The Red Magic Titan 16 Pro is the brand’s first gaming laptop, but it’s a real beast. From its sturdy aluminum unibody chassis to the RGB-lit logo and keyboard, this gaming machine is built for those who need maximum performance.
Coupled with a massive 16-inch display and equipped with a 14th Gen Intel Core i9-HX processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 laptop graphics with 8GB of VRAM, this powerhouse will handle even the most modern AAA games you play. Just about any demanding productivity task like 4K video editing or 3D rendering.
All that power comes with a $1,699/€1,759/£1,599 price tag. So how does the Titan 16 Pro perform and what kind of shortcomings does a 16-inch gaming laptop have? We conducted our usual tests and were impressed with the performance, build and display, but the constantly spinning fan and low battery capacity are some of the weak points.
Design, Build Quality, I/O
There’s no getting around it, the Titan 16 Pro is strictly a gaming laptop. As you’d expect there are RGB lights everywhere, from the logo on the back to the Red Magic branding front and center inside the display, to the full-size RGB-lit keyboard.
The Titan 16 Pro is a heavyweight gaming machine
This heavy-duty laptop weighs 2.4 kg and has a thickness of 24 mm at the thickest point, but it has a sleek profile and aluminum unibody that feels premium and gives little or no flex. It comes with a hefty charging brick, one of the largest power supplies we’ve seen. It weighs an additional 860 grams bringing the total weight to over 3 kilograms – not exactly backpack-friendly.
While the Titan 16 Pro makes 13-14-inch ultrabooks look like toys, it’s not that much bigger than competing 16-inch non-gaming laptops. We had a MacBook Pro 14 sitting nearby and we compared the two side by side.
Titan 16 Pro next to MacBook Pro 14
Our review unit comes in Eclipse Black with a stealth matte finish, but it picks up stains from your fingers very quickly, especially in the area around the trackpad.
In terms of I/O, you get a good number of ports with most of them located at the back of the device. These include – 3x USB-A ports (2x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1) as well as 1x USB-C port (Thunderbolt 4) with support for Power Delivery and DP Alt mode. You also get 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x SD UHS-II card reader, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a Gigabit Ethernet port.
Titan 16 Pro I/O
Wireless connectivity is handled by Intel’s AX211 network card with 2×2 MIMO antennas offering Wi-Fi 6E with 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz bands and Bluetooth 5.3.
Being a gaming laptop, the Titan 16 Pro comes with a proper cooling solution consisting of two large fans on both sides of the keyboard that are powered by 4x ultra-wide heat pipes (3 x 10mm + 1 x 8mm) and 13.8 CFM. With airflow cranked up to 4,500 rpm. ,
Display
The Titan 16 Pro features a 16-inch IPS LCD with 2,560 x 1,600 px resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, and 16:10 aspect ratio. The BOE-made matte panel covers 100% DCI-P3 and sRGB color gamut and offers a fast response time of 3 ms. It’s also compatible with Nvidia’s G-Sync for minimal input lag
Red Magic is advertising 500 nits of brightness from the panel. We actually measured it to go even higher, topping out at 545 nits in the middle of the display and around 500 nits in all other areas. The display showed no signs of uneven backlighting and its viewing angles were as good as you’d expect from an IPS panel.
The bezels around the display aren’t the thinnest but we certainly don’t mind their size. The top area houses a 1080p webcam with the IR sensor required for Windows Hello biometrics.
General productivity tasks, browsing the web, and viewing content felt great here, and the panel even felt at home during gaming sessions thanks to its 240Hz refresh rate. We should mention that the display can only switch between the default 240Hz refresh rate and 60Hz without offering a 120Hz middle ground.
keyboard, trackpad, audio
The Red Magic is equipped with a full-size RGB-backlit QWERTY keyboard with a dedicated numpad. The first thing you notice is the weird gaming-inspired typeface – it’s got all kinds of lines, pointers and other symbols that might look good on marketing material but are distracting in actual use.
Another thing to note is that off-center spacing is required to accommodate the numpad. The biggest issue by far is the small Enter key, which was shortened to accommodate the numpad. This probably won’t matter too much while gaming but it’s not ideal for regular productivity work. Key travel is good and once you get used to the off-centre position the typing experience gets better.
The trackpad is a decent size and made of glass which always feels better than plastic. Even in the top corners its click is solid and we had no complaints during the review period.
Dual speaker 3D audio with DTS-X Ultra delivers loud and powerful sound that fills the room. They are located on both sides of the keyboard and deliver engaging audio with spatial effects and decent bass.
Software and performance
The Titan 16 Pro comes with Windows 11 Home edition. The only bit of additional pre-installed software is Red Magic’s Gooper Suite that allows you to adjust various RGB lighting components and toggle between display modes and fan output.
Intel’s 14th Gen Core i9-14900HX processor Raptor Lake CPUs have been tested extensively at this point, so we won’t go into too much depth here. It has a 140W maximum TDP and a stable 100W operating mode.
The CPU is paired with Nvidia’s RTX 4060 laptop graphics card with 8GB of GDDR6 memory and an advertised 140W maximum power draw. Not that you’ll ever be able to reach the 140W value as Nvidia deliberately limits the GPU to around 100W for most tasks, including gaming. More on that soon.
The rest of the components include 16GB of DDR5 single-channel memory occupying one of the two memory slots and a 1TB Samsung PCIE4 SSD of M.2-2280 format. There’s a second SSD slot ready to take on additional storage, but we’d be willing to add another RAM stick to see a meaningful increase in multitask performance.
The Samsung-made PCIe-4.0 SSD provided great read and write speeds. It is divided into C and D partitions by default.
Fan noise is something you’ll have to learn to live with with the Titan 16 Pro. The fans come on as soon as you turn on the device and they only get louder when you start doing some productivity tasks or start a game.
We regularly get over 50dB of noise when pushing a laptop and people around you will notice all the commotion and probably ask if all this noise is coming from your laptop . Noise levels dropped to around 35dB in idle mode which is still a bit higher than what we are used to.
During our benchmarking and gaming tests, the area above the keyboard regularly topped 46°C, while the touchpad area peaked at a little under 37°C. The device was hovering below 30°C in idle mode.
Titan 16 Pro surface temperature in idle mode and while gaming
For our synthetic benchmark tests, we ran Geekbench 6.3.0 for both CPU and GPU, which yielded top-tier results. We should mention that the laptop was set in its performance/gaming mode and connected to its power supply.
Titan 16 Pro Geekbench 6.3.0 CPU and GPU (OpenCL) scores
We also tested the GPU with GFXBench and the Titan 16 Pro delivered good results here too. We got impressive scores with over 500 fps in 1080p tests, 240 fps in 1440p tests, and over 100 fps in 4K tests.
Titan 16 Pro GFXBench results
In our gaming tests, we pushed the Titan 16 Pro with Death Stranding Director’s Cut at 2,560 x 1,440px (QHD) resolution and toggles on all graphics settings turned to maximum. We got an average frame rate of 138 fps with excellent stability and no noticeable lag. The GPU runs at up to 102W of power and maxes out at a temperature of 75°C.
Titan 16 Pro FPS and GPU performance during gaming tests
We ran the older but still resource-challenged GTA IV at QHD resolution and maximum graphics settings. We managed a steady 120 fps here but with some noticeable dropped frames here and there.
The Titan 16 Pro did stutter in CPU-demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077, but Nvidia DLSS will offer improvements at that level as long as the game you’re playing is supported.
Battery life and charging
You’ll want to sit around a power outlet with the Titan 16 Pro. The high-wattage CPU and GPU combo eats through an 80Wh battery cell like Joey Chestnut defeating hot dogs in a competitive eating championship.
Upon fresh boot and with a 99% battery charge, Windows reports 2 hours and 37 minutes of battery standby. We fired up Death’s Stranding and managed to play for 1 hour 28 minutes Before shutting down the laptop.
In our video streaming test, which involved a 4K YouTube video at 100% brightness and 50% volume, the Titan 16 Pro turned in an unimpressive performance. 4 hours 24 minutes But that was in balanced performance mode with the integrated Intel GPU.
You get 100W charging support, which is fast enough to fill the 80Wh battery. The Titan 16 Pro also supports USB-C charging but you’ll have to shell out quite a bit of money for a charger powerful enough to handle its CPU and GPU combo.
decision
Red Magic’s first gaming laptop can play any AAA game with high graphics settings and does so with stable frame rates in most titles. It features a sturdy metal unibody chassis, a decently bright and spacious 16-inch IPS LCD with a fast 240Hz refresh rate. The free RAM and storage slots inside the laptop are great for future upgradeability and the port selection is great too.
During our time with the Titan 16 Pro, noisy fans were a frequent nuisance even when the laptop was in idle mode. We know that powerful hardware requires adequate heat dissipation systems, but most of the other gaming laptops we’ve reviewed never reach this level of noise. You’ll have to carry the 860g power adapter with you wherever you go as the battery won’t hold up even with casual light browsing and video streaming.
While the Red Magic lets you add a second RAM stick, it’s a bit disappointing to see the device coming with single-channel memory. We weren’t fans of the keyboard layout, which features a distracting typeface and cramped Enter key.
A quick Google search shows that the similarly specced Lenovo Legion Pro 5i can be purchased for $1,500, while the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 can be purchased for $1,150. Overall, we’d say that the Red Magic Titan 16 Pro is a great first foray into the gaming laptop market, but at $1,699, we’d be more inclined to look for a better deal. However, Red Magic often runs very good promos on their website so if you can take advantage of one of those then things can change quite a bit.
Pros
- Aluminum unibody, no keyboard flex
- Solid performance from the Intel Core i9-14900HX and GeForce 4060 GPU
- glass trackpad
- Good variety of ports
Shortcoming
- loud fan
- poor battery life
- Single-channel DDR5 memory
- distracting keyboard typeface
