RedMagic 10 Air is great and affordable phone for gamers

The RedMagic 10 Air isn’t a phone for everyone, but it’s a solid handset that most people will likely never experience. While it’s not the typical flagship I review, this striking orange phone is perfect for gaming.

Compared to the RedMagic 9 Pro, Nubia has made the device much slimmer and really improved its design. And despite using a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 process, which came out in 2023, the RedMagic Air 10 is quite capable, especially for Android gaming needs.

The handset runs off a 6,000mAh battery capable of lasting about two days of normal usage, or a full day after some rounds of Pokémon Unite or Wild Rift and some Blasphemous. The RedMagic 10 Air also has 80W wired charging, meaning that once it’s dead, it can charge back incredibly quickly. Thankfully, there’s a power adapter in the box—more phone companies should be doing this.

I played these games on the handset’s highest possible settings, and they ran beautifully. I liked the smartphone’s big, beautiful 6.8-inch display with a 1116 x 2480-pixel resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. The titles looked great and ran smoothly, plus the 960Hz touch sampling rate made it feel like each touch connected with the handset instantaneously.

Moreover, the phone kept quite cool, thanks to the heat dissipation features of the 6,100mm² vapour chamber. After using the Nothing Phone 3, I was happy to use a phone that didn’t get super warm during gaming.

Alongside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, the handset also features 16GB of RAM. It definitely doesn’t benchmark the best, considering devices with the Snapdragon 8 Elite are out, but obviously, it’s quite capable.

The RedMagic 10 Air isn’t perfect though, as the device has really wobbly haptics, which makes typing unbearable. I love good haptics, and absolutely hate bad haptics, and think that bad haptics can create a bad experience, so I had to disable the feature. This is especially disappointing since good haptics can add a lot to mobile gaming.

At least this handset looks cool. I showed it to one of my friends, and he immediately wanted to steal it from me. While I’m not a big fan of the boxy design, I love the gamer vibe it gives off. The back of the handset even has a fun gamer-esque light strip, which you can change how it reacts to incoming calls and notifications. There are also some gaming effects you can turn on, but you don’t see these as much since you’re looking at the screen. Overall, it’s super fun, and I like the lighting effects, even though it’s gimmicky. Take note, this is only on the orange version.

I also enjoyed that Red Magic toned down the design compared to its older phones. The orange on the back is incredibly striking, and there are subtle horizontal lines that make it feel almost like a race car. It’s a pretty sick-looking phone, and if you’re a gamer, it fits that aesthetic. On the side of the handset, there’s also an orange accent that’s a nice-looking detail. On the other colours of the phone this detail is red.

Camera-wise it’s not the best, with colours leaning a bit on the cooler side. These images aren’t horrible by any means since the dual 50-megapixel camera setup captures a lot of details. In my tests, it did a good job catching the stitching in a couch, seeing the detail in the brick wall, and more. I just wish the colours were better, but you can easily adjust this with some editing.

The RedMagic 10 Air is stellar, and I would recommend it to anyone who really likes mobile gaming. It’s not the best at taking pictures, and it’s pretty thick, but otherwise, it’s a solid phone that runs very smoothly, with a cool design and great battery life. It’s also $729 outright, which is incredibly affordable in a country where flagships are usually more than $1,200. The one caveat we need to add to the end of this review is that it remains unclear if this phone will support voice calls on Rogers’ network due to the ongoing 3G shutdown.