Vivo X100 Pro review: The best zoom camera?!

The Chinese manufacturer Vivo finally introduced the Vivo X100 today Pro officially for the Austrian market. It is a smartphone of absolute superlatives and has the potential for the best smartphone camera.

For a recommended retail price of 1.199 euros, you get basically everything your heart desires: a 6,78-inch OLED display with 120 Hertz, 16 GB of RAM, a 5.400 mAh battery, 100-watt fast charge, a Triple camera with 50 megapixels each and much more. On paper we have it with the Vivo X100 Pro to do one of the best smartphones on the market, but how does it perform in everyday life? Does it have the best camera currently available? You can find out all this and much more in this detailed test report.

Conclusion on the Vivo X100 Pro

The Vivo X100 Pro is finally a smartphone that absolutely impressed me and stands out positively from the currently very saturated smartphone market. Vivo has managed to create a convincing flagship smartphone in all areas and that X90 Pro to provide a worthy successor. It is quite large and heavy, but that is a matter of taste and the X100 delivers in the really relevant points Pro across the board:

The pure OLED display achieves an impressive maximum brightness, the MediaTek Dimensity 9300 has a lot of power, the stylish software offers you many useful additional functions, the battery lasts a long time and is filled again in a flash, the speakers are excellent and the camera setup is phenomenal. For me we have it with the Vivo X100 Pro with the currently best photo camera in a smartphone. The zoom in particular is great and allows you to take photos that look good even at a magnification of 30x.

Are there also weaknesses? I actually have a hard time with the X100 Pro Finding weaknesses. In my opinion, the design just mentioned cannot be described as a weakness, because this top hardware has to fit somewhere and Vivo has done everything with the rounded edges to ensure that the smartphone still fits well in the hand despite its enormous size. The fingerprint sensor is also not a point of criticism for me. We are dealing with a step backwards compared to... X80 Pro to do, but that doesn't mean that the sensor of the X100 Pro bad is. He's one of the best!

For an RRP of 1.199 euros I can get the Vivo X100 Pro Recommend across the board. Of course, I'm aware that 1.199 euros is a lot of money, but it's actually worth it. Especially for those who value the camera and need a long battery life.

Design – large, heavy & high quality

In its press release, Vivo speaks of a slim and light design aesthetic, which is typical of the iconic X series. After more than a week of intensive use, I can't really support this statement because of the Vivo X100 Pro It is undoubtedly a very large, heavy and thick smartphone, which is no longer suitable in many situations procan be easily operated with one hand. It measures an impressive 164,05 millimeters in height, 75,28 millimeters in width and 8,91 millimeters in thickness. The weight is 225 grams, which is quite a lot, but by no means unusual. Unfortunately, the weight is distributed rather top-heavy, which is not surprising given this huge camera bump and can hardly be solved in any other way, but it still makes the smartphone seem a little heavier than it already is.

Together with the thickness and the enormous dimensions, this means that the Vivo X100 Pro seems a bit clunky and is not as comfortable to use as mine, for example HUAWEI Mate 50 Pro. Nevertheless, Vivo has done a lot of things right in the design: The frame is made of aluminum with a high-gloss look, which feels extremely high-quality and, unlike many competitors, is not angular. I'm glad that Vivo isn't following the current trend, because a rounded frame makes the smartphone feel much more comfortable to hold than an angular frame. On the left side, the manufacturer places the on/off button and the volume up/down button, both of which are well made.

The back is made of matte glass, which feels unique but is extremely slippery. I've probably never had a smartphone that was as slippery as the Vivo X100 Pro. The glass offers almost no grip, which makes it hardly usable for me (especially with cold hands). I recommend everyone get a case. Unfortunately, when it comes to colors, you only have one color available: “Asteroid Black”. White, blue and orange are only available outside of Europe.

If we turn the smartphone around, we see a huge OLED display with rounded edges and pleasantly thin bezels. The chin could be a little thinner, but that's okay. As with its predecessor, the display is interrupted by a small cutout in the middle for the front camera.

Display – up to 3.000 nits

The front is dominated by a 6,78-inch OLED display in an elongated 20:9 aspect ratio, which has a razor-sharp resolution of 2.800 x 1.260 pixels, so that no individual pixels can be seen in everyday life. Samsung offers with the Galaxy s24 ultra although an even sharper display (3.120 x 1.440 pixels), but also the 453 pixels pro Inches of the Vivo X100 Pro are completely sufficient. The screen also supports a smooth refresh rate of 120 Hertz, which means that all animations and scrolling appear buttery smooth, which ensures a great user experience.

The display is also convincing across the board in the remaining points. Colors are displayed in “Pro“Reproduced beautifully and naturally and if you like it a little more saturated, you should switch to “Standard” or “Bright” mode. The black level is outstanding, as is typical for OLEDs, and even the white level is great. I was positively surprised by the viewing angle stability, which in my opinion is second to none. Even when tilted to the side, colors hardly change color at all, which speaks for a high-quality display. The maximum brightness of 3.000 nits is also at the top level and of course ensures that the screen still shines even in very bright environments procan be read easily.

Software – Funtouch OS 14

The in-house user interface Funtouch OS 14, based on Android 14, is used as software. This is a highly customized user interface with a number of additional functions. For example, you have the option to design the always-on display virtually freely or to configure the animation when unlocking using the fingerprint sensor integrated into the display. I find most of the additional functions more or less useful, but there are also a few features that I consider to be rather unnecessary. However, that is a matter of taste.

From a purely visual perspective, I like Funtouch OS quite a bit. The lock screen, home screen, notification bar and control panel appear tidy. I just think it's a shame that such an expensive flagship smartphone comes with a lot of bloatware, such as Candy Crush, pre-installed.

Performance – MediaTek Dimensity 9300 with 16GB RAM

A strength of Vivo flagships has always been their impeccable performance and fortunately the X100 delivers Pro consistently continue on this path. After that X60 Pro and X80 Pro still with a QualcommProcessor were already equipped, the X90 Pro with a MediaTekProprocessor driven, which did a very good job. This was the Dimensity 9200, which has now received a successor with the Dimensity 9300. This now comes in the Vivo X100 Pro with an impressive 512 GB (not expandable) and was able to completely convince me, but first things first. What does this one do? Processor so special?

The Dimensity 9300 is manufactured using the energy-saving 4-nanometer process and does not use low-clock speeds Proprocessor cores. A Cortex-X4 with 3,25 GHz is used as the prime core and, like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen3, it also enables Bluetooth 5.4.

Much more important than the technical data of the ProThe cessor is of course the everyday performance. The X100 Pro impresses with a fantastic performance and is at the top in this regard. Apps start and close extremely quickly and I never experienced any stuttering or delays during my testing phase. It's really impressive how smoothly and consistently this smartphone runs. The RAM management works great thanks to the 16 GB of RAM and there is no problem with more complex things like the camera or games Proproblems. It will be a little warmer than usual, but definitely not worrying.

Battery – excellent running and charging times

After the charging speeds of the battery have been pushed forward in recent years, the jumps in battery capacity have been rather limited. Almost every flagship smartphone in the size class of the X4.500 had around 5.000 to 100 mAh Pro and was therefore nothing special. Now there has been a virtual upswing this year - especially in the BBK Group, because in addition to the OnePlus 12, the Vivo X100 also has it Pro has a 5.400 mAh battery that can be fully charged in 120 minutes with the included 100 watt power adapter with up to 32 watts. After about 12 minutes it is already half full. In this respect it is currently one of the best and clearly beats Samsung, Apple and Google.

And what about the running times? These are also really good, so even heavy users should be able to get through a day without charging. At the end of the day, with a screen-on time of four to six hours, I still had at least 40 Procent and a maximum of 59 Pro5.400 percent battery left, which is extremely powerful. Nevertheless, I might have expected a little more for XNUMX mAh, but that's complaining at a very high level. Battery life is great!

Camera – absolutely impressive

The heart of the Vivo X100 Pro is undoubtedly the triple camera on the back, which was developed in collaboration with ZEISS. According to Vivo, it combines hardware and software to accurately capture high-quality photography in all scenarios. The focus is primarily on telephoto and night shots:

• 50 megapixel 1-inch main camera, f/1.75, OIS
• 50 megapixel ultra wide angle camera, f/2.0
• 50 megapixel APO floating telephoto camera, f/2.5, 4,3x optical

The ZEISS APO floating telephoto camera meets the new ZEISS Vario-Apo-Sonnar standards for high-quality close-up and telephoto shots. It has a “floating elements design”, which enables very high image quality even at 6x to 10x magnification. The Vivo X100 Pro is the first mobile imaging system in the world to receive ZEISS's APO certification - this is the rigorous standard for lenses in which color errors such as chromatic aberration and color fringing in high-contrast areas are corrected as much as possible to achieve exceptional clarity. Also setting new standards is the certified ZEISS T* coating, an advanced anti-reflective coating technology that significantly increases light transmission and helps accurately reproduce colors while reducing light reflections and minimizing glare. This means you can capture clear images even in poor lighting conditions.

Picture: TechnikNews

Let's start with the main camera, which actually surprised me positively in terms of color reproduction. What do I mean by that? The Vivo flagships of recent years all delivered excellent results, although in my opinion they were a bit too saturated. It almost seems as if Vivo has taken my criticism of the last test reports to heart, because the 50 megapixel main camera of the Vivo X100 Pro proproduces beautiful images with realistic color reproduction in the “ZEISS natural color” color mode. If you like something a little brighter, you can choose the “Vivid” or “Structured” mode in the camera app. In the end, which one you like better is a matter of taste, but I think it's great that Vivo offers a certain selection to satisfy all tastes. As is typical for Vivo, the dynamic range is first-class, the sharpness is at an extremely high level and there is hardly any unnecessary artificial sharpening.

As soon as the lighting conditions get worse, the night mode comes into play, which achieves phenomenally good results. It ensures bright – but by no means too bright – images that are characterized by a high level of detail. Even when you zoom in you can still see some details. Colors are reproduced well, even if they do not always correspond to reality. The noise level is extremely low.

I also really like the ultra wide-angle camera. It is very well matched to the main camera, resulting in almost identical color reproduction, which is not the case with some competitors. The dynamic range is great as usual and a lot of details are preserved, especially in the center of the image. There is only a slight blurring at the edges, which is common with an ultra-wide-angle camera, but is the only point on the camera that Vivo would like to improve in the future. Of course, in lowlight it can't keep up with the main camera because the shots are blurrier and sometimes extremely blurred. Nevertheless, we are dealing with usable lowlight shots that are among the best on current smartphones.

The best zoom camera?!

The heart of the camera is without a doubt the 50 megapixel telephoto camera, which enables a 4,3x optical zoom and is also used for macro shots. Similar to the HUAWEI P60 Pro You can zoom in close to objects without holding the device itself close to the objects you want to photograph. This has the advantage that you do not essentially darken the objects to be photographed with the device. Furthermore, the bokeh is much more pronounced with a wide zoom than with a wide focal length. All of this also has a positive impact in practice. The macro images are beautifully sharp, the colors are accurate and the natural bokeh looks fantastic. This is where the Vivo X100 plays Pro right at the top

The zoom capabilities of this camera are even better. At 4,3x magnification, the results look really good because they are very sharp and (almost) always displayed with accurate color. Even at 10x magnification, the images look great, giving the impression that this is 10x optical magnification and not digital. But it goes further! I never thought I'd mention this, but even photos at 30x magnification still look really usable. You can tell that the software helps a lot here, but I personally don't care as long as the pictures look good. And yes, the pictures look good! But it's not just the quality, but also the fantastic image stabilization that leaves me speechless. Vivo trumps all the competition here and makes a clear statement in the smartphone market.

Test photos

Let's take a look at a few test photos. The following images are absolutely unprocessed, but compressed without loss in order to keep loading times and memory consumption of the website low.

Other – regression in the fingerprint sensor

In recent years, one thing in particular has distinguished Vivo flagships: the fingerprint sensor! Both the Vivo X80 Pro as well as the X90 Pro+ were each equipped with a 3D ultrasonic fingerprint sensor from Qualcomm, which is an impressive 20 x 30 square millimeters in size. In addition to the size, I was particularly impressed by the enormous speed and reliability, but also by the ultrasonic technology itself, because unlike optical sensors, it doesn't have to light up to be able to recognize the fingerprint.

Unfortunately, Vivo has the X100 Pro I've taken a step backwards that I can't really understand. It has a (small) optical fingerprint sensor that is no longer easy to reach and no longer unlocks the smartphone as quickly. Please don't get me wrong here, because in my opinion the sensor is still one of the best of all current smartphones, but it is still an incomprehensible step backwards.

Good vibration motor & great stereo speakers

Since the X80 Pro Vivo uses very good vibration motors, which are only just beaten by the iPhones and Pixel phones. The vibration motor in the X100 Pro is very precise and conveys an extremely high-quality feel in the hand. The noise is anything but annoying or unpleasant - completely different from, for example Sony Xperia 5V. For my taste, the vibration motor in the X100 Pro However, I would like to be even more present or stronger.

Like all current high-end smartphones, the Vivo X100 also has Pro via stereo speakers. They get loud enough and sound really good at low to medium volume. I was particularly pleasantly surprised by the bass - if you can even say that about a smartphone - and voices, synthesizers, etc. are clearly reproduced. Only at high volume does the sound no longer sound so great.

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