Bo Moore
In 2024, RedMagic performed a miracle with the RedMagic 9S Pro. Not only was it a stunning phone, but it took every opportunity to stomp the competition when it came to performance, and somehow RedMagic was able to sell the phone for just $650. And less than a year later, it’s back again with a very familiar phone in the RedMagic 10 Pro, except now it wields the new Snapdragon 8 Elite – a game-changer in its own right. Lo and behold, the price hasn’t changed, so the RedMagic 10 Pro may end up being one of the most powerful, value-centered, and all around best gaming phones around.
RedMagic 10 Pro – Design and Features
RedMagic didn’t change up much in the short time that has passed since the launch of the RedMagic 9S Pro. The RedMagic 10 Pro isn’t very visually distinct, but that’s not a knock. Its predecessor had a stunning design, and that’s carried forward into this new model.
The RedMagic 10 Pro isn’t some gaudy gaming phone. It’s surprisingly elegant in its simplicity. A flat aluminum frame wraps around the chassis, and the glass front and back are completely flat as well – no curved edges or protrusive camera bump.
The rear of RedMagic 10 Pro features a few RGB LED zones, but they’re not garish. The base model of the phone has a geometric pattern on the back that shimmers as it reflects lighting almost like frost on a glass surface. RedMagic also has different designs for higher-spec versions that opt for a clear back design to hint at the internals of the phone.
For its design simplicity, there’s still a lot going on. The RedMagic 10 Pro still features an active cooling vent that pulls air in from one side of the phone and pumps it out the other. The fan itself is visible through the back glass and lines up with the two rear cameras. Along the top edge of the phone, you’ll find a 3.5mm headphone jack (yes!), a speaker, a mic, and an IR emitter found on many Chinese phones giving them the ability to double as a universal remote control. The bottom of the phone houses a 10Gbps USB-C port with DisplayPort output, another mic, another speaker, and the phone’s dual-SIM tray. Unfortunately, the RedMagic 10 Pro only supports physical SIM cards, not eSIM, which can make getting setup with regional networks while traveling more difficult.
The right side of the phone is busy. As a dedicated gaming phone, the RedMagic 10 Pro features two touch shoulder buttons. A little red switch turns on the phone’s gaming mode and kicks the cooling fan into gear. The power button, volume controls, and a third mic are also along this side.
Just like its predecessor, the RedMagic 10 Pro has an exceptional screen. It’s massive at 6.85 inches, has ultra-thin bezels all around, and has no camera notch. The selfie camera is hidden away underneath the display, and it’s almost completely imperceptible. This gives the phone a properly uninterrupted screen, and it’s a great one. The 1,216 x 2,688 resolution is a bump up from last year’s phone and plenty sharp, plus the phone gets a bump up to a 144Hz refresh rate for even smoother visuals. Of course, games that can take advantage of this are exceedingly rare. The display uses an AMOLED panel with a 2000-nit fullscreen peak. This makes for some phenomenal viewing. In Avatar 2, when the humans return to the planet, the intense glow of the deceleration thrusters is rendered brilliantly against the black of space and again as the ships land. RedMagic is using Gorilla Glass 7i here, which isn’t top-tier, but should resist scratching decently and can handle falls up to 1 meter onto asphalt. The phone comes with a pre-applied screen protector that’s held up well in my time testing, showing only light scratches.
The speakers on the phone do a solid job presenting stereo sound, helping make games and movies feel immersive. They pump out a respectable amount of volume as well, providing enough to hear podcasts in the shower or enjoy music without needing to hold the phone too close. They can resonate a bit at high volumes though, becoming grating as a result, particularly for busy music.
The ReadMagic 10 Pro hides a fingerprint scanner underneath the display like many Android phones nowadays. It’s not the fastest I’ve tested, with the OnePlus 13 feeling notably quicker to unlock from a quick tap, but it still will register a finger and launch the home screen in under a second. There’s also facial recognition, but it’s no faster. It does register at surprising angles, not requiring me to completely square up my face with the sensor and get close for it to unlock. Suspecting it might simply work because it wasn’t highly accurate, I tested the face unlock against a photo of me and a video of someone who looked like me, and it wouldn’t unlock for either.
Surprisingly, RedMagic managed to actually trim down the phone this year ever so slightly. It’s still large at 6.43 inches tall and 3 inches wide, but it’s not significantly larger than competing devices, measuring a hair taller but a hair narrower than the Galaxy S24 Ultra. With the phone just a modest 0.35 inches thick, unchanged from its predecessor, it’s all the more impressive that RedMagic slipped in a 7,050mAh battery – the biggest I’ve come across in a phone.
RedMagic 10 Pro – Software
The RedMagic 10 Pro is a gaming phone, and has some of the customary software bloat you’d expect. It continues to feature the Mora AI Waifu character I encountered on the RedMagic 9S Pro, and even though there could have been an interesting integration with more powerful AI – a Google Gemini tie-in perhaps – she’s still a very simple program and not a dynamic AI assistant. The phone comes with a handful of pre-installed extras, like Facebook, MoboReader, MoboReels, and a couple others. It also has a special gaming space activated by the switch on the side of the phone. This services as a launcher for games and provides quick access to some of the performance controls.
The phone ships with Android 15, giving it a good up-to-date start. That said, RedMagic is only promising one Android version upgrade. That’s disappointing, and lines the phone up more with budget devices. It will get three years of security updates though, at least keeping it more viable for a longer time.
RedMagic 10 Pro – Gaming and Performance
The RedMagic 10 Pro is beastly. Even the base model tested here has substantial might. The 12GB of memory may not seem the most competitive, but it’s still a solid allotment. One day, I had used Google Maps at one point in the morning and continued to use the phone throughout the day without ever returning to Maps. At 3 PM, I was able to switch apps back to Maps and immediately continue use as though I’d only left the app for a split second. Like the OnePlus 13 running on the same Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, everyday operation is no sweat for the RedMagic 10 Pro.
When it comes to gaming performance, the RedMagic 10 Pro is simply the best I’ve seen, topping even the Asus ROG Phone 9, the OnePlus 13, and the iPhone 16 Pro Max. It puts up solid numbers in Geekbench 6, where its 3077-point single-core score only marginally trails the ROG Phone 9 and iPhone 16 Pro Max, and its 9830-point multi-core score is beaten only by the ROG Phone 9. In 3DMark’s game benchmarks, the RedMagic 10 Pro doesn’t hold back, though. With 7015 points in Wildlife Extreme, 2546 points in Steel Nomad Light, and 12034 points in Solar Bay, it beats every other phone I’ve tested and even tops the ROG Phone 9 by 18% on average across the three tests.
The cooling on the RedMagic 10 Pro is strong, though can struggle to contend with the heat the Snapdragon 8 Elite will put out when running full throttle. With the phone running in its balanced performance profile and the fan on, it successfully ran the Steel Nomad Light stress test with 99.3% consistency and scores ranging from 2158 points to 2173, neck-and-neck with the ROG Phone 9. But with the phone’s Rise performance profile, it saw performance ramp up for a higher top score of 2561 during the stress test but sinking performance down to a low of 2045 points, proving less consistent and unable to sustain max power on the Snapdragon 8 Elite. While the ROG Phone 9 proved more stable, it also didn’t see performance peak as high. The active cooling does help the RedMagic 10 Pro keep its head above the OnePlus 13, which had strikingly close performance across the board but couldn’t sustain it as well in the face of mounting heat.
The massive battery inside the RedMagic 10 Pro gives it plenty of juice to run all day, even when you’re sprinkling in serious gaming hours or some high-brightness HDR video. Streaming Dune for one hour with the display set to max brightness, the battery only dropped by 4%. Even when it’s low, it can power back up quickly with support for up to 100-watt charging. You won’t get wireless charging though, which could prove inconvenient if you’re a regular user of the tech.
While the RedMagic 10 Pro may not have as extensive of support for US mobile carrier networks as something like the Pixel 9 or iPhone 16, it should be functional on all three major carriers’ 5G and 4G networks. In my testing, the phone worked well with T-Mobile’s 5G network, even seeing download speeds of nearly 400Mbps.
RedMagic 10 Pro – Cameras
Gaming phones don’t tend to have the best cameras, and the RedMagic 10 Pro is no exception. It has a pretty typical combination of sensors with just a wide and ultra-wide pairing. RedMagic also included a paltry 2MP macro camera, which was enough of an afterthought that it’s not even clearly detailed in the specifications. Here are the detailed camera specifications:
- 50MP Wide, f/1.9, 1/1.5”, OIS
- 50MP ultrawide, f/2.2
- 2MP macro, f/2.4
- 16MP Selfie, 1.12-micron, f/2.0
The main wide-angle camera does a decent job. It captures images with satisfying brightness and color, offering a natural look to scenery. It also has a pleasing depth of field, letting subjects stand out while naturally blurring other areas of the image without needing to rely on digital blur. It’s good enough to get the job done for casual photography, but there’s little to get excited about. While the phone supports digital zoom, it’s not worth using. The main sensor is not good at it, and just digitally cropping into a 1x shot looks better than snapping a digitally-zoomed 2x shot on this camera.
The ultra-wide is noticeably dimmer than the main sensor. It naturally would be with its tighter f/2.2 aperture, but RedMagic might have opted to boost the ISO when shooting to better align the images between the two sensors. The ultra-wide performs better snapping scenery than it does nearby subjects, where it struggles with focus.
The macro sensor isn’t worth using. The main sensor does a solid enough job on close-ups, even within a few inches, and the downgrade in quality that comes from switching to the macro sensor negates any benefits you might get from a closer focusing distance.
The selfie camera, by default, wants to beautify faces. This smoothes out skin, brightens it (and everything else in the shot), and adds a bit of a glow to the eyes while also slightly blowing them up. I find it a bit unsettling, and it only gets worse when shooting in darker environments. With this feature disabled, the selfie camera isn’t half-bad, especially for one that has to snap photos through the display. Selfies could be a bit sharper, but they’ll do for sharing with friends and viewing on social
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