RedMagic 10 Pro Lightspeed

It's pretty amazing what you can get for your money if you're willing to look past the established brands in the Android market and shop by specs alone. Sure, you sacrifice long-term software support and dedicated, in-depth Android skins, but you get performance for your money.

Take RedMagic as an example, a relatively new brand that has been delivering one gaming smartphone after another for several years now. Sure, the design is quite striking and gives you away as a gaming enthusiast from miles away, but you're really just getting top tier components at a cheaper price, so what if the design is a bit dodgy, right?

The latest addition to the line, RedMagic 10 Pro Lightspeed, isn't even that ugly. It's far more boxy than even the most boxy iPhone designs, making it look both hyper-industrial and almost... well, cool? That might be going a bit too far, but the point is that RedMagic is on to something here, and when I picked up this paperweight for the first time, I honestly thought, "wow, I wish more smartphones took inspiration from this". It weighs 229 grams, has a metal frame, glass back and in this rather striking Lightspeed colour. There's Bluetooth 5.4, a 7050mAh battery, 100W charging, a jack connector, trigger sensors on the frame at 520Hz and much, much more, all for a starting price of €649.

Inside we find up to 16GB LPDDR5X RAM, up to 1TB UFS 4.1 Pro space, a Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC and a unique "ICE-X" cooling system with a 23,000 RPM turbo fan and a vapor chamber consisting of graphite plates and copper foil. Now, smartphone performance is extremely hard to pinpoint, but let's just say that whether it's Genshin Impact, Call of Duty: Mobile, Adobe Rush, or whatever your use case is, the RedMagic 10 Pro is fast enough, and more time, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future.

There's even more good news. The display is 6.8", runs at 144Hz, is an AMOLED panel capable of 2000 NITS with a Delta-E deviation of less than 1 and 100% DCI-P3 colour coverage, as well as a resolution of 2688x1216, or as RedMagic calls "1.5K". It's all smooth as hell and manages to give you plenty of screen space thanks to this boxy look with a 20:9 screen ratio.

The phone runs REDMAGIC OS 10 and, as expected, it's packed to the brim with gamer-specific features and animations. If you set it to charge, if you switch on the internal fan, if you move into the specific "Game Lobby". It's all super tacky, and the waifu that can become your animated AI wallpaper in particular is borderline insulting. And RedMagic's weird Google Feed replacement on the left was changed the moment I discovered it.

But to be honest? Most of this is standard Android, and while the base launcher is locked, there is the option to just install Niagra or another launcher.

The camera is mediocre, and you knew that already. Although there are two 50 megapixel lenses, one standard wide with OIS and one ultra-wide, everything from properly calibrated colour chemistry to dynamic range is lacking. It's not exactly terrible, but it's a half-hearted implementation that I don't want to use more than necessary. But at least RedMagic is being honest here, and hasn't attributed much value to the camera, and I respect that. These lenses are here, they work, but you can't rely on them, especially in lower light conditions.

Overall, though, it's pretty easy to recommend the RedMagic 10 Pro on the basis of the pretty wildly compelling specs you get for your money. The Snapdragon 8 Elite, the excellent display, plenty of RAM and space, a jack socket - it's all wrapped up in a compelling design, and most software quirks can be avoided outright if you can't snag them.