I Own 3 Tablets And Only One Of Them Is In A Class Of Its Own

I currently have three tablets — a 6th-generation iPad, a 13-inch iPad Air M2, and the Redmagic Astra — but only one of them made me use tablets a lot more. Honestly, I've never been a fan of tablets, even though I review them for a living. I got my hands on a 6th-generation iPad as part of my flight training package. While it was pretty useful for navigation while I was in the air (versus using paper maps), that was pretty much the only thing I used it for. I felt that the iPad's 9.7-inch screen made it too unwieldy for playing games, but it's also too small to do any serious work on it while I'm on the ground, especially as I have multiple open windows and tabs when I'm writing.

That's why I bought the 13-inch iPad Air M2 as soon as it became available. Its larger screen made it the perfect device for editing my photos, and it also served as a backup and secondary screen to my MacBook Air. However, my biggest gripe with it is that the screen tends to dim after several minutes of using it, particularly if I'm running heavy applications like Lightroom. This is likely caused by thermal throttling, as I can feel the tablet getting a bit warm to the touch, too. And while it cannot be avoided, it makes working for me harder, as I prefer cranking the tablet to its maximum setting when I'm locked in. Because of this, I just ended up lugging around my Apple laptop everywhere I went — that is, until I got to check out the Redmagic Astra.

I was at first skeptical about how useful I would find this smaller tablet — after all, it only had a 9.06-inch screen, which made it even smaller than my original iPad. But the more time I spent using it, the more I fell in love with it. In fact, it has now become my main device for entertainment, media consumption, and photo editing. It's already been weeks since I last used my iPad Air, and I've even stopped playing games on my smartphones.

The biggest thing that made the Astra my favorite tablet is its OLED screen. It can hit a peak brightness of 1600 nits, with a typical brightness of 1,000 nits, meaning I get to clearly see whatever I'm working on. Furthermore, I have yet to experience any thermal throttling on the device, likely because of the built-in fan that helps keep it cool even with prolonged heavy use. It also boasts a 165 Hz refresh rate, making it way smoother than my iPads, especially for gaming. So, even though it has less screen real estate than my two Apple tablets, it's a compromise I'm willing to make because of its excellent display.

Now, the Redmagic Astra is certainly larger than any mobile phone, but I still find it easy to lug around in my shoulder bag, unlike my iPad Air, which will only fit in my laptop bag. This is why I can say that this Android device is a game changer for me, as it has changed my tablet habits. I now rely on it for most of my photo editing work and a little bit of notetaking and use it a lot for gaming and watching YouTube and Netflix.