% of the power, and the full-charging test took us 42 mins. And then we started playing PUBG Mobile for 40 mins with the highest fresh rate and the highest HDR graphic settings they could access to. Both of them consumed 19% of the power.
So from the tests we did, their battery performance was very similar to each other. So no need to be confused about the battery life if you are going to pick one of them.
So that’s it for this Black Shark 3 Pro vs Red Magic 5G comparison. Both are excellent gaming phones.
While the Red Magic 5G more deserves the name of the ultimate E-sports phone in terms of sheer performance, the Black Shark 3 Pro provided better gaming operation and better cooling experience. Both brands have also developed a lot of accessories for these two models, which may somehow make up for the gaps in the gaming experience.
So which one do you prefer? The Red Magic 5G with its ultimate screen and performance or the well rounded Black Shark 3 Pro?
