REDMAGIC Astra Gaming Tablet review: 9-inches of OLED goodness and massive 8,200mAh battery

Update, July 10: Jump to details about the Early Bird offer.

REDMAGIC reached out to me and asked if I was willing to take a look at its Astra Gaming Tablet, which becomes available from July 16. It is known as the REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 3 Pro in China and was released on June 11.

Before we get underway, here is a disclaimer: REDMAGIC provided a sample without any review pre-approval.

As can be seen from the specifications, it's a pretty beefy tablet powered by last year's flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite. However, there's no SIM support and no card slot. Another important thing to note is that the price given above is for the 256GB, 12GB RAM version, which is what was shipped to me; the price goes up to $699 for the 16+512 GB variant, and it is $899 for the top-end 24 GB + 1TB version.

What's in the box

The packaging is standard fare. The cardboard box includes:

• REDMAGIC Astra Gaming Tablet x1;
• Type-C Cable x1;
• Quick Start Guide x1;
• Warranty Card (Dependent on market) x1
• Some REDMAGIC (logo) stickers

My review unit did not include a charger, and my contact told me that this applies to all regions. However, you will be able to buy an official 80W charger on the official website.

Accessories

There's a range of accessories that will also become available alongside the Astra Gaming Tablet, which you can see in the above image; however, my contact told me that the stylus "will launch later in late July," so you will need to check the official product page for availability. For some reason, the 80W charger is not listed above as an accessory, but prospective buyers will be able to obtain the charger for free. I will elaborate on this later.

Hardware Warranty

REDMAGIC offers a 24-month warranty for its tablets, under which the Astra Gaming Tablet falls. However, there is a long list of caveats that could void the warranty, such as "Ordinary wear and tear," which is undefined and probably determined by a repair technician.

The packaging is quite nice and minimal; there's not much to write about it. On taking off the box cover, the tablet is there covered with a protective plastic sleeve; under it is a plastic mold with a bunch of stickers, a USB Type C to Type C cable, and a box with all the regulatory documentation.

Design

The tablet itself has an all-glass front with what they call an "aviation aluminum middle frame" that results in a mostly fingerprint-free display. I contacted my contact to ask what type of glass protection they use and was told that they use Gorilla Glass protection.

The aluminum shell feels quite premium to hold, albeit a little slippery. At only 370 grams, it is also quite light. If this became my mainstay tablet, I would definitely look for a trifold-style case (which is sadly not included in the box) for an easier grip and to prop it up while viewing media content.

The product page does not make any claims about the strength of the Astra Gaming Tablet as far as durability goes. Well, I did some of my own testing, trying to see if it made any creaking sounds on (light) bend/flexibility attempts, and I am happy to report that no such noises were heard.

In landscape mode, the volume rocker, a mic hole and the red "Magic key" are on the top. The right side has the Type C USB port, speaker grill, and another mic hole. The bottom is completely smooth. On the left side, there is another speaker grill and, above that, the power key that doubles as a fingerprint sensor.

The placement of the power button/fingerprint sensor feels weird to me because when used in landscape mode, it makes more sense to register a left finger, but when using it in portrait mode, it is then on the right side along the top, which makes it awkward to unlock with my left hand. However, the face unlock in the Astra Gaming Tablet is rather good, I'd say it is better than my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, but not quite as good as the Honor Magic7 Pro that I reviewed earlier this year.

There's no screen protector included in the box. Usually, when I receive a phone or tablet for review, it comes preinstalled despite the fact that such devices usually already have Gorilla Glass-style protection, which protects them from scratches! I don't even have a screen protector on my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, which I have now been using for 2.5 years, and the display still looks like new. Why buy a $1000+ device just to stick a cheap bit of plastic over the premium display that already comes with scratch resistance?

As far as the display goes, the bezel is just 45mm thick, and the OLED screen offers a peak brightness up to 1,600 nits and a full-screen brightness reaching 1,100 nits. Furthermore, REDMAGIC claims the tablet covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut with precise color accuracy (ΔE

Although there is no mention of certification by TÜV SÜD for low blue light, the setting is there in Android 15 settings to enable Eye comfort.

The rear has the camera array up top, which also allows the tablet to sit completely flat on a desk, as there is no camera hump here, very good!

Setting up and usage

Upon powering up the tablet and going through the initial Android setup steps, you eventually get to the Home screen, which is powered by REDMAGICOS 10.5, which is based on Android 15 preinstalled.

Regarding software support, that information is not easy to find, but my contact told me that REDMAGIC provides five years of software support, including major Android OS upgrades and regular security patches in the EU. In other regions, you can expect three years of support for the same. My contact further elaborated on this with the following:

Our update strategy follows local laws and also takes into account product lifecycle, user experience, and technical needs to ensure a stable, high-quality software experience globally.

I decided to clone my S23 Galaxy Ultra to the Astra Gaming Tablet during onboarding, which went well, as expected. After that, I got the REDMAGICOS out-of-box experience (OOBE), which you can view below.

Gallery: REDMAGICOS 10.5 OOBE

As you can see with the last image, I was immediately prompted to finish installing a REDMAGICOS 10.5 update, which I did. Then I left the tablet to complete installing and setting up the tens of apps that I had cloned over from my S23 Galaxy Ultra.

Bloat

As far as bloat is concerned, the device includes several apps, such as 50PlusMatch (a dating app for 50 plussers!), Browser, Goper (which appears to be a Nubia accessories app), Inspired Wallpaper, Keep Notes, Live Transcribe, Prank Video Call, Phone Switch, Private Space, Safety, Voice Access, and WPS Office.

Along with the following games:

• 1945 Air Force Airplane (is a shortcut link to download)
• AIFusion Robot Factory
• Block Blast
• Giant Rush
• Guess Their Answer
• Gun up 2048
• Ice Cream Inc
• Triple Matters(?) (is a shortcut link to download)
• Sniper
• ThiefPuzzle

Plus shortcuts on the Recommended apps OOBE after initially setting up the Astra Gaming Tablet. Thankfully you can uninstall some of the bloatware, like the dating app, or disable or hide others that don't interest you. Default apps can be also be set to whatever you want in the Android settings.

Magic key

On the top right side of the Astra Gaming Tablet (when held in landscape mode), you will find the red Magic Key, which is actually a physical toggle switch that slides in the left or right position.

By default, it launches the GameSpace, which is basically a game launcher like Steam, Epic Games Launcher and so forth. There, you manually add games to the library from the list of installed apps and games on the tablet. However, the key can be assigned to other useful options such as the camera, flashlight, voice recorder, face-to-face translation, and quickly toggling through sound modes.

Unfortunately, it does not look like you can assign a custom app to it. However, buyers who care enough to give feedback might end up persuading REDMAGIC to allow such customization in a future update, just like Samsung did with the Bixby key on Galaxy devices. You know it makes sense, right?

On the audio front, the Astra Gaming Tablet is certified for DTS X and High-res Audio, supporting lossless format over Bluetooth 5.2 with FLAC, but no sadly no LDAC support is listed. The dual-speaker setup is passable for dialog but ended up sounding a bit tinny, which is a common trait on the tablets I have ever tested anyway. I would probably prefer to wear headphones when watching a movie on a tablet, anyway.

Media

The Snapdragon 8 Elite also supports 4K AV1 decoding, which can be seen as future-proofing streaming capabilities, but one thing that surprised me is that the REDMAGIC website does not mention that the tablet also fully supports HDR, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision.

The HDR support can be seen at this link. Actually, in trying to take a picture of a movie I was watching, the image really does not do it justice. The colors really pop in real life, and the viewing angles are great. If I had any complaints at all, it would be "Stereo dual 1620 speakers" with audio format support for DTS:X® Ultra, WAV, AAC, MP3, FLAC; which is apparently a "Dual X-axis linear motor." As I already mentioned earlier in this review, I found the sound too tinny; ambient sounds (in the movie) are lost unless you crank the volume all the way up, which then results in very loud dialogue. Not that I expect a tablet just over half a centimeter thick to have great audio anyway, but you'll quickly be reaching for your Bluetooth headphones when you consume any media on it.

The Astra Gaming Tablet did get a bit warm while watching the movie outside in indirect sunlight. Using an infrared skin thermometer, I measured the screen temperature at 37.2 °C, and the rear was a little lower at 36.8 °C.

Benchmarks

Because people like benchmarks, I started off with GFXBench, which mainly tests the GPU.

As you can see from the above images, the High-Level test measured 3,872 frames (High Tier), the Low-Level (Tesselation) measured 1,809 frames, and the average number of search points per MB (high precision) measured 4,179 mB PSNR.

Next, I ran Geekbench AI, which returned the above scores of 458 on Single Precision Score, 429 on Half Precision Score, and 654 on Quantized Score.

Next, I ran Geekbench 6, which returned a Single-Core score of 2,652 and a Multi-Core score of 8,076; that is almost double that of the Honor Pad V9, which is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8350, at 1,417 and 4,348, respectively.

It's the same with the AnTuTu benchmark test, which came in at 2,487,561, more than double the Pad V9's score of 1,234,770. It "defeats" 80% of users and places it third in the overall ranking if we adjust it for our unvalidated score.

3DMark

Next, I ran some 3DMark benchmarks (full statistical data can be viewed in the above gallery) and I recorded the following:

• Steel Nomad Light: 2,369 (max temp 28C)
• Steel Nomad Light Stress Test: Best 2,303 Lowest: 2,070 (max temp 40C)
• Wild Life Extreme: 5,389 (max temp 41C)

It's fair to say that the so-called "Enhanced ICE-X Cooling System: 13 Layers Cooling System," which is complemented with Liquid Metal 2.0 and rated with a thermal conductivity of 200 W/mK, is really doing its job here. Despite the Astra Gaming Tablet's thinness, it did not get too hot to hold, even under the excessive GFXBench Battery Test loops. I tried to measure the outer shell temperature, and if my thermometer is accurate, it did not go above 38 °C (I really need to buy a thermal imaging camera attachment).

Battery

8200mAh is nothing to write home about, but considering this is a 9-inch device and not an 11.9-inch behemoth, you'd be forgiven for wondering why the battery is smaller than in some flagship smartphones. Well, apparently, REDMAGIC claims that it is the largest battery placed in a 9-inch tablet. After a quick search, this appears to be true, for example, I could only find one (current) Tablet that came close to screen size, the Lenovo Legion Tab (8.8"), and that includes a mere 6550 mAh battery.

As of writing, the Astra Gaming Tablet's product page is not live, but in our reviewers' guide, REDMAGIC makes the following claims about the battery:

• 5.5 hours of Honkai: Star Rail gameplay at full frame rate
• 5.3 hours of Arena of Valor gameplay while livestreaming
• 33 hours of continuous movie playback

This combination of battery capacity and performance ensures uninterrupted gaming and entertainment on the go.

When it’s time to recharge, the fast charging capability powers the battery from 0 to 100% in just 71 minutes.

REDMAGIC did not ship a power adapter in the box that I received, so instead, I placed it on a USB charger that shows the current charging speed. As you can see in the image above, it pulled around 30W at 9V * 3.4A. The remaining 5% took around half an hour, which was annoying but necessary to conserve battery life.

According to Gemini (AI), a 35W charger would be required to make good on REDMAGIC's claims of 0-100% in 71 minutes. In addition, this is supported by Qualcomm Quick Charge. However, I wish they shipped a charger with the tablet, if not only to make good on their marketing claim, and if you ask me, it's a pretty important one. What good is such a claim if you don't have all the tools to achieve it?

I watched a two-hour 4K HDR10 HEVC movie with TRUEHD 7.1 audio on it, and it consumed around 20% of the battery. So you could easily watch four two-hour films back to back and still have enough juice to check your emails and social media.

Conclusion

I found the display to be quite excellent. I'm a real fan of the OLED screen in this tablet, and the 1,100 to 1,600 nits of peak brightness really complements HDR content too. I did not have too much trouble viewing the screen under indirect sunlight, although it was not quite as bright as my Galaxy S23 Ultra, but that makes sense considering the S23's display is rated for 1200 nits (HBM), 1750 nits (peak) which is slightly more than the Astra Gaming Tablet's 1,100 (hbm) 1,600 (peak) screen. It also ticks the boxes on media consumption support and for being just over a third of a kilo at 370 grams.

What's not to like? Well, it does not support cellular for things like a data SIM, and there's no charger in the box in any region, but you do get a whole lot of tablet for that. You may be wondering why I did not include anything about the cameras. Well, for one, I don't really think it's in the scope of this review, but also, I am waiting on a trifold cover that my contact is sending me so I can hold it safely while outdoors. I will update this review with a gallery of pics later.

For me, this gets a solid thumbs up and compliments for the really great display.

Where to buy, and Early Bird!

The REDMAGIC Astra Gaming Tablet goes on sale from July 16 in 60 countries and regions, which include North America, Europe, the U.K., Asia Pacific, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and Latin America. However, you can gain access a day earlier on July 15 if you purchase a $1 Early Bird Voucher on the official product page, which provides $30 off your order. Plus, to sweeten the deal, users who purchase the voucher from July 10–15 will receive a complimentary REDMAGIC 80W charger along with a free pair of exclusive gaming finger sleeves with their purchase.

Early Bird offer is live

Update July 10: The Early Bird offer is live, so what does it entail? If you are interested in purchasing this tablet, you can purchase an Early Bird coupon for $1 that gets you the following:

• Orders open 1 day earlier (July 15)
• $30/€30/£30 off the total price
• Free 80W Fast Charger (valued at $29.90)
• Free Gaming Finger Sleeves

Please note that the $1 voucher can only be bought between July 10 and 15, after which the offer expires.

Order from the official product page.