vivo X100 Pro review

15 December 2023


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Better speakers and battery than last year and sustained performance and thermals are better too. I can't stress how amazing it is that Vivo made such a huge jump in only one year, or it could be that the X90 Pro itself was a bit too different from their main flagship the X90 Pro+ (in terms of performance and thermals). The point GSMarena brought up about the speakers not having as much bass as the S23U is true however I'd say the X100 Pro is better because it's better on the other end of the Frequency spectrum, the high frequencies, not only that the distortion is only second to gaming phones and Xiaomi flagships. Bravo Vivo. More bass is always cool to have but a very pleasing and well balanced frequency response like the one here is something I really respect, imo they made the right choice. Quality over "bass".

The UW cam and selfie cam are just a bit of a hard pill to swallow, but considering the fact that the Xiaomi 13 Ultra and Find X6 Pro had mid selfies as well, I can get by with the worse selfie but the UW cam? That's just a bit tough to ignore, it's not bad at all ofc, but just overshadowed so much by the other two that it's a shame. This phone has made FOMO REAL for me, damn such an amazing phone. Wish they could just add 4k to the selfie videos like Xiaomi did with the 14 Pro, it's just a software thing it seems. Anyways, I think the rating of this phone should be at least 4.6 if not more. The S23U receiving 4.7 stars is criminal compared to this.

Oh yeah what about the other modes, Zeiss Natural or the "Natural" mode? I saw no mention of that in the otherwise thorough review. That mode is one of the best if not THE best natural mode for phones. Xiaomi's softer processing in Leica Authentic is ok but at that point using the pro mode would've been better due to worse HDR. Vivo strikes the greatest balance between a natural photo and a good photo with its Zeiss mode.

Would've gotten this phone if it were available in my country, that's for sure

    Inedian, 15 Dec 2023It's the best 2x zoom i've seen and it's not... moreAlthough I haven't seen a comparison between them yet, I have the feeling that the current 2x "hybrid" is clearly better than last year's 2x optical, which was rather weak in terms of detail.

      Ottonis, 15 Dec 2023Superb overall performance Superb battery life Superb cam... moreThe only thing they didn't quite nail is the ultrawide and the selfie (typical BBK tbh). They should've used a larger sensor (think 1/2.0"-type or larger) instead of the 1/2.76"-type Samsung ISOCELL JN1 sensor (which itself is not a great sensor anyway), and the lens should've been around 12mm instead of 15mm. Another annoyance of mine is the main camera's 23mm lens, which could've been 24mm or 25mm (my personal favourite focal length).

      The selfie should've been either a 12MP sensor or a 48-50MP one, and judging by the rather large selfie cutout compared to last year's, they could've straight up used a 1/2.5"-type sensor, which would've allowed them to use high resolution Quad Bayer sensors that aren't the Samsung ISOCELL JN1, such as the 48MP Samsung ISOCELL GM5, though that one's quite possibly an exclusive sensor for only Google to use. If they had to still use a 1/2.8"-type sensor, they could've also gone with the 50MP Sony Exmor RS IMX707, though I have no idea about the sensor's quality.

      My point still stands, though. The ultrawide isn't wide enough, and the selfie quality is not great because of software, but 8MP wouldn't be give good enough image quality, so either they should use a 12MP, a 48MP or a 50MP sensor for the selfie camera instead of this mess.

        73% throttled GPU after an hour is not too bad. I expected more throttling since there were no Cortex-A5x efficiency cores.

        As for the photos, I see improvement from its predecessor for daylight photos with less oversharpening and better highlights. However, I'm not keen on the Night Mode processing from lowlight photos. For me, the standard mode looks so much better than Night Mode.

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          • Zuzuz
          • mA{
          • 15 Dec 2023

          AlienNextDoor, 15 Dec 2023Yes, newborn chip, not baby. Stop being melodramatic. T... moreMost of people buy the latest chip just because those phones got the lastest tech on all other departments too: screen, camera, design, charging, software support etc.

          Bring those on a middle segment and 99% won't care about the antutu or geekbench

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            • Lister
            • pL9
            • 15 Dec 2023

            2024 is going to be interesting if we're kicking off the smartphone battle with this.

            I'm not the biggest fan of these large camera housings, but who's going to be staring at the camera most of the time?

              Superb overall performance
              Superb battery life
              Superb camera
              Great display

              Seems that Vivo nailed with no wishes left.

              Well, a dedicated micro sd card slot and a 3.5mm audio jack would have been even better in a creator-centric phone like this.

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                • Inedian
                • L2r
                • 15 Dec 2023

                It's the best 2x zoom i've seen and it's not even atelephoto camera.

                  Jin, 15 Dec 2023"It lacks behind even sd 8 gen 1 when it comes to emul... moreYeah I realise he's not open minded , when he implies.no other reason for the flagship phone I just checked out

                    Muthu, 15 Dec 2023This is a major achievement for Mediatek. For the first tim... moreThanks for the correction, indeed it is a good move from mediatek

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                      • Zero
                      • EU0
                      • 15 Dec 2023

                      Actually this is an historic feat from Mediatek:
                      - No small cores shown up that is no longer necessary
                      - ARM should realize that the small core design is no longer useful (they transformed into a Bulldozer thing!)
                      - With more stable configuration (2+6 or 3+5) the throttling won't be an issue.
                      - GPU wise they managed to tie with Qualcomm.

                      Heck, this is one of the wildest years ever seen. And is the last from Qualcomm to use a stock core. And Apple should start to go at least to 2+6 too since Mediatek managed to catch them up

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                        • Teks
                        • R5h
                        • 15 Dec 2023

                        SonyXperia, 15 Dec 2023Someone already cited and I'm gonna say it again. GSMA... moreWhere that article again 😂😂 I wanna read it again😂

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                          • Muthu
                          • y2g
                          • 15 Dec 2023

                          IpsDisplay, 15 Dec 2023It's literally a new born .. only smartphone chipset w... moreThis is a major achievement for Mediatek. For the first time, their flagship SOC properly beats Qualcomm's flagship SoC in CPU/GPU peak and sustained performance. Kudos to them for upping their game and challenging Qualcomm in all segments now. This will benefit the consumers of Android phones in all segments (low end, mid range and flagship) due to increased competition.

                          One correction on this being the first SoC with ALL high power cores - Apple already uses very powerful cores for their so-called low power cores as well. High power cores - Apple uses 2 of them while Mediatek uses 4 of them. But those 2 cores in Apple's A series SoCs are even more powerful than the X4 cores in this Mediatek Dimensity 9300+ SoC. On the Android world though, this is the first SoC with all high power cores. And kudos to Mediatek for implementing it successfully without issues.

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                            • Anonymous
                            • X%d
                            • 15 Dec 2023

                            wait, it doesn't have large ultrasonic fingerprint sensor like its predecessors? WTF vivo?

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                              • Anonymous
                              • srr
                              • 15 Dec 2023

                              im waiting for dxomark to rate this phone higher than top15 when is clearly a top3 phone far above samsung

                                Excellent performance in photography, even in its crop focal lengths. I'm curious to see what the future Pro Plus version can do. It has a lot of potential to become my next device.

                                  Fun fact : Whoever barking here are not going to buy any of flagships and settle for a mid ranger.. So ignoring them.

                                  I have used x60 X70 pro and currently on x80 and hands down Vivo is one of the best in camera phones... My next upgrade will be definitely x100 but I will wait for price to come down

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                                    • dcdev
                                    • JGb
                                    • 15 Dec 2023

                                    Notafanboy-Fanboy, 15 Dec 2023And also with: Honor Magic 6 Pro S24 Ultra Xiaomi 14 U... moreHonor Magic 6 Pro - why not?
                                    S24 Ultra - I have S23U, and I think S24U won't have really good progress in cameras (no 1-inch, no better x10).
                                    Xiaomi 14 Ultra - maybe, they have good hardware, but... we will see.
                                    OnePlus 12 - nope, I think it can't stand against Vivo X100 Pro.
                                    Pixel 8 Pro - not really, and it's about algorithms.
                                    ¿Mate 70 Pro? - not interesting without google.
                                    ¿iPhone 16? - no no no

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                                      • Haplo
                                      • MIn
                                      • 15 Dec 2023

                                      oepie, 15 Dec 2023I live in Europe and i've bought the X70 Pro+ and the ... moreX90 Pro is also available in Europe on Amazon (Global version, rather then the Chinese one). I hope X100 Pro will be as well. I do care about Android Auto and other Google services.

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                                        • Anonymous
                                        • gDf
                                        • 15 Dec 2023

                                        Gsmarena, does the X100 Pro let you save dng files at 10x in its auto mode? If yes, the resolution of the dng files would tell us whether Vivo uses pixel binning at 10x because the 10x images don't look very good. For example, the Pixel 6 Pro uses pixel binning at 10x in all light conditions (in contrast to the 7 Pro and 8 Pro). This should be tested in every review.
                                        In some images it's hard to say whether Vivo only used machine learning or whether they combined machine learning with the higher resolution. It seems that Vivo has issues with the color filter array or signal to noise ratio.

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