Today, we have something special for you guys.
We have brought in five gaming phones for the ultimate GAMING COMPARISON — the ROG Phone 5, the Legion 2 Pro, the Redmagic 6, the Blackshark 4 and the Redmi K40 gaming edition. All of them were released in the first half of 2021. And we believe these five candidates cover all the possible price segments for a capable gaming phone in the market.
Gaming Phone with the Best Design
When we evaluate the design of gaming phones, the judging criteria is often very different from a regular phone. It’s not necessary for these gaming models to be light and thin, since higher priority is given to longer battery life, more effective thermal design, and better hardware enabling creative gaming features.
All these five models weigh over 200g. The Redmi K40 Gaming is the closest to a regular phone with the best weight control.
But among these five gaming models, no doubt the heaviest one, the Legion 2 Pro has the most distinguished design. The Legion phone uses a three-part design with an aluminum frame and a glass back. Inside the model, its motherboard with the chipset is placed at the middle to avoid heating on both sides of the holding area, where it features dual 2525mAh batteries. And it’s the only model among the five to feature 2 built-in cooling fans.
Another model that comes with a cooling fan is the RedMagic 6. Apart from this, we couldn’t find any design distinguishing it as a gaming phone. So it’s similar to the Blackshark 4 and the Redmi K40 Gaming edition. These three models look like a regular smartphone. Another model that uses an internal three-part design is the ROG Phone 5, which also has a centrally placed chipset and batteries on the two sides. In addition to this, there are more similarities between the ROG Phone and the Legion Phone. For example, they both feature a big RGB-light logo on the back, but the big eye of the ROG phone no doubt is more breathtaking for a gamer. Additionally, they both have two USB-C ports, which is really convenient for charging and playing games without affecting your grip.
The Legion Phone is the only model that aggressively puts its front and rear cameras at a strange location. The centrally-placed rear camera module looks really strange. Actually, it doesn’t look good at all, while the pop-up front camera is a much smarter design to be positioned on the side-frame. It achieved a perfect angle when we were playing games horizontally. What’s more, for those mobile gamers who also do live-streaming, no doubt it’s the best option to solve all streaming issues with just one phone. But some users may consider it a bit too flashy. Indeed, it does look a bit weird, so the other four probably look better as a smartphone.
But note that although the Legion phone’s selfie camera didn’t occupy any area of the front, its edge width wasn’t narrow at all. On the contrary, the Blackshark 4 and the Redmi model featuring a hole-punched front camera have relatively narrower edges.
So to conclude, for the appearance perspective, we’d like to give both the Legion model and the ROG model a 4.5 out of 5, mainly because they are not perfect. And we’ll give 4 points to the Redmagic 6, and 3.5 to both the Redmi model and the Blackshark 4.
ROG 5 vs Legion 2 Pro vs Blackshark 4 vs Redmi K40 Gaming vs Redmagic 6: Display
The Legion phone, ROG phone and the Blackshark 4 feature an E-sports-level display with 144Hz refresh rate, while the Redmi K40 gaming comes with only a 120Hz display.
Although the RedMagic 6 comes with the highest refresh rate of 165Hz, the difference with the other four models is really hard to perceive with your naked eye. But speaking of their display quality, we have to say that the Redmi model is a bit disappointing because we found that its edges look a bit reddish. And turns out there are other units that have the same issue.
Speaking of colors, only the Legion 2 Pro applies a lower color temperature, which makes the screen look relatively yellowish. And no matter the color mode, there’s no option for users to adjust the color temperature. While on the other 4 models, there’s no such issue.
All these 5 models claim their panels support HDR content, and especially the ROG Phone, the Legion model and the Blackshark 4 claim they can breach the 1000-nit barrier upwards to fit the HDR standard. But in our test, only the Blackshark 4 and the ROG phone could actually reach around 800nits of peak brightness at APL-100 and over 1000 nits at APL1, while the Legion model failed to deliver on its promise and only got a close result to the Redmi K40 Gaming edition. But when we used them for HDR1000 content playback, the Blackshark 4 turned out to be the best one to activate the highest brightness.
And all of these five models support DC dimming, which is an option that we are sure PWM-sensitive gamers would appreciate. However, only the Redmi K40 Gaming edition and the ROG phone require the refresh-rate limit of 60Hz to activate DC dimming.
Also, except for the ROG Phone, the other four models claim that they feature super high touch sampling at over 300Hz. But actually, the ROG Phone isn’t far behind in terms of touch and slide latency. The ROG phone still has the best performance of touch and slide latency because all the other models only feature a maximum touch sampling rate at 300Hz on paper but the ROG model triumphs over them in real life. Take the Blackshark 4 as an example. When we activated its higher sampling at 720Hz, although we could see more sampling points, its latency strangely increased than the other models. And even on the Redmi model, you can see frequent breaks occurring under the simulated sampling.
So for display rating, we’d like to give the ROG model 5 points out of 5, 4.5 for the Blackshark 4, 4 for the Redmagic 6, and 3.5 for both the Redmi model and the Legion Phone.
ROG 5 vs Legion 2 Pro vs Blackshark 4 vs Redmi K40 Gaming vs Redmagic 6: Best Gaming Operation
In 2021, how do you define a gaming smartphone? By the presence of gaming buttons. In fact, if you look at it, if not for the gaming buttons, the Redmi K40 Gaming edition would be just another good-performing mid-range model. But it does have my favorite pop-up physical shoulder triggers just like the Blackshark 4.
However, the Blackshark 4’s triggers offer better tactile, clicky feedback with a bit more comfortable key travel as well. In addition, the Blackshark 4 supports double mapping positions of a push and lift actions separately, while each trigger of the Redmi model only has one pressing mode for single-position mapping. If you want to set up combos of buttons on the Redmi K40 Gaming, it’s only available as a virtual button on the screen.
As for the Redmagic 6, in addition to the mapping modes we mentioned, each touch shoulder button supports either triggering dual positions or trigging a macro-operation.
For the ROG phone, the operation can be much more complicated as each button can be separated into two buttons and support slide actions. Users not only can slide to trigger buttons but also can use them to simulate horizontal or vertical slide actions, which really requires a lot of practice. But most gamers wouldn’t even try these unusual options while gaming.
If you are still not satisfied with the shoulder buttons, well, don’t worry about it. ROG further adds two more physical triggers on their official cooling accessory, the latest Aero Active cooler. So literally with the cooling fan, it supports gaming operation with up to 6 off-screen buttons.
Well for the Legion 2 Pro, the situation is crazier. This monster phone just supports 2 press-sensing areas and 6 built-in extra-buttons for gaming operation, including 4 separated shoulder buttons and two slide buttons on the back. However, it’s not easy for gamers to have a comfortable grip while using all the buttons. And it’s really easy to register mistouches with these buttons, or sometimes you may even be confused by the less sensitive slide buttons at the back. So it’s hard to say whether this over implementation of buttons is a successful solution on a mobile product. But if you only activate the basic 2 shoulder buttons, the whole gaming operation would be much more delightful as they have fast response. And the grip feeling is the best among the five models due to the thoughtful position for placing your little fingers.
To conclude, in the gaming operation department, our rating could be somewhat subjective since operation experience varies from person to person. Anyway, we’ll give 5 out of 5 points to the Blackshark 4, 4.5 to the RedMagic 6, 4 to the ROG phone and the Legion phone, and 3.5 to the Redmi K40 Gaming edition.
ROG 5 vs Legion 2 Pro vs Blackshark 4 vs Redmi K40 Gaming vs Redmagic 6: Best Gaming Software
All these gaming models have their own software for gameplay. Except for the Redmi model, gamers are able to access higher chipset performance and most game-related shortcuts with their dedicated game assistant. It seems that Redmi didn’t really prepare well when it comes to the in-game software for their first gaming phone. So the built-in Game Turbo looks pretty simple with just several shortcuts. There’s no option for performance adjustment, neither projection options. But gamers can still directly project the game or the phone screen to a TV or a PC through Miracast on all these five models.
Well, the best model for projection is the Redmagic 6. Compared to others, projection on the Redmagic 6 has better compatibility with higher image quality. For example, you can choose wired projection through a direct connection with a monitor or USB connection with the Redmagic Studio on a PC.
Another model that supports high-refresh-rate projection is the Legion 2 Pro, it supports wired projection at 1080P and up to 120Hz.
Furthermore, you can also turn the Redmagic 6 into a virtual gamepad during Projection.
For more details, you can just check the table here. But please note that the Redmi K40 Gaming edition didn’t really optimize its projection capacity. Over game-related software, it really is no different from a regular phone.
So in this department, we’d like to give 1 point to the Redmi model, 3 points to the Blackshark 4, 4 points to the ROG phone and the Legion Phone respectively, and 5 points to the RedMagic 6.
ROG 5 vs Legion 2 Pro vs Blackshark 4 vs Redmi K40 Gaming vs Redmagic 6: Best Performance
The performance comparison probably is the most boring part of this comparison, since we already knew that the Snapdragon 888 chipset was gonna win the race. Anyway, let’s take a look at their benchmark performances. Unsurprisingly the three models running the 888 chipset dominate the race and didn’t really show significant gaps, but here we still want to remind you that this can be partially attributed to the excellent thermal design of these three gaming phones. About their specific thermal performance, we will show you more details later. The Blackshark 4 and the Redmi model is at another level, and the Blackshark 4 seems to have slightly better performance than the Redmi K40 Gaming edition.
In our actual gaming test, from the framerate results, we cannot exactly pinpoint which model powered by the 888 chipset won the competition. They all achieved almost the best frame rate results in the three games. In PUBG mobile, the best result were achieved by the Legion phone, while in Nimian legends and Genshin Impact, the Redmagic 6 won. If I have to pick up the model that has the most stable performance, we will give the title to the Redmagic 6. However, the biggest surprise is the Blackshark 4 powered by the 870 chipset, which didn’t lag much behind, while in the last place, unsurprisingly, was the Redmi K40 Gaming edition. However, what really disappointed us was the Redmi model’s performance in Genshin Impact. It’s ridiculous for a gaming phone to lock the framerate to 50fps in a popular game, and even throttle down at 45fps. But in our early review video of the Redmi K40 gaming model, you could find that the phone at that time didn’t lock the framerate in its early software version. But now considering its high power consumption and thermal issue, Redmi eventually used a more conservative CPU strategy in the latest update.
So for this round, we will give 5 points to the three 888 models, 4 points to the blackshark 4, and a 2 to the Redmi K40 Gaming.
Gaming Smartphones of 2021: Best Thermal Design
In Genshin Impact, it’s unsurprising that the Redmi K40 Gaming with locking framerate achieved the best results in heating control and power consumption. And the Blackshark 4 results are slightly better than the other three models. Although the three 888 models applied excellent thermal designs to maintain high performance output, the heating issue still existed. Well thanks to the three-part internal design, actually the ROG Phone and the Legion phone didn’t feel so hot when we were holding it during gameplay.
However, unlike the ROG Phone and the Legion phone, the Redmagic 6 didn’t guarantee a comfortable holding experience while applying an aggressive CPU strategy. In the last few minutes, it was too hot to hold the phone firmly.
So when it comes to thermal design and holding experience, we’d like to give 5 points to the Legion Phone, 4 to the ROG Phone, 3 points to the Blackshark 4 and the Redmi model respectively, and the last place, 2 points to the Redmagic 6.
Gaming Smartphones of 2021: Best Battery Life & Charging
As for their charging and battery performance, we don’t want to waste your time, so just check the table and the charts below.
Now we are close to the final conclusion. Before showing our conclusion, we want to invite you guys to leave your thoughts down below and tell us which one is the best gaming phone in 2021 according to you.
Okay, no further talk – let’s get to the final conclusion!
Best Gaming Phones Battery Comparison 2021: Who’s the Winner?
The title of best 2021 gaming phone still goes to a phone with a traditional strategy, the ROG Phone 5! Actually the phone didn’t dominate every part of this comparison. However, it’s hard to deny that it’s the most stable gaming phone in 2021. Although the Legion 2 Pro is getting close to the first place, we still got a strange feeling about the phone. Because the Legion phone is so special it may not please every gamer. To be honest, the Redmagic 6, somehow is my favorite gaming phone mainly for its powerful projection capacity.
However, the Blackshark 4 was a real surprise. It’s one of the cheapest gaming phones that you can buy among the ones we compared today. But as a gaming device, its performance lags behind others. And sorry to tell you guys that the most disappointing model was the Redmi K40 Gaming edition. We were really looking forward to the first Redmi gaming model and hoped it could bring new energy to the gaming market, but it turns out, the phone has an obvious gap with the other four models.
Anyway, that’s it for today! We hope this best gaming phone 2021 comparison helped you to identify which is the ideal model for you.
Since you’ve read till the very end, here’s a teaser for you — Our Best Camera Flagships of 2021 video and article will soon be up, so stay tuned for that. The results from our camera tests turned out to be very interesting!
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