Forget iPad Pro and Steam Deck: This Android tablet is the ultimate gaming handheld

We live in the age of the gaming handheld renaissance. Steam Deck, Nintendo Switch, Lenovo Legion Go, Ayn Odin… all of these amazing handhelds have proven indispensable at keeping gamers connected to their games throughout their busy everyday lives.

But there’s a new product that, I feel, can blow many of these other handhelds out of the water with pure versatility, portability and awesomeness. And it’s the RedMagic Astra 2 gaming tablet.

A gaming tablet makes a ton of sense

To be sure, gaming on a phone can be great. Gaming on a full-blown handheld like the Steam Deck is great. Heck, even gaming on a powerful mainstream tablet, like the iPad Pro, can be a ton of fun.

But the combination of well-balanced portability, Android, and powerful gaming software has made the RedMagic Astra 2 a surprisingly fabulous choice for handheld gaming.
To get it out of the way, the iPad Pro has incredibly powerful hardware and access to a super-rich catalog of native games of all types, including free-to-play blockbusters like Call of Duty: Mobile, as well as premium titles like Civilization VI.

And this is awesome; however, Android’s native selection of titles is more or less the same, but where it massively outranks iPadOS for gaming is its support for game engine ports (like idTech4a++, Quad Touch, Source, Xash3D, etc.), PC emulators (GameNative, GameHub, Winlator), and console emulators (NetherSX2, Eden, Dolphin, X1Box, etc.)

With all these tools in the bag, a powerful gaming Android tablet like RedMagic’s Astra 2 can become the ultimate playground for hardcore gamers, even more so than a dedicated handheld like the Steam Deck. Let’s see exactly why…

Here’s what makes the RedMagic Astra 2 the ultimate gaming handheld

Advantage 1: Massive display of extreme quality

Compared to most handhelds, the Astra 2’s 9” OLED panel is significantly bigger, which is very beneficial to the overall gaming experience.

Not only that, but it’s in the ideal 16:10 aspect ratio, has super-high brightness output, is a beautiful, fast OLED screen that can go up to 185 Hz, plus it has a very high resolution that is not only tailored to gaming, but also reading, browsing, and all other tablet use cases.

Advantage 2: Way more portable than a gaming handheld

Despite the large display, a tablet is a tablet, meaning that it’s super slim and relatively light. Traveling with a Steam Deck is a chore. Not only is it big, but it also has protruding, moving parts that can get damaged, like joysticks, for example. You’ll typically want to keep it in its carrying case, which is quite bulky. It is basically one extra bag you need to carry around.

The RedMagic Astra 2 weighs 363 grams and is just 6.9mm thin, so it can be easily slipped into any laptop bag or backpack, which you’ll most likely be carrying with you either way. It doesn’t need dedicated storage – it fits into what you’re already carrying.

Advantage 3: You get to pick your controller

There’s a ton of telescopic controllers out there, like the very popular GameSir X5s. Not all of them can extend enough to accommodate the Astra 2, but a bunch of them can, and the cool thing is you get to pick the one that suits you best.

You don’t like the joysticks or button layout on the Steam Deck or ROG Ally? Well, sorry, you’re stuck with them. But with the RedMagic Astra 2, you can always get a different controller and thus transform your gaming handheld experience.

Even with a telescopic controller attached, the Astra 2’s combined weight is about 650 grams, which is close to that of a Steam Deck, and considerably lighter than a Legion Go (S).

Advantage 4: You can use it as a tablet and keep playing with touch controls

While not strictly gaming-focused, the benefit of being able to remove the Astra 2 from the controller and use it as a regular, 9” tablet is difficult to overlook.

You can do all the normal tablet things on it, run all the apps you want, browse the web, read books, watch YouTube… Many of these things you can also do on a gaming handheld, but it’s way quicker, more enjoyable and convenient with the RedMagic Astra 2.

Not to mention, the portability of the 9” form-factor is definitely something, compared to most other tablets out there, which nowadays often try to be full-on laptop replacements rather than handheld devices.

Speaking of that, you can actually keep playing almost any game out there even if you don’t have a physical controller attached, thanks to highly customizable touchscreen controls.

Sure, the experience isn’t as convenient and efficient as with a hardware controller, but touch controls can be surprisingly workable if you spend a few minutes to tailor them to your liking. This just adds extra flexibility points for the Astra 2.

Advantage 5: RedMagic’s Rise and Diablo performance modes unlock even more gaming

Thousands of games from many different platforms run and emulate perfectly; however, there are some that suffer from performance issues. If you were to play them on a standard, mainstream phone or tablet, you’d have no way to get them running smoothly.

However, the performance modes available in RedMagic’s gaming overlay allow you to crank the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 to its peak performance, and that very often fixes any performance hiccups, or simply increases the frames per second further.

This is just another example showing that if the people behind a product truly understand the needs of their audience, they can create useful solutions that in turn make their product even more desirable.

For example, I’ve always been interested in playing Unreal Championship 2, originally available for XBox (like, the original XBox). But I’ve never owned an XBox, and Microsoft has never cared enough about this to consider porting this particular game to the PC.

With XBox emulation now starting to be a thing, I was able to run UC2 on the Astra 2 using the X1Box emulator (or its fork, hakuX). Which is awesome, if you think about it – I can finally play Unreal Championship 2, some 20 years after its release!

The only problem was, that particular game doesn’t run very well, experiencing frequent stutters and low FPS, often to the point that it would be unplayable on most mainstream phones and tablets. But, switching over to the Diablo performance mode allowed me to run it buttery smooth on my RedMagic Astra 2. How cool is that?

Advantage 6: Battery life is better than that of an x86 gaming handheld

Unlike most handheld consoles, the RedMagic Astra 2 is an Android tablet, meaning it’s an ARM-powered device. As such, it tends to sip energy, rather than gobble it up like an x86 device would.

As long as you can stay away from the high-performance Rise and Diablo modes, playing games on the Astra 2 would be a fairly power-efficient endeavor, compared to playing them on an x86 device, like the Steam Deck, often getting you hours upon hours of battery life more.

There’s also support for charging separation (bypass charging), allowing you to play indefinitely without taxing the battery with extra heat or charging cycles.

The Astra 2 even has an extra USB Type C port on the bottom to let you connect a cable conveniently, without interfering with the controller you may have attached.

There are many other advantages, but I’ll just stop at that, because this article is already getting way too long. With that said, though, let me walk you through some of the important disadvantages you may run into if you go for the RedMagic Astra 2 as your main handheld gaming device.

Disadvantage 1: Compatibility with some PC games still needs work

I’ll start with this. It’s not a RedMagic thing, but a software platform thing, and it’ll certainly get better with time. But at this particular point, I’m confident that I’d be able to run roughly 60% of my Steam library. This is a ballpark estimate, not a scientifically derived number.

To me, this number is very high, and it’s amazing that we’re even able to do that, all thanks to tools like GameNative, Winlator and GameHub. But it’s just important to know that getting this success rate requires a healthy amount of tinkering. And, some games will just not run at all, due to incompatibility.

The Steam Deck, which is running a Linux platform, also doesn’t have a 100% compatibility rate, but it’s still way better, because it’s a x86 device, and we’re trying to execute x86 software here after all.

I just feel this is important to know, so if you’re considering a purchase and being able to play a particular title is critical to you, I’d suggest that you first do some research to see if it can be gotten to run on Android. Most often, it’s games that use their own supporting software or have their own dedicated launchers that don’t work.

The same goes for consoles that are notoriously hard to emulate, like the original XBox or the PS3.

Disadvantage 2: No built-in trigger buttons

One of the greatest features of RedMagic phones is the built-in trigger buttons. These are actually touch-sensitive trigger touchpads, but I’ll stick to calling them buttons for ease of expression.

Having these buttons means that you can play games with a hybrid controller involving the touchscreen + the trigger buttons, which, for many games, tends to be way more efficient and useful than just using the touchscreen controller.

However, due to perfectly understandable reasons, the RedMagic Astra 2 does not have trigger buttons. Having them on the left and right edges of the top side (when in landscape), as they are laid out on the phone, doesn’t make much sense here, because it’d make for an uncomfortable and unnatural holding position.

RedMagic has tried some software tricks, like using the gyroscope or software to simulate trigger key action, but this just doesn’t work. It’s too unreliable, complicated, and fiddly.

The only logical solution would be to somehow integrated similar touch-sensitive trigger pads on the back of the tablet. I could see this working, but it’s obviously not trivial to get it right.

I think having some sort of built-in trigger buttons on the Astra line is important, because it’d further evolve it into a fully functional, standalone gaming handheld device that can be even more useful on its own, even when you didn’t want to bring a controller, or didn’t have space for it, or whatever.

There’s just something to being able to comfortably game on such a thin and light device, without sacrificing too much in terms of ability or convenience.

Oh well, perhaps that will be the major innovation in the RedMagic Astra 3 next year?

Disadvantage 3: No super-slim gaming controller available

RedMagic offers its own gaming controller, called Shadow Blade Gamepad 3. It looks extremely cool, but it’s mostly a rebranded (and more expensive) version of the GameSir X5s.

As cool and compact as it is, this gamepad still adds a fair bit of thickness to the device. This isn’t a design flaw or anything like that, of course. It’s just made for ergonomics, which is great.

However, because the Astra 2 itself is so thin, wouldn’t it be cool if RedMagic came up with an extra-thin telescopic controller that may be slightly less ergonomic but adds minimal thickness to what is such a thin and portable device?

We know it can be done, because the JoyCons of the Nintendo Switch are basically that.

As far as I know, there are no Bluetooth controllers out there like that, so this may be a genuine differentiation feature for RedMagic in the future.

No other disadvantages

And, that’s pretty much it. I can’t think of anything else that would be a major disadvantage to the Astra 2 or the gaming experience with it. Do let me know in the comments if I’ve missed any!

Of course, the higher price this year is bad news. It went from $500 - $550 for the original Astra, all the way up to $750 for the Astra 2.

But this is not a disadvantage compared to other consoles, tablets and gaming handhelds, because if you can name one that didn’t get a price increase this year, you’ll get your comment featured as an award.

That’s just the AI tax all of us have to pay right now. But this is a whole other topic, and a way less cool one, so let’s just leave it for some other time, shall we?

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