RedMagic 10 Pro Hands-On: equipped for gaming, but a bull’s-eye as a phone

The RedMagic 10 Pro is a $649 gaming phone with high-end hardware, and it offers great value in terms of what you get – at least on paper. When I played Dead Cells I used the phone’s gameplay mode to remove the frame cap and enable higher resolution graphics, and it still played at a solid 90 frames per second. Mortal Kombat Mobile immediately ran at full 144 fps, the highest the screen supports. And while Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is an older title, the Android version is easy to operate, thanks in part to its responsive 960Hz touch sampling rate, but I still recommend using a controller. Games like the aforementioned Dead Cells look vibrant and smooth; However, after a few days of testing the RedMagic 10 Pro, it’s largely hit the mark in terms of it being a good phone.

The RedMagic’s beefy specs include a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, whose fast speeds I first tested with the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro. The RedMagic 10 Pro supports a 100-watt wired charging speed to power its massive 7,050 mAh battery, both of which we rarely see in phones sold in the US. Looking forward to testing the battery and charging speed of the phone.

The 10 Pro builds on the design of the RedMagic 8 series, including an under-display front camera that provides an uninterrupted 6.85-inch canvas for games and videos. This year’s RedMagic phone has a screen that supports a 144Hz refresh rate, which should be more than enough for smooth animations and scrolling, even if this isn’t the highest refresh rate I’ve seen on a gaming phone. The 2,688 x 1,216 pixel screen has a peak brightness of 2,000 nits. RedMagic also has an internal cooling fan and a liquid metal cooling system normally found in gaming PCs.

In the graphics and gaming-focused benchmark test 3DMark Wild Life Extreme, the RedMagic 10 Pro scored similarly to the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro, which costs $551 more. The RedMagic was also slightly ahead of the Asus in the Geekbench 6.0 CPU benchmark. So RedMagic clearly checks the box when it comes to the phone’s gaming prowess. It’s the 10 Pro’s ability to be a decent phone that leaves me frustrated and disappointed.

During my early testing of the RedMagic 10 Pro, I encountered a number of issues with the software that tested my patience. Many of these problems are the same ones I was facing previous RedMagic phones. It’s frustrating that there hasn’t been much improvement.

The most glaring annoyance is the camera software, which applies a watermark to all images by default, making turning it off extremely unintuitive. Instead of uninstalling it from the camera app or phone settings, you’ll need to launch RedMagic’s Game Space menu by turning on the red physical switch, tapping your profile icon, then scrolling down to the option to uninstall it Disable ‘Red Magic Watermark’. These menus also have an inconsistent grammatical style, which I just find jarring in phone software.

RedMagic is also making some changes to the Android experience that I think are getting in the way. For example, the Google News feed is initially replaced by “Z-Board,” which I quickly disabled because it reads like built-in ads to me, even though it bills itself as “Featured news and service information.” It also uses its own browser app by default, but that’s easier to change to another option like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

And while it’s cool to use a phone with an uninterrupted screen, the under-screen camera takes bad photos. For example, in this selfie from the 16-megapixel shooter, the background is very blurred even after I used a microfiber cloth several times to clean the “lens” part of the screen. The rear cameras on the RedMagic 10 Pro include a 50-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera and an unnamed 2-megapixel camera. I asked RedMagic to clarify what the third camera was; normally this would help with portrait mode.

RedMagic does not have a good reputation for software and security updates. RedMagic’s website claims it is getting its phones “more than two years of software support,” which is low by 2024 standards. While Asus also provides two years of major software updates for its ROG gaming phone, it at least guarantees five years of security updates. I asked RedMagic to clarify the support timeline, but haven’t heard back.

Who is the RedMagic 10 Pro intended for?

The RedMagic 10 Pro isn’t meant to lure people away from more traditional flagship phones like the Samsung Galaxy series. But the lower price does make it one of the most affordable phones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, which beats all the 2024 phones CNET tested in terms of pure gaming performance. The “all-screen” display makes it a powerful media machine, especially if you connect it to a game controller when you play more console-level games on it. The large battery and fast charging speed further enhance its appeal as a pocket-sized gaming device. For the more ROM-savvy crowd, you might be able to flash this device to suit your needs better than RedMagic’s existing software experience.

The handheld gaming market is also becoming increasingly competitive, raising more questions about who is the best audience for a gaming phone like the RedMagic 10 Pro, especially when the device’s functionality as a phone is its weak point. A Steam deck – although too big to fit in your pocket – offers instant access to many PC games at a lower price than the RedMagic, even if the Steam Deck itself isn’t also a phone. The Asus ROG Phone 9 series is an easier recommendation as both a capable phone and a gaming device, but its starting price is a much higher $1,000.

But with an early bird sale date of December 12, followed by a general sale date of December 18, the RedMagic 10 Pro will be particularly notable for being one of the first phones to hit the North American market with the latest Snapdragon processor. inside. And maybe that’s enough for early adopters who are also gaming enthusiasts to jump on board. But most people will probably be better off waiting for the first wave of flagship Android phones that will also include this processor, or perhaps they should consider the more expensive Asus phone. when gaming is a priority alongside a more organized software experience.