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During my period of use Red Magic 11 AirI had moments where I could see how this was happening phone It could be a great deal to her Price $499. Many of the hardware features I love from the more expensive Pro models made it to the Air largely unchanged: it has a large 7,000 mAh battery, 80W wired charging, a 6.85-inch HD display devoid of any display cutouts and a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor (a slight step down from the top devices). Snapdragon 8 Elite Generation 5 chip) that makes games like Red Dead Redemption and Crazy Taxi run quickly.
The RedMagic 11 Air has 80W wired charging.
But then I actually started using the Air as a phone and saw almost all of the same software quirks that bothered me during my stay last fall Red Magic 11 Pro. The RedMagic OS comes with a lot of the same bloat, including a custom RedMagic feed that replaces Google’s Discover feed, and an Inspired Wallpaper app that has the same typos and hideous watermark applied to all images, which you have to turn off.
The phone also only gets three years of software and security updates, which is very low for a phone in this price range, but not as bad as the $749 Pro, which competes with the seven-year updates on Google and Samsung’s flagship phones.
The RedMagic 11 Air has a 50MP wide camera and an 8MP ultra-wide camera on the back.
I did notice some improvements, like how RedMagic’s web browser app no longer shows an ad every time I open it, which was a big problem during my time with the Pro. And the Air makes a lot of smart choices when trimming its price from the $749 Pro: Although it lacks liquid cooling, the phone has an LED logo on the back with customizable lights.
The Air doesn’t have a headphone jack or wireless charging, but the phone does include a cooling fan and a shortcut button to launch the console-style Game Space menu.
Speaking of the Air, this is by no means a thin or light phone at 207 grams (7.3 ounces), but the moniker makes sense when you think of it as a high-end model.
The front camera is located below the screen, resulting in an uninterrupted screen for gaming and media.
Although photography is never a priority on a gaming phone, I was pleasantly surprised with the photos on the Air for its price, as long as I stuck with the rear camera system that includes a 50-megapixel main camera and an 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera.
I took this photo of a charcuterie board while having dinner with my friend Kevin. In the darker frame, the camera got a lot of detail on the different cubes of cheese, bread, and beef.
The photo was taken with the 50MP RedMagic 11 Air camera.
Then I took a photo of my friend staring into the distance. The photo manages to get his face into sharp focus while providing a slight bokeh effect on the background behind him.
Taken on RedMagic 11 Air.
But it is better to use the 16-megapixel front camera sparingly. This is partly due to the placement of the front camera bottom of the screenwhich is great for viewing content but makes taking selfies and video calls a challenge to avoid the smeared effect.
Captured with the 16MP RedMagic 11 Air front camera.
I captured these two selfie attempts with my colleague Tara Brown while we were filming the RedMagic 11 Air unboxing video. Even with bright lighting, these images struggle to get any detail. Both our faces look completely washed out.
You can change the color of the logo on the back of the RedMagic 11 Air.
The RedMagic 11 Air is definitely a more specialized device. If you are interested in using this device as a pocket-friendly Android gaming device for making calls, at $499 for 256GB of storage or $599 for 512GBHowever, I can see the value for someone who plans to customize this phone heavily with Android launchers. But for most people looking for a value-packed phone that also lets them play games, they can simply find plenty of options for it Good cheap phones now.