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).
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