Nubia Air Pro Review

With the Nubia Air Pro, ZTE continues its push into the ultra-thin phone segment. Arriving in May 2026 as a more ambitious follow-up to the Nubia Air launched in late 2025, it promises lightness, sturdiness and performance in one package. It is sold in a single configuration pairing 8 GB of RAM with 512 GB of storage, in black or white.

At just 5.99 mm thick and 172 g, the Nubia Air Pro leads with its slimness. That is its principal argument and it registers the moment the phone is picked up. The aluminium alloy chassis gives a distinctly premium sensation, and the completely flat back takes an attractive matte finish, although it picks up fingerprints quickly in the hand.

Despite the slim profile, the handset feels solid. The edges can seem somewhat raw to the touch, though that only becomes genuinely bothersome after extended use.

The lock and volume buttons sit quite high on the right edge, a layout that can be disorientating at first and is awkward for smaller hands. On the left edge, Nubia adds a Motion Key that triggers sport mode by default but can be fully customised, so it can be reassigned to take a screenshot, engage silent mode or open the camera.

Ingress protection is generously specified, with IP68, IP69 and IP69K ratings quoted for the handset. There is no Corning Gorilla cover glass.

The Nubia Air Pro carries a 6.77-inch AMOLED panel with a density of 440 ppi and a 144 Hz refresh rate. Its screen-to-body ratio of 91.1% produces a particularly successful sense of immersion and places the handset among the best in the category on that measure alone.

The default Normal profile is not the one to use. Measurements record a white balance that is too cold at 6856 K, and a greyscale Delta E that is a little high at 2.3. Colour results are also elevated, at 3.2 in P3 and 3.9 in sRGB, and on this scale a lower figure is the better one.

A second profile, labelled Vivid, delivers noticeably better calibration. Measured with the white balance set to warm, this P3-oriented mode returns a Delta E 2000 of 2.1, while the warm setting also improves white balance to 6283 K and brings the greyscale Delta E down to 1.1. That combination — Vivid with a warm white balance — is the configuration worth selecting.

Brightness is the disappointment. Nubia quotes a maximum of 4500 nits, but the measured figures land a long way short: a peak of just 1275 cd/m², a manual peak of 778 cd/m² and an HDR peak of 770 cd/m², which places the handset among the weaker performers on this point.

The Nubia Air Pro runs Android 16 under the MyOS 16 interface, and unlocks via a fingerprint sensor beneath the display. General ergonomics are pleasant enough, but the experience degrades quickly once the screen is on, largely because of the sheer number of AI functions built into the handset.

The interface offers an autonomous AI assistant, an AI photo editor, a writing assistant, translation tools, object removal and image upscaling. The accumulation quickly creates a feeling of clutter. Some inclusions are frankly surprising: an AI pet occupies the display and cannot be removed, and there is also an AI boyfriend, an AI English teacher and an AI horoscope.

Other irritations pile on. The first is the quantity of preinstalled bloatware, which is awkward in daily use and particularly so at the start. The second concerns the localisation, since some settings still contain untranslated English words, leaving the user to work out what is meant.

More broadly, the handset stays reasonably pleasant to handle in ergonomic terms. But once the interface is running, the mass of AI features, the bloatware and the imperfect translation make the experience progressively less enjoyable, and less than what is expected of a modern phone.

The Nubia Air Pro is covered by only three years of updates from the date of purchase. That is a notably short window, and it makes Nubia a poor performer in this respect, since most competitors now offer between five and seven years.

The handset uses a MediaTek Dimensity 7100 processor. Across several benchmarks the results are generally disappointing, landing in the lower average for phones of the same class.

Thermally it behaves better. The Nubia Air Pro warms to a little over 40 °C, with a temperature amplitude of 20 °C, and that heat remains barely perceptible even during a gaming session. In everyday terms, browsing and games stay fluid, without a pronounced hot spot under the palm.

There are two physical SIM slots but no eSIM support. The handset works on 4G and 5G networks, and carries Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.4.

The Nubia Air Pro carries a 5000 mAh silicon-carbon battery with 45 W charging, plus 10 W reverse charging.

Endurance, though, is particularly disappointing. The handset lasts barely more than 10 hours, which is among the weakest results recorded in this class of testing. On charging, ten minutes recovers 20% of the battery, while a full charge takes 1 hour 24 minutes, with a peak of 44 W and an average of 18 W. That again places the handset among the poor performers, even against rivals positioned lower down the market.

Two sensors sit on the back: a 108-megapixel main camera and a 2-megapixel macro, one fewer module than the Nubia Air offered. At the front there is a 32-megapixel selfie camera. The camera block is centred and sits particularly high on the back, and its width lends the phone a degree of stability when it is placed on a table.

The main sensor reproduces colour reasonably well, though the results look very vivid and saturated. At 3x the image dulls and yellows a little further, but the outcome remains perfectly acceptable.

The handset has a night mode, and it produces a fairly good result with the image staying sharp. Night mode combined with 3x zoom is a different matter and pixelates the image noticeably; in that specific case the default 3x setting delivers a cleaner picture.

Portrait mode produces a reasonably convincing cut-out. It occasionally struggles with certain fine details, but the result stays broadly acceptable.

The selfie camera is the least convincing element. Selfies look dull and washed out, the colours do not always match what was in front of the lens, and the overall result sometimes lacks sharpness.

Taken as a whole, the photography is average, and the absence of an ultra-wide sensor is felt day to day.

The Nubia Air Pro has stereo speakers, but their management is not among the best. The left speaker takes over during playback, the bass is too recessed, and the sound can seem saturated or degraded depending on the type of music. One positive remains: voices are well brought forward, whether for music or for podcasts.

The case for the Nubia Air Pro is a physical one. If a 5.99 mm chassis, a light body and an unusually immersive 6.77-inch panel are what you are after, and you mostly consume video and games on the handset, it delivers something few rivals do. Anyone who needs a full day away from a charger, wants an ultra-wide camera, or expects a phone to remain supported for more than three years should look at another option, because those are exactly the areas where this one gives way.