The RedMagic Astra Is the Best Gaming Tablet You Can Buy

Earlier this year, I tested it Lenovo’s 8-inch Legion Tab Gen 3 gaming tablet To see how it sticks to the iPad Mini’s small gaming tablet. Spoiler Alert: Very well done. But, shortly after testing this tablet, console maker Redmagic reached out to ask if I wanted to test its new gaming tablet, the 9-inch Astra.

After weeks of testing, I can say with certainty that while Lenovo’s small tablet is still great, Astra beats it in several key areas. The most important of these is performance: it’s faster than the Legion Tab. Lenovo, on the other hand, is a better choice, as a small, universal Android tablet that is perfect for gaming (and is often cheaper than Astra). But if your most concerned thing is gaming features and performance and great design, Redmagic Astra is worth paying you a premium.

Flagship hardware

I really like the design of the Legion Tab, which convinced me of the benefits of the entire form factor. Even someone who loves mobile gaming, I really don’t like carrying a lot of phones around, so having something big enough to play without being as big as an iPad or Galaxy Tab, especially a laptop, is great.

Although slightly larger, for me, Astra is still very suitable for the space between this space. It has a 9-inch screen, but the red screen wraps it up as a small, stylish tablet that actually fits in my back pocket. The design is reminiscent of the iPad mini, with rounded sides and flat sides symmetrical, just 4.9mm wide, wider than the iPad Mini, which makes Apple’s smallest tablet look dated.

There is also a fingerprint sensor in the power button, which is very welcome, especially considering that there aren’t one for more other quality tablets like the OnePlus Pad 3 (or even the Legion Tab). The front camera supports face unlock (only for the tablet itself) and is great for streaming or video chat at 9 megapixels.

A single rear 13 megapixel camera is acceptable, but no more than that. If you need to use it, that’s great, but Redmagic has never been known for its excellent camera, and that certainly applies.

Redmagic is known for including all the latest top-spec packaging for its devices, while Astra continues this trend. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, up to 24GB of LPDDR5X RAM and up to 1TB of UFS 4.1 storage. The base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage is $549, with the base model you get in the $550 Legion Tab Gen 3 (although Legion is regularly scheduled Sale at a cheap price of about $100). I tested the $699 version of Astra with 16GB of storage and 512GB of storage. The maximum ASTRA with 24GB RAM and 1TB of storage costs $899.

Redmagic’s own gaming chip Redcore R3 Pro is Redmagic’s own gaming chip. The idea is that the R3 Pro delivers some game-specific tasks from the main chipset to help maintain peak performance and prevent the Snapdragon 8 Elite from landing faster.

The 9.1-inch OLED display shows off all your favorite games with a 2,400×1,504 pixel resolution (331 ppi) and a beautiful 165Hz refresh rate. It also reaches 1,600 column peak brightness, which is bright enough if you find yourself trapped in the sun. I would say this is one of the best screens I’ve seen on my tablet and it’s great for any game. (In contrast, the iPad Mini’s screen has a pixel density of 326 ppi).

Powering all of this is an 8,200 millihour battery battery and supports up to 80 watts of fast charging. I can easily use this tablet for a few days, which includes one or two hours of gaming and another hour or two basic usages. On CNET’s YouTube streaming test, the average is 10 hours and 32 minutes, which is good, but you will only not get it when you play. The only downside is that there is no charger in the box, although you should be able to charge with most 80 watt chargers.

Sound, Dual DTS:X Ultra speakers sound great for small tablets. Of course, you won’t get indoor fill sound from the four speakers on the iPad Pro, but it’s also a bigger and more expensive device. Astra’s speakers are good for gaming or streaming, but for FPS games or games that are important for every noise, you’ll want some good gaming headsets.

A strange design choice

Redmagic makes a very strange design choice from ASTRA by leaning the USB-C port against the top of the tablet. This means that the power button is now opposite the USB-C port, so if you try to use a USB-C controller, you may press the power button when turning the controller on and off. I did run into this in my tests and although it was annoying, I wasn’t enough to get me to buy it. Once I use the controller it doesn’t happen, and the Bluetooth controller obviously doesn’t encounter this problem. (Redmagic may thank you for throwing it away Its Bluetooth gaming board has an extra $129 Anyway. )

Also, when using the controller, the tablet now sits farther and becomes somewhat unbalanced. Again, this isn’t a deal-breaker for me because I ended up putting my tablet on my desk or on my knees, which almost got better for me so I didn’t have to hold it. Your mileage may be different here, and I do know how uncomfortable it may be for some people, but I don’t want to knock it before trying it.

I asked Redmagic why it uses this layout, and the company representative said that the top-of-the-line USB-C can prevent the charging cable from blocking your hands while charging, so you can still play with it when plugging in without any problems. This makes sense to me and is one of the problems I have when gaming on my phone or other tablet. Additionally, the side-mounted power button is cancelled to work with many third-party game controllers with buffers to avoid accidental activation. I’m willing to bet that even if it’s a gamer-centric tablet, Redmagic’s customer data shows that there are much more people without a controller than users play.

All the performance you want

As you might expect from the spec sheet, this thing is just about anything you throw. Besides gaming, I use it as a regular tablet, which includes browsing, researching new cars (I have limited back, which is fun), some YouTube and emails. As expected, everything I did was smooth and fast. No problem.

Obviously, being able to play the best games smoothly is a key part of performance, but Redmagic is the absolute best gaming experience for you on your mobile device.

All the most popular games I’ve tried run at the highest frame rate. I always hit 120 frames per second on Call of Duty: Mobile, and Redmagic promises a lot of refresh support for other popular games including PUBG, Delta Force, and League of Legends.

Redmagic’s Game Center software even allows you to increase frame rates in supported games like Genshin Impact. On mobile devices, Genshin only supports 60fps locally, but Astra can increase the frame rate to 120fps through the Game Center software.

Additionally, with its high-speed wireless gaming, streaming games via Game Pass or PlayStation Remote gameplay runs well, making Astra a truly all-around mobile game powerful force.

Is this total overkill for most people? Absolutely. Is it still fun? oops.

	Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3	Redmagic Astra
Unlimited wild life	17,320	23,187
Geekbench 6 CPU (single core)	2228	2641
Geekbench 6 CPU (multi-core)	6600	7990
Geekbench 6 GPU	16624	19223
Octane 2.0	75924	158865

Quick software, but don’t expect updates

I was pleasantly surprised by the software experience of Astra out of the box. Even a few years ago, Redmagic’s software was still very serious and looked like something from a bad sci-fi movie. Recently, the company has greatly weakened its software experience, and now, it is actually quite useful.

However, there is a lot of bloatware, but most are easy to remove, and the rest are very clean Android. Apart from the gaming space, it’s not that different from what you’ve found on most other Android tablets today. There were some translation errors spread, but it was certainly much more than it was a few years ago. Redmagic is worth mentioning how much progress it has made.

However, it still lags seriously behind the update. Astra runs on Android 15, and honestly, I won’t expect any major platform updates. From my past experience with Redmagic devices, you will get some security updates over the next two or three years, and you may be surprised by the platform update, but the company can’t guarantee it, so don’t hold your breath.

For me, it’s not a deal, because it’s mostly about being a gaming and entertainment device, not something I use for a bank or anything personal. Just the main new games released in the next few years – they will almost certainly – I’m not satisfied with the lack of updates. The company definitely needs to do better, but I won’t stop you from buying it.

Also, if you are looking for complete accessories in the box, you will be disappointed. As I mentioned before, no charger is included, but Redmagic will sell you for $29.90. The screen protector and folio case are also $24.90 and $39 respectively, but they seem to be selling out quickly. And, while the Astra does have the support of an active pen, Redmagic currently does not have a pen as an accessory, although one is expected to be available. This is where the Lenovo Legion Tab has an advantage, as the tablet contains a charger, screen protector and a folio case, and you can get a pen from Lenovo for about $40. It may not have Astra’s performance, but in that sense it’s a better option.

The best way to play on the road

As of now, I haven’t tested other small tablets that are more suitable for gaming than the Redmagic Astra. The Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 has last year’s specifications, an outdated design, and only one configuration. If you can find it for sale, it’s worth it, but for $549, the Astra is the main player, which is a better choice.

The iPad Mini has huge bezels that are far from power as Astra, and it is expensive. And you’re stuck in the Apple ecosystem, which has its own set of problems. The higher configuration of Astra (including the one I tested) is expensive and you still have to pay extra for any accessories if you need it. But if you’re all in mobile games, there’s no better device than Astra right now.