RedMagic Astra tablet review: Gaming at 9 inches

A couple of years ago, when smartphones started pushing the 7-inch screen size, we thought that small tablets were done for. And they did slowly wither away, leaving the scene open to their bigger 10-inch and above relatives.

Now we’re looking at the RedMagic Astra and can’t help but wonder, is there really a place for a sub-10 inch tablet on the market, and especially for a gaming tablet? Because that’s what the Astra is – a 9-inch gaming tablet with some interesting tech inside and cool looks.

With its price tag of $500, the device is quite attractive and actually aims to challenge the iPad Mini that carries the same price and is very similar in size. But at the end of the day, it’s a dedicated gaming device, and we shouldn’t forget that.

Let’s dive deep and find the ins and outs of the RedMagic Astra gaming tablet.

The retail box isn’t as lavish as we’ve been used to when it comes to RedMagic devices. Normally, you would find a charging brick inside, some kind of a cover or a case, and sometimes even additional accessories.

In this case, though, you’re getting the tablet, some stickers and a USB-C cable, and that’s it. It’s a bit disappointing, especially given the gaming nature of this beast, but it is what it is. Let’s move to the screen, which kind of redeems the modest retail box.

The Astra comes with a 9.06-inch OLED panel that can refresh at 165 Hz (mainly during gaming) and also boasts 1600 nits of peak brightness (1100 nits typical). It’s not unusual to see OLED screens on tablets nowadays, but some, if not most, still use LCD panels to keep the cost down.The resolution is 2.5K (2,400 x 1,504 pixels), which at this screen diagonal equals around 312 PPI pixel density, pretty good for a 9-incher. RedMagic also claims that the Astra’s display covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut with precise color accuracy of ΔE < 1, and we’re about to test all those claims.

Looking at the test results above, most of the claims hold true. The Astra was able to output over 1000 nits at 100% APL (and pretty much the same number at 20% APL, which leads us to the conclusion that it’s limited at this threshold), and that’s quite good.

The cited under deltaE of under 1 was apparently measured at different brightness levels and settings than the ones we use in our test, but nevertheless, a result of 1.34 is impressive for a tablet and a gaming device. Minimum brightness is a bit high, so gaming sessions at night might require some ambient lighting, but all in all, the display of the Astra is pretty impressive.

Now, in terms of biometrics, the power button doubles as a capacitive fingerprint scanner, and you can also set up facial recognition. The latter relies only on one simple front-facing camera, so it’s not as secure as other systems that employ ToF sensors and 3D facial scans.

RedMagic Astra Performance & Benchmarks

Super-cooled Snapdragon 8 Elite

The Snapdragon 8 Elite is the go-to silicon when it comes to high-intensity applications nowadays, and gaming is surely one such scenario. The RedMagic Astra comes with the regular version of the chip (no overclock to the performance core), but the Adreno 830 GPU has been clocked to reach up to 1,100 MHz (pretty much the graphics performance of the Leading Version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite we tested inside the RedMagic 10S Pro).If you set the Astra to 165 Hz and leave it in high-performance mode, your day-to-day experience outside of gaming will be amazingly smooth. It makes the table a tad hot and also engages the cooling fan, but the performance is there. Let’s check out the synthetic benchmarks for some data-driven proof of the above.

CPU Performance Benchmarks:

The benchmarks tell a pretty convincing story. The RedMagic Astra just obliterates the tablet competition, and only the iPad Mini is able to hang on with its great single-core performance. When it comes to graphics, though, the Astra and its overclocked Adreno 830 core are unbeatable.

Of course, the active cooling system with a tiny fan running at 20,000 RPM has something to do with the consistent 3D Mark score, as well as the Liquid Metal 2.0 material and the vapor chamber design.

This machine can run Genshin Impact at 165 Hz and max graphics without any problems, but more on this in the software section below. Finally, there are three memory configurations to choose from. The basic one has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, then there’s the 16GB version that also comes with 512GB onboard memory, and you can go all-out and get the 1TB model that also happens to have 24GB of RAM onboard (a bit of overkill, but extremely future-proof).

One thing we miss on the hardware side is capacitive triggers or shoulder buttons. There aren’t any on the RedMagic Astra, which is a shame, really. The RedMagic 10S Pro features two of those with a very high touch sampling rate, but the Astra has to rely on screen input at all times.

RedMagic Astra Software

The Astra gaming tablet comes running Android 15 with RedMagic OS 10.5 on top. It’s a straightforward distribution with minimal tweaks and bloatware and with a sprinkle of AI on top. Nothing groundbreaking, just some AI translation options, coupled with intuitive application selection for your most frequently used apps.But the Game Space is the crown jewel when it comes to software tools and gaming tools in particular. You can trigger the mode with the red slider button, and it takes you to a dedicated gaming space (as the name implies).

RedMagic Astra tablet review: Gaming at 9 inches

You have complete control over many aspects of the Astra’s hardware and software. You can choose the mode the CPU and GPU are using, add helpful software tools such as crosshairs, quick presets, and control notifications; add hardware periphery such as a mouse and keyboard; and more.

It’s done in a very intuitive way; you can either choose from various performance presets or dive deep and tweak parameters yourself. For the gaming test we decided to use Genshin Impact, as it’s one of the heaviest and most resource-demanding mobile games out there.

The Astra handled the game flawlessly – we set everything to maximum, and the game ran smoothly with no lag or any frame rate drops. To be fair, the tablet got a bit hot while playing, and the fan could be heard, but nothing too unpleasant to our ears or hands.

RedMagic Astra Audio Quality

There are just two speakers on both sides of the RedMagic Astra, but they are quite powerful and loud. The tablet supports DTS:X Ultra and various audio formats, including WAV, AAC, MP3, and FLAC.

There’s no 3.5 mm headphone jack, which is a drawback if you want to game in public and not disturb everybody, but of course you can pair Bluetooth headphones and use them to isolate the sound from your surroundings or vice versa.

The haptic motor inside the Astra is quite strong and powerful, as well as precise. This is key when we talk about gaming devices and contributes to the overall experience quite a bit.

RedMagic Astra Battery and Charging

The battery inside the RedMagic Astra has an 8,200 mAh capacity, which is pretty decent considering the small footprint of the tablet. The company advertises a gaming battery life of 5.5 hours in Honkai: Star Rail, as well as up to 33 hours of video playback.

Let’s see how the tablet tackled our battery tests.

PhoneArena Battery Test Results:

Well, in terms of gaming, we were able to get a very similar result of around 5 hours and 10 minutes. And while this pales in comparison with other, non-gaming devices, we think it’s a good result for maxed-out competitive gaming.

The browsing and video streaming results are not very impressive, especially next to other tablets (some with smaller batteries), but performance comes at a cost, and the Astra is just not built for efficiency.

In terms of charging, the tablet supports fast charging, and we were able to get the 8,200 mAh cell from zero to full in 1 hour and 12 minutes, a decent result. There are no wireless charging coils onboard, and thus, no wireless charging support.

RedMagic Astra Camera

It’s a gaming tablet

The usual caveat we put when we test tablets and gaming devices, especially, applies here as well. The Astra comes equipped with a pretty modest camera system – just one 13MP wide camera at the back and a 9MP front one.

The specs of these two cameras won’t make you jump in your seat, and they’re there to get the job done in a very basic sense. To be fair, there’s some AI processing going on in the background, and the results are very palatable, so to speak, but nothing spectacular.

Photo Quality

Well, you can check out the samples above. You have the option to use digital zoom – 2x and 5x – and while the 2x samples are okay-ish, when going to 5x digital, the noise gets pretty high, and the overall detail and quality fall down quite a bit.

Should you buy it?

That’s an excellent question right there! The RedMagic Astra gaming tablet caters to a very specific audience. On the one hand, people who enjoy some heavy and competitive mobile gaming but, for some reason, find most smartphones too small in terms of display size.On the other hand, though, the Astra lacks dedicated hardware controls such as shoulder buttons or capacitive zones to give you that extra precision and flexibility during gaming, so it’s a pros-and-cons situation.

There are some very strong sides to this slate – the display is simply amazing, and the 165 Hz refresh rate is super smooth. There’s power on tap you can use in non-gaming scenarios as well, and the compact nature of the Astra makes it a perfect travel buddy.

But you have to outweigh this against the kind of short battery life, the lack of wireless charging and the mediocre camera if you want to use it as a non-gaming regular tablet.

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RedMagic Astra tablet review: Gaming at 9 inches