vivo V15 Pro review

48MP main shooter with a depth sensor and ultra wide angle lens

The vivo V15 Pro comes with a triple-camera setup 48MP + 5MP + 8MP for ultra wide shots. The 48MP sensor is likely to be Samsung's Bright GM1. It's pretty big - 1/2" and has 0.8µm pixels and f/1.8 aperture. It's a sensor that grows in popularity day by day and has been used in various smartphones including high-end handsets such as the Honor View 20. Of course, that also means that the camera software uses Quad-Bayer-like technology that combines four adjacent pixels into one. This results in a sharper 12MP photo with plenty of light, detail and less noise. The secondary 5MP camera is used only for depth information when taking portraits, for example. The third is an 8MP ultra-wide angle lens with f/2.2 aperture.

And as for the selfie cam, it uses a 32MP sensor and a f/2.0 lens once again utilizing the pixel-binning technology.

But before we go over the sample photos and see what the triple-camera setup is capable of, lets take a look at the camera options in the default camera app.

Camera menus

The camera menu is familiar - swiping to the left and right will cycle between different modes while the additional settings are right above the software shutter button and in the upper part of the viewfinder. There are a couple of settings hidden in the settings menu in the upper-right corner. You can find the 48MP mode in there, AI scene identification and camera pop-up sounds. The camera also supports different capture gestures.

Camera menus and options

The portrait mode is in the standard Photo mode and you can adjust the blur effect in real-time. The modes worth mentioning are the Pro mode and the Night mode. The names are pretty self-explanatory - the Pro mode gives you manual control over camera settings like ISO, white balance, focus, shutter speed, etc., while the Night mode is used for poorly-lit scenes.

Image quality

During the day, you can expect sharp and detailed photos with accurate color reproduction, nice contrast and good dynamic range. We didn't really find any big issues to complain about.

AI: Off • On • Off • On • Off • On • Off • On

If the colors are lacking, you can always turn on the AI. It will result in juicy colors but maybe a bit over the top.

AI: Off • On • Off • On • Off • On

However, we found that in some cases, there was visible noise in the sky or around the edges of some buildings. Nothing too alarming but worth noting. And the noise wasn't as apparent on most samples.

More daylight and indoor photos

Also, the HDR didn't do much for us - shadows and highlights during the day stay pretty much the same. Luckily, the dynamic range in the standard photo mode is good so you won't need HDR in most cases.

HDR On

As far as the 48MP mode is concerned - we don't see any benefit to using the 48MP camera's native resolution as it delivers more noise, less detail and colors look a bit off, too.

48MP samples

Ultra-wide photos

The ultra-wide camera applies good correction in the corners of the image and even though distortion is visible (the buildings look tilted), at least there is no pronounced barreling and lines are mostly straight (even if not perpendicular). However, the lack of dynamic range, autofocus, and the rather low 8MP resolution are not promising.

Ultra wide-angle photos

Low-light photos

We were kind of impressed by the low-light samples. It appears that the benefits from the 48MP sensor shine in the dark. Noise is limited, highlights and shadows are nice and there's a good amount of detail. Turning on the Night mode will result in loss of detail but better highlight and shadow reproduction - so there is a certain trade-off involved.

Night mode: Off • On • Off • On • Off • On • Off • On

It seems like vivo prioritized the exposure over detail whereas in other cases, we've seen oversharpening even.

Night mode: Off • On • Off • On

Once you are done with the real-life scenarios, take a look at our studio samples taken in a more controlled environment where you can compare how the vivo V15 Pro stacks against the competition.

vivo V15 Pro against the Redmi Note 7 and Pocophone F1 in our Photo compare tool

And here are our 48MP samples.

48MP mode: vivo V15 Pro against the Redmi Note 7 and Honor View 20 in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

Portrait shots are in terms of color reproduction and detail. They look pretty natural and detailed but it leaves a lot to be desired in the edge detection department. Especially when you consider the fact that there's a dedicated sensor doing all the depth mapping.

Portraits

Selfies

The vivo V15 Pro takes awesome selfies - natural colors, great detail, and wide dynamic range.

Only portrait selfies leave something to be desired - HDR doesn't work in this mode and the edge detection isn't all that good.

Normal selfies

Portrait selfies

Video recording

The handset supports 1080p video recording in 30 and 60 frames per second while 4K recording is limited to 30fps only. Slow-motion and time-lapse modes are available as well.

Video recording quality, however, is a mixed bag. In 4K, you can expect a good amount of detail, nice contrast and minimal noise but dynamic range is lacking. The biggest issue we had was the sound recording. As you can see for yourself, it sounds awful. It's like the sound has been compressed. We've observed the same behavior indoors as well so it's not due to the environment.

The same goes for the 1080p video recording. Of course, expect less detail as well.

The EIS toggle is nowhere to be found in the camera menus but we can easily tell that the electronic image stabilization works only in 1080p videos while the 4K recording is stripped from this option. Take a closer look for yourself.

When you are done with the real-life examples, here are some video screengrabs, which you can use to compare the vivo V15 Pro video quality to other phones in the controlled environment of our studio.

2160p: vivo V15 Pro against the Xiaomi Mi 8 and Pocophone F1 in our Video compare tool

You can download short untouched samples as well - 2160p/30fps (10s, 55MB), 1080p/30fps (10s, 23MB).