I replaced my Pixel 9 Pro with a $750 Android for a week - and didn't regret it

ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• The Redmagic 10S Pro volition beryllium disposable now, starting astatine $699.
• The 10S Pro harnesses awesome power, making it an implicit delight for gamers and powerfulness users.
• Average users mightiness find they person to bash a spot of tweaking to get the 10S Pro to their liking.

I've been utilizing Pixel phones for a long, agelong time, and each truthful often I think, "Is it clip to effort thing different?" But each clip I stray, I inevitably travel backmost to the Pixel mode of thinking.

Every erstwhile successful a while, though, a telephone comes crossed my table to marque maine think, "This could beryllium the one!" One specified telephone is the Redmagic 10S Pro. I precocious reviewed the Redmagic 10 Pro and recovered that to beryllium a telephone worthy of replacing my Pixel 9 Pro.

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Little did I cognize that Redmagic had thing adjacent much almighty up its sleeve, successful the 10S Pro. Even though the 10 Pro was a stellar device, with much than capable powerfulness to tally each the apps and games I wanted, the 10S gives the show a bump.  

My experience

Physically, the beforehand of the 10S Pro is reasonably typical-looking. But the backmost of the telephone is transparent, revealing the battery, the cameras and lights, and an engraved Snapdragon logo connected the CPU. It looks sweet. 

Speaking astir the phone's performance, let's spell beyond sheer power, due to the fact that blistering velocity (which the 10S Pro has) isn't the lone important facet erstwhile selecting a caller phone. I've been saying, for a precise agelong time, that Google needs to up the ante with the Android UI due to the fact that it's grown truthful boring and stale.

Swipe and clasp from the near to activate the sidebar.

Jack Wallen/ZDNET

Sure, with each iteration, the Android UI gets a spot amended with smoother animations and a spot much polish, but it's inactive mode down the likes of iOS. Besides the messiness of app launchers connected the location screen, iOS is beautiful, and Redmagic intelligibly gets this with RedMagicOS (version 10.5.5). 

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The archetypal happening you announcement -- arsenic with immoderate caller Redmagic telephone -- is the gorgeous UI. It's fluid, elegant, and accelerated (take note, Google). To date, I've not seen a instrumentality connected Android that is this polished. And fixed this telephone starts astatine $699, it's an unthinkable steal.

The show connected the 10S Pro is fundamentally the aforesaid arsenic the 10 Pro and runs astatine a pleasing 144Hz refresh rate, 2688 x 1216 resolution, 2000-nit brightness, and a 100% DCI-P3 wide colour gamut. Those numbers equate to a beauteous show connected a telephone that precise overmuch deserves it.

Redmagic AI

Like each telephone connected the market, the 10S Pro includes AI. To motorboat it, pat the "REDMATIC AI+" successful Settings, and you'll spot SmartSidebar, RedMagic Translation, and "Redmagic astute communication." 

The SmarSide barroom tin beryllium activated to show shortcuts to app popups. For example, if you pat the Gmail shortcut, a tiny Gmail widget appears, wherever you tin work and constitute email.

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The Redmagic Smart Communication diagnostic manages connections. For example, it includes "Smart antenna boosting," which uses algorithms to amended antenna ratio for amended performance. There's besides Smart dual-SIM, which intelligently recognizes a SIM's awesome spot prime and automatically switches to the champion SIM (if you person 2 inserted).

Yeah yeah, capable astir AI. What astir the phone?

It's a delight. From the mildly rounded edges (and boxy design, which I truly appreciate) to the size, weight, and consciousness of the phone, the 10S Pro screams "premium" without the premium price. 

If I had 1 disapproval of the Redmagic 10S Pro, it would beryllium the spot of bloatware installed connected the device. There are apps that truly aren't necessary, similar Booking.com, Gopher, MoboReels, Prank Video, Headspace, Hinge, and rather a fewer others. 

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Also, the phone's camera (which is 1 happening that lags down different almighty Android flagships) comes enabled with a Redmagic watermark connected photos. You'll privation to disable that successful the settings unless you privation each of your idiosyncratic snapshots to enactment arsenic Redmagic advertising. 

The numbers talk for themselves 

One of the archetypal things I did during my investigating was tally the Geekbench app connected some my Pixel 9 Pro and the Redmagic 10S Pro. I wanted to spot however the 2 phones compared, and my suspicions were proven correct. 

The Redmagic 10S Pro with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor blew distant the Pixel 9 Pro successful the CPU benchmark, and got importantly higher scores successful some single-core and multi-core processing. 

ZDNET's buying advice

Look, the Redmagic 10S Pro is simply a large telephone for mobile gamers with each the indispensable velocity and optimizations to assistance you get the astir of the experience. The occupation is that determination are a fewer things mean users volition person to woody with to truly get the astir retired of the phone. There's the camera watermark, the Redmagic quality feed, the bloatware, and the not-exactly-brilliant cameras. 

If you request a telephone with a almighty camera, instrumentality to the Google Pixel oregon Samsung Galaxy. If cameras are secondary to speed, the Redmagic 10S is arsenic overmuch a flagship slayer arsenic immoderate instrumentality I've tested.

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As acold arsenic price, you tin get the low-end exemplary for $699; the midrange exemplary is $849 and includes 16GB of representation and 512GB of storage; and the highest-end exemplary is $999 for 24GB of representation and 1TB of storage.

The telephone volition beryllium disposable connected June 12th, and arsenic of present you can sign up to beryllium informed of the 10S Pro release but pre-orders person not yet opened up. 

Redmagic 10S Pro tech specs:

• Transparent metallic body
• RGB lighting
• Customizable Magic Key for instant entree to Game Space
• CPU - Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset (4.47 GHz), combined with the AI RedCore R3 Pro, LPDDR5T RAM, and UFS 4.1 Pro storage.
• RAM - 12/16/24 GB of LPDDR5T
• Storage - UFS 4.1 up to 1 TB.
• Average framework complaint - 120.2 FPS
• Cooling - 12,000 mm^2 vapor enclosure and a 23,000 RPM high-speed fan
• Battery - 7,050 mAh artillery with 80W accelerated charging
• Display - 6.85" with 2688 x 1216 solution astatine a 144 Hz refresh rate, 2000 Nits, 2,500 Hz instant interaction sampling rate, and a 95.30% screen-to-body ratio