vivo V30 review

Curved 6.78-inch OLED

The vivo V30 employs a 6.78-inch AMOLED screen of 1,260 x 2,800 pixels or 453ppi. It is protected with a curved Schott Alpha glass.

The panel is quite premium - it has support for 10-bit color depth, there is up to 120Hz refresh rate, HDR10+, and up to 2,800nits of peak brightness. According to the official specifications, the screen has 1,200nits of High Maximum Brightness.

We've completed our display test, and the numbers are in line with vivo's claims. First, we captured 528nits of maximum brightness when controlling the brightness slider manually.

But when using the Auto Brightness mode, the screen can be much brighter - 1,253 nits, to be specific.

The minimum brightness at point white is just 2 nits!

The display supports up to 120Hz refresh rate, and there are three refresh modes - 120Hz, 60Hz and Smart Switch. The 120Hz and the Smart Switch drop-down to 60Hz when the screen shows static content, but the Smart Switch is more limiting - often capping the system UI and apps to 90Hz or even 60Hz.

The vivo V30 comes with Widevine L1 DRM support, and Full HD streaming with HDR10 support is available across popular platforms, Netflix included.

Battery life

Our new Active Use Score is an estimate of how long the battery will last if you use the device with a mix of all four test activities. You can adjust the calculation based on your usage pattern using the sliders below. You can read about our current battery life testing procedure here. For a comprehensive list of all tested devices so far, head this way.

The vivo V30 carries a standard 5,000 mAh battery, but its overall endurance is anything but standard. Aside from the gaming test, the handset passed all other three tests with flying colors and achieved an Active Use Score of 15:32h. That's enough to overtake pretty much all of its competitors.

Vivo introduces some under-the-hood changes too. The company promises 4-year-long optimal battery health, meaning it should retain 80% of its capacity even after 1,600 charging cycles.

Charging speed

The vivo V30 supports 80W fast charging, and it ships with an 80W FlashCharge power adapter. Vivo advertises a full charge in 46 minutes.

We've completed our charging test with the supplied adapter, and the numbers are in line with vivo's statements. We clocked 39% charge in 15 minutes, 74% in 30 minutes and 100% in 42 minutes. Note that it took the phone another 4 minutes before it showed Fully Charged.

Vivo is offering smart battery charging as part of the battery optimizations.

Speaker

The vivo V30 Pro has one speaker at the bottom of the phone. It has a loudness boost marked as 150% if you click the volume up button after reaching 100%. The boost increases the high-frequencies, and the V30 Pro does sound louder without hurting the overall audio quality (which is not always the case).

The vivo V30 Pro scored a Good mark on our loudness tests - in both 100% and 150% options. The speaker offers average audio quality - there is a rich presentation of the high-frequency range, okayish vocals and almost no bass.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.