Nubia Z60S Pro Review: Flagship Camera Power With A Midrange Smartphone Price

The $500 to $600 mid-range smartphone market is crowded with tons of excellent handsets. There's the mainstream players like the Google Pixel 8a and the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE. Then we also have the pretty niche "flagship killer" brands like the OnePlus 12R and the Nothing Phone (2).

Most of these models offer great value for the specifications they have. However, they often stop short of putting in the latest and greatest tech, which are often reserved for the flagship models their brands offer. So, if you are a small, relatively unknown brand, you need to offer something that will make you stand out from the tons of options available to consumers.

This is where Nubia comes into the picture. This company is known for its Redmagic brand of gaming smartphones, with the Redmagic 9S Pro having arrived in the market recently. However, it's also trying to break into the general Android phone market with the Nubia Z60S Pro. Nubia provided the Z60S Pro for our in-depth testing and review, so let's see what this mid-range smartphone has to offer.

The Nubia Z60S Pro comes with the usual contents of a smartphone box plus a few extras. First, you get the phone itself and a thick red USB-C to USB-C charging cable similar to what you find in the more premium Redmagic Pro line of gaming smartphones. Of course, there's also the sim ejector tool and some paperwork. But aside from that, you also get a quick charging 80W GaN charger and a matte plastic hard case to protect the phone.

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The phone has a rectangular shape with slightly rounded corners. It has an aluminum frame that's feels premium to the touch, and it feels like it has a glass back with a carbon fiber look underneath, although I cannot verify if that is the actual case or if it's just a design. There's also a massive camera bump that houses the three cameras plus the Flicker sensor which measures color temperature.

Nubia provided a black review unit with 12GB of memory and 256GB of storage. It's also available with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage, and with aqua and white colorways.

The Nubia Z60S measures around 6.5 x 3 x 0.5 inches, including the case and the camera bump. This makes it the perfect size for my hands, and I don't have any difficulty reaching the top of the screen. The flat sides of the smartphone also make it easier to grip and reduces the chances of a mis-press by my palm. At the same time, the rounded corners don't dig in as much into my hand, unlike the sharp corners of my Samsung Galaxy Note10+.

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The power and volume buttons are also fairly reachable, no matter which hand holds the phone. The red power button is also textured, so you don't have to look at it to know which button you're about to press. One more thing that makes this phone unique is the slider that sits right above the volume buttons. It's a feature that you can find on Redmagic models, although its placement is a bit difficult to reach.

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Nevertheless, the slider is a great shortcut to several functions. It opens Street mode in the camera app by default, but you can also set it to different functions in the Settings menu. The other options you can choose include GameSpace, which is the gaming mode that you can find in the Z60S Pro's Redmagic cousin, turn the flashlight on and off, open and exit the voice recorder, or use it to activate vibrate or silent mode.

Nubia is marketing the Z60S Pro as a photography phone, hence the "Empower Your Creativity" tagline, and it doesn't disappoint in this regard. You get three high quality camera sensors right on the back of the phone: the 50-megapixel main camera with a 1/1.56-inch sensor mated to a 35mm-equivalent autofocus lens with a wide f/1.59 aperture and optical image stabilization.

You also get a 50-megapixel f/2.0 13mm-equivalent autofocus camera, and an 8-megapixel camera with an 80mm-equivalent lens with three times optical zoom. So, even if you're using the 170mm-equivalent telephoto lens, you won't notice a drop in image quality.

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What makes this phone a great street photography camera is that it uses a 35mm-equivalent lens for the main shooter. This focal length is great for street scenes, and I personally use a 38.4mm-equivalent lens when I travel. Aside from that, it has several filters in the street photography mode, allowing you to simulate film for your images.

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And if you want more nuanced control of the camera, you can switch to Pro mode and it will give you control over almost every aspect — shutter speed, white balance, ISO, auto focus, and exposure value adjustment. You also get autofocus, automatic exposure, and white balance lock functions, plus a small levels graph to see how your exposure looks like. You can also shoot in RAW, so you get the most flexibility when editing photos.

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But aside from all these technicalities, the most important thing is that the Z60S Pro can produce amazing photos. It focuses and shoots quickly, and its output is sharp and color accurate, no matter which sensor you use. However, low light performance is lacking on the ultrawide and telephoto sensors. The phone's computational photography tries to make up for it, but it can only do so much.

Aside from its photography chops, the Nubia Z60S Pro also has an excellent screen and battery life. The phone boasts a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with 1260 x 2800 pixel resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. More importantly, it can hit a peak brightness of 1200 nits — crucial when you're out under the sun and taking photos. It also offers an always-on display feature, but I don't use it as it reduces battery life.

Speaking of battery life, the phone has a massive 5,100mAh battery, which is more than enough to give it a day or two of regular use. One hour of playing "War Thunder Mobile" on the Z60S Pro uses up around 20% battery. Given that, it means it could last about four to five hours of intense gaming, which is great number for a mid-range phone.

Its included 80-watt fast charging brick and USB-C to USB-C cable also means that you can quickly power it up if you run out of juice. I haven't emptied the phone out yet since I often charge at night when I sleep, but it always takes less than half an hour to fill the phone.

The Nubia Z60S Pro isn't the top-of-the-line device in Nubia's lineup, so it makes sense for the phone to not have the most powerful chip in the lineup. Nevertheless, it still uses the most powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon chip from last year, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. So, even though you're using an older chip, the phone still won't lack in processing performance.

I also like how the Z60S Pro stands up to daily use. When I switched over to it as my main phone, it didn't feel any different from the other Android phones I've daily driven before. In fact, I prefer using the Nubia smartphone over my iPhone 14 Pro Max work phone, but it's a shame that I cannot do that as some apps are incompatible with the phone for now.

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For example, Instagram, which I use to showcase my photography, isn't available on the Google Play Store for the Z60S Pro, so I have to resort to using Instagram Lite, which isn't as feature packed. Even my favorite game, "World of Tanks Blitz," is not compatible with it. This will likely be fixed later on as the phone continues to receive updates, but for now, it's a bit concerning. 

This isn't the sort of issue we normally find with phones released in the U.S. — not in 2024, anyway. Some apps stop being updated, some apps are meant for top-tier phones only — but Instagram, one of the most-used apps in the world, shouldn't be unavailable to a brand new phone. 

The Nubia Z60S Pro is one competent mid-ranger, and I can say that it even holds up well against some of the flagship phones I've previously reviewed and owned. Of course, you will miss out on some features, like wireless charging and an IP protection rating. But if you're the average user, you'll likely not miss these things anyway.

If you compare this with the competition I've mentioned earlier, the Z60S Pro outclasses all of them in the camera department. Furthermore, this handset has the largest screen among them and has the best processor alongside the OnePlus 12R, which also uses the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

The $569 price of the Nubia Z60S Pro makes it a truly competitive device, especially if you're into a photography. If you're a shutterbug and you're looking for a new phone with this budget (and you can overlook the fact that you'll need to use Instagram Lite instead of the full version of Instagram, for the time being,) I highly recommend that you get this smartphone.

You can purchase the Nubia Z60S Pro from the official Nubia store online right now in a variety of colors and internal storage sizes.