Latest news with #Redmagic10SPro
Irish Daily Mirror
04-08-2025
- Irish Daily Mirror
Redmagic Astra gaming tablet review: ultra-portable powerhouse Android device
Regular Irish Mirror readers will know I'm a fan of Redmagic gaming smartphones. Its latest model Redmagic 10S Pro is the most powerful handset on the planet currently. It follows a run of acclaimed devices including the Redmagic 10 Pro which is currently on special offer at the Redmagic store. In recent weeks I've been testing the firm's new compact gaming tablet, Astra, and it is a similarly capable beast that takes mobile gaming to the next level. Here are the results of my tests… READ MORE: Redmagic 10S Pro gaming phone review: I tested the world's most powerful mobile handset READ MORE: Redmagic offers fans €50 off high-end gaming smartphone in flash summer sale Redmagic Astra in everyday use The matte finish rear of the Redmagic Astra gaming tablet (Image: Mark Kavanagh) RedMagic Astra features the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset that the company uses in its flagship smartphone RedMagic 10 Pro. The Astra features a 9.06in 2.4K OLED display with a 165Hz refresh rate. On top of that, you get an 8,200 mAh battery that supports 80W charging, up to 24GB of superfast LPDDR5T RAM, up to 1TB of zippy UFS 4.1 Pro storage and a turbofan that spins at up to 20,000 RPM. It is a powerful tablet that breezes through everything you might throw at it, whether that's intensive gaming sessions or productivity involving multi-tasking. Whether running benchmark tests or in everyday use, Redmagic Astra is a winner. The battery endurance is appealing. The firm said the Astra lasts for up to 6.67 hours of Call of Duty Mobile gameplay, 5.56 hours of Genshin Impact, 4.55 hours of PUBG and up to 33 hours of continuous video playback. The active cooling system is impressive and during my testing the device never got too hot. When the fans kicked in they were relatively quiet. And I did not encounter any throttling of performance even during sustained performance. The Astra runs Redmagic OS 10.5 atop Android 15, incidentally. Redmagic Game Space acts as a library for all your games and enables you to tweak settings for individual games (Image: Mark Kavanagh) As on Redmagic phones, the tablet includes the gaming switch that launches a dedicated Game Space dashboard. Here you can tweak and monitor performance for individual games, control notifications, adjust the refresh rate and enable screen recording. Game Space also serves as a library for all of your games and offers instant access to them. It's a neat software extra that adds to the gamer experience and it works as well here as on the firm's handsets. I love how comfortable Redmagic Astra is to hold and use thanks in part to its 370g weight and slim 6.9mm frame that also means it fits in the smaller pouches of my backpack. The rounded edges provide a comfortable resting spot for each palm when I'm holding the tablet. And there's no camera bump on the matte-finish rear, much like Redmagic's recent phones. I tested the silver-ish Starfrost colour model. A darker colour unit is also available. Side view of the Redmagic Astra (Image: Mark Kavanagh) The other side of the Redmagic Astra (Image: Redmagic) The super responsive touchscreen OLED display is a strong point. Image quality from the 2,400 x 1,504 resolution screen is incredibly sharp, colourful and bright, with a peak brightness of 1,600 nits and a 16:10 aspect ratio. Redmagic Astra is suitable for using both indoors and outdoors. Bezels are slim and the screen-to-body ratio is 90.1 percent. You have a choice between dynamic refresh rate adjustment or locking the refresh rate to either 60Hz or 165Hz. One useful feature is Frame Rate Boost which upscales content by intelligently inserting extra frames between existing frames. Popular games already optimised for the higher refresh rates include Call of Duty Mobile (120Hz), PUBG (120Hz), Genshin Impact (120Hz), Minecraft (165Hz) and League of Legends: Wild Rift (144Hz), with more being added all the time. While newly supported Frame Rate Boost games include Wuthering Waves (90Hz), Blade & Soul (90Hz) and Delta Force (144 Hz). Animations feel smoother and slicker, enhancing your overall experience on the tablet. Redmagic Astra other features The top of the tablet houses the red Game Space activation button (Image: Mark Kavanagh) The USB 3.2 Gen 2 port supports high-speed data transfer and you can output the tablet's display to a full 4K monitor or give you input support for keyboards, controllers or docking stations. You also get WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 but no cellular connectivity. The device includes stereo speakers tuned with DTS:X Ultra and two cameras, a 13MP rear shooter and a 9MP selfie lens. I rarely use cameras on tablets for anything other than video calls and this one does the job required in that regard. There is some subtle RGB lighting on the rear of the device, around the camera lens and on the firm's logo. Recharging fully takes about 70 minutes using a compatible 80W charger. There is no charging brick in the box, incidentally. There's a fast and reliable fingerprint scanner on the power button. The RedMagic Astra is rated IP54 waterproof, which means it will survive the odd splash of rain. One caveat would be the lack of HDR support for streaming video on apps such as Netflix, but in fairness TV shows and movies still look great in full HD. Another drawback is the firm only offers three years of software support. Redmagic Astra verdict The ultra-portable Redmagic Astra feels premium and looks sleek (Image: Mark Kavanagh) Redmagic Astra is a versatile machine with a premium build, powerful performance and gamer-centric software to match the top notch hardware. Redmagic Astra pricing and availability Redmagic Astra Gaming Tablet is available in three configurations — 12GB/256GB for €499, 16GB/512GB for €649 and 24GB/1TB for €849. It is available in Eclipse and Starfrost colour options. Optional accessories you can buy include a screen protector, a magnetic folio case and a Gamepad holder. Comparable compact tablet options would include Apple iPad Mini which costs from €749 for 256GB of storage at Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news from the Irish Mirror direct to your inbox: Sign up here.
Irish Daily Mirror
13-06-2025
- Irish Daily Mirror
Redmagic 10S Pro gaming phone review: I tested world's most powerful handset
Redmagic is the world-renowned gaming smartphone brand that offers more superior performance for gamers along with plus points such as the highest frame rates, sharpest graphics and the longest battery life. It is a global leader in this category, offering similar specs as the Asus ROG Phone series but at much more affordable prices. Late last year, Redmagic 10 Pro was the first phone to market with the blazing fast high-end Snapdragon Elite chip that has powered all of the main 2025 Android flagship smartphones. Now comes Redmagic 10S Pro which is powered by an even more powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading Version chip and enhanced ICE-X cooling. The amazing new handset offers stellar features such as a 144Hz no-notch display and a gargantuan 7,050mAh battery with support for up to 80W fast charging. I've been testing it for several weeks and here are my experiences… Redmagic 10 Pro was one of the most powerful phones you could buy so the boosts in performance on 10S Pro are relatively minor compared to the jump from the 9 Pro to the 10 Pro. The Leading Version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite system-on-a-chip (SoC) is responsible for the step up, and this is because it overclocks the CPU and GPU. The two Orion Prime cores now run at 4.47GHz, up from 4.32GHz on the 10 Pro, while the six performance cores are the same. The Adreno 830 GPU, meanwhile, runs at 1.2GHz here, up from 1.1GHz on the predecessor. The gaming powerhouse now offers configurations with up to 24GB RAM (which is insane for a phone) and 1TB of superfast UFS 4.1 Pro storage. The model I reviewed included 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM. The RAM is the latest LPDDR5T, which offers more bandwidth than the LPDDR5X used in the 10 Pro. In benchmark tests on Geekbench 6, AnTuTu 10 and 3DMark, the 10S Pro scores higher marks than the 10 Pro and all the current competition including big rival Asus ROG Phone 9. On the graphically demanding 3D Wild Life Extreme test, for example, the phone achieves the best score I've seen. The improvements over the 10 Pro are most noticeable when gaming, which is music to the ears of most people who will buy this handset. In everyday use, the phone handles high frame rates and graphics settings in AAA games easily. Redmagic 10S Pro naturally runs the firm's latest OS based on Android 15 which comes with Google Gemini for an AI-enhanced gaming experience. One of the key Redmagic features that ordinary flagship smartphones don't give you is designed to ensure you can enjoy marathon gaming sessions without any throttling of performance. The firm does this with clever cooling systems and on Redmagic 10S Pro it introduces an advanced 10-layer ICE-X cooling architecture featuring Liquid Metal 2.0 with the sort of impressive thermal conductivity you normally find in high-end gaming PCs. Redmagic had added liquid metal to the 10 Pro. It is an alloy that melts at a low temperature and has high thermal conductivity. It's often used for gaming PCs and laptops and this is because it performs better than a typical thermal compound. On the 10S Pro there is 30 percent more liquid metal in direct contact with the chip and this guides heat to a vapour chamber that spreads the heat around. On top of this, for gaming you can enable the 23,000rpm fan which sucks in cool air from outside and pulls it over the chipset before expelling warm air out the other side. Like all of RedMagic's handsets, the 10S Pro includes a suite of gaming optimisation software that lets you adjust settings such as the power consumption of games, the option to force titles to run in vertical or horizontal orientation, and customisable controls that include using shoulder-button-style sensors or a virtual joypad with buttons. On top of all this you get a 6.85in 1.5K AMOLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate, 2,000 nits of peak brightness, and a super responsive touch sampling rate of up to 2,500Hz and multi-finger 960Hz capabilities. It's one of the best looking screens on any phone currently, gaming or otherwise. I love how you can personalise the Redmagic 10S Pro fan's RGB lighting with up to 15 colors, adding a distinctive aesthetic to the device's sleek transparent and industrial-looking metal chassis. Redmagic 10S Pro, like its predecessors, is a contender for best smartphone design. My review unit came with a charging brick that had Chinese plug pins but I tested it with other charging bricks and found it could recharge at the 80W speeds claimed. The rear camera system includes a 50MP wide angle camera, a 50MP ultrawide and a 2MP camera that the firm said enhances photo quality in certain modes. What I love about the camera's lenses is they are flush with the phone's body and do not have a bump. Only Google Pixel 9a comes close to being as flat as this unique device. The firm said the phone will get three years of OS upgrades and three years of security updates which, while not matching the likes of Apple and Google, is decent support in the gaming phone arena. There is no better-spec immersive gaming smartphone experience on the market right now than Redmagic 10S Pro. Redmagic 10S Pro is on sale at and costs from €649 (for the 12GB/256GB configuration) up to €999 (for the 24GB/1TB configuration). You can also buy Redmagic 10S Pro on Amazon.
