During my time using the RedMagic 11 Air, I had moments that I could see how this phone could be a great deal for its $499 price. Many of the hardware features I like from the more-expensive Pro models have made it to the pared-back Air largely unchanged: It has the big 7,000-mAh battery, 80-watt wired charging, a high-resolution 6.85-inch screen free of any display cutouts and a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor (a slight step down from the highest-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip) that quickly boots up games like Red Dead Redemption and Crazy Taxi.

But then I actually start using the Air as a phone and see nearly all the same software quirks that annoyed me during my time with last fall's RedMagic 11 Pro. The RedMagic OS ships with a lot of the same bloat, including a customized RedMagic feed that replaces Google's Discover feed, the Inspired Wallpaper app with the same typos and a hideous watermark applied to all photos, which you have to turn off.

The phone's also only getting three years of software and security updates, which is quite low for a phone in this price range, but not as heinous as it was on the $749 Pro, which competes with the seven years of updates on Google and Samsung flagships.

I did notice a few improvements, like how RedMagic's web browser app no longer pops up an advertisement every time I open it, which was a big problem during my time with the Pro. And the Air makes a lot of smart choices when scaling back from the $749 Pro: While it lacks liquid cooling, the phone has a LED logo on the back with customizable lights.

The Air doesn't have a headphone jack or wireless charging, but the phone includes a cooling fan and a shortcut button to launch the console-style Game Space menu.

Speaking of Air, this is not a thin nor light phone by any stretch at 207 grams (7.3 ounces), but the moniker makes sense when thinking of it as a stepped-down model.

While photography is never prioritized on a gaming phone, I was pleasantly surprised by the photos on the Air for its price, as long as you stick to the rear camera system that includes a 50-megapixel main camera and an 8-megapixel ultrawide shooter.

I took this photo of a charcuterie board while having dinner with my friend Kevin. In the darker setting, the camera did get a lot of details of the various cheese cubes, bread and prosciutto.

I then took a photo of my friend as he stared off into the distance. The photo was able to get a tight focus on his face while providing a slight bokeh to the background behind him.

But the 16-megapixel front-facing camera is best used sparingly. This is partly because the front-facing camera is placed underneath the display, which is great for viewing content but makes selfies and video calls a challenge to avoid a smudged effect.

I took these two attempts at a selfie photo with my colleague Tara Brown while we were filming the RedMagic 11 Air unboxing video. Even with the bright lighting, these photos really struggle to get any details. Both of our faces look quite washed out.

The RedMagic 11 Air is definitely a more niche device. If you are curious about using this as a pocket-friendly Android gaming machine that happens to make calls, at $499 for 256GB of storage or $599 for 512GB, I could see the value for someone that plans to heavily customize this phone further with Android launchers. But for most people looking for a value-filled phone that happens to also play games, they can simply find a lot of options for good cheap phones right now.