vivo X Fold2 review

Design and ergonomics

This year's vivo flagship foldable features a standout design. The back design features a combo of vegan leather and glass, with the latter being a small strip running from top to bottom. The glass seamlessly transitions into the leather surface with a pattern that mimics stitching. The leather itself is super smooth to touch.

The camera island is plenty big, featuring all three cameras and a ring LED flash aligned in a square formation. The ring around the glass housing has a rough pattern, and it looks really nice.

The frame, along with the hinge housing, are all made of smooth, anodized aluminum. With a selection of materials like this one, you'd expect a hefty smartphone, and you'd be right. The X Fold2 tips the scale at 279g, which makes it one of the heaviest foldables currently on the market, let alone smartphones in general. This is still a big improvement over the original X Fold.

The handset comes in three colors - Red, Blue and Black. The glass piece has a discreet gradient becoming more noticeable under the right angle.

Now off to the hinge. It gets a proper upgrade this year with an aviation-grade FS54 glass-fiber bracket, Seiko hinge design and creating just 5mm spacing between the two panels. Although a bit tight when opening it up, the hinge's travel is extremely smooth and feels quite solid. It can maintain each angle within the 60-120-degree range before snapping into a fully opened or closed position.

Opening and closing the handset feels satisfying, and vivo ensures at least 400,000 troubleless openings, so you can even fidget around with the X Fold2.

The crease is another significant achievement on vivo's behalf. The X Fold2's screen crease is virtually impossible to spot when the screen is on, and you can barely feel it as you run your finger across it.

And as for the external display - everything is business as usual - symmetrical and relatively thin side bezels and a centered punch-hole for the front-facing camera. Interestingly enough, the selfie cameras on the external and internal displays are the same, but the cutout on the foldable OLED is noticeably bigger. Anyway, the only out-of-the-ordinary feature of the cover display is the asymmetrical curvature. The right side is slightly curved, so it matches the curve of the back panel.

vivo X Fold2

There's nothing too special about the side frame, except maybe the alert slider near the upper-right corner. It has two positions to enable and disable all sounds. The top houses one of the loudspeakers, while the bottom makes room for the USB-C connector and the main loudspeaker grille. On the right, near the alert slider, but placed on the "right half", we have the power button and volume rocker. The power button is conveniently placed near the middle of the frame, so it's easy to reach.

vivo X Fold2

When closed, the device measures 12.9mm in thickness and about 6mm when unfolded. Of all foldables, only the Huawei Mate X3 and the Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 are thinner.

Another aspect in which the X Fold2 stands out from all other foldables is the fact that both of its screens have under-display fingerprint readers (as opposed to a single one on the side frame). The fingerprint readers are conveniently placed, and it didn't take much time for us to adjust to using them. We liked how they operated, and we think their addition brings the foldable form factor's usability to the next level.

All in all, the vivo X Fold2 offers exceptional build quality and an almost crease-less internal display. We like that vivo found room for an alert slider and not one but two fingerprint readers and two selfie cameras. It's one of the easiest-to-use foldables and the only real drawback we could think of is its weight. At 279 grams, the X Fold2 is one hefty device to keep in your pocket.