RedMagic Astra 2 review

A superb 9-inch display

The RedMagic Astra 2 packs an amazing 9.06-inch OLED display with 2,400 x 1,504 pixels (313ppi). It supports 10-bit color depth, up to 185Hz refresh rate and HDR10 video support.

The screen is protected by Gorilla Glass 3 and is completely flat.

The panel should be capable of 1,000 nits of typical brightness and 1,600 nits of peak brightness, according to the official specs.

We measured 983 nits of maximum automatic brightness with our regular 75% white patch. Then we got 1,063 nits when using a 10% white patch played on an HDR video.

There is also this option called Enhanced Display Mode. It offers a small boost in brightness, saturation, and contrast at the expense of higher power consumption. But even with EDM turned on, the brightness numbers barely budged.

The minimum brightness was about 2.5 nits, which is not great but not terrible either.

Refresh rate

The Astra 2 screen supports up to 185Hz refresh rate, up from 165Hz on the OG Astra. The available refresh rate modes include Auto, Standard (60Hz), Medium (120Hz) and High (185Hz).

The Auto mode uses 120Hz pretty much everywhere, including games and benchmarks. You will get a higher refresh rate only in specific games, as part of the Game Space.

Standard mode offers fixed 60Hz refresh rate across the board, while Medium fixes 120Hz everywhere.

And, as far as we could test, High mode (185Hz) is also locked at 185Hz for everything, except for incompatible apps such as Camera, where the system drops down to a more reasonable 120Hz.

The screen doesn't drop below 60Hz as it's not LTPO.

HDR

The screen supports HDR10 and is recognized as HDR10-capable by all hardware-scanning apps. YouTube does serve high-def HDR content. Unfortunately, Netflix offers 1080p streaming but not in HDR, but that can change after launch once the platform confirms the device capabilities.

Battery life

The RedMagic Astra 2 is powered by an 8,300 mAh battery, up from the 8,200 mAh in the first Astra.

The new Astra posted a 10:24h Active Use Score, which is in the same ballpark as its predecessor. It can last almost 7:15h of gaming, which is a solid performance for this level of hardware.

Since tablets rarely have cellular connectivity, we use WhatsApp for the call test in our tablet reviews. If you prefer to remove the call component from the calculation of the tablet's Active Use Score, you can easily do that by moving its corresponding slider to zero.

Charging speed

The RedMagic Astra 2 supports up to 75W fast wired charging. The EU version of the slate ships without a charger, but you can use any USB-PD-compatible adapter on the market. For our test, we used the 80W RedMagic charger that came bundled with the latest RedMagic 11S Pro smartphone.

In our dedicated charging test, the 80W RedMagic adapter recharged 41% of the Astra 2 battery in 15 minutes, and we clocked 68% charge at the 30-minute mark. A full charge of the 8,300 mAh battery took 54 minutes, which is quite fast.

If needed, you can also enable/disable bypass charging (called Charge separation). It powers on the tablet without charging the battery, so you avoid the heat buildup related to the charging process, which might compromise the device's performance if you are gaming while charging.

Speakers

The RedMagic Astra 2 was not large enough to fit a 4-speaker system, apparently. The tablet has just two symmetrical speakers across its shorter sides, but they are rather large and come with DTS:X Ultra certification.

The speakers scored a Very Good mark at our loudness test, which is louder than the previous model. The audio quality is great with rich and deep output across the board.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.