vivo V5 Plus review: iPhone impersonator, bokeh king
iPhone impersonator, bokeh king
Albums is one basic gallery app
The vivo V5 Plus comes with a rather minimalist gallery app, dubbed Albums. It consists of two tabs, one for your camera roll, the other for your various albums (yes). Either way, you get a grid of thumbnails, four in a row.
The main gallery interface is simple
A quite powerful editor is on board too allowing you to tweak photos straight from the gallery. Features range from trivial cropping and effects all the way up to fine-tuning colors, shadows, exposure and applying different blurs. It is definitely more than enough for quickly fixing up a photo before uploading it online.
The image editor is full-featured, though
Video player
The V5 Plus' dedicated video app has a basic interface but offers independent brightness control, DLNA connectivity, and a pop-up windowed view.
Simplistic video player • pop-out mode
iMusic, hmm
Continuing the iOS references, the music player is called iMusic (that's been its name for while on vivo phones). It's nothing special, but will do a fine job of playing your local music - no streaming, though. Songs can be browsed in various categories and playlists are easily accessible, for even more flexibility. The smartphone comes with preinstalled sound profiles for a few headsets.
Browsing songs in the music app • dedicated sound profiles for a number of headphones
The main playback interface consists of a backdrop of album art and a simple control pad. You get two toggles altogether, one for Repeat/Shuffle and another for switching on Hi-Fi mode, but it only works with headphones attached. There's a handy timer that will stop playback after a pre-determined amount of time, and it can even power off the device.
Standard now-playing interface • music controls in the notification shade and lockscreen
Audio output is nicely loud, decently clear
The vivo V5 Plus did great when hooked up to an active external amplifier. The smartphone posted excellent scores for clarity and its volume was nicely high.
Loudness remained very good even with headphones, although stereo quality took a moderate hit. Some intermodulation distortion crept in as well, but it isn’t something you’ll detect in everyday usage. All in all a pretty solid showing by the V5 Plus here.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| +0.03, -0.20 | -92.0 | 92.8 | 0.0020 | 0.0072 | -88.5 | |
| +0.24, -0.14 | -91.0 | 91.6 | 0.0080 | 0.219 | -56.0 | |
| +0.04, -0.02 | -93.0 | 93.1 | 0.0018 | 0.0085 | -93.8 | |
| +0.05, -0.02 | -92.7 | 92.8 | 0.0023 | 0.054 | -52.4 | |
| +0.01, -0.02 | -93.3 | 93.2 | 0.0010 | 0.0070 | -93.5 | |
| +0.19, -0.35 | -92.3 | 92.2 | 0.0098 | 0.295 | -58.3 | |
| +0.10, -0.03 | -94.2 | 94.0 | 0.0019 | 0.0064 | -89.3 | |
| +0.30, -0.07 | -92.5 | 93.0 | 0.810 | 0.271 | -31.3 | |
| +0.03, -0.30 | -86.6 | 83.6 | 0.0017 | 0.049 | -91.1 | |
| +0.06, -0.03 | -92.4 | 92.4 | 0.0018 | 0.021 | -88.2 | |
| Xiaomi Mi 5s | +0.01, -0.03 | -89.6 | 90.2 | 0.0029 | 0.040 | -85.5 |
| Xiaomi Mi 5s (headphones) | +0.71, -0.31 | -82.9 | 84.8 | 0.229 | 0.559 | -48.0 |
| +0.06, -0.10 | -92.4 | 92.3 | 0.0015 | 0.0093 | -80.9 | |
| +0.03, -0.11 | -92.3 | 92.3 | 0.0011 | 0.012 | -77.0 |
vivo V5 Plus frequency response
You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.
Reader comments
- RishiGuru
- 11 May 2022
- utg
Realme GT Master is a great phone and much better than the recent Realme 9 series launched. I thought to have one but just then Realme threw the bomb. At $300 we were having Realme X7 Max with the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 SoC, 12GB LPDDR4X RAM, 256GB ...
- NikiDroid
- 08 May 2022
- tDP
Sorry for late reply, I seldom open old phone page anymore. Today just check Vivo V5 Plus opinions and review comments. I bought realme GT Master for $351 on August 2021. So far the phone is good, I love it.
- RishiGuru
- 23 Sep 2021
- utg
I understand. Recently I ordered a brand new Realme X2 Pro from Amazon India. It of 12/256 GB memory configuration. Paid INR 22.85K ($313, 264 euros) after discounts without exchange. Oppo created the Reno Ace back in 2019, and the same phone w...