vivo V27 Pro review

Funtouch 13 on top of Android 13

The vivo V27 Pro boots Android 13 with a proprietary Funtouch OS v13 layer on top.

The vivo V25 Pro used Funtouch v12, and this new iteration isn't at all different in look and feel. And it's a pretty customized and customizable experience.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Homescreen • Folder view • Settings menu

One of the useful proprietary features can be found in the recent apps menu. You can choose between the standard carousel formation and a horizontal tiles layout - sort of like MIUI, only scrollable horizontally. The setting is available right then and there - you don't need to look for it in the menus.

Recent apps • Recent apps • Pop-up • Spilt screen

The notification shade is pretty familiar, and Funtouch is staying away from Google's large bubble-style quick toggles - it's simple circular buttons here. The default accent color here is blue and can be controlled via the Android 13 AOSP color palette interface. A powerful theming engine is still present.

The app drawer has an expandable recommended apps category on the top (most commonly used ones), whereas using the vertical scroller on the right would highlight the apps beginning with the selected letter.

Notification shade • Quick toggles • App drawer • Widgets next to the app drawer

The rest of the UI has plenty of non-stock bits. In the Dynamic effects sub-menu, vivo has grouped a bunch of customization options for the home screen, lock screen and animation effects. There are even various charging and facial recognition animations.

Dynamic effects

The always-on display settings are in a different sub-menu, but the phone still gives you plenty of options to tinker with - a wide selection of animations, clock styles, colors, backgrounds.

Always-on display

The Sound menu holds a few pleasant surprises. Just like Samsung and its OneUI, Funtouch takes care of people with hearing problems, and you can calibrate the sound to be heard by elderly people or those with impaired hearing. Additionally, notifications and calls get separate volume sliders. The vibration intensity can be adjusted for calls and notifications independently. No system-wide equalizer is available for the loudspeaker, though, which could be either a negative or a positive, depending on how you look at it. An Audio Super Resolution toggle is thrown into the mix.

Sound options

The Smart motion menu holds a handful of familiar screen-on and screen-off gestures along with some new additions.

Smart motion menu

Holding the volume down key can be used to launch an app or do a certain task, although the list is limited to the camera app, turning on/off the torch, start recording audio, open Facebook, or open any custom app. The so-called Quick action feature doesn't work when playing music for obvious reasons. Why isn't there a double-press option for Quick action, though?

Shortcuts and accessibility • Quick action • S-capture • Screen-split • Easy Touch

A dedicated Ultra Game Mode is available, and it has it all. Most of the features are about mitigating disturbance during gameplay or preventing certain apps from displaying notifications. One of the most intriguing features that have been around on vivo phones for a while is the ability to turn off the screen and keep the game running in the background. Especially useful for turn-based games or those requiring some sort of "farming" or "grinding".

Ultra Game mode

Having all of these customizable gestures, actions and additional features around is cool, but we can't help but wish that Funtouch would have done a better job of organizing them - and that's been a recurring complaint. As things currently stand, it is hard to find certain options, even when you know for a fact that they exist and consequently, discovering new things is even harder.

iManager

The Funtouch launcher also offers its own gallery, audio and video players, system manager. There is also a dedicated Themes app and an iManager app with various system tools.

Albums • Video • Music • Themes

Performance and benchmarks

The vivo V27 Pro is the first smartphone powered by the MediaTek's Dimensity 8200 chipset to visit our office. It's a premium midrange chip aimed to bring flagship-grade performance on non-flagship smartphones.

The Dimensity 8200 is an overclocked version of the Dimensity 8000 chip, but it is built on the 4 nm process technology and comes with HyperEngine 6.0, which supports Vulkan SDK for raytracing in gaming, FPS improvement and smart resource optimization.

Mediatek brought improved camera support and Imagiq 785 ISP, but the big changes from predecessors are fueled by the mightier processor. It will allow HyperEngine, a set of features dedicated to improving gaming performance in smartphones in the flagship-killer territory.

The new chip features a new octa-core processor, which still uses 4x Cortex-A78 and4x Cortex-A55 cores, but in a sightly different combination, more power-efficient at that. Now there is a big Cortex-A78 core with 3.1GHz clock, then three performance Cortex-A78 at 3.0GHz, and four efficient Cirtex-A55 at 2.0GHz.

The Mali-G610 MC6 GPU remains the same, but it has a higher clock at 950MHz, up from 860Hz on the previous models.

Connectivity-wise, the new chip inherited from its predecessors the dual-5G connectivity, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 and the downlink speed.

The chipset uses LPDDR5X RAM and UFS3.1 storage. Our unit has 8GB RAM with 128GB storage, but vivo is also selling 8+256 and 12+256 versions.

And now, let's run some benchmarks.

The Dimensity 8200 processor is indeed the best performing one in this upper mid-range segment with a notable improvement over the Dimensity 8100-Max inside the Reno8 Pro and more powerful than the Snapdragon 870 inside the Poco F4.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• vivo V27 Pro
  3933
• OnePlus 11R 5G
  3608
• Oppo Reno8 Pro
  3395
• Poco F4
  3190
• vivo V23 Pro
  3021
• Xiaomi 13 Lite
  2936
• Poco X5 Pro
  2930
• vivo V25 Pro
  2521
• Realme 10 Pro+
  2371
• Oppo Reno7 5G
  2276
• Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  2225
• Oppo Reno7 Lite 5G
  1996
• Galaxy A53 5G
  1891
• Redmi Note 11S 5G
  1820
• vivo V21 5G
  1600

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 11R 5G
  1060
• vivo V27 Pro
  996
• Poco F4
  975
• Oppo Reno8 Pro
  894
• vivo V25 Pro
  858
• vivo V23 Pro
  850
• Realme 10 Pro+
  842
• Xiaomi 13 Lite
  795
• Poco X5 Pro
  781
• Galaxy A53 5G
  743
• Oppo Reno7 5G
  738
• Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  736
• Oppo Reno7 Lite 5G
  688
• Redmi Note 11S 5G
  588
• vivo V21 5G
  574

The same is valid for the GPU - the Mali-G610 MC6 is the best scoring GPU in this segment, notably faster than the same GPU inside the Reno8 Pro. It also beats the Adreno 650 inside the S870 (Poco F4).

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 11R 5G
  54
• vivo V27 Pro
  45
• Oppo Reno8 Pro
  40
• vivo V23 Pro
  32
• vivo V25 Pro
  28
• Xiaomi 13 Lite
  23
• Realme 10 Pro+
  15
• Galaxy A53 5G
  15
• Oppo Reno7 Lite 5G
  12
• vivo V21 5G
  11
• Redmi Note 11S 5G
  8.7

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 11R 5G
  60
• vivo V27 Pro
  57
• Poco F4
  49
• vivo V23 Pro
  45
• Oppo Reno8 Pro
  44
• vivo V25 Pro
  42
• Xiaomi 13 Lite
  33
• Poco X5 Pro
  28
• Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  22
• Realme 10 Pro+
  21
• Oppo Reno7 5G
  20
• Galaxy A53 5G
  19
• Oppo Reno7 Lite 5G
  17
• vivo V21 5G
  17
• Redmi Note 11S 5G
  13

GFX Manhattan ES 3.0 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• vivo V27 Pro
  117
• Poco F4
  114
• vivo V25 Pro
  96
• vivo V23 Pro
  89
• Xiaomi 13 Lite
  80
• Oppo Reno8 Pro
  61
• OnePlus 11R 5G
  60
• Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  57
• Realme 10 Pro+
  56
• Galaxy A53 5G
  55
• Oppo Reno7 5G
  52
• vivo V21 5G
  47
• Oppo Reno7 Lite 5G
  43
• Redmi Note 11S 5G
  36

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• vivo V27 Pro
  6611
• Oppo Reno8 Pro
  5668
• vivo V23 Pro
  4713
• vivo V25 Pro
  4497
• Poco F4
  4357
• Xiaomi 13 Lite
  2969
• Galaxy A53 5G
  2292
• Realme 10 Pro+
  2252
• Oppo Reno7 5G
  2037
• Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  2014
• vivo V21 5G
  1605
• Redmi Note 11S 5G
  1231
• Oppo Reno7 Lite 5G
  1217

Finally, the compound AnTuTu 9 test puts the vivo V27 Pro and its Dimensity 8200 chipset way ahead of the competition.

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• OnePlus 11R 5G
  953897
• vivo V27 Pro
  846767
• Oppo Reno8 Pro
  718351
• vivo V23 Pro
  716766
• vivo V25 Pro
  704090
• Poco F4
  698586
• Xiaomi 13 Lite
  534143
• Poco X5 Pro
  531398
• Realme 10 Pro+
  522376
• Oppo Reno7 5G
  479608
• Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  437872
• Galaxy A53 5G
  379313
• Oppo Reno7 Lite 5G
  376819
• vivo V21 5G
  365055
• Redmi Note 11S 5G
  360255

And before we wrap this chapter, we also want to explore the sustained performance on the vivo V27 Pro. First, we ran the CPU Throttle test for an hour and it returned an excellent 81% stability.

The 3D Mark stress test returned 99.5% stability, meaning it offers an outstanding sustained performance.

CPU test • GPU test

The vivo V27 Pro was only slightly warm when running the CPU test, and quite warmer when using the GPU at 100%. There was this small particular spot on the back, which became borderline hot, but we could still hold the phone safe. This means the phone's cooling system does a great job especially inside such a thin smartphone.

The vivo V27 Pro offers the best performance in its class with very good stability and thermal handling. High Frame Rate gaming is also a possibility on this phone, and overall, it's shaping as the most powerful smartphone in its class.