Vivo X60 pro : smartphone

whenever we talk about flagships smartphones there's usually the same suspects that come to mind there's apple there's google there's samsung and maybe more recently oneplus now this is a very exclusive club and membership fee usually includes things like the best hardware performance a great software experience and of course a killer set of cameras now keeping all that in mind today i'm going to be  reviewing this the vivo x60 pro plus on paper it checks all the right boxes but does it have what it takes to get a seat with the big  boys let's find out. So let's get started with the design of the vivo x60 pro plus and it really doesn't look all that different from the vivo x60 pro or even the x50 series from last year but it still looks very modern and classy there's a rectangular camera module on the back and it gets curved corners with a slim body and this flat choker design on the top now this of course is the vegan leather finish and it comes in this emperor blue color which looks really premium and really classy to the touch thanks to that vegan leather it is also very grippy in the hand there's no slippage and of course there's no fingerprint smudges on the back it's also safer when you drop it because there's no back glass to shatter now the phone is fairly slim at 9.10 millimeters and it's surprisingly light despite everything that it packs in all right now time for the display which is a 6.56 inch fhd plus amoled screen with a 120 hertz refresh rate now it isn't qhd plus and honestly that's something i would have liked to see considering this is a flagship offering at a particularly high price point however i do love that vivo has moved to a central hole punch rather than the side hole punch that they had last year on the x50 series colors on this screen are punchy and vibrant and the screen gets bright enough outdoors content watching is great on the screen thanks to hdr 10 support as well also there's curved edges on this screen it's not flat so if you're not a fan of that you may want to first try the phone out to see how it operates that being said the edges are not too sharp and did not cause any accidental touches in my usage with those few things out of the way.

let's get to what i think is the most important feature on the vivo x60 pro plus it's headlining feature it's swan song the rear cameras it is a 50 megapixel plus 48 megapixel plus 32 megapixel plus 8 megapixel camera array so nearly all four sensors are very high resolution the 50 megapixel sensor is of course the samsung gn1 sensor while the 48 megapixel ultra wide sensor comes with five axis gimbal stabilization the eight megapixel sensor is for the periscope telephoto lens and of course there is that 32 megapixel sensor for portrait shots if you look carefully there's the zeiss logo with the t star logo beneath it which means that this camera system gets a unique coating which reduces things like reflection and lens flare and just overall makes for a much clearer much crisper image now pictures taken with this camera system are really good the colors are accurate they're not over saturated and they're not too flat either hdr also works quite well without a lot of hdr burn on backlit subjects there is very good depth of field with the primary sensor itself and even the ultra wide sensor is really strong it takes crisp pictures with accurate colors now there is a bit of color shift compared to the main sensor but it's only noticeable when you put the images side by side also the portrait shots are fantastic they're probably the best i've seen on a smartphone camera just ever moreover you can select the depth of field even after the image has been captured which i think is really useful now this is why i think a high resolution sensor really does wonders for portrait shots and other smartphone makers would do well to take a leap out of vivo's playbook telephoto shots are actually pretty good and i even managed to capture some birds in flight which also is an indicator of how quickly the shutter fires now optical zoom here is up to 5x but you can push it till 10x without any major quality loss digital zoom goes all the way up to 60x but at that point the only thing it's really useful for is maybe reading a far away license plate for macro images the smartphone uses that ultra wide sensor so it's no surprise that images are high in detail quality and color accuracy now you would think all this already makes this camera system worthy of the flagship name but it gets even better in low light this camera matches the best of the best and produces some great results with the astro mode you can even see the stars on a clear night which is a very cool feature to have plus since the ultra wide sensor is on a gimbal you can get stable night shots with it quite easily another area where the gimbal system comes in handy is with video and like we saw on last year's x60 pro it works wonders to stabilize shaky footage you can even get some cinematic pants that look like they've been taken using a tripod also speaking of video you can record at up to 8k at 30fps 4k at 60fps and 1080p at 60fps as well colors are really nice and vibrant and the camera picks up focus pretty easily too even in low light situations which are challenging for any smartphone camera there's not a whole lot of noise or grain which is quite impressive however it does seem that vivo is focused mostly on the back and not the front because that front facing sensor despite being a 32 megapixel high resolution sensor doesn't always take the sharpest images or the crispest shots however the portrait mode is all right and edge detection works quite well that being said for a phone that's otherwise got such excellent camera chops i think it would have been nice to see a 4k video option with the selfie camera and better image quality overall okay now let's get to the performance and like i said in the beginning this gets everything that you could ask for it checks all the boxes it's got a snapdragon a chip set it's got 12 gb of ram so there's absolutely no compromises on this front there's even an extended ram feature that lets phone storage be used as expanded ram and that also gives a smoother experience but i did not notice much difference with it on or off since the phone is already quite powerful to begin with gaming performance is also stellar there's no drop frames or lag of any sort however the phone does get a slight bit warm when playing games but that was only when i pushed it really hard for long periods of times plus that ultra game mode and multi-turbo work well to give a smooth gaming experience the overall user experience is also quite snappy again thanks to that high refresh rate also the x60 pro plus gets 256gb of ufs 3.1 storage but that's not expandable via a micro sd card. I will admit that software has been a slightly contentious point for vivo phones in the past but i do think that they've gotten much better over time fun touch os for example has gotten much cleaner and now there's also a whole lot of customization on offer android 11 also means that there's all the modern functions you need right here now it may not be the cleanest or the most minimal looking android skin out there but it's certainly better than previous iterations and doesn't look all that out of place in 2021 however i wasn't completely happy with the amount of bloat ware that was present on this phone out of the box especially considering the price point that it's being offered at thankfully all of it is very easily deleted like many other 2021 flagships there's no headphone jack here and that's not all that surprising what is surprising is the lack of stereo speakers which is a feature that is being offered at much lower price points as well moreover there's no wireless charging.

Here which in my opinion is another flagship feature that is missing and speaking of what's missing there's no ip rating here but it is good to see that there is a rubber gasket on the sim card tray which means that there is some ingress protection at least all that being said the in-displays canner here does work quite fast and it really gave me any sort of failed inputs when it comes to battery the x60 pro plus gets a 4200 mah unit which is respectable enough it did manage to always give me around a day's usage even with the screen refresh rate turned at 120 hertz and the screen brightness always nearly full however if you do things like take a lot of pictures and videos with the camera or do a lot of smartphone gaming or benchmark tests then yes you will eat into that battery life really quickly and maybe need to plug it in before the end of the day that being said there is a 55 watt charger included that got me from flat to full in around 47 minutes so clearly vivo offers a very unique flagship thanks to things like that vegan leather finish and that gimbal camera system in a sea of flagship smartphones that are competing to look like one another this certainly stands apart now it does miss out on some premium features that are expected at this price point like wireless charging and ip rating or serial speakers but if you can live without those things then this phone gives you pound for pound the best smartphone camera quality and the high performance hardware to match in that respect then there's very little that comes close to the vivo x60 pro.