 Nowadays, you can get the gaming horsepower of a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 in the palm of your hand. And mobile gaming has matured to the point where many of your favorite titles will not only run on your iPhone or Android device, but they'll even support cross-play with your friends who did manage to get their hands on a GPU or a next-gen console. Not that you want to have anything to do with those smug butt-shits anyway. But you're not mad. You're gonna make the best of a bad situation and get yourself a gaming phone. And good news, because these things are actually getting to the point where, even if you don't give two hoots about mobile gaming, they are chock-full of really cool tech. So let's take a look at them. And also at today's sponsor, Ridge Wallet. Ridge Wallet has redefined the traditional wallet with its compact frame and RFID blocking plates. Keep your bulge down and use our offer code LINUS to save 10% and get free worldwide shipping on your wallet down below. Under the hood, every one of our gaming phones has got the basics right. All three of our contenders have 12 to 16 gigs of RAM, a few hundred gigs of storage, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor. So no matter your choice, current Android games are gonna run as smooth and pretty as can be. So pick whichever one's on sale and call it a day then, right? Well, no. Unlike a PC, if you choose the wrong screen or the wrong speakers, there's no upgrading them later. And because all of your components are in the palms of your hands as you try to outfrag your opponents, suddenly we care about thermals not just for how they affect performance, but also for how they affect comfort. Performance first though. We used GFX benchmark and 3DMark for synthetic benchmarks, and while all three devices were close, there is a clear loser here. In Car Chase, the Red Magic 6 Pro rendered roughly 400 fewer frames than the Legion Dual Phone 2 and the ROG Phone 5, which were neck and neck. In 3DMark Wildlife, the race at the top seems even tighter, but this benchmark only runs for a few minutes, which might not tell us the whole story, so we'll call it a tie for now. At first glance, screen quality seems close across the board, but side by side at max brightness, the Red Magic 6 is noticeably dimmer than its counterparts. As for the Dual Phone 2 and ROG Phone 5, there's no obvious winner to my eye, so we'll let our CalMan calibration software and spectrophotometer make the call. It should be noted though that the Legion has the advantage of having an ever so slightly larger screen, giving you a better view of your opponent, regardless of color accuracy. As for audio, the ROG Phone 5 seems to have the widest soundstage and therefore offered the most immersive gaming experience with speakers, but it was honestly a little hard for the others to compete due to their noisy internal fans. Whether this is a big deal to you is pretty much gonna come down to whether you use earphones or not while you're gaming, because even without active noise cancellation, both of their cooling systems are easily blocked out, unlike my shoutouts to lttstore.com! Wait, hold on a second. Cooling systems? That's right, both the 6 Pro and the Dual Phone 2 have blower fans inside them. That means that both of them are obviously much louder than a silent fanless phone, but one of them is clearly more annoying than the other. You guys hear that noise? The Red Magic 6 has this distinctive whine to it that gets annoying pretty fast. As for the Dual Phone 2, I guess it's just the nature of the beast because it's not a lot better. If you're looking for some great audio, by the way, make sure to get subscribed so you can check out our upcoming ASMR PC build video with the sweet sultry sounds of Anthony's voice. Anyway, back to our phones. The clear winner for acoustics is the ROG Phone 5. Of course, a lack of cooling isn't necessarily a feature. Here's a fun fact. If mobile games development studios left everything uncapped or they allowed their games to run at the highest possible level of detail, fanless devices like the phone you're probably using now would just get hotter and hotter until they're uncomfortable to handle. Anecdotally, while working on development builds, testers at mobile studios have been known to put their devices in freezers to cool them down between tests. Now, obviously finished games typically have a higher degree of polish, but it's still an important factor, so we used our thermal imaging camera to run some benchmarks and see how the heat spreads across the back of our devices while gaming. The idea to put all the hot components in the center of the Dual Phone 2 actually kind of works. Your hands stay cool on either side while the center fan keeps the heat under control. The Red Magic Pro, on the other hand, has the clearest hotspot, unfortunately, directly under one of your hands. As for the ROG Phone 5, it manages to stay relatively cool by spreading the heat across the device, with the middle being the hottest zone. So this one's pretty easy then. The Dual Phone 2 wins it hands down, and that carries over very handily to what is probably the most important metric for a lot of you. Remember how I said performance was a tie for now? Well, most people don't play games for five minutes at a time with freezer cool downs in between, so we ran 3DMark over and over again to measure how performance will degrade during an extended gaming session. Only the Dual Phone 2 held its ground here, which is kind of surprising given the Red Magic on paper has a similar active cooling solution. But before we declare the Dual Phone 2 our big winner, it's worth noting that it has the worst triggers out of the three. Each of these devices comes with a number of sensors along the top that act as inputs so that you can keep your thumb off the screen when you're lining up headshots, and they're not all created equal. Whereas the Red Magic triggers are almost hypersensitive, even with the sensitivity cranked down, the Dual Phone 2 seems to require the most force to activate unless your fingers are positioned perfectly. I mean, when it works, it works, but it's easy for your fingers to slip or be lined up in a way that makes pressing them more difficult than it needs to be. As for the ROG Phone 5, not only does it have the best triggers out of the bunch, but it actually has extra rear triggers as well that admittedly weren't easy to use, but at least they're there. So the winner, surprisingly, is the ROG Phone 5. Finally, there are some other features that separate these devices. The ROG Phone 5 has the dubious honor of being the least comfortable due to its sizable camera bump, although whether having a decent camera on your gaming phone is worthwhile is up to you and kind of beyond the scope of this video. And it's the only device without an internal cooling fan, but it comes with an attachable fan that kept it running significantly cooler while also adding an extra set of triggers, as well as some extra battery life, putting it 500 milliamp hours over the Legion and almost a thousand milliamp hours over the Red Magic 6 Pro. You should think long and hard before committing to a device based on how it performs with a bulky accessory like this though, because I mean, it's great for some extra performance at home, but it seems unlikely that you'd want to carry it around in your pocket all the time. The Lenovo Legion Dual Phone 2, on the other hand, brings a lot to the table with a 720 hertz touch sampling rate that just feels a bit more responsive than the other two devices and easily the most comfortable ergonomic design, even though it does fall behind with the quality of its triggers. As for the Red Magic 6 Pro, it's a bit unremarkable here. Its flat back is comfortable enough, and it has faster touch sampling than the ROG Phone 5 at 500 hertz compared to 300 hertz, but the only big extra feature it has going for it, at least when it comes to gaming, is its 165 hertz refresh rate compared to 144 on the other two. It's also lacking a great feature that the other two have, a secondary charging port for horizontal use. So the Red Magic 6 Pro, it's a contender, but it doesn't stand out from the crowd until you factor in the price. If money's no object, it's hard to go wrong with the Dual Phone 2 or ROG Phone 5, but they both cost over a thousand US dollars. For a phone? For gaming? Meanwhile, the Red Magic 6 Pro was in the middle of the pack or at the back in nearly every category, and then absolutely knocked it out of the park where it counts, delivering way better value at just 750 bucks. That is half the price of the ASUS, and for a more comfortable gaming experience, even if it does come at the cost of some screen brightness and performance. Now, for some of you, the lack of a horizontal charge port will be a deal breaker, but for others, the inclusion of a headphone jack will be an equally important deciding factor, especially since the Lenovo doesn't have one. As for those of you who need both, ROG Phone 5 for 1500 US dollars then? Or at that point, should you just buy a GPU from a scalper? Maybe you can account for that poor financial decision with FreshBooks. FreshBooks is the easy-to-use accounting software that's designed specifically with you in mind, the small business owner. It's easy to use with built-in automation, so you spend less time tracking projects and more time doing what matters most, growing your business. So whether you're a tradesperson, creative agency, or a YouTuber, you can choose a plan that's right for you, and they have award-winning Toronto-based support who is always there to help you if you need it. So don't wait, try FreshBooks for free for 30 days today, with no credit card required at freshbooks.com slash linus. Bottom line then, which of these would you buy? Do you even want a gaming phone? Or are you just still watching this video in hopes that I'll start talking about something else? Sorry, it didn't happen.