Club Benefits
High performance at a low price is not something that most phone makers prioritize. Instead, the biggest brands around have been focusing on building up their flagship phones to new heights of both power and cost, and in a few cases, creating new, lighter "Air" editions of those phones to both show off their engineering skills and try to attract users who think modern smartphones are just too big.
But these two seemingly incompatible design directions have converged in the RedMagic 11 Air, a cheaper, slimmer version of the flagship RedMagic 11 Pro that still offers flagship-grade specs where it counts. And it's a kind of gaming phone that I think I want to see more of.
The thinness
You could hardly call the 11 Pro expensive at a base price of $749/£628, but the 11 Air is still cheaper, starting at $529/£439, or $629/£529 for the higher-spec version. That's around the same price as the $499/£499 Google Pixel 9a, the benchmark for the best cheap phones around.
It's also far cheaper than entry-level flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE ($649/£649) or the OnePlus 15R ($699/£649), which is where you'd normally have to look to get the same tier of performance specs.
That said, you may not feel the RedMagic 11 Air deserves its airy name. Measuring 0.31 inches thick, it's 40% thicker than the iPhone Air, or 34% thicker than the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. It's also about 25% heavier than both.
But even then, compared to the chunky designs we see on other gaming-focused handsets, the RedMagic 11 Airis is still pretty svelte while offering a display just as large. The RedMagic 11 Pro, for instance, is the same width and height as the Air, but is 10% thicker.
The power
The heart of the RedMagic 11 Air, both literally and figuratively, is the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. This is not the latest 8 Elite Gen 5 found in the 11 Pro or other new premium Androids like the OnePlus 15 (and likely soon the Galaxy S26 series), but it's still one of the most powerful chips you can get in a phone right now.
The benchmarks prove this. It's not that far behind its bigger sibling, the 11 Pro, in the Geekbench CPU test, and is ahead on the Wild Life GPU test. And the Pixel 9a's Tensor G4 chip never stood a chance.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | RedMagic 11 Air | RedMagic 11 Pro | Google Pixel 9a |
Chipset | Snapdragon 8 Elite | Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 | Google Tensor G4 |
Geekbench 6 score (single-core / multi-core) | 3,075 / 9,876 | 3,653 / 11,022 | 1,707 / 4,512 |
3DMark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited result (score / av. FPS) | 6,807 / 40.76 | 6,702 / 40.13 | 2,634 / 15.77 |
The 11 Air is available with either 256GB or 512GB of storage. The former comes with 12GB RAM, the latter with 16GB. Both of those are considerable amounts of memory, given the advent of RAMageddon, so seeing this in RedMagic's cheaper model is encouraging.
To further enhance your gaming, RedMagic has brought over its Pro series' capacitive triggers to give you more comfortable controls in your favorite titles. A "Magic Key" on the top left edge of the phone is used to open up the Game Space interface, where all your downloaded games can be easily accessed, along with performance settings you can assign on a game-by-game basis.
Even though it's thin and cheap, the RedMagic 11 Air still has a cooling fan with RGB lighting, though it's better hidden than on the 11 Pro. Combined with a vapor chamber cooling system and graphene layers to help move the heat around, it's got everything it needs to maintain high performance. That warmth does end up passing through to the back, though, so while the chip may not be feeling the heat, you certainly will if you play anything intensive for long periods.
The value
Gaming phones need to be effective phones as well as pocket-sized consoles. So let's go over the rest of this phone to see ifit deserves the cash you'd otherwise spend on a different phone or dedicated gaming handheld.
You can choose either Phantom black or Prism white colors for the RedMagic 11 Air, both of which are made with RedMagic's trademark flat-backed, "transparent" design. It's not showing you exactly what's under the phone's skin, but a specially designed cover that highlights certain elements.
It looks good in either option, at least until you touch it - this is one of the worst phones for picking up fingerprints I've tried in the past several years. RedMagic should have included a microfiber cloth in the box.
For your camera needs, the RedMagic 11 Air offers a 50MP main camera, an 8MP ultrawide and a 16MP under-display front camera.
As you might suspect, they don't provide the best photos, even considering the phone's price. Just check out the comparisons I've included in this section. But since this is a gaming phone, hopefully you don't intend to spend too much time snapping if you want to buy it.
For protection, the RedMagic 11 Air features an aluminum body with Gorilla Glass 7i on the front and Gorilla Glass 5 on the back. It's also rated IP54 for dust and water, which isn't bad given the phone has, by necessity, a big hole in the side for the fan to take in and expel air. Tougher glass would have been nice, but it's an understandable compromise for RedMagic to have made to hit this price point.
The 6.85-inch OLED display and its 144Hz refresh rate are on par with those of the top gaming phones on the market right now. However, the display's brightness is a bit of a let-down, making outdoor gaming a little tricky even here in an overcast London.
At least the under-display camera means there's no awkward hole in whatever you're playing or watching - it's genuinely impressive how well RedMagic and its partner companies have managed to hide selfie cameras in their phones.
Despite this being an "Air" model, you still have a 7,000 mAh battery with 80W wired charging, and a compatible power brick in the box (a rarity for any phone, let alone a budget one). I've never had this device run out of battery unexpectedly while carrying it around, and when I run this phone through one of our in-house battery tests, I'm sure we'll get some impressive results.
Final thoughts
In their quest for ultimate power, gaming phones ignore elements that we'd harshly criticize in the case of a different device. Some aim to be a more balanced experience, but still fall short. But in aiming at a slightly different set of targets, the RedMagic 11 Air manages to find what seems like a sweet spot.
This phone is still not one you'll want to take many photos with, and its design is a little too bold to recommend to some people. Its performance remains worthy of a gaming phone, however, and the price, battery specs, and display size make the buying decision even easier.
The RedMagic 11 Air may not be a good slim phone. But so far, in my time with it, it feels like a fantastic, slim gaming phone.
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