RedMagic 10 Pro Review: Budget gaming powerhouse

Introduction

The RedMagic 10 Pro is the latest gaming phone to hit the market – but unlike the ultra-premium ROG Phone 9 Pro, the RedMagic 10 Pro is actually affordable. Surprisingly so, considering what you’re getting for just £579/$649.

That’s because the RedMagic 10 Pro not only matches the ROG Phone 9 Pro’s Snapdragon 8 Elite performance, but it offers a phenomenal screen free of notches and other distractions, plenty of gaming tools including built-in triggers and the biggest battery of any smartphone on the market right now.

It’s not the perfect gaming phone of course; the mid-range phone price tag shines bright in areas like camera and long-term software support, but if you’re a dedicated mobile gamer who wants the very best experience possible, there could be more than enough here to sway you. 

Design

• Similar design to RedMagic 9S Pro
• Completely flat camera housing
• No IP rating due to active ventilation

The RedMagic 10 Pro is a chunky gaming phone, there’s no getting around that. Measuring in at 163.4 x 76.1 x 8.9mm, it’s largely similar to its predecessor, and at 229g, it’s identical in weight. 

Gaming phones tend to be on the larger side to accommodate better cooling mechanisms and larger batteries, but it’s still thicker and heavier than most regular flagships. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, for comparison, is 8.2mm thick and weighs 218g. 

It also retains the same gamer aesthetic with the usual features – RGB lighting on the rear, touch-sensitive triggers on the sides of the phone and more – present and accounted for. 

Unlike the competing ROG Phone 9 Pro, however, the RedMagic 10 Pro also includes an active fan system. It’s comprised of an illuminated fan module just beneath the cameras on the rear and intake and outtake vents on each side to keep the phone cool when gaming. 

The downside is that it can’t offer any kind of dust or water resistance, meaning you’ll have to be extra careful about where you use it. It’s also fairly audible in quieter environments, with a high-pitched whine that’s hard to ignore once noticed. 

Elsewhere, the general design has been toned down compared to the pattern-heavy RedMagic 9S Pro – in my Shadow sample, anyway. The back panel has a subtle triangular pattern that catches the light well, but it’s still a more minimalistic look than previous entries. 

That said, other finishes like Moonlight and Dusk offer a more gamer-fied semi-transparent finish to get a good look at some of the internal components. 

I’m a huge fan of the camera module, or should I say, the lack of a camera module. 

Unlike alternatives with hulking camera modules protruding far from the rear of the phone, the RedMagic 10 Pro’s triple camera setup sits completely flush with the rear case. It’s such a rarity in the modern smartphone market, not seen on smartphones since the likes of the iPhone 5 in the early 2010s, and adds to its clean look.

It also means that it sits completely flat on tables, though with a glossy finish on the rear, I’ve been reminded of a time when smartphones would gracefully slide off anything but completely flat surfaces. The RedMagic 10 Pro has gone for several tumbles during my time with the phone, so I’d recommend utilising the free plastic cover that comes with the phone for added grip.   

Screen

• Larger 6.85-inch 144Hz AMOLED screen
• Impressively slim bezels
• Boosted resolution not necessarily good for gaming

The RedMagic 10 Pro boasts a few notable improvements in the display department, starting with an ever-so-slight size increase to 6.85 inches, though the more notable jump is the 144Hz refresh rate, up from 120Hz. It’s still behind the ROG Phone 9 Pro’s 185Hz, but considering many games still cap out at 120fps, you won’t notice a difference in most games. 

There’s also much slimmer bezels this time around, with uniform 1.25mm-thick bezels giving even high-end phones like the Galaxy S25 Ultra and iPhone 16 Pro Max a run for their money. And, with an under-display camera that’s pretty much invisible at a glance, the screen experience is essentially free of obstructions, offering an impressive 95.3% screen-to-body ratio. 

It’s a big, smooth canvas perfect for playing games then, complete with more angular corners than rounded alternatives from regular flagships so on-screen elements in games aren’t blocked. Combined with the screen’s AMOLED tech delivering punchy colours and deep blacks, there’s very little to complain about the visual experience on offer. 

You can tone down the overall vibrancy in the Settings menu if it’s a little much for your tastes, but I think gamers will be right at home here. 

Interestingly, there’s also a resolution bump from FHD+ to 1.2K. While that’d be welcome on any other phone, gaming phones tend to sit at the FHD+ mark to provide the best gaming performance as more pixels equate to more power. 

RedMagic is clearly confident with the boosted power from the 10 Pro’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. It’s right to be, but more on that a little later. 

Cameras

• The weakest area of the phone
• Same cameras as RedMagic 9S Pro including junk 2MP macro lens
• Better camera performance available from cheaper phones

If there’s one area where the RedMagic 10 Pro’s mid-range price shines through, it’s the camera department. Granted, gaming phones never offer the best camera performance for the money, but the RedMagic 10 Pro’s offering is particularly underwhelming.

First, from a hardware perspective, nothing has changed compared to the RedMagic 9S Pro, which is to say that it shares the same hardware as the even older RedMagic 9 Pro. That’s a trio of lenses comprised of a 50MP main with OIS, a 50MP ultrawide and a pointless 2MP macro used to bump up the sensor count and not much else.

There may be minor image processing improvements from the new Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, but in general use, you’d be hard-pressed to find any difference in real-world testing. 

That all said, the 50MP main camera is the best performer of the lot, with the most detail and light captured in most light conditions. Even low light is serviceable with OIS and a fairly wide f/1.9 aperture. However, in either case, cheaper mid-rangers like the Google Pixel 8a take a much better photo with a wider dynamic range. 

The 50MP ultrawide offers a decent offering for a mid-ranger, with a wide enough angle to take photos of landscapes and group shots, but the smaller sensor and lack of OIS mean it’s only really suited to daylight settings. 

Essentially, the RedMagic 10 Pro will never be the go-to choice for photographers, but it performs well enough to take some decent photos for sharing on social media. 

The selfie 16MP selfie camera isn’t going to win any awards either, though considering it’s hidden beneath a layer of pixels, I was expecting much worse. While some competing UDCs can be blurry and dim, the RedMagic 10 Pro’s sensor captured more detail and light than expected, with fairly accurate, if not slightly washed-out, colours. 

It’s still not the best selfie camera quality you’ll find, but if you’re not much of a selfie-taker, the trade-off could well be worth it. 

Performance

• Snapdragon 8 Elite power bests most competitors
• Fantastic gaming experience
• The built-in fan has a negligible effect on gaming performance

It shouldn’t come as much surprise to find out that the Snapdragon 8 Elite-equipped RedMagic 10 Pro can handle practically anything you can throw at it, from gaming to content creation, with minimal loading and rendering times and super smooth performance aided by its super smooth 144Hz refresh rate. 

It easily bests the MediaTek Dimensity 9400-equipped competition including the Oppo Find X8 Pro in both CPU and GPU tests. It falls just behind the top-end ROG Phone 9 Pro Edition in the graphics department, with the latter likely offering better cooling and optimisation of Qualcomm’s premium chipset. 

But, given that the ROG Phone costs basically double that of the RedMagic, it’s not a massive disappointment. 

The RedMagic 10 Pro still leaves most of the flagship competition, including the top-end Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, in the dust in both benchmarks and real-world use. It delivers a largely fantastic gaming experience aided by the built-in, configurable, triggers on the side of the phone. 

All this, need I remind you, on a phone that starts at £579/$649 with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It goes all the way up to 24GB and 1TB for £879/$999 if you really want to max out the spec. 

However, with great power comes great… heat generation. RedMagic looks to deal with that in the way of a built-in fan system with ports on the left and right of the phone to further aid with airflow, and you can even see the spinning fan on the LED-emblazoned rear for extra ‘gamer’ points.

The fan is used in various scenarios, including keeping the phone cool when fast charging, but it’s mainly used when gaming. However, I’m sceptical about just how much it benefits the experience, having run graphics-focused benchmarks with and without the fan active and seeing better results without the fan on.

For reference, the RedMagic 10 Pro scored 61.9% stability and 15% battery drain in 3DMark’s 20-minute Wildlife Extreme Stress Test with the fan on full blast, while silencing the fan provided results of 62% and 13% respectively. 

Sure, it might help keep your phone cool with your average mobile title, but if you’re pushing the limits of the Snapdragon 8 Elite with games like Call of Duty Mobile, the fan won’t make much of an impact. For that, you’re better off with the ROG Phone 9 Pro and its AeroActive Cooler X Pro which helps sustain gameplay for much longer periods.   

If the fan system hadn’t compromised the phone’s waterproofing ability, I’d probably not be so disappointed. But, it did, and I am. 

Software

• Red Magic OS 10 based on Android 15
• Far from stock Android and a little rough around the edges
• A whole host of gaming-focused features to boost gameplay

Android purists won’t like what Nubia has done with its spin on Android 15 dubbed Red Magic OS 10. It’s about as far as you can get from the stock approach to Android found on the competing ROG Phone 9 Pro, with oddly blocky app icons, a more chaotic notification shade and more. 

There’s also a range of first-party apps like MoboReader and MoboReels, along with plenty of bloatware. That includes a folder of so-called Hot Games, along with the regular offenders like Booking.com and TikTok. 

It also commits the cardinal sin of ditching the Google Feed. Swipe right from the Home screen and you’ll find a smattering of widgets covering elements like weather and news, though the latter seemingly focused solely on hyper-local US news. You can disable it, which I did, but there’s no way to get the Google Feed to appear. 

To be fair, it is an improvement over what you’d get with Red Magic OS 9. It has a slightly cleaner design with faster animations and fewer missed Chinese translations, and you’ve got the option to switch back to near-stock app icons, but it’s still a heavily stylised OS. 

Of course, there’s a sprinkling of AI features because it’s 2025 and that’s what all manufacturers are doing. It’s a fairly light smattering by comparison, offering Google Gemini-powered features like real-time translation, real-time chat and various photo editing features. 

None of these will change the way you use the phone, though the same can be said for some of the most AI-packed phones around right now. You’re really not missing out on much. 

Instead, the most appealing aspect of Red Magic OS 10 is, of course, its gaming-focused features. 

With the flick of a physical switch on the side of the phone, you’ll enter RedMagic’s Game Space. This is essentially a console-inspired UI that provides quick access to all the games installed on your phone, along with stats like how long you’ve played. 

It’s also where you can get hyper-granular in terms of gameplay settings, with options to adjust screen aspect ratio, performance mode, DND settings, touch sensitivity and much more, on a per-game basis. These settings can also be accessed in-game at any time by swiping in from the side of the screen, allowing you to switch things up on the fly. 

There are also a few game, ahem, ‘enhancements’ that allow you to enable features like enhanced zoom in competitive shooters to give you the edge. These will certainly get you disqualified from any real competition, but if you want to beat random online noobs, it’s as good a tool as any. 

A disappointing element I can’t look beyond, however, is the phone’s long-term software support. Despite many alternatives offering solid multi-year OS upgrade promises, Nubia is only committing to a single OS upgrade to Android 16 and three years of security updates. This just isn’t good enough in 2025, even at the 10 Pro’s price point. 

Battery Life

• 7050mAh battery is one of the biggest around
• Two- or even three-day battery life
• 100W wired charging with charger in the box

RedMagic phones have always led the charge with high-capacity batteries, but the RedMagic 10 Pro and its 7,050mAh battery really take things to the next level. That’s a massive 1,250mAh uptick compared to the ROG Phone 9 Pro and a whopping 2,050mAh boost compared to regular smartphones like the Galaxy S25 Ultra. 

It’s basically the highest capacity battery you’ll find in a smartphone that’s not hugely unwieldy. As you might expect, that translates to absolutely phenomenal day-to-day performance. 

With what I’d describe as average use, with around 3-4 hours of screen time split across a 16-hour day, the phone would still have around 60-70% in the tank by the time I went to bed. This makes the phone a two-day device easily, if not three days if you use the phone less than I do on average. 

Of course, this added capacity is primarily so you can game for hours on end without reaching for a charger. It does that well too, draining just 6% charge in 30 minutes of light gaming, though more demanding titles can see a greater drain. Still, you’re looking at several hours of uninterrupted gameplay before you’ll need to reach for a charger.

And, with 100W charging in Europe, it gets from flat to full quickly, even when considering the monster capacity of its battery. You’ll get that charger in the box too – though as I was sent an early sample, mine shipped with the 80W charger you’ll get in China. 

Still, even at 80W, the RedMagic 10 Pro managed 48% in 15 minutes with a full charge in 39 minutes. That’s not exactly the fastest on the market, but it easily bests the ROG Phone 9 Pro and most other flagships in 2025.

Should you buy it?