nubia RedMagic 10 Air review

A nice dual 50MP camera setup

You don't typically go out looking for a gaming device for its cameras, but they can still be a nice little bonus. The RedMagic 10 Air only has a couple of rear cameras, but they look pretty good, at least on paper.

The main camera is a 50MP shooter based on the OmniVision OV50E sensor. It has a 7P lens design and OIS. The other rear camera is a 50MP ultrawide with an OV50D sensor. The ultrawide has autofocus, so it can double as a macro shooter.

• Wide (main): 50 MP OmniVision OV50E, f/1.9, 1/1.55", 1.0µm, PDAF, OIS; 8K@30fps, 2160p@60fps
• Ultra wide angle: 50 MP OmniVision OV50D, f/2.2, 1/2.88", 0.612µm; Autofocus; 8K@30fps, 2160p@60fps
• Front camera: 16 MP OmniVision OV16EQ, f/2.0, 1/2.77", 1.12µm; 1080p@30fps

On the front is a 16MP fixed-focus selfie cam based on the OmniVision OV16EQ sensor.

There is nothing particularly noteworthy about the camera app. It is well-organized and with plenty of options and additional modes. All the basic settings are easily accessible, and surprisingly, most are even well-translated.

Daylight photo quality

Main camera

The main camera captures really solid 1x photos. The detail is great, and so is the dynamic range. The colors look pretty good and mostly natural. The contrast could have been a bit better, but that's nitpicking.

RedMagic 10 Air: 12.5MP main camera samples

Human subjects come out looking very nice. The RedMagic 10 Air can capture portraits with its main camera at the default 24mm-equivalent focal length or at 33mm equivalent.

RedMagic 10 Air: 12.5MP main camera portrait samples

Subject detection and separation are nearly spot-on. The quality of the background blur is also solid.

You can force the main camera to shoot in its full 50MP resolution, but you probably don't want to go through the extra hassle since these shots don't actually have more fine detail. They are a bit less processed and do look slightly more natural, but that's only evident when pixel-peeping.

RedMagic 10 Air: 50MP main camera samples

There is no dedicated telephoto camera, but you can still capture some pretty nice 2x digital zoom shots with the main camera. These generally share the excellent quality characteristics of the 1x shots but are ever-so-slightly softer.

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide camera doesn't do quite as well as the main one, but it still does a solid job overall. The detail is good, and so are the colors. Dynamic range is also decent, though it could be better, and the same goes for the contrast.

RedMagic 10 Air: 12MP ultrawide camera samples

Edge sharpness is pretty good, and so is the barrel distortion correction.

Interestingly enough, the ultrawide captures stills in exactly 12MP by default instead of 12.5MP, as you would expect from the binning process. And the full-resolution shots from the ultrawide, oddly, come out in 48MP instead of 50MP. Maybe some of the field of view is cropped out by a geometric distortion correction.

RedMagic 10 Air: 48MP ultrawide camera samples

These full-resolution photos are a little less processed and a bit softer, but again, they are not that different from the regular shots and probably not really worth the hassle.

The ultrawide camera has autofocus and can double as a macro shooter with quite impressive results.

RedMagic 10 Air: 12MP ultrawide camera macro samples

Selfie camera

The selfie camera is decent but unimpressive. Perhaps it is impressive for an under-display camera, but not in general. The detail is alright, and so are the colors.

RedMagic 10 Air: 16MP selfie camera samples

You have to be careful with light and glare off of the display.

Low-light camera quality

The main camera does quite alright in low-light conditions. The detail is there, the contrast is good, and so is the dynamic range. The light sources are well-handled, and shadows are boosted pretty skillfully.

RedMagic 10 Air: 12.5MP main camera low-light samples

What we don't like as much is the sort of aggressive processing and heavy-handed sharpening being applied.

There is an automatic night mode that triggers pretty consistently as it should. There seems to be no manual night mode beyond that, or at least we didn't find it.

Here are some low-light shots from the main camera at 2x zoom. These overall look quite similar to their 1x counterparts but are a bit softer.

RedMagic 10 Air: 12.5MP main camera low-light 2x zoom samples

The ultrawide camera captures nice levels of detail with good contrast and colors. There is very little noise and only slight softness on surfaces, particularly near the edges of the frame. Light sources are a bit blown out.

RedMagic 10 Air: 12MP ultrawide camera low-light samples

The selfie camera is the weakest link in the chain. As it sits below the display, the actual display pixels catch and refract all of the light and cause really annoying streaks across the frame. Even beyond that, the detail isn't particularly great.

RedMagic 10 Air: 16MP selfie camera low-light samples

Video capture quality

Both rear cameras on the RedMagic 10 Air can actually capture up to 8K@30fps video and 4K@60fps. That's quite rare on an ultrawide. By default, videos get captured in AVC/h.264 stream of around 40 to 50 Mbps at 4K with a stereo AAC stream inside an MP4 container. You can alternatively choose to capture in HEVC/h.265 and save some storage.

Quality-wise, both cameras do very well. Naturally, the main cam has the edge in sharpness and detail, but the ultrawide is also surprisingly clean. You can have EIS at 4K on both cameras, which is nice. The stabilization works really well.

You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.