nubia Z60S Pro review: powerful, bulky midrange phone has a camera on par with many flagships

You may not have heard of nubia before, but something (that is, the camera, power and experience of using the Z60S Pro) tells me we'll be seeing a lot more of it in the future...

nubia Z60S Pro
(Image: © Future / Erlingur Einarsson)

Our Verdict

It's got a big, bright screen, a slightly old-fashioned bulky build that can be both reassuring and slightly frustrating depending on your trouser pocket size, and a delightfully feature-rich and crisp camera on the back. It's more powerful than the Pixel 9, more distinctively designed than Sony or Samsung rivals and even though it's cheaper than almost all the flagships out there, I hardly noticed the difference. Yet another piece of evidence that 'made in China' is definitely not the slight some may have once thought it was.

For

  • Big and bulky
  • Feature-rich, detail-rich camera
  • Bright screen

Against

  • Big and bulky
  • Humongous camera notch
  • [mandatory Android bloatware grumbles]

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Styled in all lower-case letters, nubia is among many Chinese tech manufacturers that many in the West (me included) may not have heard about, let alone considered a competitive alternative to the established giants of the phone space, such as Samsung, Apple and Google, but after having the nubia Z60S Pro as my daily driver for the last month, I'm adding it to the fast-growing list of new brands to watch, and watch closely.

The best camera phones have long been dominated by well-known brands like the iPhone, Samsung Galaxies, Google Pixels and Sony Xperias, but as last year's Xiaomi 14 proved so emphatically (and Hong Kong-based Infinix in the budget space), we're seeing that space disrupted massively right now.

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CPU:Qualcomm SM8550-AC Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (4 nm), octa-core
Graphics:Adreno 740
Memory:8/12/16/24GB RAM
OS:nubia MyOS 14 (Android 14)
Screen:6.78in AMOLED
Resolution:1260 x 2800p
Refresh rate:Variable, max 120Hz
Storage:256GB/512GB/1TB
Rear cameras:50MP main, 8MP telephoto, 50MP ultrawide
Front camera:16MP
Connectivity:WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, NFC, USB-C 3.1
Dimensions:163.6 x 76 x 8.7 mm
Weight:220g
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Geekbench 6Row 0 - Cell 1
Single-core:2,018
Multi-core:5,414
GPU OpenCL:9,026
The Verdict
8.2

out of 10

nubia Z60S Pro

It's got a big, bright screen, a slightly old-fashioned bulky build that can be both reassuring and slightly frustrating depending on your trouser pocket size, and a delightfully feature-rich and crisp camera on the back. It's more powerful than the Pixel 9, more distinctively designed than Sony or Samsung rivals and even though it's cheaper than almost all the flagships out there, I hardly noticed the difference. Yet another piece of evidence that 'made in China' is definitely not the slight some may have once thought it was.

Erlingur Einarsson
Tech Reviews Editor

Erlingur is the Tech Reviews Editor on Creative Bloq. Having worked on magazines devoted to Photoshop, films, history, and science for over 15 years, as well as working on Digital Camera World and Top Ten Reviews in more recent times, Erlingur has developed a passion for finding tech that helps people do their job, whatever it may be. He loves putting things to the test and seeing if they're all hyped up to be, to make sure people are getting what they're promised. Still can't get his wifi-only printer to connect to his computer. 

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