REVIEW – I have thoroughly enjoyed several REDMAGIC phones here at The Gadgeteer, but today I get my first crack at one of their gaming tablets. The REDMAGIC Astra gaming tablet is rocking some of the best mobile hardware available in a compact tablet that’s much easier to carry around than a 10-13 inch one. I’ve travelled many times with gaming laptops, and the size and weight of something like that can be a literal drag, so a mini gaming tablet is very appealing to me, if it can actually play some decent games. I spent many hours gaming and consuming media on the tablet, and TL; DR – it’s fantastic. But if you want to know more about it, read on!
⬇︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: $549+
Where to buy: REDMAGIC
What is it?
The REDMAGIC Astra gaming tablet is a compact (9″ screen) tablet, with a Snapdragon Elite main chipset plus REDMAGIC’s RedCore R3 Pro coprocessor. It’s designed to provide the best gaming experience you can have on a tablet that’s also compact and portable, which also means you get a tablet that’s amazing for media consumption. To top it all off, there’s an active cooling system and dual vapor chambers (along with a number of other cooling layers) packed into the tablet to keep it cool during gaming and prevent thermal throttling. You can configure this beast with up to 24 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage.
What’s included?
- REDMAGIC Astra Gaming Tablet
- Type-C cable
- Warranty card
- User Manual
- Logo sticker
Tech specs
Dimensions: 134.2 x 207 x 6.9 mm (5.28 × 8.15 × 0.27 inches)
Weight: 370 g (13.05 oz)
Material: Metal and Glass
Memory combinations (LPDDR5T + UFS 4.1 Pro): Eclipse: 12 + 256 GB, 16 +512 GB, 24 GB + 1TB, Starfrost: 12 + 256 GB, 16 +512 GB
Hardware: Snapdragon 8 Elite + RedCore R3 Pro coprocessor
Cooling system: Enhanced ICE-X (Cooling Alloy, High-Conductivity Graphene, copper foil, vapor chambers, high-thermal-conductivity gel, Liquid Metal 2.0, 20k RPM Turbofan)
Display: 9.06″ OLED, up to 165 Hz, 2400 x 1504 Pixels
Pixel Density: 313 PPI
Aspect Ratio: 16:10
Brightness: 1600 nits peak, 1100 nits full screen brightness
Weather resistance: IP54
Eye protection: SGS Certified
Connectivity: Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax, Bluetooth 5.4, DisplayPort-over-USB-C up to 2K Video
Rear Camera: Resolution: 13MP, with Enhanced AI Algorithm, 5P Lens, Up to 4K@30fps Video Recording
Front Camera: Resolution: 9MP, with Enhanced AI Algorithms, φ1.9mm – (Smallest Front Camera on a Tablet), 4P Lens, 1080P@30fps, ƒ/2.2 aperture, 0.7μm 4-in-1 Pixel
Sensors: Fingerprint Sensor, Electronic Compass, Gyroscope, Ambient Light Sensor, Accelerometer.
OS: REDMAGIC OS 10.5 Based on Android 15.0
Battery: 8,200 mAh dual cell battery
Ports: Single Type-C port supporting fast charging, DisplayPort, and USB 3.2 Gen 2
Speakers: DTS:X® Ultra. Stereo dual 1620 speakers
Haptics: Dual 0815 X-axis Linear Motors
Design and features
From the front, you’d never guess the REDMAGIC Astra gaming tablet is hiding incredible specs and power. When I turned on the screen, I was instantly impressed with the OLED displays clarity and rich color, but it wasn’t until I was installing 20+ apps and games at once while tabbing through browser tabs that I realized I hadn’t once had the slightest stutter or freeze at all.
The sharp 2K screen has a glossy coating, which does reflect just about anything. Luckily the screen goes up to 1100 nits (1600 nits peak) so if you do end up with annoying reflections you can always just crank up the brightness. At the top center of the tablet is a tiny front-facing camera (thankfully no holes punched in the screen, they stuck this one in the bezel). Despite it’s tiny size, it works great for selfies and video calls, with decent optics and 1080P full HD resolution.
As you start to turn the tablet around, you begin to suspect that it’s not your boring run-of-the-mill slab of aluminum or plastic. On the left top corner is a combination power button and fingerprint reader. The fingerprint reader worked great for me every time and was near instant to unlock each time. There’s also face recognition, but the fingerprint reader worked so well I forgot about it until writing this review, even though I initially did set it up.
As you continue to turn the tablet around, you get the full glory of REDMAGIC’s unique styling. A transparent clear window shows the turbofan, rear camera, and flash.
The rear camera takes decent photos and video. They’ve also advertised the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and Composit Liquid Metal cooling technology on the back top panel.
There are two RGB lighting areas that you can control in the tablet’s software, with a variety of static and animated colors, as well as audio-responsive strobing.
The turbofan gets the RGB treatment too, and can also be customized with multiple colors and animations.
On the top right side is the single USB-C port, and it’s a good one. It supports fast PD charging, DisplayPort video out (and HDMI video out with a converter-not included). You can even plug it into a dock with video, mouse, and keyboard and use the tablet as a desktop gaming machine.
On the top right is a slider switch, which by default enters Game Space, REDMAGIC’s dedicated game launcher. You can map this button to other functions like flashlight or camera if desired.
Volume buttons are at the top left. The dual speakers with DTS:X Ultra 3D stereo put out crisp and loud audio rivalling some of the best tablets I’ve previously used (like the iPad Pro line).
Finally, I’ve used tablets of pretty much every size (including four models of foldable phones), and this form factor is the sweet spot for screen size versus portability (at least for me). I’ve always ended up selling my giant tablets (like Samsung Galaxy Tab series and iPad Pro 13). Because they were so large, I ended up using them less and less in favor of the phone I had in my pocket. But even a good foldable phone is no match for the big 16:10 aspect ratio screen on the REDMAGIC Astra gaming tablet. When I watch movies on a plane or train for example, on the foldable phones I still only have about a 6.8 inch usable screen with giant black bars on most movie or TV content. With the Astra, you get minimal black bars since it’s already in a widescreen format. On top of that, the big battery can get you up to 33 hours of video playback on a single charge!
Adding a nice mobile controller capable of gripping the tablet turns it into a giant portable gaming handheld. I switched off using the tablet in this mode (often simply streaming Xbox Game Pass games) versus direct touchscreen games.
Assembly, Installation, Setup
The REDMAGIC Astra gaming tablet is running on the REDMAGIC OS 10.5, based on Android 15. Outside of the “Game Space” game launcher, most of the interface feels like vanilla android. Installation did try to prompt me to install a list of additional apps, and there is some bloatware installed (like Facebook and Booking.com), though thankfully this can be uninstalled.
Performance
I had just wrapped up testing out the REDMAGIC 10S Pro smartphone with nearly identical hardware and just a bit more RAM and storage than the Astra review unit I was sent. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading Version (a higher clocked edition of the same basic chip) on the 10S Pro smartphone was 5-15% faster than the Astra tablet on various benchmarks. That said, the REDMAGIC Astra gaming tablet is no slouch. It easily maxes out framerates in most of the games I tested, and I was able to use REDMAGIC’s frame generation to boost FPS in some games from their maximum allowed to a staggering 120 FPS, which results in buttery smooth gameplay. Here’s some of my testing footage with Fortnite and Wreckfest:
Final thoughts
The REDMAGIC Astra gaming tablet combined with the REDMAGIC 10S Pro smartphone ended up being the perfect duo for me. By the end of this review period, I sold my Google Pixel Pro Fold and have been using the REDMAGIC phone and tablet as my everyday drivers. The amazing screens on both combined with ridiculously fast hardware and multi-day battery life tick all the boxes for me. Life in the REDMAGIC world is good.
What I like about the REDMAGIC Astra gaming tablet
- Great small and portable form factor
- Excellent fast bright OLED screen with 16:10 aspect ratio and high resolution
- One of the most powerful mobile devices on the market
What needs to be improved?
- Preinstalled bloatware
- I NEED their PC gaming emulator software to make it to the global market (it’s available in China)
Price: $549+
Where to buy: REDMAGIC
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by REDMAGIC. REDMAGIC did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.
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