Vivo X70 Pro Review: Should You Buy?

Within a year, Vivo has made a lot of innovation in the camera and brings out X70 series with more premium looks and features. The highlight of the Vivo X70 Pro are 6.56 inch AMOLED Panel, MediaTek's Dimensity 1200 chipset, and a unique gimbal camera system. Will it be able to position itself in a premium mid-range segment? Let’s check out in this review

Design: Vivo X70 Pro does not look much different from its predecessor if you ignore the camera module. But as soon you touch the rear panel of X70 pro, you will quickly notice the difference. It gets some kind of glittery matte finish which is actually quite smooth. Also, now you can feel the Vivo branding at the rear. We received the Aurora Dawn version for our review. 

Apart from this, the Camera cutout protrudes a little more as compared to its predecessor and houses more capable lenses. Additionally, there is the ZEISS T* logo at the top of camera module which signifies the special coating on the lenses that helps in removing refection, ghosting effects, and stray light. 

Finally, Vivo gives IR blaster at the top of the smartphone which is useful in times when you don’t have remotes nearby or you are lazy. 

Display: Vivo X70 Pro comes with a 6.56-inch Full HD+ E5 AMOLED curved panel with a 120 Hz refresh rate and 19.8:9 aspect ratio. The panel is HDR10+ certified and comes with all-new fluorite AG coating that saves the device from fingerprint smudges. 

Being an AMOLED panel, the display is bright enough to maintain its legibility under direct sunlight. The colors are punchy, bright, and accurate. We watched web series, movies and lots of content on X70 pro and trust us, it was treat for eyes. It also gets the Widevine L1 certification, so streaming Full HD content on various OTT platforms won’t be an issue. The panel also houses a Hole-punch-styled front camera and an optical fingerprint reader is positioned underneath which was quick to respond. 

Camera: Well, this part is the USP of the smartphone. It gets a customized Sony IMX766V 50MP primary sensor that supports Gimbal stabilization. The customized sensor allows around 4.6% more light compared to the already available IMX766 sensor. Coming in the way, there are 12MP telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom and 8MP telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom. Both the telephoto lens gets the OIS. Also there is a 12MP ultrawide camera that doubles up as macro lens as well.  

The primary lens and telescope lenses are able to simulate the bokeh of some famous ZEISS lens styles – Biotar, Sonnar, Planar and Distagon. 

Coming to the performance, the daylight shots were full of details and sharpness. The X70 Pro captures true colors and the photographs looks amazing after the post-processing. You can even post the images directly without giving a second thought to the editing.  

The real capabilities of the camera can be witnessed when sunsets. Yes! You read it right. You can capture different shades of lights and even dark scenarios with ease and results would be surprisingly good. When you switch to the Night mode, it can even capture great photographs when there is no light or say very little light. When shooting outdoor in the night, it offers impressive dynamic range, contrast, well-developed shadows with plenty of details. 

There is a dedicated supermoon mode that allows you to capture the moon at its best. The 60x Hybrid zoom and AI of the smartphone capture the moon with its full bloom. 

The selfies captured through 32MP were full of details and offered a wide dynamic range but lacks sharpness in the low light areas. The daylight selfies were able to manage the sharpness, but in low light conditions, it smoothened skin tone. The portrait mode detects the edges nicely and distinguishes the background from the subject perfectly. You can shoot portraits from all lenses except the ultra-wide. The camera allows you optically zoom till 5x in portrait mode, but we found 2x best for shooting the portraits. 

Speaking of video capabilities, Vivo X70 Pro can capture 4K@60fps videos. The 4k video offers a great dynamic range and is full of details. The camera really offers good stabilization, but Ultra Steady mode is capped at 1080p. To our surprise, you can now adjust the aperture manually in the video for both front and rear cameras. By shifting the toggle to the lowest aperture, you will get the portrait videos, and the results are really great.

Performance: Vivo X70 Pro is powered by MediaTek's Dimensity 1200 chipset, clocking at 3GHz through Cortex A78 main core and three Cortex A78 cores at 2.6GHz. Our review unit comes with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage. Like other Vivo phones, it also gets the extended RAM feature which uses internal memory to expand the RAM by 4GB.  

The processor is really powerful to care for your daily tasks but not at par with the competitors. In benchmark tests, OnePlus 9 leaves X70 Pro far behind. 

We played lots of games including Garena Free Fire, Call of Duty and Battleground Mobile India to name a few but it didn’t disappoint us even at once. We also tried to play games in the highest possible settings and it handled games very smoothly. 

Vivo X70 Pro runs FunTouchOS12 based on Android 11. Interestingly, Android 12 is also coming soon in the month of November itself. If you like stock Android, you will find the FunTouchOS better. However, it is now optimized for lots of things. There is some bloatware but that you can easily uninstall as soon you setup the device. Overall, you are getting a decent processor and you definitely will not compromise on speed and performance. 

Speaking of battery, it gets a 4450 mAh battery with 44W fast charging support via a bundled charger. The battery life is significantly optimized, thanks to the E5 panel. It can easily last long for a day, if you are a moderate user. We used it for calling, Maps, watching OTT content, mails and an hour of gaming, still it managed to save 23 per cent in the bank at the end of the day. It takes around 1 hour to fully charge the battery with the bundled charger. If you are in hurry, you can charge 60 per cent of the battery in just 30 minutes. X70 pro can also charge other devices since it supports reverse wired charging. 

Verdict: Vivo X70 pro is one of the highly capable smartphones out there with really great camera capabilities. With a curved AMOLED panel, great design, and one of the best camera hardware, it becomes a strong contender in the mid-range segment. The areas where it lags behind the competition are average performance due to the Dimensity SoC, lack of wireless charging support, and absence of stereo speakers. If you are looking for exceptional camera performance, then no one stands in front of the X70 Pro. If you want to look elsewhere OnePlus 9 and Asus ROG Phone 4 are worth mentioning in the segment.