REDMAGIC Astra 2 review: I finally found a no-holds-barred warrior for tablet gaming

Quick Recap

I have a weakness for small tablets, and this love started years ago with the iPad mini. Unfortunately, with each passing year, most brands push their slates closer to laptop territory, with 12-inch, 13-inch, and even 14-inch screens that need a keyboard and a desk to make sense. The REDMAGIC Astra 2 goes the other way. It’s a 9.06-inch tablet built for one job above all else, which is gaming in your hands, and it does that job better than any Android tablet I’ve used.

The hardware is pretty generous. You get Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, up to 16GB of LPDDR5T RAM, and an active liquid cooling system that replaces the tiny fan from the first Astra. The result is performance that holds steady long after other Android flagships start to throttle. The 2.4K OLED screen runs at up to 185Hz, and hits 1,600 nits at peak brightness. REDMAGIC also got the small things right. The camera sits completely flush, and there are two USB-C ports for charging in either orientation with a bypass trick.

It’s not a tablet for everyone, though. The price has jumped to $799 for the heavy-hitter model, the software ships with a pile of third-party apps, the cameras are weak, and REDMAGIC’s update promise is short outside Europe. The Astra 2 is a specialist machine, and it doesn’t pretend to be an iPad replacement. But if raw gaming firepower is what you seek, this is where your search ends.

REDMAGIC Astra 2 specifications: A quick look at the internal hardware

REDMAGIC Astra 2 design and build: Bold is all I can say about it

The REDMAGIC Astra 2 measures 207.1 x 134.2 x 6.9mm and weighs 363 grams, roughly 7 grams less than its predecessor. That may not sound like much on paper, but the overall footprint is what matters here. This is a tablet I can hold in one hand, or cradle with two for a long gaming session, without my forearms complaining. Broadly, you won’t be forced to rest this one on your lap or prop it on a table.

The 16:10 aspect ratio helps, too. In landscape, there’s enough width for your thumbs and for widescreen video. In portrait, the tablet doesn’t feel top-heavy when I’m reading a web page, a PDF, or a manga chapter. It is noticeably heavier than Apple’s iPad mini, mostly due to the cooling hardware inside, but the weight is evenly spread, and the 6.9mm profile gives it a dense, solid feel rather than a hollow one.

RedMagic uses an aviation-grade aluminum frame and back, available in Eclipse (black) and Starfrost (silver) shades. The matte, blasted finish offers far more grip than the glossy glass backs on the company’s gaming phones, and I never had to worry about it sliding off a sofa armrest.

My favorite design detail is on the back: there’s no camera bump. The single 13-megapixel sensor sits completely flush under the glass, so the tablet lies flat on a desk or a tray table without rocking. It’s a small detail, but almost every phone and tablet I test these days wobbles when you tap it on a table, and the Astra 2 doesn’t.

On the front, the bezels are slim and even, giving the tablet a 90.1% screen-to-body ratio. REDMAGIC also avoided punching a camera hole into the display. The 9MP selfie camera lives in the bezel, so nothing interrupts a movie, an e-book, or the corner of a game’s HUD where your minimap usually sits.

Overall, the Astra 2 is far more restrained than REDMAGIC’s phones, but the back still makes its gaming roots clear. A transparent glass window shows off a stylized circuit board design and the tablet’s headline feature: an active liquid cooling loop.

Instead of a sealed copper heat pipe or a vapor chamber alone, the Astra 2 circulates a non-conductive, server-grade fluorinated coolant across its internal heat spreaders. When the tablet is under load, you can actually see the coolant moving behind the window, lit by programmable RGB lighting. You can set it to a solid color, such as an electric blue or green, or switch it off entirely if you plan to use the tablet in a meeting and would rather not draw attention.

REDMAGIC placed every port and button with landscape gaming in mind, and for the most part, it shows. The tablet has two USB-C ports. The main one, on the short edge, supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 speeds of up to 10Gbps, DisplayPort Alt Mode for external monitors and AR glasses, and 75W charging. The second port, in the middle of the long bottom edge, runs at USB 2.0 speeds but also supports full 75W charging. In practice, that means I can plug in a charger while gaming without a cable digging into my palm, which is something I wish more tablets would copy.

Along the upper right edge sits REDMAGIC’s signature red slider. Flick it, and the tablet jumps straight from the regular Android launcher into Game Space, REDMAGIC’s console-style gaming environment. If you don’t care about that, you can remap the switch to toggle the flashlight, start the voice recorder, or change sound profiles.

The power button doubles as a fingerprint sensor, and it’s fast and reliable. Its position is a little odd, though. In landscape, it falls naturally under my left index finger, but in portrait, I have to reach up toward the top of the frame. Face unlock works well enough as a backup that I used it most of the time.

The speakers are where the design falls short. REDMAGIC tuned the stereo pair with DTS:X Ultra, but the grilles sit low on the short edges. When I hold the tablet horizontally with both hands, my palms end up partially covering them, and the sound gets muffled. I had to angle my grip forward or switch to earbuds for longer sessions. The front glass is Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

It holds up well against scratches, but it’s an old formulation, and I’d expect Victus or something newer at this price. The Astra 2 is IP54-rated. Dropping the fan from the previous model also means there are no open intake vents for dust and grit to work their way inside. Still, IP54 only covers light dust and splashes, so keep it away from the pool.

The retail box is spartan. There’s no case and no screen protector, and in Western and European markets, there’s no charger either, just a red USB-C cable and some paperwork. Since the tablet has no built-in kickstand, you’ll also want to budget for a folio or stand if you plan to watch anything on a desk.

Score: 8/10

REDMAGIC Astra 2 display

The 9.06-inch OLED panel has a resolution of 2,400 x 1,504 pixels, which works out to 313 pixels per inch. The 16:10 shape is, in my opinion, the right choice for a tablet like this. Tall 20:9 phone screens feel cramped for reading and maps, while the 4:3 screens on most tablets leave thick black bars above and below widescreen video. On the Astra 2, movies and shows fill nearly the entire screen with very little letterboxing. As you turn it to portrait mode, you get a comfortable, book-like page for e-books, manuals, and social feeds.

The refresh rate goes all the way up to 185Hz. I’ll be honest here, though. In everyday use, I struggled to tell the difference between 120Hz and 185Hz. But scrolling through menus, long web pages, and supported games is consistently smooth, and nothing ever felt choppy.

REDMAGIC pairs the fast panel with a dedicated Synaptics display chip that drives a 300Hz multi-finger touch reporting rate and an instant touch sampling rate of up to 2,000Hz. In fast competitive shooters, the gap between touching the screen and seeing my character react felt practically nonexistent. If you’re coming from a 60Hz or 120Hz tablet, you’ll notice the difference right away.

Being an OLED panel, the Astra 2 shows true blacks by switching individual pixels off completely. Bright highlights stand out against dark scenes without the blooming or the grayish haze I see on the LCD screens of many competing tablets.

The panel covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color space, and REDMAGIC claims a Delta E below 1. Those are excellent numbers for a gaming-focused device. REDMAGIC doesn’t make much noise about HDR on the box, but the tablet supports HDR10+ and Dolby Vision playback.

The screen is pretty bright. In fact, it’s comfortably one of the brightest compact Android tablets I’ve tested, and I had no trouble reading it near a sunny window or in a bright meeting room. Combined with SGS low-blue-light certification and flicker-free dimming, the panel makes late-night reading in a dark room fairly easy on the eyes.

Score: 9/10

REDMAGIC Astra 2 performance

Raw performance is what the REDMAGIC Astra 2 is all about, and it doesn’t disappoint. Powering this slate is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, built on a 3nm process. It has two prime Oryon Gen 3 cores clocked at 4.60GHz and six performance cores humming at 3.63GHz. Graphics are handled by the Adreno 840 GPU ticking at 1.2GHz, and REDMAGIC adds its own RedCore R4 chip, which takes care of audio, haptics, and lighting so the main processor can focus on games.

You can choose between 12GB or 16GB of LPDDR5TXRAM and 256GB or 512GB of UFS 4.1 storage. REDMAGIC has dropped the 24GB RAM and 1TB storage options from the previous generation to keep costs in check, and there’s no microSD slot, either. The storage is fast, though. In my testing, sequential read pace consistently hit over 1,500 MB/s and sequential write speeds touched 1,600 MB/s.

The numbers make it clear that this is the most powerful Android tablet you can buy right now. Coming to synthetic benchmarks, on Geekbench 6, the Astra 2 averaged 3,600+ in single-core and 11,600+ in multi-core runs. Single-core results are in the same league as Apple’s M4 silicon, which is no mean feat, while falling only about 6-8% shy on multi-core tests.

AnTuTu v11 returned 4,285,000 points on average after three runs, which is, once again, quite impressive. On 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited, it managed to comfortably stay ahead of other 8.8-inch gaming tablets. The ray-tracing-focused Solar Bay Extreme test returned expectedly high scores, but the more impressive aspect was the low perf drop from peak value and high stability.

This is where the Astra 2 sets itself apart. Most tablets lose performance over time as heat builds up inside a sealed body. REDMAGIC has replaced the 20,000 RPM fan from the last generation with the AquaCore 2.0 system, which combines liquid metal thermal paste on the chip, a large 3D vapor chamber, and the circulating coolant liquid in a loop.

In a continuous 20-minute stress test, the Astra 2 held between 82% and 95% of its peak performance. Most tablets in the flagship bracket often drop to 60-65% under the same load. The aluminum shell does get warm. My infrared thermometer read between 97°F and 100°F after long gaming and video sessions, but the chip itself didn’t throttle in any way I could notice. It’s far quieter than the whirring fan on the original Astra.

The 185Hz screen is the Astra 2’s headline feature, but very few games can actually take advantage of it. I ran more than a dozen titles with the display set to 185Hz, and a boosted performance profile enabled. I left Diablo mode off for most of my testing, since REDMAGIC designed it to be used with an external clip-on cooler. Only one game ran at a true 185 fps in my tests. Most of the marquee titles topped out at 120 fps, a few landed well below that, and a couple ran into odd problems.

Blood Strike is the game that shows off what this tablet can do. With graphics settings maxed out, it held a steady 185 fps, and it’s the first time I’ve seen a mobile shooter run at such a high frame rate. It was also the only game that pushed the battery temperature close to 110 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest reading I saw, with the exception of Diablo mode.

Call of Duty: Mobile comes close. In multiplayer, the frame counter was consistently over 160 fps, but only once I dropped the graphics to lower quality. With everything maxed out, it settles at around 60 fps, which still looks fantastic on this screen. Battle Royale is more demanding, but I was glad to see 90+ fps on this one as well. I can also report that the gyroscope aiming worked well across the full slate of games I tried.

PUBG’s local fork also ran at a smooth 120 fps on its peak frame rate setting. The motion was so fluid that it actually left me a little dizzy after a long session. Delta Force also held 120 fps without any trouble. Farlight 84 hit 119 to 120 fps, but not at its highest settings. Turning the graphics up drops the cap to 90 fps, and the ultra preset limits you to 60 fps.

Fortnite, with every setting on Epic and the 120 fps option enabled, hovered between 90 and 94 fps. Dropping the texture quality a notch should get you closer to 120 fps, though. Wuthering Waves, one of the most demanding games out there, deserves a note. On its peak preset, the game caps out at 90 fps. With REDMAGIC’s frame interpolation enabled, it easily climbed past 100 fps, and I didn’t run into any vexing stutters while at it.

Score: 8/10

REDMAGIC Astra 2: The highs and hiccups

The REDMAGIC Astra 2’s biggest undoing is the gaming ecosystem, because the hardware is more than ready for whatever you throw at it. Genshin Impact, for example, was a letdown. With graphics maxed out, it ran at only around 45 fps, below the game’s own 60 fps cap, and turning on frame interpolation made no visible difference. Asphalt Legends Unite offers a 120 fps option, but in practice, it ran barely above 50 fps.

Minecraft was the worst of the bunch. It mostly held 60 fps, but I ran into noticeable freezes in the middle of play. Dropping the performance mode to Balanced or Eco and setting the screen to 60Hz is worth trying, but I can’t promise it fixes the problem. This looks like a compatibility issue that REDMAGIC or the game’s developers will need to address.

Overall, the frame interpolation tech feels unfinished, and it’s nowhere close to what the likes of Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR will provide. It worked in Wuthering Waves, remained static in Genshin Impact, and wasn’t even available in Call of Duty: Mobile or Delta Force. I hope REDMAGIC improves the situation with updates.

The liquid cooling does its job, and better than I expected. In a room at around 82.4°F, the battery temperature stayed between 100.4°F and 104.0°F in most games, and only Blood Strike at 185 fps pushed it to 110°F. I never saw the tablet slow down because of heat, even after hours of back-to-back sessions.

Diablo mode is a different story. When I pushed Fortnite to its absolute limit, with its 120 fps mode enabled, the game ran smoothly, but the temperature climbed all the way to 127°F. Yes, the tablet got pretty warm. Once I closed the game, though, the liquid cooling system brought the temperature down to 110°F in roughly three minutes, and within six minutes, it had dropped below 102°F.

The liquid cooling system works well beyond games, as well. After running a synthetic benchmark test, the battery and board sensors had soared to 104°F and 111°F, respectively. Five minutes later, the numbers had dropped to 91°F and 93°F for the battery and board, respectively. The speed of cooling came as a pleasant surprise to me.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 also makes the Astra 2 one of the most capable Android devices for running PC games through compatibility layers like GameHub. Older titles such as Halo run at over 60 fps, and even Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is playable at 60fps on low graphics settings with upscaling and frame generation enabled. Demanding games like The Witcher 3 and Crysis Remastered also run well, but you’ll need to drop the resolution and juice up frame generation.

Compatibility is still hit-or-miss, though, and online multiplayer PC games usually get blocked by anti-cheat software. It’s a fun bonus rather than a reason to buy the tablet. As you flick the red switch, Game Space takes over the screen with a console-style launcher environment for games and plenty of customization options. Your games appear in a carousel, and you can adjust graphics, controls, and performance for each one.

Swiping in from the corners during a game brings up the Energy Cube overlay, which is where most of the useful controls live. There are four performance profiles. Eco for saving battery, Balanced for everyday play, Rise for unlocked CPU and GPU clocks, and Diablo, which goes all out and is designed for use with an external clip-on cooler. A feature called Super Picture Quality uses on-device AI to upscale games and interpolate the frames for higher fps output.

You can also turn off Android’s edge gestures so a stray swipe doesn’t throw you out of a game mid-fight. Beyond that, there are tactical plugins such as on-screen crosshairs, color filters that make enemies easier to spot in dark areas, and an optional AI coach. Some of them feel like cheat codes, and they will almost certainly get you banned from competitive tournaments. Console Mode lets you send a 4K gaming interface to a TV or monitor over USB-C, which turns the Astra 2 into a decent living room setup.

Score: 8/10

REDMAGIC Astra 2 Software: Loaded and bloated

The Astra 2 runs REDMAGIC OS 11.5 on top of Android 16. It’s a heavy re-skinning, mind you! REDMAGIC’s software has been its strength (thanks to all those plug-ins and customizations) and a crucial weakness, with flashy styling, buggy launchers, and awkwardly translated menus. I’m happy to report that this version is much cleaner, though not a full salvation.

Out of the box, the interface sticks close to Google’s Material You design, with a standard app drawer, round icons, and settings menus where you’d expect them. REDMAGIC has also finally added Google Discover to the left of the home screen, which was missing on its earlier devices. If you still want the cyberpunk look, gaudy themes and fonts are just a toggle away.

As a gaming and entertainment device, the Astra 2 is superb. As a work machine, it’s limited. Split-screen and floating windows are both there, so I could watch a video while replying to messages or keep notes open next to a browser. But the 9-inch screen doesn’t have enough room for two full productivity apps side by side.

REDMAGIC also lacks a native desktop mode like Samsung DeX or OnePlus Open Canvas, so the Astra 2 stays firmly in phone app territory rather than working as a laptop stand-in. The setup process is a tad annoying. The setup wizard tries to preselect around a dozen third-party apps and casual games for download, and I had to uncheck them one by one.

Even after that, the tablet ships with a few pre-installed apps, along with a handful of casual games. There are also a few duplicate system utilities, some of which can’t be purged. I cleaned most of it up in under an hour, but it shouldn’t be my job in the first place, and it somewhat dilutes an otherwise stellar experience of all using an all-out tablet.

The biggest weakness of the Astra 2 is how long it will be supported. Apple, Google, and Samsung now offer six to seven years of OS upgrades and security patches. REDMAGIC’s policy depends on where you live.

Buyers in the European Union get up to five years of support, thanks to regional regulations. Everywhere else, including North America, REDMAGIC promises just two major Android upgrades and three years of security updates. For a tablet that costs as much, it’s a major problem if you expect to use it for several years.

Score: 7/10

REDMAGIC Astra 2 battery and charging: Fast, with an unexpected perk

The REDMAGIC Astra 2 comes equipped with an 8,300mAh battery, a small step up from the original Astra. Despite the powerful chip and high-refresh screen, the uptake is fairly frugal in everyday use. In my web browsing-based work disguised as a test, the tablet lasted around 8-9 hours, which is more than enough for a full day of usage. If you binge-watch a TV series or films, it can easily go around 9 hours.

Thankfully, standby battery drain is low. I left the tablet idle on my desk for a week, and it used less than 30% of its battery. Of course, heavy games drain the battery much faster. Starting at 99%, I played demanding titles back to back for about three hours with the screen at 185Hz and ended at 31%. That works out to roughly 25% for nearly every hour, or about 4-4.5 hours of heavy gaming on a full charge.

If you switch to Diablo mode, it will cut those per-charge numbers further down and lead to heating, as well. That’s a big drop compared with browsing, but it’s still roughly double what you’d get from handhelds like the Steam Deck or Asus ROG Ally. Lighter casual games can stretch runtime much further.

Charging is fast, thankfully, and without the usual heating caveat. With a USB-C Power Delivery brick that supports the tablet’s 75W protocol, the Astra 2 went from empty to 67% in 30 minutes, and reached a full tank in 55 minutes. Both USB-C ports support the full 75W top-up, so you can run the cable out of whichever edge suits your grip.

REDMAGIC also includes Charge Separation tech on this tablet. With this feature enabled, power from the adapter goes straight to the processor and skips the battery entirely. That cuts down on the heat generated by charging while gaming, and in turn, helps preserve battery health over long sessions. If you game while plugged in, this is the mode you want to pick.

Score: 8/10

Should you buy?

If you’re buying a tablet mainly for games, the answer is a resounding yes. The REDMAGIC Astra 2 is the best Android gaming tablet I’ve used, and it proves that liquid cooling in a compact 9-inch body is more than just a gimmick. The combination of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, a 185Hz 2.4K OLED screen, a flat back, and dual fast-charging ports makes it a fantastic portable machine for mobile gamers, emulation fans, and anyone who simply wants the fastest small tablet around. Its sustained performance, bright screen, and bypass charging give it an edge that bigger mainstream tablets can’t match.

It’s a much harder sell for everyone else. At $699, it competes directly with heavy-hitting tablets that do far more outside of games. On top of it, the preinstalled clutter, the easily muffled speakers, the lack of stylus and cellular support, and the short update promise outside Europe make it a tough recommendation as a digital sketchbook or even a daily productivity companion. In a nutshell, if gaming, emulation, and watching video on a gorgeous compact OLED screen are your priorities, buy the Astra 2 without second thoughts. If you need long-term software support, stylus input, or real productivity apps, your money will take you further elsewhere.

Final Score: 8/10

Why not try

Apple iPad mini (2026)

The iPad mini remains the benchmark for small tablets, and the new model narrows the gap with an OLED screen and the A20 Pro chip. It doesn’t have the Astra 2’s high refresh rate or active cooling, so it won’t hold peak performance as long under heavy loads. In return, you get a more polished build, Apple Pencil support, iPadOS apps that are actually designed for tablets, and many more years of software updates. Just be aware that the most powerful version of its chip is reserved for the pricier storage tiers.

Lenovo Legion Tab (Gen 5)

This one is the Astra 2’s most direct Android rival, and owing to the high demand, it’s usually out of stock. This sleek slate offers a similar compact, gaming-first design, snappy performance, and dual USB-C ports for a little less money. If you want a dedicated Android gaming tablet but can’t justify REDMAGIC’s price, the Legion Tab is the one I’d look at first.

iPad Air (M4)

In case you prefer to spend your money on a do-everything tablet, the iPad Air is the safer choice. The Apple M4 chip is plenty fast. It works with the excellent Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil, and the 11-inch screen is better suited for productive tasks like editing, drawing, schoolwork, and more. It’s not a handheld gaming machine like the Astra 2, but it does almost everything else better.

How I tested

I tested the REDMAGIC Astra 2 for two months and pitted it against a handful of other tablets, including the iPad mini, the iPad Pro, and the OnePlus Pad 4. During the test period, I played a variety of native Android games as well as emulated titles on this tablet. For charging tests, I used a standard 100W brick with a USB-C to USB-C cable.

Gaming sessions were conducted in a variety of places, including public parks on a sunny day, the sitting area of a heated coffee shop, and my own drawing room. To get the most accurate thermal readings, I tested the tablet without a case. Additionally, all the benchmarks and gaming tests were run across the Rise, Eco, Balanced, and Diablo modes, both with and without liquid cooling enabled.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

What’s the asking price of the tablet?

The base model (12GB RAM + 256GB storage) costs $699, while the top-end trim (16GB RAM + 512GB storage) is priced at $799.

What about the cooling tech, and does it work?

The tablet comes equipped with a 12-layer cooling system that includes flowing liquid coolant, liquid metal, and a vapor chamber.

Does it heat while charging and playing games simultaneously?

The tablet supports bypass charging, which means the battery is cut off, so the tablet runs relatively cooler during top-up.

How long does the battery last on a single charge? Does it support fast charging?

The battery is expected to last anywhere between 8-9 hours of 60fps gaming, but the real-life mileage is about 30-45% lower than the rated figures.

Is it available to buy in the US?

Yeah, you can place the order directly from REDMAGIC’s global site.