RedMagic Gaming Tablet 5 Pro (REDMAGIC Astra 2) Review: 9-Inch Pocket Handheld

REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 5 PRO (REDMAGIC Astra 2) Experience: A 9-inch Handheld That Can Fit in Your Pocket, A Clever Game of "Tian Ji's Horse Racing"

In recent years, the long-dormant "small tablet" track has become lively again. But after playing with several mainstream products on the market, I found that current small tablets seem to have fallen into a fixed setting: rigidly locking the size between 8 and 8.8 inches, primarily focused on one-handed grip and casual reading.

They are essentially more like "a large-screen phone that can't make phone calls," using compromised configurations to balance the light needs of ordinary people reading novels, watching videos, and replying to WeChat messages, trying to find the greatest common divisor between portability and entertainment.

Under this industry inertia, the REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 5 PRO (REDMAGIC Astra 2)'s 9-inch size absolutely counts as a "scarce size" that floats outside the mainstream narrative.

9 inches, a "scarce card" that floats outside the mainstream

Looking purely at the specs on paper, this body size sandwiched in the middle seems to have nowhere to fit—bigger than other small tablets, yet smaller than mainstream tablets of 11 inches or above, seemingly an awkward choice that pleases neither side.

However, after using the REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 5 PRO (REDMAGIC Astra 2), I understood the logic behind this "not fitting in."

From the very beginning, Red Magic never intended to join in the excitement of "all-around office work," nor did it want to just make an ordinary, run-of-the-mill novel launcher.

It simply pierced through the disguise of productivity, and standing from the player's perspective, "reinvented" a small tablet specifically serving esports scenarios. In the REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 5 PRO (REDMAGIC Astra 2)'s product definition, gaming > small > tablet.

Under this highly biased ordering, the 9.06 inches immediately welcomed a wonderful game of "Tian Ji's horse racing."

Using a phone to play horizontal-screen mobile games, the finger operation area and the game screen easily crowd together, and the field of view is also lacking; switching to an 11-inch large tablet, holding it with both hands suspended in the air for less than half an hour will make your wrists sore.

Yet Red Magic, which happens to be positioned right at this sweet spot, not only has a more open, immersive field of view than 8-inch competitors, but also isn't tiring to hold horizontally for long periods.

A "inferior horse" size that seems somewhat awkward on the conventional track, once placed into a pure gaming scenario, instead becomes a "superior horse" that fits just right.

From liquid cooling, ports to service, everything serves the player

The moment you open the box, you can feel its "specialness": while the REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 5 PRO (REDMAGIC Astra 2) inherits the highly recognizable "transparent window" family design, it has replaced the previous generation's cooling fan with a slowly flowing liquid-cooling "stream."

Inside this transparent small window, Red Magic has not only packed in the industry's first actively liquid-cooled tablet cooling module, but has also arranged 11 customized RGB light beads underneath. Lighting it up in a dark environment, the blue-cyan lighting effect flickers faintly along with the circulation trajectory of the coolant.

Getting closer to listen, you can catch the high-frequency buzzing sound made by the liquid cooling's piezoelectric ceramic pump when working; placing your finger against the back panel, you can even feel the slight vibration coming from the body.

However, this high-frequency background noise can still be somewhat annoying in a quiet environment; fortunately, the system provides a flexible switch option, and turning it off when not gaming can return quietness to daily use.

What's even more commendable is that, after accommodating such a complex internal stack, its back still maintains a design with the camera lens completely free of protrusion; when placed flat on a desktop, it won't "seesaw"; running your finger across the back panel, you won't feel any abruptness or resistance brought by the camera module.

Turning to the front, the 9.06-inch body paired with a 16:10 screen ratio, combined with a 4.9mm extremely narrow bezel, achieves a screen-to-body ratio as high as 90.1%. The whole machine weighs 363g in hand, and there's no pressure even during long gaming sessions.

This 16:10 screen is also suitable for daily content consumption; whether scrolling through the Xiaohongshu feed or watching videos in landscape mode, the black bars top and bottom are controlled quite appropriately, and the utilization efficiency of the screen area is very high.

There's also a small experiential detail: the REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 5 PRO (REDMAGIC Astra 2) is equipped with side fingerprint unlock.

At a time when a host of tablet products are cutting fingerprint recognition one after another to control costs, this instead becomes one of its major experience bonus points. The moment you pick up the device, your finger naturally rests on the power button, and lighting up and unlocking happen in one smooth motion.

At the top of the body, the REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 5 PRO (REDMAGIC Astra 2) is equipped with a red "Gaming Space" physical toggle switch. Flip it to the left, and accompanied by delicate vibration feedback, you can directly enter the immersive esports mode.

This mode's overall UI visuals are close to Steam's "Big Picture Mode," supporting switching between touchscreen, handheld, and console modes, and is quite friendly to controller operation.

Without further ado, let's start a match directly. In the actual testing of competitive mobile games, the underlying hardware played a key role. The REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 5 PRO (REDMAGIC Astra 2) is equipped with the fifth-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite and the Red Core R4 esports chip, and the screen refresh rate even reaches 185Hz.

When playing "Valorant Mobile," thanks to the Synaptics S3930 touch chip's instantaneous sampling rate of up to 2000Hz, the feedback for turning the viewing angle and abruptly stopping to fire is precise and without any dragging.

In terms of thermal control, under the dual suppression of the pulsating liquid cooling engine and Liquid Metal 3.0, after playing three consecutive high-load ranked matches, the back of the body only feels warm to the touch, so there's no need to worry about overheating during long gaming sessions.

The REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 5 PRO (REDMAGIC Astra 2) has two Type-C ports, one at the bottom and one on the right side. The position of the right-side port has also been deliberately moved upward, so that when connecting wired headphones externally, or charging while playing, the cable connector won't "fight" with the palm.

Bypass charging technology is naturally standard as well. When plugged in for use, the current directly powers the motherboard, reducing heat generation from the source. The system supports automatic switching and allows setting a charging threshold, eliminating the hassle of manually turning it on every time, making it more worry-free.

It's worth mentioning that the REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 5 PRO (REDMAGIC Astra 2) also has a built-in PC emulator, and is the first to launch Steam Direct Connect mode; logging directly into a Steam account allows the game library and saves on the computer to sync seamlessly.

However, after actually testing "Cyberpunk 2077," I must admit that AAA titles are indeed not its home turf.

Even with performance pushed to the maximum "Awakened" mode and image quality compromised to "lowest," the actual frame rate can only barely maintain around 20 frames.

Its more realistic and comfortable use is to play some indie games or mid-sized games that don't have particularly high requirements for frame rate and real-time operation. For example, card games like "Slay the Spire," roguelike games like "Hades," or some slower-paced RPGs, or even niche GalGames.

Letting PC games cross the threshold from "unplayable" to "playable" on this 9.06-inch screen, directly stuffing a massive computer game library into the player's pocket—this in itself is the value of its existence.

In addition, the built-in AI virtual avatar "Moji" can not only serve as a desktop companion mascot, but can also provide voice responses and match analysis during matches, adding a touch of the warmth of anime-style companionship to this cold performance machine.

Back to daily life, the small tablet feeling is just right

Flip the red switch back to the right, exit the tense and exciting esports state, and you return again to the familiar daily interface.

You'll find that, beyond the pure specialization of gaming scenarios, the REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 5 PRO (REDMAGIC Astra 2) also doesn't fall behind in daily audiovisual entertainment and content consumption.

This screen is the first to launch 2.4K OLED X10 light-emitting material, with 1600nit local peak brightness and a dynamic contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1, so content can be seen clearly even under strong outdoor sunlight.

Acoustically, the body is equipped with 1227 stereo symmetrical dual speakers. Even without wearing headphones, you can accurately "hear direction" in games, and when watching movies or listening to podcasts daily, the clarity of human voices is sufficiently solid.

In mobile travel scenarios, the 8300mAh large battery brings ample battery life performance; in terms of charging speed, in a room temperature environment of 26 degrees, using the Sugar Factory Small Power Bank 02 Ultra to charge it, shaking hands with the PPS protocol, the measured peak power can reach around 73W, taking only 29 minutes to charge from 3% to 80%.

In addition, it also supports reverse charging function, so headphones and watches that are out of power can also be used for emergency rescue.

Admittedly, the REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 5 PRO (REDMAGIC Astra 2) is not suitable for everyone.

It didn't make itself into a well-rounded, balanced small tablet, but instead, with strong intentionality, carried the word "gaming" through to the end.

Such a product will of course filter users. Just like an extreme esports host machine, some people are willing to pay for the emotional value it provides, while others will find it "flashy and gimmicky."

And when it comes to the REDMAGIC Gaming Tablet 5 PRO (REDMAGIC Astra 2), attributes like liquid cooling, PC emulator, and larger size will seem "overdone" to most users.

But for the group of people that Red Magic truly wants to serve, these are precisely its appeal; bravely admitting one's own "specialization/bias" is instead a rare sincerity—

It is first a "gaming tablet," and only then a "small tablet."