Camera phone champ with a key weakness

I love mobile cameras, and for the past year I’ve been enjoying taking snaps with the vivo X200 Pro. Between the fantastic camera zoom, variety of video capture options, and premium extras, there was a lot to like. The X200 Pro wasn’t perfect, though. A weird glare issue on the primary camera, along with plenty of bloat, a dearth of AI features, and a ho-hum update pledge sullied the otherwise great package.

Now, vivo has launched the X300 Pro, its next flagship phone for global markets. So does the new phone pick up the baton and run even faster, or does it stumble and fall in a heap? I took it for a spin for a few weeks to find out.

The good news is that the X300 Pro generally takes high-quality images across the board. Much like the vivo X200 Pro, the 200MP 85mm periscope camera (f/2.67, Isocell HPB sensor) is my favorite shooter here. It captures sharp, detailed snaps while doing a good job of freezing moving subjects. And there’s always a snapshot mode if you’re shooting particularly fast-moving subjects. Image quality holds up well out to ~10x, but I also found that 20x shots weren’t always a complete waste of time. There is a clear lack of subject detail in many 20x snaps I took, but the clean lines, pleasantly shallow depth-of-field in some situations, accurate focusing, and mostly controlled contrast certainly helped a lot. You can always opt for the vivo X300 Pro’s fun external lens if you value higher quality long-range zoom.

The X300 Pro captures some detailed, full-resolution 200MP shots, and I’m glad to see the company has all but eliminated the splotchiness seen on previous X series phones, such as the X100 Ultra. It also tentatively looks like vivo has reduced blown highlights here compared to the X200 Pro, but shot-to-shot times still take around four seconds to process.

Okay, so you’ve got all those megapixels, but what can you do with them? In addition to full-resolution portraits and landscape/night mode snaps, vivo now offers a cloud-based AI Story feature, which effectively creates a two- or three-part “storyboard” out of a 200MP photo. I like the idea of harnessing all those megapixels to effectively get multiple photos from one snap, but this feature is highly dependent on the scene, and it sometimes highlights an arbitrary element in the scene or a subject that’s pretty blurry.

What about the other cameras? Well, the phone also has a 50MP LYT-828 main camera (1/1.28-inch) and a 50MP ultrawide lens (Isocell JN1). The 24mm main shooter is a little too wide for my liking after using the X200 Ultra and its 35mm primary camera, but it still captures photos with plenty of resolvable detail, wide dynamic range, and minimal noise. I’m also glad to report that the X200 Pro’s unsightly glare issue has been fixed on the X300 Pro. Thank goodness. Check out a comparison below.

After the X200 Ultra delivered a top-tier ultrawide camera with the same sensor as the main shooter, I’m somewhat disappointed to see the X300 Pro revert to the mid-tier Isocell JN1 camera sensor. Unsurprisingly, ultrawide shots via this camera are a clear step below the primary and tele lenses, featuring splotchy textures, occasionally inconsistent colors, and minor ghosting in a couple of situations. Fortunately, vivo’s processing does help deliver solid ultrawide results in mixed lighting.

Much like other vivo handsets, the X300 Pro offers very sharp output by default across all three lenses. This sometimes gets into over-sharpened territory — see the 3.5x shot of the ginger kitten in the main gallery. I also noticed that the cameras would focus on facial sharpness but fail to offer this same level of clarity on the rest of a subject’s body (such as arms). Weird.

In any event, vivo still allows you to reduce sharpness with a dedicated slider, but it also features a new Raw Lighting toggle. Keshav Chugh, vivo’s senior product manager of imaging effects, told Android Authority that this toggle disables HDR and effectively keeps the camera algorithms to minimal levels. In practice, I noticed a more contrasted look with darker shadows and brighter highlights. However, I didn’t see much of a change in terms of sharpness in the scene below.

Chugh also shared his recipe for images that look like you shot them on a “good, expensive small camera.” This entails enabling the Raw Lighting mode, switching to -20 brightness and +10 contrast via the effect adjustment sliders, and using the Positive Film style. It’s just a pity that vivo doesn’t let you quickly share these recipes as we’ve seen with Nothing phones.

I’m also glad to see some high-quality selfie shots here via the 50MP front-facing camera. That’s a relief, as I increasingly noticed the X200 Pro offered disappointing selfie images the more I used it as a daily driver. The new phone still manages to deliver clear, sharp snaps at dusk, and I was happy with the balance between detail and noise reduction.

Other notable features include 4K/120fps Dolby Vision slow-mo capture, 4K/120fps LOG video, and 4K/60fps cinematic video. I thought video capture was great, although I noticed some minor judder when panning. As for 4K/60fps cinematic capture, the phone actually processes footage after the fact in the gallery app, but Chugh told us that this was still a native 4K/60fps video and that only the depth map was processed afterwards. But as with the 4K/30fps option, video quality looks good in ideal conditions. Otherwise, it’s not uncommon to see flickering on people’s faces when using cinematic video in less-than-ideal lighting — that’s a problem I’ve also noticed on the X200 Ultra. You can view full-resolution photo samples via our Google Drive folder.

The X300 Pro is the first phone with the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 chipset, so what should you expect in terms of performance? Well, Geekbench 6 shows that the CPU is a clear step above the Dimensity 9400 in both single- and multi-core workloads. It’s also marginally better than the Snapdragon 8 Elite on single-core scores but lags behind when it comes to multi-core workloads.

The first Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phones offer a notable lead over the Dimensity 9500 in both tests, particularly in multi-core workloads. Meanwhile, GPU stress tests show disappointing levels of sustained performance. It starts off well, but quickly dips to the same broad performance levels as previous-generation flagship phones.

Fortunately, the X300 Pro handles real-world tasks just fine. The phone flew through most tasks, such as multitasking, launching apps, and demanding games. In the case of the latter, I was able to play War Thunder at a smooth pace with graphics turned up and a 60fps cap, while Genshin Impact also delivered a fluid experience with mostly high graphics and a 60fps frame limit. But it’s worth noting that popular racing title GRID Legends isn’t supported yet, ostensibly due to the developers not allowlisting the Dimensity 9500 chipset just yet.

Easily my biggest issue with the X300 Pro hardware is the downgraded battery in most regions. The phone ships with a 6,510mAh battery in China and some regions, but a 5,440mAh battery in Europe. This decision also has implications for overall endurance. I was generally able to get four-and-a-half to six hours of screen-on time with typical usage, while light usage yielded just over eight hours. By contrast, the X200 Pro, with its 6,000mAh battery in most regions, generally delivered eight hours of screen-on time with my typical usage. Don’t expect two days of usage with the X300 Pro’s smaller battery, unless you use battery saver mode and take other power-sipping measures. What a shame.

Once you’ve drained the battery, you can take advantage of 90W wired or 40W wireless charging. I’m also glad to see the phone supports PPS charging, as it goes from 1% to a full charge in around 58 minutes via my 65W PPS charger without the fast charging toggle. That’s nothing special in the grand scheme of things, but I’m glad more brands are embracing reasonably fast speeds via the standard protocol.

This is also the first vivo phone outside China with the OriginOS skin, as vivo has dropped the FunTouch OS branding. OriginOS 6 bears more than a passing resemblance to iOS 26 and its Liquid Glass aesthetic, but it also brings a few notable additions. This includes the fun Flip Cards lock screen wallpaper feature, the Motion Prompts feature for combating motion sickness, Mac integration, more widgets, bypass charging, and a redesigned notification shade. I would’ve liked to see a wet touch mode for the display, along with more general AI features and more AI options that don’t require a vivo account.

I’m also glad to report that the X300 Pro is scheduled to receive five major Android OS upgrades and seven years of security patches. That’s not quite on par with Google, Samsung, and HONOR’s seven-year pledge across the board, but it’s still a significant improvement over the previous 4+5 update policy.

The vivo X300 Pro is a strong contender for one of the best camera phones on the market, owing to fantastic camera zoom, a slick main camera, and a ton of photo/video options. Fortunately, the phone also delivers a much-needed software overhaul, fast wired/wireless charging, a durable IP rating, and a responsive fingerprint scanner.

It’s not all great, though. The biggest issue is that many countries will receive a downgraded battery, resulting in disappointing endurance. vivo doesn’t really have an excuse when flagships from stablemates OPPO and OnePlus offer huge batteries thanks to dual-cell designs. Otherwise, performance under sustained load is a concern, the ultrawide camera feels like an afterthought once again, and there aren’t many AI features outside of photography tools. The phone will also set you back a pretty penny at €1,400 (~$1,618), although this matches the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Nevertheless, the X300 Pro is definitely worth considering if you’re after an excellent camera experience and don’t mind paying “Ultra” money. But there are also a few alternatives worth considering. The OPPO Find X9 Pro ($1515 at Amazon) offers compelling specs and similarly great camera hardware, but a much larger battery.

Meanwhile, the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL ($1199 at Amazon) brings polished cameras and plenty of AI tricks, but lags behind in terms of overall horsepower and fast charging capabilities. Finally, the vivo X200 Pro ($749.99 at Giztop) is still available in some global markets, and it has a larger battery than the X300 Pro in all but two countries, namely Austria and Hungary.