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Tom's Guide
a day ago
- Tom's Guide
Forget the iPad mini — this 9-inch OLED Android tablet is way better for gaming
There's been a hole in my life ever since I finally said goodbye to my aging iPad mini several years ago. In my mind, Apple's smallest iPad is one of the best tablets out there, but the arrival of the RedMagic Astra this month has given me pause. What's on offer is pretty simple: a compact Android tablet running the latest and greatest chipset designed for a supreme gaming experience. While I'm not a massive mobile gamer, I've always appreciated that the iPad mini 7 didn't compromise on power even though it was smaller than its bigger brethren. The same is true here. RedMagic has thrown everything but the kitchen sink into this device thanks to a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, a stunning OLED screen, active cooling, fast charging and a slick design. Space is at a premium in my everyday carry, and I'm not quite willing to pony up for one of the best foldable phones, no matter how slim the new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is. That leaves me looking for that Goldilocks device; a tablet larger than a phone but not as big as a hybrid, that doesn't compromise on power and has a few unique tricks up its sleeve. And after having used it for a couple of weeks, I think the RedMagic Astra delivers on all fronts. Let me tell you how... RedMagic Astra Starting price £529 / $699 Display 9.06-inch OLED (2,400 x 1,504) Refresh rate 165Hz adaptive Rear camera 13MP Front cameras 9MP Chipset Snapdragon 8 Elite RAM 12GB/16GB/24GB Storage 256GB/512GB/1TB Battery 8,200 Charging 80W Operating system RedMagicOS 10 / Android 15 Size 207 x 134.2 x 6.9 mm / 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.27 inches Weight 370 grams / 0.81 pounds Colors Eclipse/Starfrost The Redmagic Astra comes in three different configurations with pricing to match. The entry-level price for both the Eclipse (black) and Starfrost (silver) versions gets you 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage for $699 / £499. If you opt for 16GB RAM and 512GB storage, that pricing increases to $799 / £699. And if you push up to 24GB RAM and 1TB storage, the cost goes up to $949 / £879. Just note: only the Eclipse colorway is available in this configuration. Those prices are a little on the high side and put this above the level of a casual purchase. For example, the entry-level price is actually higher than the $499 starting price for the iPad mini 7. It's true that Apple's tablet has half the storage for that price, but still — if you want a small tablet on a budget, then Apple actually has the edge here. However, Apple's pricing increases to $799 if you want 512GB of storage on the iPad mini 7, so once you start getting into the higher configurations, you're getting better value from Redmagic. Perhaps a more realistic comparison is Lenovo's Legion Tab, another 8-inch tablet with a gaming focus that also starts at $549, albeit with an older chipset and an LCD screen rather than an OLED one. Another recent Android tablet to launch with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset is the OnePlus Pad 3, which commands a £599 / $699 price for its 16GB RAM and 512GB configuration — but that's also got a larger 13.2-inch screen. Gaming devices can be somewhat divisive when it comes to design, but I think most people would be hard-pressed to find fault with the RedMagic Astra. Bezels around the front of the device are kept to a minimum, thanks to the 90.1% screen-to-body ratio, while the back is pretty understated. First up, I'm not sure I can remember the last time I used a tablet (or phone) without a camera bump. Seriously, it's been that long. The Astra is completely flush across the back, which means you can slide it in and out of a backpack, prop it up on a stand or even attach it to a telescopic controller without any resistance. The aluminum frame has rounded corners and measures a pitch-perfect 7.3mm thick — enough to give you something to grip onto without being too chunky. The power button sits on the left edge naturally, where your index finger rests while holding it in landscape mode, and doubles up as a fingerprint scanner. The Astra's USB-C port is across from it on the right edge. Up top is the volume rocker and RedMagic's metallic red slider that toggles on its Game Space launcher — more on that later. I'm not quite sure why RedMagic decided to put the USB-C on the right-hand side — it's too far up to use in a telescopic controller, and because it's not on the bottom, you can't easily attach it to a dock or charging station. Whether you opt for the Starfrost or Eclipse color, you get a soft matte finish on the back that looks awesome. It dulls those pesky reflections you get with a glossy finish, although this slate still isn't immune to fingerprint smudges. Aside from the single RedMagic logo in the middle of the chassis, there's a rectangular glass window running along the top that gives you a glimpse of a PCB-stylised graphic with gold stamps for the Snapdragon 8 Elite logo, as well as highlighting the vapor chamber and "composite liquid metal" build. There's also the RedMagic logo written out in font, which you can set to pulse with light in the tablet's settings. You can also illuminate the ring around the camera lens. These small bits of RGB lighting let you subtly know it's a gaming machine and they can be set for additional functionality, like working with an alarm or indicating a charging process. The RedMagic Astra is rated IP54 waterproof, which means it'll survive the odd splash if you want to take your gaming session outside in the rain or into the shower — but it's not going to survive being fully submerged. One small gripe I have about the design is that the speaker vents are placed on the left and right below the power button and USB-C port. This means that when you're gripping the tablet in landscape mode, your palms can muffle the output and spoil the audio quality. Given the relative size of the device, I'm not sure where else you would locate the speakers, but if the power button and USB-C port had been shifted to the top and bottom, respectively, RedMagic may have been able to shift the speaker grilles further up and alleviate the problem. All told, though, I'm a real fan of the RedMagic Astra design. It leans just enough into a premium, gamer sci-fi vibe to be recognized as a premium tablet without being garish. Meanwhile, the heft (370g) and proportions — about the same as a Moleskine notebook at 134.2mm (H) x 207mm (W) x 6.9mm (D) — are just right to slip into my rucksack without making a nuisance. If the design around back is cool, then the RedMagic Astra's display is ice cold — and probably one of the best reasons I have to recommend this device. Not just to anyone wanting a gaming machine, but anyone wanting a small, powerful tablet, period. You get a full-on OLED display with a 165Hz refresh rate and 1,600 nits of peak brightness. It's absolutely popping with vibrancy and contrast in games like Call of Duty: Mobile or Genshin Impact, and it's really impressive. The 2,400 x 1,504 pixel resolution is more than enough on the Astra's 9.06-inch screen (with a 16:10 aspect ratio), and if you want to switch off the games and enjoy one of the best streaming shows, it's just as good. It doesn't support HDR on services like Netflix, but to my eye, the contrast on those deep blacks still looked fantastic. The Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset has made itself at home in a number of the best Android phones, but is still relatively rare in tablets. The RedMagic Astra has the regular version of the chip without an overclocked CPU. I was able to comfortably run Genshin Impact, Call of Duty, FC Mobile, Command & Conquer: Rivals and Horizon Chase with the Astra set to 165Hz, and it was the best gaming experience I've ever had on a tablet. From loading up and navigating through menus to actual gameplay, the experience was fluid and responsive without a hint of stutter or lag. I'm no fan of touchscreen gaming, but the response rate — to my untrained fingers — was sublime. There's an active cooling system and the vapor chamber inside the RedMagic Astra, and the fan will start up under aggressive conditions to try and keep the thing cool. You can hear it whirring away if you put your ear to the back of the device, but otherwise it won't spoil your gaming session, and it succeeds in keeping the tablet cool throughout even the most demanding games. Running the Astra through a series of benchmarks just confirms the inevitable; this device blows its competition away when it comes to sheer grunt. It scored higher than the OnePlus Pad 3 on single-core Geekbench score and narrowly lost out on multi-core. Meanwhile, it swatted away Apple's M3 iPad Air without breaking a sweat. You can see the full results in the table below. RedMagic Astra OnePlus Pad 3 Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Plus iPad Air 2025 (11-inch) Chipset Snapdragon 8 Elite Snapdragon 8 Elite Dimensity 9300 Plus Apple M3 Geekbench 6 score (single-core / multi-core) 3,136 / 7,376 2,980 / 8,993 2,137 / 7,130 3,042 / 11,804 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited (score / fps) 5,628 / 33.70 6,410 / 38.38 5,121 / 30 5,806 / 34.8 Adobe Premiere Rush time to transcode (mins:secs) 0:54 0:53 0:43 0:18 The basic RedMagic Astra comes with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage, while the higher-spec model I've been using has 16GB RAM with 512GB onboard memory. If you really want to go overboard, you can pick this tablet up with 24GB of RAM and a massive 1TB of storage. Most people won't need that, but if you've got deep pockets (read: $899) and want a device for the long haul, you may be interested. Battery life is something you usually have to sacrifice with smaller devices, but the Astra does a commendable job when it comes to staying power. Tucked inside that stylized matte casing is an 8,200mAh battery that RedMagic quotes will give you around 5.5 hours of gameplay at full frame rate or 5.3 hours of gameplay whilst livestreaming. If you want to use it for movies, RedMagic claims you'll get 33 hours of continuous playback before it dies. In more day-to-day usage, you're going to get somewhere in between those two extremes. I fired the RedMagic Astra up at 9am and used it continuously until 6pm for streaming video, playing music, browsing the web and playing some games. All of which with the screen at full brightness and locked to 165Hz. I took a break for a few hours at 6pm, but came back to it for another two hours later in the evening for a little more YouTube and gaming with a Bluetooth controller attached. Even after nearly 12 hours, I still had a quarter of its available charge left. That's pretty good considering my colleague Tony took a similar approach with the iPad mini 7 and landed on 10 hours and 34 minutes before that device died. As you'd expect, the Astra supports 80W charging and will charge to full in 71 minutes when connected to a compatible charging brick. You just need to be aware that RedMagic doesn't ship the device with its own charger. Part of the reason RedMagic says the Astra can last this long is due to its "Liquid Metal" technology. The company says it used an indium-based alloy formed mostly from potassium to create a solid piece of metal with strong thermal conductivity. Placing this directly over the CPU lowers the chip's temperature by up to 5°C and improves the overall thermal performance and, by extension, efficiency. There's some good and some bad when it comes to the software side of things here. Bad stuff first; this tablet comes pre-loaded with the kind of bloat I assumed was a thing of the past, but is sadly all too common with Chinese manufacturers. Thankfully, much of it can be uninstalled swiftly, but it's still a laborious process that takes some of the sheen off firing up a brand-new tablet. Similarly, I noticed a particular quirk when I was scrolling through my email inbox, and the messages were all layered on top of each other into a blurry mess. I fixed the issue by forcibly locking the screen to 65Hz and reloading the app. It hasn't happened before, but I wouldn't be surprised if I run into a few other glitches here and there. Thankfully, the RedMagic Astra keeps things mostly to stock Android 15 with a few tweaks added by the company's RedMagic OS 10.5 skin. You get some extra options like the aforementioned RGB lighting on the back of the device, around the camera lens and the company's logo. Alongside the aforementioned bloatware, there's also some AI gimmicks like "RedMagic Translation" that offers you real-time voice translation on voice content. Finally, there's an app sidebar you can call up at any time by swiping in from the side of the screen and holding for a few seconds. This displays your recently or most-used apps and can be handy. One thing I would have liked to see is a real multitasking solution akin to OnePlus' Canvas feature. The RedMagic Astra is more than powerful enough to run a bunch of apps simultaneously, so (even on a small screen) not having software take advantage of this seems like a missed opportunity. But when the rubber meets the road, this is a gaming device, so the star of the show is RedMagic's Game Space — activated via a slide of the metallic red toggle on top. This transports you (through a fancy, lightspeed-esque graphic) into a game launcher where you can find all your games as well as quick settings for CPU and GPU performance. And you can tweak the settings for each individual game. It's a simple procedure to toggle superior performance for a demanding game like Genshin Impact while easing back on the throttle for something simple like your next round at Solitaire. The RedMagic Astra is a certified contender for the best gaming tablet you can buy, thanks to the combination of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip and a jaw-dropping OLED 165Hz screen. It doesn't come cheap, but then considering the hardware and specs you're getting for the price, there's a whole lot of value on offer here. Are there some drawbacks? Of course. There's no 5G cellular option for a start, and whilst the hardware and battery will last you a good few years, the same can't be said for the software. RedMagic has committed to three years of software updates (including one major Android update), which isn't good enough in an age where Samsung is supporting its phones for seven years. Looking past those points, the RedMagic Astra is a fantastic device even if you're not a huge gamer. It'll handle any pro-grade app you throw at it, and you could just as easily use this for a bit of on-the-go video editing or hook it up to a monitor and a Bluetooth keyboard and use it as a work machine. You can get a range of dedicated accessories, like a stylus, case or gamepad, directly from RedMagic, too. Smaller tablets generally don't have the allure of their larger siblings, but I'm a big fan because I rate portability highly. And while I feel like I've always had to compromise on power or battery life to achieve that, the RedMagic Astra shows I can have my small cake and eat it. If you want a small, powerful tablet that's not the iPad Mini 7, then this is the device for you. It helps a bit if you like to play games, too.
Irish Daily Mirror
5 days ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Redmagic offers fans €50 off high-end gaming smartphone in flash summer sale
Gaming smartphone market pioneer Redmagic has officially launched its summer sale. The firm is giving fans the opportunity to avail of exclusive regional discounts on the Redmagic 10 Pro, from the high-end gaming smartphone series that continues to raise the bar for mobile gaming performance. Redmagic is a 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. READ MORE: I tested Starlink Mini to see if satellite internet really could be the future READ MORE: Eufy E15 robot mower review: is this clever wireless machine the future of gardening? It is a global leader in this category, offering similar specs as the Asus ROG Phone series but at much more affordable prices. Last year, Redmagic 10 Pro became the first phone to market in Ireland and the EU with the blazing fast high-end Snapdragon Elite chip that has gone on to power all of the main 2025 Android flagship smartphones. The star of the show on Redmagic 10 Pro is the latest high-end Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC (Image: Redmagic) When Redmagic 10 Pro was launched, my review said it was 'by far the most powerful smartphone I tested in 2024 and a gamer's delight'. I added that it was an 'affordable gaming powerhouse with liquid cooling tech, unbelievable battery life and an array of Google Gemini AI smarts'. My review added: 'Redmagic 10 Pro offers plenty to get excited about. You get a dazzling 1.5K AMOLED display with ultra-slim bezels and a 144Hz refresh rate. The company claims this is the most advanced full screen on the gaming phone market. The new device also boasts a 7,050mAh battery that is the largest capacity I've ever seen in a gaming smartphone.' Now you can buy that phone with a huge discount of €50 off in the Redmagic summer sale. The discounts are applied automatically on the official Redmagic store and are available on a first-come, first-served basis while stocks last. The promotion covers all variants of the Redmagic 10 Pro in every available colour, giving fans the freedom to choose the configuration and style that best suits their gaming needs and personal taste. From bold designs to signature finishes, every edition is now more accessible than ever. There are also deals to be had on a range of accessories such as the clip-on Redmagic VC Cooler 6 which now costs €10 less at €44.90 You also buy a range of Redmagic products from Amazon, while the Rog Phone 9 Pro competing gamer phone is also on sale at Amazon. Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news from the Irish Mirror direct to your inbox: Sign up here.
Forbes
18-06-2025
- Forbes
Redmagic 10 Air Stands Out As A Thin Gaming Smartphone
Redmagic 10 Air The current trend for smartphones is to go thin. It's been a general design cue in many new handsets launched in 2025, the recently launched Galaxy S25 Edge makes that explicit, and the upcoming iPhone 17 Air will put the 'Apple Stamp' onto the form factor. Can a thin handset ever be more than fashion? The team behind the Redmagic 10 Air certainly think so. Nubia's Redmagic series of phones is focused on gaming. They are not out-and-out gaming phones, there's enough in the subtle styling that helps the 10 Air blend into the background and be suitable for general use, but gaming features are to the fore. Which is where the benefits of going for a thin and light are most noticeable. Redmagic 10 Air One of the knock-on effects of having a small gaming phone is that you have a light gaming phone. While you can have long periods of day-to-day use on a phone (think reading social media, browsing the web or triaging emails), you don't have to be holding the phone in a specific way, or contort your hands to grip the phone in a particular way. It's the opposite when you are running the complex titles a gaming phone screams for. You'll hold your phone in a specific way for extended periods, working your thumbs around the screen, index fingers along the top spine for the shoulder buttons. Gaming phones have typically sported more mass with more volume, which could lead to fatigue in long sessions. Going thin, and implicitly going light, gives the Redmagic 10 Air an advantage over the competition… which is comfort. Redmagic 10 Air Every smartphone is a compromise; gaming phones even more so. There's more value placed on a fast-refreshing screen with a high sampling rate than a comprehensive and highly specced camera; while battery endurance is a consideration, getting more performance out of the processor is higher up the list; and the ergonomics play a larger part. The lower weight already covers the latter, but the other factors are accentuated by the thin design. The camera is often one of the first elements to fall back when compared to the competition. The selfie camera needs to work well as a webcam for the occasional in-game chats, but you are not buying a gaming phone for a high-end photographic experience; there are phones where that is maximised, but that is not the role of the Redmagic gaming phones. With less space in the Redmagic 10 Air's chassis, there's even less space to cram in the latest camera technology without building out a massive camera island at the rear of the phone. If there was, the balance of the phone in hand would be off and there would be an increase in weight. So, rightly, the Redmagic 10 Air doesn't even need to try. Going thin gives Redmagic permission to focus away from the camera, and consumers the argument as to why the camera may be weaker than the competition. Redmagic 10 Air Yet the Redmagic 10 Air's push towards thin and light must be considere in context. It has an edge over the gaming competition at 205g and 7.85mm thick. But over the Galaxy S25 Edge? Samsung's fashionable phone comes in at 163g and 5.8mm. Even its entry-level Galaxy S25 is lighter and smaller at 162g and 7.2mm. If the Redmagic 10 Air is compared to its fellow gaming smartphones, it's the svelte one. For everyone else, we have a phone that is a shade bigger than an everyday phone, with a focus on comfortable gaming of high-end titles. Coupled with the mid-range price (the entry-level model is £439 here in the UK), there's a small but suitable audience for such a phone. Redmagic 10 Air Now the latest smartphone headlines in Forbes' weekly Android news digest...
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.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Yahoo
Redmagic 10 Air review: The gaming phone you can actually hold in one hand
Last year's Redmagic 10 Pro was one of the best gaming phones around with an unbelievable price point. I'm a fan of the Redmagic brand and while I disliked its take on Android, I enjoyed the premium hardware and the raw performance of the Snapdragon 8 Elite packed into that phone. I loved the $650 price tag even more, making it one of the best-valued powerhouse devices of the year. So when I got my hands on a brand-new Redmagic 10 Air, I was more than a little confused. After all, it looks almost identical to the Pro, but it is not as powerful. It uses an older Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip and has a smaller battery. It is also nearly the same price. Who is this phone for? I spent a few weeks with the Redmagic 10 Air, hoping to solve this riddle and understand what was behind Redmagic's thinking. I may have figured out the answer. There are three versions of the Redmagic 10 Air. The first version comes with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage and costs $549. The next step-up is 16GB + 512GB for $600. It comes in three choices of color: twilight, hailstone, and a special 'flare' version. The phone isn't available at any stores in the US, but Redmagic does have it available for free global shipping direct from their site. I've already touched on the older Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset inside the device. There's a 6.8-inch screen with 1.5K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. It has the same liquid metal cooling that we saw in the Redmagic 10 Pro, but this device has no fan. It has a smaller 6,000mAh battery and supports 80W fast charging. Finally, it supports GSM, LTE, UTMS, and 5G, and I had no issues using it on my provider's 5G network up here in Canada. When I first took the Redmagic 10 Air out of the box, I was surprised to see that it looked almost identical to the 10 Pro. But looks can be deceiving. The Air instantly felt more comfortable to hold in my hand. It is only 7.85mm thick, and the edges are just ever-so-slightly curved, so it didn't cramp up my hand the way the 10 Pro did. I instantly liked the feel of this phone. That sentiment would grow as I used it. Holding this phone was a refreshing change from the boxy and heavy 10 Pro. At only 205g, the 10 Air is light, but not too much. It still retains a bit of heft, so you know you're holding it. Even more impressive was how Redmagic kept the screen practically bezeless. I don't like bezels nor do I like curved displays, and Redmagic has once again ticked all the right boxes when it comes to displays. The screen is decent. I wasn't blown away by it, but I wasn't disappointed, either. 120Hz is more than enough to keep everything slick, like watching YouTube and playing games. My latest obsession is Magic: The Gathering Arena, and this phone kept up with all the flying graphics and crazy colors. The dual speaker system works. They didn't blow me away, but they didn't let me down either. I played a lot of Call of Duty: Mobile on this device, and the speakers did their jobs. I need to give a shout-out to the battery here. Despite constant use, it lasted me 18 hours on a single charge. I was impressed with the 10 Pro's battery life, and I'm glad to see the little brother carry on the family legacy. The included 80W fast charger quickly brought the battery back up to 100% in a pinch. I also enjoyed some of Redmagic's software tricks to push the phone further. Charge separation is a big one, where I could set a cutoff charge level and let the phone redirect power to use the device. So, if I was gaming while the phone was plugged in, it would power the game without affecting the battery. Problems with the device began almost as soon as I powered it on and went through the setup process. The older Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 was really showing its age. Software took longer to load than I am used to, and sometimes I had to swipe away an app and then relaunch it to get it to work. I've used plenty of devices with the 8 Gen 3, and that was a fast chip, so I'm not sure what the issue was with the Redmagic 10 Air. But it gave me problems from the get-go. The phone comes preloaded with Google apps and little else (I appreciate the lack of bloatware on Redmagic devices). So I loaded all my usual go-to apps when I was first setting up the device: Firefox, Fastmail, Obsidian, ToDoist, VLC. The device did not like that. Opening and using these apps was a headache. They were laggy, and Obsidian in particular never fully loaded, an issue, I assumed, with its on-device storage system. In the end, I had to remove all of these apps and use only the pre-installed Google apps. At least they worked. That said, gaming was never an issue. The CPU never gave me an issue once I was in a game. Many of the problems I faced had to do with launching apps, and I don't know why. I thought it could be an issue with its cores, so I ran a Geekbench 6 test on it. It scored 2293 in single-core performance and 7203 in multicore. Those were great scores, so the issue wasn't there. I still cannot pinpoint what was causing so many problems with third-party apps. But performance was not my biggest complaint — the in-screen fingerprint reader was. It never worked. Not once did it ever manage to read my fingerprint and unlock the device, even after a few tries. Eventually, I got in the habit of using a four-digit password to unlock it, like it was 2014 or something. The cameras on this device are not great. It has a 50MP main shooter and a 50MP wide-angle shooter. They work for still shots at close range, which is good enough to capture memories when needed. But zooming in on a subject turns the photo into a pixelated mess, and while video is fine at 1x and 2x zoom, anything else becomes unwatchable. But this device isn't for photographers. I think I figured out who it is for. The Redmagic 10 Air is not meant for hardcore gamers. It's not meant for professionals on the go or camera jocks. And because it costs more than the Redmagic 10 Pro, at least at launch, I don't believe it's meant for the budget-conscious market, either. Instead, I think I found the perfect customer for this device: older kids. Think about it. It comes with everything a teen or tween needs. Google's software suite is built right in. It handles gaming wonderfully. The cameras are good enough for the crazy way kids take pictures, and the speakers are perfect for YouTube. Best of all, it fits in slightly smaller hands. Plus, it won't break the bank for those working part-time (or their parents).
