This a true gaming phone with high-end specs that skims below P50,000.
The RedMagic 10 Pro is a beast. Skewed towards gaming, it does have a bunch of quality-of-life features that make it great as a daily driver. But don’t get me wrong: this phone is truly meant for the gamer at heart. It costs P49,999.
Aesthetics
Out of the box, the RedMagic 10 Pro is a looker. Once you power it on, it definitely screams ‘gamer’ with the sound of a car starting and revving (yes it’s a bit campy but I will forgive this) and the LED lights of the Red Magic logo and the fan blinking. The revving also kicks in whenever you plug the phone to fast-charge – a feature which most people will turn off as the gimmick dies quickly.
The RedMagic 10 Pro comes with a semi-transparent snap-on plastic case. I am very vocal against nubia and Red Magic sporting this type of stock case as it provides zero drop protection. If you buy this phone, I highly recommend looking at Lazada or Shopee for a 3rd party compatible case – of which there are options, but not as vast as other brands given that this has special hardware considerations (the fan!).
Watch: The many lights and sounds of the RedMagic 10 Pro
@barpoinsettia #REDMAGIC10PRO – The lights and sounds of what is probably the most affordable Snapdragon 8 Elite phone in the Philippines. It also comes with solid state liquid cooling technology + 23000 rpm fan. #redmagic ♬ original sound – Jayvee
Performance and GameSpace
Although Antutu scores only reveal part of the whole picture, the 10 Pro boasts a score of 2.6M making it easily one of the top five performance devices in terms of score. For gaming, the score is put into context because of the presence of an active cooling fan, dubbed as part of the ICE-X Magic Cooling System that combines a 23,000 rpm fan, graphene material under the screen, and a peculiar “liquid metal” material located on the fan. Apparently, the liquid metal acts similarly to thermal paste you would normally find on a CPU and fan but this material conducts heat faster, allowing more heat to pass through the vapor cooling chamber from the fan.
In true gamer fashion, the fan does have LED lights that can be turned on or off in the settings. The GameSpace software feature, which I will explore more on later, allows for fan settings to be changed. With the fan turned on for everyday use, it does get quite noticeable in a quiet room, but not as annoying as say, a JisuLife fan. The fan chamber itself isn’t weatherproof, but I find the engineering of this device to be quite admirable as it does have an unofficial IP54 rating. I doubt this is something ZTE would talk about openly given that there’s a rotating fan on the housing, but still, it’s good to know that there is some splash and dust protection for insurance. I would not advise testing this though.
GameSpace is truly built for gamers in mind. The addition of a dedicated hardware switch that turns this mode on and off is of huge consideration as it allowed me to move from “daily driver” to “Gaming optimized.” GameSpace is quite similar to overlays we find in gaming handhelds, laptops and other software like SteelSeries, NVIDIA, AyaSpace, etc. The mode allows you to adjust CPU performance, screen refresh rate, battery management, and customize virtual controls that can make use of touch screen, the two shoulder pads, and interestingly enough, the gyroscope.
So for instance, if you’re playing COD: Mobile, you can make use of one of the shoulder triggers to fire (if auto fire isn’t on already) similar to how many handhelds config the attack button in shooters. Reloading can also be snappy by mapping the reload touch button to a gyroscope movement, like tilting the phone to the left or the right. Imagine Time Crisis or House of the Dead at the arcades, where reloading your gun meant lowering it or shooting outside the screen. Some may call it “cheating” but the addition of these new input options really enhance the gaming experience to make it feel more fluid.
Camera
As I said in my introduction, the RedMagic 10 Pro hovers above gaming, but it does have a decent triple camera system of 50-50-2MP OmniVision sensor. It’s, well, decent. Here are some snaps I took in Yokohama, Japan and in natural light, as well as at night, we get pretty decent shots. Of note, only the main camera comes with the optical image stabilization feature.
Conclusion
I can highly recommend the RedMagic 10 Pro. When I first teased this phone, it got a lot of views online compared to other brands. The ZTE / nubia / Red Magic brands, at least in the Philippines do not get a lot of media coverage or are as loud as the other brands but it does have a huge fanbase where their mid-range devices usually sell out quickly. The Red Magic 10 Pro competes in a very niche gaming category as a true gaming phone, and we can’t help but compare it to ASUS’ ROG series that also sports active cooling technology. The former wins in price as it is more affordable by roughly P10,000.
Specs
- Size: 6.853 Inch BOE Q9+ FHD+
- Refresh Rate: Up to 144Hz
- Touch Sampling Rate: Highest 2500 Hz (Average 960Hz)
- Resolution: 2688×1216 Pixels
- Aspect Ratio: 20:9
- Type: AMOLED
- Brightness: 2000 Nits Max Brightness,
- Material: Corning® Gorilla® Glass
- Color Gamut: 100% DCI-P3,
- Color Accuracy △E＜1
Cooling System:
- ICE-X Magic Cooling System
- 23,000 RPM High-speed Turbofan
- Cooling Air Duct
- Alloy Shark Fin High Speed Centrifugal Fan
- High-low Fan Blade Structure
- Number of Fan Blades: 58
- Thickness of Fan Blades: 0.1mm
- Speed: 23,000 RPM
- Flow Rate: Increased by 10%
- Other Cooling Components
- Aircraft Grade Aluminum Alloy
- Super Soft High Heat Conductivity Rare Earth
- Graphene Under the Screen
- Composite Graphene
- Copper Foil Under the Screen
- Super Thermal Conductivity Copper Foil
- High Thermal Conductivity Gel
- Liquid Metal
Hardware:
- Snapdragon 8 Elite
- CPU Cores: Kryo™
- CPU Core Frequency Increased to 4.32Ghz
- GPU: Adreno™
- Red Core 3 Pro
- RAM: 12/16 GB LPDDR5X Ultra
- ROM: 256/512 GB UFS4.1 Pro
Camera:
- Rear Camera:
- Resolution: 50MP+50MP+2MP
- Sensor: OmniVision OV50E 1/1.5
- OIS Optical Image Stabilization
- 7P lens
- APL-coated Anti-glare
- Front Camera:
- Megapixels: 16MP, 2nd Generation Under-display Camera (UDC)
- Pixel Size: 1.12μm
- Aperture: 2.0
Other Functions:
- Shoulder Trigger Buttons: 520Hz Touch Sampling Rate Touchpads
- Game Space Switch: Toggles Special Game Mode On or Off.
- RGB Light: Fully Customizable Lighting Effects (Except Japan Version)
