RedMagic 10 Pro review: Game on, camera off

Like the Asus ROG Phone, RedMagic is a brand that’s synonymous with mobile gaming. For gamers, that’s great news. But there are also perks for non-gamers: namely, a big screen with a high refresh rate and decent speakers. If a smartphone is built for gaming, it should also offer a great experience for video playback and speedy day-to-day multitasking.

And that’s exactly what you get with the RedMagic 10 Pro, but this high-end gaming phone also follows the seemingly symbiotic trend of lacklustre photography. They’re not bad; the results just aren’t as wow-worthy as the rest of the offering and pale in comparison to competitors. Scroll on for the full review of the RedMagic 10 Pro.

That’s a tricky question to answer, given the RedMagic 10 Pro isn’t sold in Australia. Well, not by any brick-and-mortar retailers. Instead, you’ll have to import one, which means you may be at the mercy of international warranty woes, and you’ll definitely want either a replacement charger or an Aussie adaptor for the US charger. That was the case with the review unit that RedMagic sent to me, but it is nice to see a charger included all the same (unfortunately, a rarity these days).

In terms of costs, prices start at US$649 for the base model. Alternatively, it’s US$799 for the speedier middle model with more storage (the one RedMagic sent me to review), or US$999 for the tippity-top version. At the time of writing, importing the mid-tier model from Amazon was just under $1,800, which means the 10 Pro is competing with the likes of the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro, Google Pixel 9 Pro XL and the iPhone 16 Pro.

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Like the RedMagic 9 Pro before it, the 10 Pro is a gaming phone, so you can expect appropriately specced trappings. That starts with the screen: a 6.85-inch AMOLED beauty with a 144Hz refresh rate, 2688x1216 resolution and up to 2000-nit max brightness. That screen refresh rate can be manually lowered to 120Hz, 90Hz or 60Hz, which should lead to better battery gains. I had the refresh rate set to ‘Auto’ but, unless that seemingly perpetual ‘144Hz’ indicator in the status bar was a bug, it seemed to exclusively stick to 144Hz.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because I’m a PC gamer and appreciate higher-refresh-rate screens. The 10 Pro is a flat-screen mobile phone with unobtrusive bezels. It comes with a basic clear case, which protects the top, bottoms, back and corners, leaving the sides almost entirely exposed. Speaking of exposed, the clear case preserves the techy back, which shows some of the hardware innards, including the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip and a cooling fan. It’s still weird to have a phone with a fan, but I appreciate it given how hard the hardware is pushed.

It’s worth investing in a better case, though, because the 10 Pro reportedly has an IP54 rating, so it is dustproof but not waterproof (though it can survive water splashes). If you do get a case, don’t worry about blocking wireless charging, because the 10 Pro doesn’t support it, though it is very much built for fast charging. On that theme of balanced pros and cons, you can’t expand the storage with a MicroSD card but there is a 3.5mm audio jack for wired audio. Speaking of audio, the dual 1115K speakers are DTS Ultra certified and pump out impressive room-filling sound on full audio.

In terms of photography, the 10 Pro is fast at taking pictures with prominent choices between a wider-spectrum 14mm or default tighter 24mm lenses, coupled with intuitive photography presets, including video and an intimidating settings-heavy pro mode. As for the pictures in non-pro mode, they’re okay albeit artificially bright under a range of lighting conditions, but most noticeable at night. Some of the 10 Pro’s night shots look washed out with the amount of extra injected light, while other photos have added unnatural brightness to oranges and greens (in particular).

It doesn’t help that I was using a still-fantastic Google Pixel 7 Pro as a comparison, which offers much more natural results. Zoomed photos on the 10 Pro look muddy and lose clarity, while the selfie camera is decent with the right lighting. If there isn’t enough light, the added brightness can make selfie pics look like you’ve added AI adjustments to your face (check out my selfie pic below). Strangely, there’s an obtrusive bottom-of-pic watermark enabled by default that you can only disable by digging into the settings. You can see that watermark beneath most of the RedMagic 10 Pro photos below.

The base version of the RedMagic 10 Pro comes with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, plus two colour choices. There are also two colour choices for the mid-range option, which has 16GB of memory and 512GB of internal storage. The top version comes with a whopping 24GB of memory and 1TB of storage. Practically speaking, 12GB is a solid platform for the games of today, with the 16GB and 24GB upgrades more future focused.

All three come with the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, which is the best Snapdragon processor available at the time of writing. Combine that with the 16GB of RAM in the mid-tier option that RedMagic sent me, and everything feels fast, from powering on and restarting through to zero-compromise multitasking and, of course, gaming. Speaking of gaming, the 10 Pro understandably tackled everything I threw at it, including Diablo Immortal, Streets of Rage 4, and far too many (more) hours spent in Slay the Spire.

There’s a dedicated red side button for game customisations and optimisations, which would otherwise sometimes pop up unprompted when I started a game. It didn’t provide any value I’d consider essential, but it is nice to have a dedicated gaming function for a gaming phone. The dual speakers offer decent volume at about 50% and don’t have any distortion issues when maxed out. Expect to get dirty looks if you plan on playing anything at full volume in a public space.

In terms of operating system, it’s a RedMagic OS skin, which has Android 15 as a basis. Compared to my day-to-day comparison with the Google Pixel 7 Pro, RedMagic OS is familiar albeit unremarkable. I did encounter some bugs and oddities during my testing, but nothing particularly deal-breaking and all of the regular interactions were more or less where I expected them to be. What is concerning is RedMagic is only offering one major OS update—from Android 15 to 16—although it is good to see a pledge for three years of software support.

During our usual YouTube 1080p playback test, I did have some issues with the 10 Pro jumping back in time on the 24-hour video in multiple attempts. For context, I’ve never had that issue with any other phone or laptop I’ve performed this test on. Regardless, the 10 Pro lasted an admirable 21 hours and 25 minutes with default brightness settings. The 7,050mAh battery offers enough standby longevity that it took 7.5 days to run from 100% to 15% with very light intermittent use.

In terms of recharging, I used a 100W fast charger (not the included 80W GaN charger) to test default fast charging. You’ll know the 10 Pro’s prepped for fast charging when you hear the car revving noises (no, really). A default fast charge took around 40 minutes for a 50% charge and one hour and 20 minutes for a full charge. You can jump into the battery settings to activate ‘Turbo charge’, which charges faster and automatically activates the internal fan, which sounds like soothing light rain.

The actual ETA jumped around a lot in my tests along with the recharging percentages, so there may be some kinks that need ironing out, though you can reportedly fully recharge in as little as 40 minutes. I also like that you can enable charge separation if, say, you want to play a particularly demanding mobile game without worrying about the added heat from simultaneously recharging the battery.

There are other gaming phones for a similar price point available from Aussie retailers, which means you get better warranty peace of mind and a compatible power adaptor. But if that’s not a deterrent, a straightforward import of the RedMagic 10 Pro via Amazon means you get an Android phone with a cutting-edge processor and power to spare, both in terms of performance and longevity.