Everything You Need in a Compact Handset

Mid-range smartphones are known for delivering all the premium features, like an excellent camera system, while skimping on the finer things, like a full-glass back. Vivo’s best mid-range offering, the Vivo V25 Pro, has the same character—it’s got great cameras, a flawless screen, and a loud and clear speaker.

But to keep its price at mid-range territory, Vivo had to compromise on other features. So, is the V25 Pro still worth it? Or did Vivo remove one too many features? Let’s find out.

Vivo V25 vs. V25 Pro

Before going into detail, you must know that V25 has a Pro and non-Pro version. Although they look similar, both phones have significant differences. Here’s a comparison between their specifications:

The Vivo V25 Pro has a better display, a faster screen, and a slightly bigger battery than the vanilla V25 unit. Nevertheless, the latter has one advantage over the former: it has a better selfie camera, affirming the previous model’s stance, the Vivo V23, as the ultimate selfie phone.

But enough about comparisons; let’s dive into the Vivo V25 Pro.

In the Box

The Vivo V25 Pro arrives in a vanilla gray box, but the goodies inside it are anything but. You’ll see the Vivo V25 Pro wrapped in matte plastic when you open the package. Underneath the phone, you’ll find a clear plastic case, a massive 80-watt charger, and a USB-A to USB-C charging cable. Vivo also includes a wired 3.5mm headset and a USB-C to 3.5mm jack adapter.

You also have two options for the color—pure black and sailing blue. If you choose the latter, you get a UV-sensitive back plate that darkens when exposed to UV light. It’s a nice party trick, but not something you’ll find useful in everyday situations.

Vivo V25 Pro Design

The phone itself is thin and lightweight. You’ll find its power and volume buttons on the right side, with the SIM card tray, a small hole for the microphone, USB-C port, and a single speaker grille at the bottom. The top and right sides are blank, save for another hole for the secondary microphone.

You’ll find the camera bump at the back with one small and two large sensors. The 64MP primary sensor is located at the top, with the flash right beside it, while the 12MP ultrawide sensor sits right below it. The 2MP Super Macro sensor is the smallest in the camera bump and sits just right below the ultrawide camera.

It also features an optical under-display fingerprint sensor that lights up as soon as you move the phone. You can also use the hole-punch front camera at the top-center of the display to scan your face and unlock your phone.

You can also use the always-on feature on the AMOLED display, showing you the time, notifications, and even customized text when you’re not using the phone. You can also change its settings so your phone will show the always-on feature when you move the phone, on schedule, or all the time.

The V25 Pro’s rounded edges make gesture navigation a breeze in the Funtouch 12 OS. You’ll also find the phone’s light and slim build easy to hold, meaning you won’t get tired from holding it while watching videos for long periods. The phone’s color-changing back panel also has a nice matte finish that’s smooth to the touch and doesn’t leave fingerprints as well.

Theoretical Performance

The Vivo V25 Pro isn’t running the latest and the greatest from Qualcomm, so don’t expect it to break any computing records. Nevertheless, its performance is good enough for most day-to-day tasks, like watching videos, posting on social media, and playing light games. You can also use it for some video and photo editing, but don’t expect it to perform as fast as other flagship devices.

On Geekbench 5, the phone scored 622 on the single-core and 1988 on the multi-core tests. It also scored 4096 at 24.5 FPS on 3DMark for Android Wild Life and 7718 on PCMark for Android Work 3.0. Surprisingly, these scores are around 35-40% lower than what the Vivo V23 Pro garnered in most of the same tests.

UL Solutions also posted a better Wild Life result for the previous model at 4483 at 26 FPS, an 8.6% reduction in performance, and a 5.8% reduction in frames per second.

The only test where the V25 Pro beat the V23 Pro was in Work 3.0, where it defeated the latter’s 6575 by 1143 points.

Nevertheless, don’t be discouraged by these numbers. After all, benchmarks are just that—numbers. What’s more important is how the phone will perform in the real world.

Watching Videos, Listening to Music, and Playing Games

Whatever results the Vivo V25 Pro received from these benchmarking apps, let’s check out its performance in day-to-day use, especially in media consumption.

The phone’s 120Hz 6.56-inch AMOLED screen allows it to run smoothly, even when you’re playing demanding Android games like Real Racing 3 and Genshin Impact. And with the screen rated for HDR10+ and with 1300 nits peak brightness, you can ensure that you’re getting the best possible color from the videos you watch.

My only qualm with the screen brightness is that it tends to get too dim when set on automatic. While it’s good to have low screen brightness levels when you’re using the phone in darkness, it can get too dim, especially if you’re driving. You can adjust the brightness level to make your display easier to see. Still, it’s annoying to do so, especially if you drive under a bridge and suddenly have difficulty seeing your navigation app.

When it comes to the audio, the phone gets reasonably loud, allowing you to hear every minor detail of what you’re listening to. Although it doesn’t have the crispness of flagship devices and has only one speaker at the bottom, it’s loud enough that you would barely notice those imperfections unless you’re used to high-end devices.

The Vivo V25 Pro is also great at playing games. When you launch a game, the phone offers a game bar hidden on the right side of the screen. When you swipe from the right edge, you reveal several options, like different power modes, notification and call muting, view enhancement, brightness locking, screen off autoplay, quick screenshots, and screen recording.

The smooth, rounded screen edges make it a joy to play games, while the clear case ensures you have a secure grip on the phone during intense gaming.

Vivo V25 Pro Photography

Of course, we cannot end this review without looking at the Vivo V25 Pro’s primary design—smartphone photography. Vivo is leaning into the V25 Pro’s camera system so much that it even printed Professional Photography at the top edge of the phone.

Standard Photography

The camera offers a maximum of 64MP resolution, but you should remember that pixel count isn’t everything. With the Vivo V25 Pro, you get excellent image quality beyond resolution. Images taken in broad daylight produce sharp, crisp images with vivid and realistic colors.

It also has a great autofocus system, distinguishing between subjects and accurately tracking people. It also quickly adjusts its focus, so you rarely get out-of-focus images. Its wide f/1.9 aperture for the primary camera also means great natural bokeh. Because of its large opening, you don’t have to rely on artificial background blur.

You can get excellent images, even in low light conditions, without switching to night mode. As long as there’s a light source, the Vivo V25 Pro can produce a bright image with tack-sharp details.

Night Mode

But if you need to capture images in extreme darkness, you should switch to Night Mode. In this mode, the phone will capture images for extended periods—four seconds or more. If you’re switching to this mode, you must have a tripod or any other way to stabilize the device.

The phone automatically decides how long to capture the image. If the scene is genuinely dark, it could switch to Extreme Night Mode, which will lengthen its exposure time to 15 seconds. Nevertheless, the long exposure time is well worth it, as the difference between ordinary and extreme night modes is night and day.

Portrait

When you switch to Portrait mode, you open up a world of options. Not only do you get 15 filters to change how your images feel, but you can also use the phone’s built-in AI to change how your human subject looks.

Vivo offers buffing, skin tone, and whitening in Portrait Mode. But aside from that, it also lets you change your model’s facial features. With the V25 Pro, you can slim or reshape the jaw, reduce the cheek’s puffiness, shorten or lengthen the face, enhance the jaw, adjust the forehead, reshape the nose, and more.

But if you want to keep to your natural look, you can skip the Beauty filters and swipe to the Posture guide instead. You get over 50 poses for selfies, profile photos, group shots, and more. You can even adjust the bokeh effect from f/16 all the way to f/0.95, allowing you to have a super shallow image that helps your subject to pop out.

Video and Other Modes

When you switch to Video Mode, you’ll see that the phone can shoot as high as 4K60, although that means you won’t have access to other features. If you want to use features like Ultra stabilization, Auto Super Night Mode, and HDR, you must limit your image quality to Full HD at 60 FPS.

Aside from Video, you also get several other specialized modes, like Live Photo, Slo-mo, Time-lapse, and Vlog Movie. You also get other photography modes, like 64 MP, Panorama, Pro, Documents, Pro Sports, Long Exposure, and Double Exposure.

Each of these modes has its own sub-modes and instructions, allowing you to use them effectively, even if you don’t have experience with it. There are also two other notable modes—AR Stickers, which allows you to add fun filters to your face, even when using other apps for video calls, and Dual View, which allows you to record videos on both the front and rear cameras.

All these photography and videography modes add a lot of value to an otherwise typical mid-range smartphone.

Is the Vivo V25 Pro Worth Your Money?

Yes. If you’re looking for a smartphone that’s really good at photography and videography, but you don’t want to spend so much on a flagship device, you should go for the Vivo V25 Pro. This smartphone ticks all the right boxes if you’re into photography—an excellent sensor setup, a ton of filters and guides, specialized modes, and more.

Of course, you’re bound to get some compromises at this price. The phone doesn’t have any IP rating, nor does it have stereo sound. And its Android skin, Funtouch 12, is filled with a lot of bloatware you can’t remove. But if you must have the best camera at a price you can afford, these compromises are worth tolerating.