Though we have REVIEWED a lot of phones, every time when I REVIEW Nubia phones, I get excited. Because they always have something different and often surprise us with their eye-catching features. This Nubia Z60 Ultra is supposed to be the last flagship phone released in 2023, and as the curtain call phone for 2023, I wonder if it can live up to our expectations. And. Although it’s a bit late, Happy New Year!
Design
Whenever we marvel at how beautiful Redmagic phones are, we also sigh: if it wasn’t a gaming phone, I’d definitely buy it. Of course, Nubia knows what we expect, so here’s the Redmagic 9 Pro that’s more suited for most people. Like the Z50 Ultra, the Z60 Ultra still has that super-square design.
There’s also the alert slider at the side, and it’s moved to a position below the power button, making it easy to use. It’s a shame that the camera is still bulging, but at least you get three really great cameras, which we’ll talk about later. As you can see, we got them in their most special colorway: The Starry Night. it’s the colorway that was created using Van Gogh’s famous painting as inspiration, and it’s very pretty in the light.
The IP68, which is a basic feature of this year’s flagship phones, is not absent either. If I had to say the downside of this phone, I’d say it’s still a bit big and heavy. But I’m totally okay with it because its battery life is just mind-blowingly great!
Battery & Charging
Usually, we talk about the charging and battery life part at the end, but with this phone, I’m going to tell you how great it is right now. If 5,500mAh is considered a really big battery, the Z60 Ultra’s 6,000mAh battery is simply massive. It has the longest battery life we’ve ever tested in a non-gaming phone. We did unboxing shorts, gaming, camera, and Benchmark tests and it still didn’t need to be charged, which proves how impressive its battery life is.
Unfortunately, the Z60 Ultra doesn’t have big charging power, it’s only 80W, and it does not have wireless charging, which is probably to balance out the big battery.
Camera
The Nubia Z60 Ultra still uses the same 35mm main camera and 85mm telephoto, but the ultra-wide camera has become 18mm.
Let’s start with what I think is the best ultra-wide camera in this phone. This camera has autofocus, which means the Nubia Z60 Ultra is capable of taking macro photos. Other than the field of view, which does tend to be a little narrower than other phones, it’s pretty much a perfect camera. It even has OIS, so it ensures excellent image quality in very dark conditions. Without a doubt, it should be one of the best ultra-wide cameras I’ve used in 2023.
The telephoto camera takes great pictures most of the time. But there are times when it will inexplicably ……Em…… not work as well. For example, on other phones, it is popular to use the telephoto camera as a macro camera, but the closest focusing distance of Z60 Ultra’s telephoto is over 60cm. So you want to use the telephoto camera to get a close-up shot of the food? No way. But Lens Flare? It must be somewhere. Plus it has the strongest sharpening algorithm of the three cameras, the Z60 Ultra’s telephoto camera doesn’t work as well as you’d expect. So 7/10.
The Z60 Ultra’s 35mm main camera is also one of my favorite cameras of 2023. In addition to better composition, it takes incredibly sharp photos. There’s no sharpening algorithm, it’s real physical hardware-created sharp. And it has a super shallow depth of field, it’s like a DSLR shot.
Of course, the downside of the 35mm main camera is bad performance in shooting video. Because to use EIS, the footage will be cropped, you can see that the footage is very much smaller. So, the ultra-wide camera is recommended for daily recording. Here is the good news and bad news. The good news is that all three cameras support 4K 120fps video recording. The bad news is that you can’t switch between cameras in 4K recording, not even at 30fps.
To be honest, as a photography enthusiast, Nubia’s flagship phone has always been my favorite. Apart from the reasonable focal lengths of the three cameras, it also gives us many switches to let us make good use of the camera freely.
For example. The buttons here show the focal lengths rather than how many times of zoom. alert slider also turns on Street mode by default. so Nubia’s head of the camera department must be a photography expert, otherwise, there is no way to explain why it has so many features that photography enthusiasts love.
It would be nice to see a collaboration between Nubia and a camera brand in the future. The current color science is rather average and not impressive enough.
Benchmark & Gaming
Everyone knows that phones with good cameras don’t usually perform well. But the Z60 Ultra is an exception. Since Redmagic and Nubia are brothers, it makes sense that the Z60 Ultra is a strong performer. While the CPU Throttle Test scores don’t look as good as the K70 Pro’s, the maximum and average performance are both stronger.
If you’re looking at these two screenshots and worrying that it’s not strong enough, take a look at this graph. You should know very well what this so-straight line means. It makes miracles with a little higher power consumption and temperature in Genshin, becoming my dream gaming phone, even though they said it is not a gaming phone.
Thanks to its large, perfectly straight screen, the gaming experience is also great. And there are a lot of features that are very similar to its brother, such as Bypass Charging. You can understand it like this: the Z60 Ultra is actually a Redmagic 9 Pro without the built-in fan. I think it should be the best regular phone for a good gaming experience in 2023.
Display
Looking at the spec, the Z60 Ultra’s screen isn’t exactly outstanding, which is why I didn’t talk about its screen until now. There are just 2 words you need to remember about this screen: straight, and complete. While the selfies will take you back to 20 years ago, because of this under-display camera, the impact of a full screen is really impressive. It’s one of the things that gives Nubia’s flagship phone an edge over other phones.
Conclusion
I guess after watching this video, the Z60 Ultra should perform much better than you guys thought. There are a lot of things that only the Z60 Ultra can do, such as a 35mm main camera, a full straight screen, and a 6,000mAh battery, that other phones simply can’t do. For those of you who like selfies, smaller phones, and need wireless charging, I wouldn’t recommend you buy it. Others I think can buy it with no worries, especially since it’s really not expensive either.
