vivo X60 Pro+ review

Android 11 + Funtouch 11

The X60 Pro+ runs Android 11 with the proprietary Funtouch 11 layer on top, a combination we're already familiar with from the V20, or so we thought. That phone launched on Android 11 all the way in October last year, and back then, we noted a shift towards a less custom user interface, but that could have been due to the early release date. This version here isn't quite as stock, but rather more Funtouch-y.

The basics are either standard or close to it, even though the icons are thoroughly themed - the app drawer is stock, the task switcher is stock-ish (with a 'Clear all' button), the quick toggles in the notification shade have the usual circular design, the notification cards themselves are standard too. A welcome addition to the brightness slider is a switch for 'auto', usually buried in settings on stock-leaning UIs.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Task switcher • App drawer • Quick toggles • Notifications

Since the phone's software is based on Android 11, it offers the Android 11-intrinsic features. For instance, the notifications are now grouped into categories, so 'Conversations' from messaging apps won't get lost in the clutter. In case you've dismissed something by accident, there's detailed notification history. Other notable Android 11 features include Bubbles (a Messenger-like chat heads functionality), better permission handling, built-in screen recorder, and the completely overhauled power menu.

With the return of the full-on Funtouch, in addition to the custom multimedia apps, we're seeing a custom dialer and messages apps. The iManager is here to stay as well, a utility for clearing memory cache, data usage analysis, virus scans and the like.

You have the usual set of navigation gestures with additional quick access to Google's Assistant by swiping diagonally from the lower-left and lower-right corners of the screen.

Album • Video • Dialer • Messages • iManager • Navigation

By default, pulling down on the home screen opens up the system-wide search, instead of opening the notification shade. You can set that to pull down the notifications and quick toggles down, but the trouble with this setup is that once you do that, there is no way to invoke the app search with a gesture.

The swipe-up gesture brings up the app drawer and there is no way of reassigning that or turning off the app drawer altogether.

Raise-to-wake and double-tap-to-wake are among the most commonly used gestures too, and they are available here, too.

There's also a fair bit of options to tweak the UI appearance. You can change the font, mess around with the themes, and choose between a handful of Always-on display styles. The Dynamic effects menu lets you change the system animations and effects.

General settings • Always-on display • Themes

The Ambient light effect, for example, lights up the edges of the display for notifications, calls and even lets you choose which apps to trigger the effect. It's not something we haven't seen before - Samsung, OnePlus, and Xiaomi do that, but vivo takes it one step further and lets you choose not only the style but also the duration of the ambient light effect. You can turn this into a substitute for notification LED.

Dynamic light effects

There are some gaming-centric features on the X60 Pro+, grouped under the Ultra Game Mode in settings. A handful of options to minimize the disturbance during gameplay like blocking notifications and heads-up notifications are at your disposal.

Last, but not least, this mode gives you the freedom to turn off the phone's screen while the game is running in the background. This would save an immense amount of power when playing some types of online or turn-based games.

Ultra Game Mode

Synthetic benchmarks

The X60 Pro+, being the top-of-the-line model, gets a top-of-the-line chipset - the Snapdragon 888. Qualcomm's latest flagship SoC is manufactured on a 5nm process and features an octa-core CPU and a built-in 5G modem.

The unit we have for review packs 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage and 12GB of RAM. Another version with half the storage and 8GB of RAM is also in existence.

That's just the nominal, 'real' RAM you have, but there's also some 'Virtual RAM'. vivo's allocating 3GB of the storage to work in conjunction with the actual RAM and be used for dumping less important processes, thus theoretically allowing you to have more apps cached and ready for you when you need them. We have no objective means to test this feature, however.

As for the benchmarks that we can run - well, the X60 Pro+ breezed through those, topping every chart. In GeekBench, it was neck and neck with the OnePlus 9 Pro for the single-core title and the ROG Phone 5 for multi-core, but ultimately the vivo snatched both wins.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• vivo X60 Pro+
  3749
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  3710
• OnePlus 9 Pro
  3636
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
  3518
• vivo X60 Pro
  3490
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  3489
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  3476
• vivo X50 Pro+
  3411
• Oppo Find X3 Pro
  3316
• Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G (Snapdragon)
  3244

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• vivo X60 Pro+
  1143
• OnePlus 9 Pro
  1126
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  1110
• Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G (Snapdragon)
  1109
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
  1107
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  1091
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  1085
• vivo X60 Pro
  1034
• vivo X50 Pro+
  930
• Oppo Find X3 Pro
  926

The gap widened in Antutu, where the X60 Pro+' result is some 3.6% higher than that of the runner-up, the ROG Phone 5 - obviously, still a largely insignificant difference, but the vivo does win the bragging rights. The Mi 11 and the Find X3 Pro are further down, their numbers being 10% and 12% lower, respectively.

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• vivo X60 Pro+
  734811
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  708216
• OnePlus 9 Pro
  691055
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  668722
• Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G (Snapdragon)
  657273
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
  657150
• Oppo Find X3 Pro
  656467
• vivo X60 Pro
  639612
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  622276
• vivo X50 Pro+
  621433

In GFXBench, the X60 Pro+ is again on top, most of the time sharing the spotlight with the ROG Phone 5. The 1440p phones predictably take hits in onscreen fps numbers, the 1080p vivo suffers no such blows.

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Asus ROG Phone 5
  122
• vivo X60 Pro+
  119
• OnePlus 9 Pro
  119
• Oppo Find X3 Pro
  113
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  111
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  111
• Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G (Snapdragon)
  109
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
  107
• vivo X60 Pro
  96
• vivo X50 Pro+
  85

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• vivo X60 Pro+
  105
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  103
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  100
• vivo X60 Pro
  86
• vivo X50 Pro+
  74
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
  58
• Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G (Snapdragon)
  58
• OnePlus 9 Pro
  57
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  57
• Oppo Find X3 Pro
  55

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• vivo X60 Pro+
  71
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  71
• OnePlus 9 Pro
  70
• Oppo Find X3 Pro
  70
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  67
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  66
• Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G (Snapdragon)
  66
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
  64
• vivo X60 Pro
  59
• vivo X50 Pro+
  51

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• vivo X60 Pro+
  62
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  59
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  54
• vivo X60 Pro
  51
• vivo X50 Pro+
  43
• OnePlus 9 Pro
  36
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  33
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
  33
• Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G (Snapdragon)
  33
• Oppo Find X3 Pro
  33

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• vivo X60 Pro+
  44
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  43
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  37
• vivo X60 Pro
  35
• OnePlus 9 Pro
  27
• Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G (Snapdragon)
  25
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  24
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
  23

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• vivo X60 Pro+
  43
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  43
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  40
• vivo X60 Pro
  34
• OnePlus 9 Pro
  24
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
  24
• Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G (Snapdragon)
  23
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  22

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Asus ROG Phone 5
  32
• vivo X60 Pro+
  31
• OnePlus 9 Pro
  31
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  28
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
  28
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  26
• Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G (Snapdragon)
  25
• vivo X60 Pro
  24

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• vivo X60 Pro+
  28
• OnePlus 9 Pro
  28
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  28
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  28
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
  26
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  25
• Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G (Snapdragon)
  25
• vivo X60 Pro
  22

The X60 Pro+ loses its bragging rights in 3DMark Wild Life by about one percent - the SD888 devices are very tightly spaced here, save for the Galaxy, which is ever so slightly behind.

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  5757
• Asus ROG Phone 5
  5744
• OnePlus 9 Pro
  5701
• vivo X60 Pro+
  5695
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
  5691
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  5673
• Oppo Find X3 Pro
  5653
• Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G (Snapdragon)
  5547
• vivo X60 Pro
  4203

The vivo X60 Pro+ aced the benchmark run indeed, and it also did so with little impact on the numbers from thermal throttling. It does heat up considerably after sustained load, but the results remain consistently high. In any case, there's no doubt in our minds that the X60 Pro+ is a capable performer with plenty of reserves, as expected from its hardware.