Pretty much everybody who owns a smartphone has played a game on it, whether that be Fortnite or Wordle. And thanks to the exponentially increasing power of microprocessor technology, that game probably looked pretty good. The fact is, your phone is almost certainly a far more capable gaming computer than your Nintendo Switch.
Even so, the RedMagic 10 Pro is a step up. Rather than being able to run games as a byproduct of the technology powering its other functions, this is more like a games console in the shape of a phone, with powerful speakers, capacitive shoulder buttons, ostentatious RGB lighting, and even an audible fan that you can activate to keep the phone cool during particularly intense gaming sessions.
There are better options out there if you’re simply not interested in playing cutting edge games on your smallest screen, but that doesn’t take anything away from the fact that the RedMagic 10 Pro is a unique, capable, practical smartphone with impressive battery life and fantastic media capabilities.
Looks
Let’s start with the first impressions. The RedMagic 10 Pro is a stark, boxy device, with a large screen (163.42×76.14mm to be precise, making it ) and a sleekly minimal brushed aluminium bezel containing a volume rocker, a power button, and a red slider for activating the phone’s Game Lobby gaming mode.
A cooling grille sits on each side, while on the right-hand side (where most of the buttons are) there are those touchpads, which come with a more than serviceable 520-Hz sampling rate. There are speakers on the top and bottom, a USB-C port, and, in a pleasing blast from the past, a 3.5mm audio jack port.
The screen is made of Gorilla glass, and the back is made of glass too. Intriguingly, this glass is not opaque but perfectly clear, revealing a layer of the phone’s mechanical innards. It’s as if RedMagic is making a point: this phone is all about performance, not looks. That said, the RedMagic 10 Pro is a distinctive and fairly stylish device.
Specs
The RedMagic 10 Pro has an impressive AMOLED screen with a resolution of 2688 by 1216 pixels. For reference, that’s very probably higher than the resolution of your PC monitor. According to RedMagic the phone has 2000 Nites Max Brightness, a refresh rate of up to 144Hz, a Color Gamut of 100% DCI-P3, and Color Accuracy of “△E＜1”.
We don’t know what that means either, but we can tell you this: the RedMagic 10 Pro has a stunningly bright, crisp, colorful display and loud, punchy speakers, making it perfect not just for gaming but for watching films and TV shows.
There’s a 7050mAh dual cell battery in the RedMagic 10 Pro, which is more than 1.5 times the capacity of the Pixel 9, and it comes with fast charging up to 100W. That makes it a very suitable walking-around phone, with a battery that should easily last a full day.
Elsewhere, there’s 16GB RAM, a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, Kryo CPU cores, and an Adreno GPU. In lay terms, that translates to a phone that’s pretty much as powerful as phones come right now.
The only area where the RedMagic 10 Pro comes close to falling behind its main competitors is camera quality. There’s a 50MP rear camera, a 16MP front camera, and all sorts of software tools such as an OmniVision OV50E sensor and OIS Optical Image Stabilisation. To our eyes, images taken on the RedMagic 10 Pro look pretty good. But if you’re extremely serious about your smartphone photography then you may want to look elsewhere.
Pixel 6 on the left, RedMagic 10 Pro on the right
Software
The RedMagic 10 Pro comes with Android 15 overlaid with its own RedMagic OS 10.0. According to RedMagic, users can expect one Android OS update in future. Security features and UI upgrades will keep coming for up to three years. This is a pretty meagre upgrade window compared to, say, the Pixel 9, which promises to keep the upgrades coming for seven years.
There’s AI functionality for editing photos, translating text, and so on. You may or may not be relieved to learn that RedMagic has chosen to use Google Gemini rather than develop its own alternative. That means it’s extremely functional, though the same functionality exists on every recent Android phone.
Gaming
It goes without saying that the experience of actually playing a game on the RedMagic 10 Pro is pretty much as good as it gets on a mobile phone. The device sits fairly comfortably in your hands, and the performance is lightning fast. The visuals look beautiful, and there are even those shoulder touchpads to make the whole experience that little bit more console-like.
Naturally, you can also pair a real controller to the device, and RedMagic has its own Shadow Blade gamepad shell that turns your phone into a fully fledged handheld console.
But RedMagic takes things a step further with Game Lobby. By flicking a switch on the side of your phone you can replace the Android interface with a slick gaming UI that displays the games you’ve installed through Google Play. But Game Lobby is more than just window dressing. Each game in your lobby has its own Energy Cube. This is a sort of sub-menu where you can add unique settings for CPU and GPU performance. You can also decide whether the fan automatically comes on, set control sensitivity, accidental touch protection, and more.
Elsewhere in the interface you can choose an input method, from game controller or keyboard and mouse. You can cast your screen through Game Lobby too, though this is fiddlier than it should be. To cast to your PC monitor you need to download a Windows app and scan a QR code. Once you’ve done that it works well. Alas, Google Chromecast doesn’t appear to be supported, so to stream a game on a TV you’ll need to resort to Miracast.
Game Lobby even dabbles in AI, with a Behavioural Learning setting that builds key schemes around your behaviour and habits. And it lets you set up your own profile, complete with anime avatar, if that’s your thing.
Once you start playing around with the RedMagic 10 Pro’s gaming features, it starts to feel like a genuine bridge between smartphone and console.
Conclusion
If you’re the kind of person who frets about missing out on software updates, you may come to resent the RedMagic 10 Pro as the years pass. But that’s a problem for Tomorrow You to deal with. Right now, the RedMagic 10 Pro is pretty much the pick of the bunch when it comes to gaming phones.
While not as powerful as the almighty Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro, it’s roughly half the price. This makes it a no-brainer for all but the most spendthrift mobile gamers. Even if you’re not a gamer, the RedMagic 10 Pro’s distinctive style, fantastic screen, convincing sound, and generous battery life make the it solid choice for almost all occasions.
The good
- Stunning AMOLED display
- Generous battery life
- User-friendly gaming software
- Lots of power
- Comparatively good value for money
The bad
- Boxy form factor won’t be for everyone
- Less than stellar camera
- Narrow software support window