RedMagic 10 Professional Fingers-On: Powered Up for Gaming, however a Irritating Cellphone Leave a comment

The RedMagic 10 Professional is a $649 gaming telephone with higher-end {hardware}, and it gives a terrific worth by way of what you get – at the very least on paper. After I performed Useless Cells, I used the telephone’s gameplay mode to take away the body cap and toggle greater decision graphics, and it nonetheless performed at a strong 90 frames per second. Mortal Kombat Cell immediately ran on the full 144fps, the best the display screen helps. And whereas Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is an older title, the Android model controls simply, thanks partially to the responsive 960Hz contact sampling price — however I nonetheless advocate utilizing a controller. Video games just like the aforementioned Useless Cells look vibrant and easy; nonetheless, after a number of days of testing the RedMagic 10 Professional, it is in any other case largely hit-or-miss by way of being a very good telephone.

The RedMagic’s beefy specs embody a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, whose quick speeds I first examined with the Asus ROG Cellphone 9 Professional. The RedMagic 10 Professional helps 100-watt wired charging velocity to energy up its large 7,050-mAh battery, each of which we hardly ever see in telephones that promote within the US. I sit up for testing the telephone’s battery and recharging velocity.

The ten Professional builds upon the RedMagic 8 collection’ design together with an under-display front-facing digicam that gives an uninterrupted 6.85-inch canvas for video games and movies. This yr’s RedMagic telephone has a show that helps a 144Hz refresh price, which ought to be greater than adequate for easy animations and scrolling, even when it is not the best refresh price I’ve seen on a gaming telephone. The two,688×1,216-pixel display screen has a peak brightness of two,000 nits. RedMagic additionally has an inner cooling fan and a liquid metallic cooling system that is usually seen in gaming PCs.

Within the graphics and gaming-centric benchmark take a look at 3DMark Wild Life Excessive, the RedMagic 10 Professional scored comparably to the Asus ROG Cellphone 9 Professional which prices $551 extra. The RedMagic additionally ranked barely forward of the Asus within the Geekbench 6.0 CPU benchmark. So clearly RedMagic checks the field by way of the telephone’s gaming prowess. It is simply the ten Professional’s capability to be an honest telephone that leaves me annoyed and dissatisfied.

In my early testing of the RedMagic 10 Professional, I hit quite a few hiccups with the software program that attempted my persistence. Many of those points are the identical ones that I had with prior RedMagic telephones. It is irritating that there hasn’t been a lot enchancment.

Essentially the most obtrusive annoyance is the digicam software program that defaults to making use of a watermark to all photos, and makes disabling it extraordinarily unintuitive. To show it off, you’ll want to open up the digicam, faucet the top-right arrow, then faucet “Extra settings” on the highest left to then uncover the watermark toggle. There’s additionally a watermark possibility to show off from RedMagic’s Recreation Area menu by turning on its crimson bodily change, tapping your profile icon after which scrolling all the way down to the choice to show off the “Pink magic watermark.” These menus even have inconsistent grammatical type, which I simply discover jarring within telephone software program.

RedMagic additionally makes quite a few modifications to the Android expertise that I discover get in the way in which. As an example the Google Information feed is initially changed by “Z-Board,” which I shortly turned off as a result of it reads to me like built-in promoting though it payments itself as “Really useful information and repair information.” It additionally defaults to its personal browser app, however that is simpler to alter to a different possibility like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

And whereas it’s cool to make use of a telephone that has an uninterrupted display screen, the under-display digicam takes unhealthy images. As an example, on this selfie from the 16-megapixel shooter, the background could be very washed out, even after I used a microfiber material to wash the “lens” part of the display screen a number of occasions. The RedMagic 10 Professional’s rear cameras embody a 50-megapixel essential digicam, a 50-megapixel ultrawide digicam and a 2-megapixel macro digicam.

RedMagic doesn’t have a terrific report for software program and safety updates, and that continues with the ten Professional. The RedMagic 10 Professional will get one main software program replace, three years of safety updates and two “generations” of upgrades to the RedMagic UI. That is very low by 2024 requirements. Asus, by comparability,  is offering two years of main software program updates for its ROG gaming telephone, and 5 years of safety updates. And it is nowhere near the seven years of software program and safety updates that we’re now seeing on the entire Google Pixel telephones launched in 2024 and Samsung’s Galaxy S24 line.

Who’s the RedMagic 10 Professional for?

The RedMagic 10 Professional will not be meant to lure folks away from extra conventional flagship telephones just like the Samsung Galaxy collection. However its lower cost level does make it some of the inexpensive telephones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, which beats the entire 2024 telephones that CNET has examined by way of sheer gaming efficiency. Its “all-screen” show makes it a robust media machine, particularly if you happen to join it to a gaming controller when enjoying extra console-level video games on it. The large battery and quick charging velocity additional increase its attraction as a pocket-size gaming system. For the extra ROM-experienced crowd, you would probably flash this system to fit your wants higher than RedMagic’s current software program expertise. 

The hand-held gaming market can be turning into more and more aggressive, which raises extra questions round who the most effective viewers for a gaming telephone just like the RedMagic 10 Professional is, particularly when the system’s performance as a telephone is its weak level. A Steam Deck — whereas too large to slot in one’s pocket — gives direct entry to many PC video games at a lower cost than the RedMagic, even when the Steam Deck itself is not additionally a telephone. The Asus ROG Cellphone 9 collection is a better suggestion as each a succesful telephone and a gaming system, however its beginning value is a a lot greater $1,000. 

However with an early chicken sale date of Dec. 12 adopted by a normal on-sale date of Dec. 18, the RedMagic 10 Professional will probably be particularly notable for being one of many first telephones to hit the North American market with the most recent Snapdragon processor inside. And maybe for early adopters which can be additionally gaming fans, that is sufficient to leap in. However most individuals will probably be higher off ready for the primary wave of flagship Android telephones that can even embody this processor, or ought to maybe think about the costlier Asus telephone if gaming’s a precedence alongside a extra organized software program expertise.

First revealed Dec. 3, 4 a.m. PT.
Replace at 9:01 a.m. PT with extra particulars on the digicam, the digicam’s watermark setting and software program help.