REDMAGIC 10S Pro review – Mini fan, huge impact

Smartphones nowadays are very purpose-focused. The biggest line drawn is between gaming phones and all the other phones – and today, we’re finally going to review out first phone from REDMAGIC – the REDMAGIC 10S Pro. The company made a name for itself when they introduced a fan to their gaming phone, and that changed everything.

We always say that phones have reached its potential and higher power consumption will be problematic, but that only applies to phones with a passive cooler. The REDMAGIC 10S Pro has a fan, so that means it’s an active cooler – and I’m personally excited to know what kind of performance it can churn out.

Design

Before we talk about anything, we have to talk about the design. I really like it as REDMAGIC is an unapologetic about its design being all gamer-looking. The last time I’ve seen something like this was from Black Shark. RIP Black Shark, you’re missed even to this day.

Anyway, the REDMAGIC 10S Pro has a sleek design, flat on all sides with no camera bump. Surprising in the year 2025, I know.

There are some RGB LEDs at the back – one for the REDMAGIC logo and another for the X symbol. The fan also has four RGB LED as well – one for each quadrant.

The right side of the phone is actually the busiest. There is one trigger for each side, a red slider to enter the game space, a round power button at the center, and another volume rocker.

This slit is actually the fan intake port. It goes through the entire phone and goes out the left side of the phone.

Looking at the exploded view of this phone’s internals, the REDMAGIC 10S Pro has a combination of multiple heatspreaders but the main star of the show is the 23,000 RPM fan. It’s surprisingly quiet even at full speed.

Performance

So, of course, we’re going to talk about the performance now. The REDMAGIC 10S Pro uses the Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading Version – which is identical to the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy but without the Galaxy branding. It has higher core clock speeds on two CPU cores and the GPU when compared to the vanilla version, and that’s the only difference I can find.

Now, the 8 Elite in itself is already very high in terms of power consumption when it’s pushed to its limits – so how does the REDMAGIC 10S Pro handled it with its fan?

Handled it magnificently, actually. We threw all the games at it and it can handle it at magnificently at the highest graphical settings flawlessly. You can watch the full gaming test below – but here’s the summary.

Genshin Impact, 60fps consistently without any issues at all. Zenless Zone Zero is not particularly at 60fps consistently since this game is very, very demanding – but the game is quite okay since the frame drops aren’t particularly distracting.

The most surprising to me though, is Wuthering Waves. You see, this game has a lot of different settings to play with – and we turned off Frame Generation just to see how things go. And the REDMAGIC 10S Pro ran it smoothly at 90fps with some frame drops under certain scenarios.

However, the wattage is truly concerning as it takes in around 18W for a while just to keep up with the game. That is truly scary in a way as phones taking in 8W and above is already considered very high. And yet the REDMAGIC 10S Pro takes in above 10W for quite some time.

So, did it overheat? Actually, no. At least not that I know of. The highest temperature that I can see if at 51°C but there was no major frame drops – so I don’t think it thermal throttled. The fan is indeed whirring a mini tornado in the phone to keep things cool, and it worked.

The phone is indeed super uncomfortable to touch because of how hot it is, but the performance is still great.

I’d say the REDMAGIC 10S Pro is fantastic for gaming. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is indeed powerful – but also power-hungry at the same time when pushed to its higher limits.

Battery life

With such a high power consumption means that it will definitely just chug the battery down. With a massive 7050mAh battery – the battery dropped from 100% to 55% throughout the entire gaming test. That gives us a perspective on how power-hungry the Snapdragon 8 Elite is.

But, when we did our standardized battery life test, it can only last around 11.5 hours locked at 144Hz refresh rate and 100 nits brightness with the fan turned off. This is why I’m saying – just use the REDMAGIC 10S Pro in the auto refresh rate mode.

Charging speed

The charging speed is amazing too. It comes with an 80W charger in the box. This charger partially supports USB-PD PPS as it only goes up to 45W. Yes, we tested.

Using the stock charger with the default settings, it charges completely within around 46 minutes. The fan does turn on while charging, so that it can push more wattage without overheating the battery.

Now when we turned it up to the fastest charging speed possible, it can charge to completion in around 34 minutes. Again, the fan turns on and the temperature curve is very different from the default settings.

Curiously, when we plugged this phone into our UGREEN 140W charger, the REDMAGIC 10S Pro can take in around 73W peak and charges faster than the proprietary charger too – in less than 30 minutes to get to 100% charge. The fan is indeed whirring while charging to keep the temperature in check.

Screen

The screen is also amazing too. It has a 6.85-inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 2688×1216 pixels and goes up to 144Hz refresh rate.

From our colorimeter, it achieved 1200 nits in maximum auto brightness and 100% of both sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamut coverage. The maximum ΔE number is high, but the average is supremely low. All I can say is – this display is amazing though might be a bit too saturated for some people.

There are a few different color modes to select from – but this Colorful color profile is the default. The Vivid color profile is surprisingly not as vivid. My advice is – just use whatever color profile you like.

By the way, it is only now I realize that there is actually… no front-facing camera in view. Yeah, the screen is completely filled to the brim, very high screen-to-body ratio, and no selfie camera black hole in sight. Yeah, they’re using an under-display selfie camera – and I truly like this.

Software

As for the software, it’s using the REDMAGIC OS 10.5 running on top of Android 15. It’s very close to stock Android but with REDMAGIC’s features sprinkled on top. There are some bloatware apps preinstalled, and there’s this UNKNOWN app that I have no idea what the heck it is because it has no information and I can’t even launch it.

Either way, the bloatware is removable but the “More Games” and “More Apps” are not. It’s from the NextApp which I can’t find where it is, but doing this  can disable the app entirely.

Other than that, it’s very clean. REDMAGIC does have a lot of features built-in which we have made another video talking about it one by one.

Camera

As for the cameras, I don’t think it’s the focus of the REDMAGIC 10S Pro. Really, the words “gaming phone” and “great cameras” do not belong in the same sentence. I mean, there are two cameras on this phone and it takes some decent-looking photos too. I don’t want to talk much about it – but the cameras are indeed usable.

To have a look at all the pictures taken with the REDMAGIC 10S Pro, watch our video at the top of this review.

A few more things to mention

A few more things to mention here – the REDMAGIC 10S Pro comes with a USB 3 port at the bottom which also supports display output. It’s an integral part of the phone because we can change the aspect ratio of the game and also make the phone to become a virtual gamepad.

It has dual SIM Card slots and a 3.5mm audio jack too. Nice. Of course, there is consequences to having a fan – so no IP rating at all as the fan leads directly inside the phone.

Should you buy the REDMAGIC 10S Pro?

So, should you buy this phone? At the price of RM3,199 right now – I’d say yes. The performance we’re getting is amazing. It’s the best performing phone that I’ve seen to date – and it’s all thanks to the fan. There are a lot of other features built-in to the REDMAGIC OS to bring forth even more value too.

Honestly, there’s only two choices in the market when it comes to gaming phones. Either the REDMAGIC 10S Pro, or the ROG Phone 9. Both these phones are trying to be the ultimate gaming phone ever, but with a different approach.

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