Vivo X60 Pro+ review

Price When Reviewed

Rs 69,990 (around £680)

Best Prices Today: Vivo X60 Pro+

It’s a shame that the Vivo X60 Pro+ isn’t releasing outside of China and India, because it makes a pretty compelling case that Vivo can hold its own against Samsung and Xiaomi in the flagship space.

While those brands are mostly saving their best camera setups for ‘Ultra’ phones that also boast huge displays and even bigger price tags, Vivo has squeezed a brilliant quad-camera module into a relatively compact device.

It’s kept costs down by making compromises elsewhere, making the X60 Pro+ an excellent choice for anyone who wants one of the best phone cameras around but doesn’t want to drop over a grand on a phone they can’t even hold in one hand.

At points it feels like those compromises go too far – wireless charging is an odd omission for a phone at this level – but I suspect that the X60 Pro+ will hit a sweet spot for many.

Design and build

I’ve made no secret of my love for Vivo’s current flagship design language – I think it’s pretty much the best around – and the X60 Pro+ is essentially a muted, faux leather-coated extension of that philosophy.

The company’s trademark tiered camera module is here, though larger than ever to fit in four lenses and some pretty sizeable sensors.

The rear of the phone is coated in vegan leather – blue in India, though China gets both that and a more vibrant orange option – which gives the phone a welcome tactility. The only downside is that it does make it thicker – at 9.1mm it does feel a little chunky, especially compared to the svelte, glass-encased X60 and X60 Pro.

The 6.56in display is curved at the sides, but just enough to keep the phone comfortable to hold without impact usability. The black bezel is pretty slim too.

You get a USB-C port for charging, but no headphone jack. Perhaps more surprising for a flagship, you don’t get stereo speakers, though the single down-firing speaker is pretty potent. More concerningly perhaps, there’s no IP rating, meaning there’s no guarantee of the phone’s water- and dust-resistance.

Display

The X60 Pro+ packs a pretty typical flagship phone screen: a 120Hz AMOLED with support for HDR10 and high max brightness.

This isn’t one of the recent adaptive refresh rate displays, so it can only deliver 60Hz or 120Hz, or a smart switch mode to swap between the two, rather than hitting a full range of refresh rates to suit different content.

The bigger compromise here is that the resolution is only Full HD+ (1080 x 2376) rather than 2K or higher like most rival flagships. In all honesty, I think this is a smart swap: most people can’t spot the higher resolution on this screen size anyway, and having fewer pixels improves both battery life and gaming performance.

In all other respects the display is a treat. It’s bright, vibrant, and supports blue light and anti-flicker eye protection features, along with an under-display fingerprint scanner that’s fast and reliable. If you don’t mind missing out on a few extra pixels, this’ll do you great.

Specs and performance

If the display involves a minor drop from top specs, there’s no such compromise on the phone’s internals.

The X60 Pro+ is the only phone in the range powered by the flagship Snapdragon 888 chipset, guaranteeing the best performance around, along with strong 5G support. It’s joined by 8/12GB of RAM and 128/256GB of storage, although there’s no microSD card slot to expand that.

In benchmarks the phone excels, securing the best scores we’ve seen from any Snapdragon 888 phone yet, even trumping the gaming-focused Asus ROG Phone 5. You can see the benefit of the Full HD+ display in the GFXBench results, where it trounces its 2K rivals.

Setting artificial benchmarks aside, in regular use the phone is fast, responsive, and essentially lag-free, as you’d expect. Fundamentally, you can’t get meaningfully better performance than this elsewhere.

Camera

It’s fair to say that for most people the decision to buy the X60 Pro+ or not is going to come down to camera performance, so I’m relieved to say that the phone really does deliver here. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s the best camera phone out there right now, but it definitely belongs in the conversation.

There are four rear lenses here: a 50Mp, f/1.6 main lens using the large Samsung ISOCELL GN1 sensor and OIS; a 48Mp, f/2.2 ultrawide camera with Vivo’s custom gimbal stabilisation system; a 32Mp, f/2.0, 2x zoom telephoto lens; and an 8Mp, f/3.4, 5x zoom periscope lens with OIS. Let’s take them in turn.

The selling point of the main camera is the large 1/1.31” sensor, which helps the camera take in more light for more detailed shots, accurate colours, and improved dynamic range (with the added benefit of a natural bokeh effect in some close-up shots). Shots are punchy and attractive, even in dimmer light, and the main camera does an excellent job of balancing exposure in challenging conditions like dark environments with a few strong light sources.

Details remain strong and crisp even if you punch in or crop, and there’s little evidence of noise, artifacting, or over-aggressive sharpening in the final images. Colours can be a little aggressive – Vivo’s colour science is a little heavy on saturation for my taste – but this is far from the worst offender for that, with none of my shots coming out saturated to the point of artificiality.

The main lens is backed up by an ultrawide using Sony’s 48Mp IMX598 sensor and Vivo’s gimbal stabilisation system – making it essentially the same setup as the main camera in the X60 Pro. I’m a huge fan of this recent trend for ultrawide lenses that can keep up with the main shooters, and while the two cameras here do pull apart a little, there’s not much in it.

The ultrawide lacks some of the finer detail you’ll find from the main lens – even with that gimbal stabilisation to keep it steady – but colours and white balance are impeccable. Thanks to the gimbal it exceeds the main camera in low light, with that extra steadiness helping to maintain detail while delivering superior exposure.

The next lens over is a 32Mp 2x zoom telephoto, which Vivo bills a ‘portrait lens’ – it’s actually the lens that the phone’s portrait mode defaults to, though you can also use the main camera if you prefer.

Once again, colour consistency is remarkable, and in good lighting results are mostly on a par with the other lenses, though there’s a little more evidence of sharpening to maintain detail. It’s in dimmer light that this begins to suffer, with details getting lost and noise creeping in, but equally, I’ve managed some fantastic lowlight shots out of this camera during my testing.

Finally, an 8Mp, 5x periscope rounds out the set. This is no match for the 10x periscopes in the top-end Samsung and Xiaomi ultra-flagships, but for most people this will be more than enough zoom. At 5x results are fantastic, and remain good up to 20x or so, but as you approach the 60x max a watercolour effect begins to set in. This is also the only lens where colour consistency is slightly off, with paler results than the other three lenses – not necessarily a bad thing though.

The rear lenses come with Zeiss branding and the promise that they met the optical company’s quality control and certification standards. More importantly, the rear module boasts Zeiss’s T* lens coating, which reduces glare and artifacting from bright light. It won’t eliminate it entirely – you’ll spot some lens flare in my sample shots – but I’ve definitely noticed less glare and cleaner shots in especially bright light, so it is doing something.

On the front, the 32Mp, f/2.5 selfie camera is also a triumph. By selfie standards this is high resolution, and the results speak for themselves, with crisp details matched by strong colours and an effective portrait mode with customisable depth of field (and some aggressive beauty mode options, if that’s your thing).

Vivo offers a wealth of photo modes across the lenses, with long and double exposures, separate dedicated modes for lunar and astral photography, and a comprehensive pro mode with RAW support. Night mode is supported on every lens, portrait on everything except the ultrawide, and high resolution shots on everything except the periscope and selfie camera.

Video caps out at 8K@30fps (on the main and ultrawide) or 4K@60fps. HDR is limited to 4K@30fps, and only available on the main and portrait lenses for some reason. The main and ultrawide can also deliver super stabilised video, combining OIS and EIS (and the gimbal for the ultrawide) to impressive effect.

This is amped up even further for ‘Super Night’ video, which crops aggressively into the gimbal-stabilised ultrawide camera for the sake of stable lowlight video.

All-in-all, this is an impressively well-rounded camera set. Short of including a 10x periscope or an even larger main sensor there would be few ways to improve on the camera hardware on offer here. And while I wouldn’t say Vivo’s computational photography prowess is quite up there with the likes of Apple and Google, the gap is closing more than ever.

Battery and charging

The 4200mAh battery in the X60 Pro+ is relatively petite by modern standards, which is probably a big part of how Vivo has kept the phone thin and light.

While this is reflected in some underwhelming battery benchmark results, in regular used the Pro+ actually impressed me with its longevity, easily lasting more than a day and making it to two with light use. This is likely thanks to a combination of smart power optimisation software and the decision to stick with an FHD+ screen – high-resolution panels are a major power draw.

Charging is more of a mixed bag. Over USB-C you get 55W charging speeds, which in my testing equated to 49% in 15 minutes and 82% in half an hour. That’s not the fastest you’ll find – and in fact even some budget phones go faster these days – but it’s almost certainly fast enough.

More disappointing is the fact that there’s no wireless charging at all. Vivo still doesn’t support the tech in any of its phones, even as it’s become standard across rival flagship devices. At this point, it feels like a pretty striking omission.

Software

The X60 Pro+ comes with two different software configurations depending on where you buy it. In China, the phone is sold with Vivo’s new Origin OS, which I haven’t had the chance to test, so I can’t speak to how it runs.

The Indian version of the phone still runs the company’s older FuntouchOS, and I’ll be honest: I wish it didn’t.

Funtouch is one of the more aggressive Android skins out there. The phone ships with a full suite of Vivo apps, rather than the Google defaults, along with pre-installed bloatware like Amazon, Snapchat, or Flipkart. You’ll also have to contend with ads for ‘hot games’ and ‘hot apps’ and Vivo’s virtual assistant, Jovi.

Much of this can be uninstalled, disabled, or otherwise hidden away, but some features – Jovi and the core Vivo apps – are there to stay, whether you like them or not.

This isn’t the worst Android experience out there, and it’s getting better over time, but Vivo is still behind rivals when it comes to western tastes for an operating system. The company itself even knows that, and ships its phones in Europe with something much closer to stock Android, but with no official European release on the cards for the X60 Pro+, that isn’t an option here.

Price and availability

The X60 Pro+ starts from ¥4,998 in China (£550/$760) and Rs 69,990 in India (£680/$940), so if you want to import one you should expect to pay around that much, plus some for shipping and import taxes.

Check out Giztop and Ali Express for Chinese import options, or Flipkart and Amazon for the Indian version. Remember that your choice will impact your software options, and which colours are available.

Regardless, you can probably get the X60 Pro+ for less than the price of the Galaxy S21 Ultra or Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra, but you will be paying a similar price to the likes of the standard Galaxy S21, OnePlus 9 Pro, or iPhone 12.

The camera system here is quite possibly the best you’ll find at that price point, but just remember that you’ll be missing out on niceties like wireless charging, an IP rating, and stereo speakers. Check out our guides to the best camera phones and best Android phones for more options.

Verdict

The pitch for the Vivo X60 Pro+ is pretty simple: an ultra flagship camera in a (relatively) affordable package.

With four lenses, including huge sensors, gimbal stabilisation, and a periscope zoom, you’re getting a camera spec that’s up there with the best around, but in a phone that’s cheaper and more compact than similar Ultra rivals.

On the other hand, you’ll also have to give up wireless charging, an IP rating, and stereo speakers – and put up with some occasionally frustrating software.

If photography is your focus, this is a smart tradeoff. But dropping this much on a phone without the usual flagship luxuries might not make sense for everyone else.

Best Prices Today: Vivo X60 Pro+